Our Mission

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All kids love reading. Yet by the time they get to third grade, many lose much of their innate impulse to engage with the written word. How can we counteract this tendency - given how important it is to encourage our kids to read at an early age?

 

Reading science has shown that kids are more likely to read if they think of reading as something you do, not something you’re taught. If you start out by hearing good stories with which you can engage, then you’ll likely love reading throughout your life.

 

It turns out that many kids are intimidated by other kids who read well. Some think that good readers have special abilities that they do not. Kids from lower income families suffer the most.

 

But science tells us that any kid can become a great reader if they are engaged and having fun. After all, we all share the same innate ability to talk - first by listening, then by imitating the speech we hear around us. Toddlers mimic us adults and practice speech until they get it. Stumbles and mistakes are part of the process.

 

But in our current educational system kids don’t get much chance to acquire that sort of knowledge. Schools nowadays spend less and less time on science and social studies. Without such exposure kids do not get the chance to become familiar with the basic knowledge and sentence structure necessary for sound reading instruction.

 

Now is a time of rising concern about illiteracy and its underlying causes. Test scores, such as National Assessment for Educational Progress, have been stagnant over the past thirty years of testing. Reading theories compete with each other - should we teach factual information or how to think? phonics or reading on sight?

 

Apparently three million teachers in US may be teaching the wrong reading curricula. They are trying to teach these skills in a way that conflicts with cognitive science. But it is a hard, slow, and expensive process to implement reading science in classrooms. Very few resources exist. Training programs are expensive and take years. Teachers burn out with “change fatigue”.

 

It has become obvious that getting students to read in class is not enough. Many kids can not decode or decipher words no matter what method is used because they lack the vocabulary, syntax, and background knowledge that is critical to understand passages on random topics. 

 

The key is to make sure that reading is part of kids’ everyday surroundings, something they come across in their daily lives. Studies have shown how much relevant knowledge that a reader has is essential to comprehending the written word.

 

Read Me A Story app enlists teachers and other family members as collaborators in literacy training of our young ones. The app is designed to be enjoyable by both readers and kids. Parents, grandparents, and teachers want to give their kids an enjoyable experience.

 

RMAS believes that reading is less a skill to be mastered than a way to learn about the world around you. It does not try to teach kids reading, but rather to teach kids by reading. It was built to spur kids to explore the world around them and learn more.

 

Yes, kids learn on screens nowadays. Computer based lessons are common. If given the choice between a book or an app, they will choose the app. Unless….. unless they start out loving to hear a good story and can engage with the reader, then perhaps they will love reading throughout their lives.

 

                                    Fair Use

 

Our mission here at Read Me A Story is to share the magic of reading great stories aloud to our little ones. We believe that all of us own these stories in common. They belong to us grownups as our legacy, to be treasured down through the years and passed along to our children and grandchildren, so they can know what made up our world and opened our minds to beauty and mystery and wonder.

 

The Doctrine of Fair Use is a provision of U.S. copyright law that permits read-aloud activities to be moved from classroom or bedroom to the internet, in order to enhance "learning, reaching out, or equitable opportunities". Such "transformative purposes" are not considered copyright infringement as long as they do not harm the work's core markets, such as competing with the publisher's efforts to sell books.

 

This means that when parents, grandparents, teachers, or others read aloud using online tools like Read Me A Story app, fair use allows the same practices that take place in person.

 

The Doctrine of Fair Use can be condensed into two essential questions:

 

1. Is there an educational purpose?

 

2. What, if any, is the harm to the original's core market?

 

For instance, reading a storybook online to pre-readers is considered a transformative activity since it supports learning to read and may reinforce group identity. The point is not whether the story in question was intended to be read online, but whether this sort of activity takes on new significance in this context, which it typically does.

 

To answer the second question, one can ask whether reading the story online will interfere materially with the sale of physical books, or even audio-books if commercially available?  In general, as Carrie Russell of the American Library Association has pointed out:  “Reading aloud is not displacing a sale or serving as a substitute to the work ... Listening to an audiobook is not the same as story time.”

 

Overall, Fair Use provides a powerful way to ensure that every kid has full and equal access to educational resources. As we learned during the time of the pandemic, we must be willing to respond to changing circumstances. Using technology to help close the gap for ethnic, disabled, and marginalized students remains a call to action.

 

Adapted From:     Reading Aloud: Fair Use Enables Translating Classroom Practices to Online Learning by Meredith Jacob et al is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.