Lacking Content in Little Reader

[littlelg]

Hello Everyone!

We already posted to another forum, please see:
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/is-there-anyone-who-can-help-us-create-more-lr-content-we'll-pay!!/msg77393/

We received some responses but really not enough so we we thought we should post here, to Little Reader-specific forum.

We are looking for folks who may be interested in developing new content for Little Reader. We can provide specific requirements and guidelines but the overall objective is create something like "Semester 3" which will consist of high quality lessons focusing on sentences and phrases.

We will pay either per lesson or per batch of lessons created. All content that is created will be published to the community for free.

If you are interested in earning extra money while having fun creating new content and doing a great service for this community, please send us a PM.

Thanks!
Little LG's parents

[sonya_post]

I saw your post in the other forum. I'd be interested but am busy creating material specific for our own family's needs or I would consider it. I am wondering, however, if you should consider moving your child on from LR. I understand the joy of the system. It is efficient, easy and always available where ever you left off with a click of a button. There is no need to gather materials - it is all right there. If your child can read the material in LR on his own (even if it is only bits here and there), you might want to consider working on Phonics instruction with the Flesch exercises, or www.readingbear.org, or perhaps both. At some point you are going to need give your child the tools to read quickly and easily by him/herself.

I've started putting the Flesch exercises in LR reader format. I'll be working through them as quickly as I can. At the end of the exercises your child will have all the phonics rules needed for reading. I have an explaination of how to use the Flesh exercises in the English LR content download forum. You can go to www.larrysanger.org and get Daddudes ebook on how he used the exercises to teach his child to read quickly and well above grade level very young. You will find a video here http://forum.brillkids.com/mgallery/?sa=item;id=1707;showway=1 . The child is not sight reading but decoding. He is the one who started www.readingbear.org. I don't know Larry but as a vetran homeschooler, I found his ideas very helpful. 

I am not suggesting LR is bad, it is wonderful to have a storehouse of words you know when you are a beginning reader. It removes tons of the frustration for a little one. And some kids, though not even close to all kids, will make the transition from whole language to phonics without additional training. But most kids will need formal instruction. You want it to be quick and as painless as possible. The goal is get them reading early and well. LR does have some pattern phonics but it is not enough. That isn't their problem as I don't think that is what LR intended to do. We use LR and my son loves it. He can recognize a lot of words at 15 months. The thing it has done that I wasn't prepared for is speach. My son speaks better than most children 6-8 months older than he is. He is learning words at about 6-7 new ones a day. It just keeps getting faster. However, we just started on phonics instruction this week. We start by learning the letter sounds. When he has those down we will move to the Flesch exercises and Reading Bear with him.

SInce it is obvious you don't have a lot of time, this seems like the easiest way to get your child where you want him/her to go with the least effort and least pain. Like LR most of the work is already done and you just have to click the button.

Just my 2 cents,

Sonya

[littlelg]

Sonya,

Thank you for your very insightful comments!

I think you are 100% correct-- one should consider other methods that have a greater emphasis on phonics instructions (vs. word patterns).

What we love so much about Little Reader is how effortless it is. We have an established routine with our little one-- 10 minutes of Little Reader over breakfast and 10 minutes at night. It's super easy to follow if there is a continuous supply of lessons. We breezed through both semesters in about 8 months.

Our little one absolutely loves Little Reader and even now as we temporarily stopped doing Little Reader (we ran out of content!), whenever he sees one of us get on our laptops, he says "What do you want to do? Little Reader?"

I will note the following--- we are doing other things such as sounding letters when we read as well as following lessons from Siegfried Engelmann's "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Steps" (it's a classic on this subject!). Plus, our little one just started Junior Kumon, which is also great.

We have also started with Larry's http://www.readingbear.org, which is great of course and free for those who can't afford Little Reader.

However, none of these methods come close to Little Reader in terms of ease of use and immediate results. Hence, we are really hoping we can find some folks who could help us develop new content for Little Reader ("Semester 3").

We were hoping we would find interested folks here but perhaps we may have to also post on Craigslist or oDesks ads for this. We have gotten some responses but not enough. As I mentioned, we will pay for each lesson developed and once new content is created, we will share it back to the community for free.

Thanks again for your response!

Little LG's parents

[sonya_post]

Have you seen Bob Books and other similar books? As soon as I get at least 30 or so Flesch exercises up, I will be creating phonics based ebooks in LR for our use much like the Bob books, I hope better content. My intention is to cover a couple phonics rules in each book. They will carefully follow the Flesch exercises as that is the primer we are using. I have used 100 Easy Lessons, but for us (with a 4 y/o boy) it was torture. We moved to the Flesch exercises in LR for the same reasons you like LR already. It is easy! We play the "Say It Fast" game all the time with the Flesch exercises. The thing I like about the way we do the Flesch exercises (I stole this all from daddude but put our little spin on it), is that, for the child, it is fairly painless. We do them in order spend about ten minutes and move on. First, the computer says the word, Then I sound it out slow, he repeats after me then we say it fast and we move on. It wasn't long until we went to letting the computer say the word, and him just sounding it out slower and putting it back together. The progress we have seen is amazing.

I made an abc category in LR with just one letter on each frame and we run drills on that every morning with prizes (of course) for beating the previous time. (In little reader it is merely a click to the next letter and no flash cards to get lost). We went from 1 minute 56 seconds to 45 seconds in 3 days. This has made sounding out words a breeze. We are nearly at the point where I only need to present a rule and sound out one or two words and he will just say the rest of the list.

