As a mom of a child with a learning disability in reading, technology has been a huge help. But most of the reading apps out there are geared toward young children who are learning to read, not 9 year olds. I just stumbled across the Whispersync and Immersion Reading from Kindle and I need to know more about it. Thanks!
Courtney
This is a great question, Courtney. Both of these technologies are exciting developments for the Kindle, and we think one of them especially will be of great help to your daughter.
While you may find that both Whispersync and Immersion Reading have features that could be of interest to your daughter—or anyone who loves both audio and text books—they are pretty different technologies. Whispersync allows a person to go from audio to text seamlessly by synchronizing your content across your devices, which is very attractive to someone who listens to an audio book while in the car but then turns to the Kindle to read at bedtime.
For your needs, though, I think
Immersion Reading for the Kindle will be more useful. Not only does it let her hear the story with Audible.com’s high-quality narration, but the text will be highlighted in sync with the audio. This allows her to still read along, but minimizes the chance of losing her place if she gets momentarily distracted.
It’s important to note that you’ll need a
Kindle Fire in order to use the Immersion Reading. And while I’ve read some false claims that in order to get both audio and visual books, you’d have to buy both at full price, this actually is not the case. If you go to Audible.com with your Kindle Fire, you’ll see that you can add Immersion Reading to the purchase of enabled audio book for only a few dollars more. Phew!
I’m also pleased to see so many titles for kids like the
Percy Jackson Series,
Holes, and 39 Clues, with other
Immersion Reading-enabled children’s titles listed at Audible.com. Hopefully, they’ll be adding more soon. But with over 800 titles, this should keep even the biggest story-lover busy for a good long time.
–Christina
For anyone who has a child with a learning disability or just needs extra help learning to read and work on reading comprehension, you need to check out http://www.tumblebooks.com. In the district where I work in an elementary school, we use this website quite a bit for reading work. There are grade level books that are read to the person that is logged in. They have a selection of beginning readers all they way up to chapter books for at least up to 8th grade. Some of them have quizzes for the book, some have games or puzzles, and the majority of them have a book report form you can print for the child to do as an assignment. You will need to get an account with them, but it is a good site for elementary students. There is also http://www.starfall.com for Kindergarten and First grade students to learn phonics, phonetic sounds, and it takes them from beginning reading up to higher level reading like 3rd or 4th grade. This one has so much to offer. Check it out and see if there is anything you can use or pass on to someone who may need it.
As for Brainpop Jr. it is a wonderful website for K-4 grades. Unfortunately if you are using it on an iPad, like I am at work, you have to pay $2.99 per app per iPad. That is a little expensive so we don’t get to use it on iPads. Good luck with your kids and I wish them all the best.
Thanks Theresa. We have covered Starfall a few times — it’s great!
Are there elementary classroom textbooks available in Immersion Reading? If so, where can they be found? Thank you!
I bought a Kindle Fire for my dyslexic son after reading rave reviews of Immersion Reading, and while I agree that it has the potential to be amazing for him, I’m really frustrated that it is not an option for a child user account on the Fire tablet. Amazon offers the option of creating separate child user accounts on the Fire, which come with a lot of internet safety features and a high level of parental control (for example, I can set it so that he has access to games, but cannot play them until he has read for a certain amount of time, and I can limit the amount of time for games too). However, it is not possible to access audio books within the child account, which means no Immersion Reading. This is not clearly stated anywhere on Amazon’s web site.