Perfect for Family Literacy Nights and as an Online Resource for Parents
Research-based and developed with reading specialists, Bruce Johnson, M.Ed., and Dorothy Taguchi, Ph.D.
To help promote parent engagement in reading with their children, we have created several interactive presentations or “workshops,” which we are making available for download or streaming at no cost to schools and districts. If you or a person in your organization would like to do the presentations yourself, we provide everything you need in the download: there are PowerPoint Presentations, Handouts for the participants, and comprehensive Presenter’s Guides. Or, if you’d prefer, there are two streaming videos available, which you are welcome to use at any time for teachers or parents in your district.
All of the downloadable workshop presentations can be easily tailored to your audience and desired length of time. And, while these presentations are primarily designed for parents, they can also be great workshops for classroom teachers and literacy tutors!
There are two versions of the Reading Together workshop presentation available as a streaming video. You can stream the videos from this page or from YouTube. More information on this is below.
Reading Together
and
We Both Read®
These two mini-workshop presentations (30 to 45 minutes each) will motivate parents to get more involved in reading with their children and teach them skills they can use to maximize the benefits of reading together.
The first workshop covers best practices in reading together. Parents will learn why reading together is important, three styles of reading together (choral reading, echo reading, and shared reading), skills to use when reading to their child, and skills to use when their child is reading to them.
The second workshop covers books specifically designed for reading together, focusing primarily on use of the We Both Read series. This section includes information on how to maximize the benefits of using We Both Read and offers parents an opportunity to practice using the books.
View and download Reading Together and We Both Read presentation materials
Stream or share a presentation on
We Both Read & Reading Together
Stream a presentation with Tips on
Reading Together with Your Child
Starting Off Right with
Phonemic Awareness
and Phonics
For presentations to parents, there are two mini-workshops, one focusing on phonemic awareness and one focusing on phonics skills (Length: about 45 minutes to 1 hour each). A longer and more comprehensive version, combining both workshops, is included for presentation to classroom teachers and teachers’ aides.
The phonemic awareness presentation focuses on verbal games and activities parents can do to help prepare their children for reading. Parents will learn how to help their child develop the ability to hear, identify, segment, and blend the individual sounds in spoken words.
The phonics presentation focuses on the relationship between sounds and letters and how to blend letter sounds together to decode written words. Parents will learn simple games and activities they can do anytime with their child to reinforce phonics skills in reading.
View and download Phonemic Awareness and Phonics presentation materials
Helping Your Child
Get Ready to Read
This interactive presentation is designed to let parents know what they can do to help their children be better prepared for reading instruction. An ideal time to present this in the first half of kindergarten or before formal reading instruction begins.
The first section of the presentation focuses on reading to your child, as well as fun activities to do with your child to help develop phonemic awareness. The workshop presentation not only shows how important it is to read to your child but also covers how parents can maximize the benefits for their child.
The second section of the presentation includes fun activities to help your child learn the names and sounds of the letters in the alphabet. It also includes how parents can begin to introduce reading together activities, even with children who are prereaders.
Each section can be presented in about 30 minutes. Please note that much of the material in this presentation is covered in the other two workshop presentations above. However, this presentation is tailored specifically to parents of prereaders.
View and download the Helping Your Child Get Ready to Read presentation materials
We Both Read
Audio Books
Eight of the most popular We Both Read books are now available on audio CDs!
These audio books can be particularly helpful for ELL/ESL students, as well as for any students who are using the printed books without a parent, tutor, or reading buddy. Students can listen and follow along as the entire book is read to them, or they can listen to the left-hand pages (which have text at a higher reading level) and then pause the audio to explore reading the right-hand pages (which have text at their reading level).
Pricing: $9.95 each
Audio Books are also available as a complete set, and as a set with matching paperbacks.
SHOP NOW for the Audiobook CDs.
Read-Along E-Books
These Read-Along e-books can play an audio recording of the book, and students can easily follow along in the e-book since words are highlighted in sync with the audio. These e-books will help support beginning and struggling readers, since students can listen to the entire book or pause the recording to read the pages that are designed for their reading level. Of course, these We Both Read e-books can also be read without the audio and word highlighting.
If you already have an account with one of the companies below, it is probably best to obtain our Read-Along e-books through that company. Just click on their logo to log in to your account and then see the We Both Read e-books that are available with that partner.
Available Through
You can also buy a perpetual license to the Read-Along e-books directly from us. At this time, we only recommend this if you use Apple iPads or Apple computers at your school, and you have a computer tech at your school who can help transferring the books to the libraries for the iBook or Book app on your Apple devices. The perpetual license is good for all students at one school or one library.
At this time, we only offer a package of thirteen Read-Along e-book titles. If you purchase this package, you will receive a download link for the e-books. Please note that the download is over 500 meg and will require a relatively fast internet connection. Click here to see the included titles and shop for this e-book package.
PDF E-Book Editions for Your iPads and Computers!
These PDF E-Books are perfect for use at home and at school! They are not interactive; instead, they are designed to replicate the look and experience of reading a full-color printed book. To use these PDF E-Books on your iPads, simply download the free Adobe Reader or PDF Reader app from Apple’s iTunes store. These full-color E-Books are also ideal to read on your electronic whiteboards and computers.
SHOP NOW for PDF E-Book Collections.
View Samples for PDF E-Book Collections.
Both We Both Read and We Read Phonics books are now available as PDF E-Book Editions on CD-ROM. Each CD-ROM contains PDFs for three complete books. These PDF E-Books are also now available online with our School-to-Home Connection license, which allows parents to read all these books with students at home.
There are four CD-ROMs with a total of twelve titles from the We Both Read series in PDF format. The twelve titles represent some of our most popular books and include a mix of both fiction and nonfiction.
There are seven CD-ROMs with all twenty-one titles from the We Read Phonics series. The CD-ROMs for We Read Phonics also include separate phonics and sight word games for each title in an easy, printable format. Plus, the CD-ROMs include discussion questions for each title to ask students before and after reading.
PDF E-Book Pricing:
- $239.60 for 12 We Both Read PDF E-Books with a School-to-Home Connection License (which includes 2 year online access for teachers, students and parents at one school, as well as the 12 titles on 4 CD-ROMs and the right to transfer the e-books onto all computers at that school) (Set #: WB-PDF-12)
- $419.30 for a set of all 21 We Read Phonics PDF E-Books with a School-to-Home Connection License (which includes 2 year online access for teachers, students and parents at one school, as well as all 21 titles on 7 CD-ROMs and the right to transfer the E-Books onto all computers at that school) (Set #: WU-PDF-21)
- $658.90 for 33 We Read Phonics and We Both Read PDF E-Books with a School-to-Home Connection License (which includes a license to provide perpetual online access for teachers, students and parents at one school, as well as the 33 titles on 11 CD-ROMs and the right to transfer the e-books onto all computers at that school) (Set #: EB-33)