Educational Overview
Innovative and Fun!
Read-TV is an innovative series that helps children become familiar with words and reading. The stories in Read-TV engage children with lovable characters, humorous situations and simple language that includes rhyming and repetition. The colourful and context sensitive text captioning helps children become familiar with words and the meanings of those words. Researchers have shown that basic text captioning is beneficial to new readers. Read-TV pushes those benefits to a new level: the words often reflect the object they represent through animation, placement and colour.
Now It’s Your Turn to Tell the Story
Each of the six Read-TV stories are shown two times. First the story is told by a storyteller, then the storyteller steps aside and gives children and their parents a chance to interact with the video. This feature is called, “Now It’s Your Turn!” In this interactive space, children enjoy telling their version of the story (an important literacy behavior) identifying words or letting a parent or teacher take the lead as they use the video as a teaching tool.
Overall Read-TV is an active and interactive storybook on television and an riveting literacy event for emerging readers.
For Beginning and New Readers
Read-TV is a valuable literacy tool for children who are at different places in their emerging literacy. For the emerging reader Read-TV provides exposure to text in a medium children feel comfortable using. It aids in the realization that those squiggles on the screen are words and that those words carry meaning. The more developed reader will learn some words by sight, will have reading modeled for them and may even learn to read along with the stories.
For ESL Learners
Read-TV has been a successful tool for children learning english as a second language.
“Read-TV is absolutely appealing to children learning English as a second language. The mono-lingual, whole language, approach works quite well in combination with Read-TV’s engaging and empathetic nature. The writer and director has excellent insight into child psychology. These stories are set at a luxurious pace, they are charming and children will treasure them.”
-Dr. Carol Thew, Ed.D.,
Child Language Specialist
For Children with Special Needs
It is also a favorite for a variety of children with special needs.
“I was particularly interested to see my 5-year-old step-grandson (who is autistic and generally not attracted to video images) fascinated by the colour segment; he watched the whole thing, repeating the names of the colours.”
-PEH,
British Columbia, Canada