I am not sure if this will help you or not. If you give me some time I will be working on ebooks, But, I suspect most parents here are much like you, busy and frazzled, that is why they are using LR in the first place - it is easy. 

Sonya     

[littlelg]

Sonya,

Thanks again for your great suggestions. We have not tried Bob books because we found illustrations in them to be too plain. Our little one really loves pictures. I think this is one reason why Little Reader is so amazingly effective.

Have you tried books by "Brand New Readers" (see http://www.amazon.com/Wow-Its-Worm-Watches-Readers/dp/0763611530/ref=pd_sim_b_2 and they have more)? We found these to be the best so far. These books have colorful illustrations, sentences are simple, and they clearly separate pictures from words.

We have also attended several kids book fairs. We found it to be amazing that despite the sheer number children book authors and publishers, very few understand the mechanics of teaching small children how to read. Most books use words that are too complex, break sentences in wrong places, mix inconsistent capitalization or use fonts that are not ideal for learning how to read.

In this regard, Little Reader is just amazing and a step above anything else out there. In fact, we have done a simple test. We took Kumon Jr. flash cards and then converted them into a Little Reader program. Exact same content but a different form factor. Our little one was so much more engaged using Little Reader, it was day and night difference.

Now, if we can only find someone to help us develop more quality content for Little Reader...

Cheers!

Little LG's Parents

[sonya_post]

I will look at the books by Brand New Reader.  I like the idea of the Bob books but was not impressed with them either. I have a couple of Kumon workbooks but have not seen the flash cards.

I agree with you about publishers. That is why the market is wide open for other material. You might have better luck at a homeschool fair. Or contacting your local homeschool group. Many of them are not keen on early learning as they feel it stifles the children, but for material, they are going to have the best ideas. Most homeschool publishers have a better handle on early reading. My first child is now 16 and we used the Turbo reader, which dispenses with the pictures after the first 5 lessons. I now do daycare for a 4 y/o, 3 y/o and have my 15 m/o, They are all learning to read at the same time, but in different ways. The point, I've been out of the reading loop for so long, I really don't know what is available anymore.

Over the next couple weeks I will go to the library and see what can find & to get ideas. I will check out the Brand New Reader stuff and maybe we can do something for you. However, it won't be immediately and I will write them according to the Flesch exercises. If that is acceptable to you, perhaps we can kill two birds with one stone.  If I am creating content for my own use, it seems a better use of time to make sure it is stuff other people will want and can use also.

Sonya

[LDSMom]

I've just got to chime in - We purchased the first set of Bob books when my son was learning to sound out words from the Flesche cards.  I didn't really like them at first because there wasn't much to them, they didn't seem very creative, pictures were boring with only bits of color here and there. But my 4 yr old now really does love them. One book was talking about a "red hen" but the picture wasn't even colored so really the hen was white. I let him take his crayons to the pages, and color them just like a coloring book. They are now his favorite because he's added his personal touch to them. 

There are always ways to make things more interesting than they seem!   Also, when you're reading the books you can find interesting things to point out in the pictures, they're just not always glaringly obvious. I think they are purpously using a more subtle approach to each page vs. having lots of distracting colors, pictures, etc.

We've just moved on to the Kindergarten Sight Words books and he's flying through them, and actually picking up the sight words as a whole word vs. phonics sounding out. It's so fun to see them learn and grow!!

[KL]

Hi all!

You'll be glad to know that we are in the process of releasing a lot more content (Categories) for LR.  We should also be releasing a major upgrade of LR early next year which will allow you to create your own curriculum with whatever Categories you choose to put into it.  Will be releasing more details soon!

[littlelg]

Hi all!

You'll be glad to know that we are in the process of releasing a lot more content (Categories) for LR.  We should also be releasing a major upgrade of LR early next year which will allow you to create your own curriculum with whatever Categories you choose to put into it.  Will be releasing more details soon!

KL,

That's fantastic news!

Three follow up questions then:

1. Is there a tentative timeline for releasing new Categories of content for Little Reader?

2. Will these Categories include more advanced content, specifically continuation of Semester 2. What we are really looking for is additional "Simple Sentences" content. Our little one loves these little stories, and we feel that it's a great way to progress in reading.

3. Given the tentative timeline and expected new categories, do you think we should still hire someone ourselves to develop new content? We were considering hiring someone through oDesk to create may be 50-100 new "Simple Sentences" modules. The idea would be to follow Semester 2 format (minus videos to keep things simple). Once these are created, we would of course share them with the community for free.

Thanks again to your team for all the hard work on this product. Little Reader truly is a life changing learning tool.

Cheers,
Little LG's Parents

[KL]

1. We've got a very bad track record in fulfilling timelines, so I would rather not say. Heck, fine, I think it should be within 1-2 months.

2. Unfortunately, the content may not be quite what you're looking for.  What's being released is a lot more Categories of words, so the emphasis is on vocabulary expansion rather than developing higher levels of reading (eg., with sentences and stories).  So you'll get more Categories of animals, transportation, nature, sports, etc.

3. I would still recommend you hire someone to do the new content, especially if you'll be giving it away for free.  I'm sure it would be highly appreciated by the whole community!

KL

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