Reading Bear is an excellent online resource to supplement phonetic and phonemic skills for early emergent readers. Founded by Larry Sanger in cooperation with the St. Charles Place Education Foundation, it is the creator’s mission to embed beginner reader skills within students in order to promote literary competency. All of the contents on this site are free and can be accessed through a laptop or tablet, however, Reading Bear does rely on donations and sponsors for maintenance and creating content.
Furthermore, in order to promote engagement and utilization, video tutorials on navigating the site have been made available for both teachers and parents. Also, specific training videos and manuals are accessible for teachers to incorporate Reading Bear in various classroom activities. Similarly, students may also learn how to access the resources and activities of the site through a “student-friendly” tutorial as well. Therefore, extinguishing feelings of initial confusion when first attempting to operate the site.
In addition, all activities are divided into separate modules depending on student proficiency. Reading Bear’s curriculum and format matches the literacy learning objectives for primary grade levels. Not to mention, word lists that the students will learn throughout the module are found in the teacher manual. The activities are presented in a “slide show” format similar to many online tools such as Boom Cards and KAHOOT. As mentioned previously, letter and sound recognition skills are the absolute focus per lesson. For instance, each vowel sound is taught within words, thus promoting consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word identification and forming. Although registration is optional in order to access the resources, it is recommended for all students to register in order to actively monitor progress. Performance is recorded at the end of each lesson through the use of quizzes.
Overall, Reading Bear is a great online resource to utilize in order to promote beginner reading skills. Despite the contents of this site being aimed at primary grade level students (K-2), it is an excellent supplement for struggling readers as well. The focus of this resource is to inform the students that each letter of a word (primarily CVC words) possesses a specific sound. As a result, the program teaches students how to identify sounds in words in order to compose words independently. The contents are of high quality and meet all learner types when introducing phonics. Both teachers and parents will notice an improvement and an interest in reading in their students when utilizing Reading Bear.
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