Starting today, all Costa Rican families will enjoy free access to ABCmouse Aprende Inglés, a comprehensive digital English language learning program for children ages 3 – 11. Available on computers, tablets, and smartphones, ABCmouse Aprende Inglés was created by Age of Learning and is being offered at no cost throughout Costa Rica by the company’s philanthropic Age of Learning Foundation led by Chairman Doug Dohring. Aligned to international language learning standards, ABCmouse Aprende Inglés is designed specifically to help Spanish-speaking children learn to speak English fluently and confidently and support their important journey to becoming bilingual at an early age. Its engaging, game-based language learning activities makes learning English fun for kids.

In Costa Rica, the ABCmouse Aprende Inglés app is endorsed by the Ministry of Public Education as a valued complement to the English classes received by students in their schools.

Offering more than 4,000 English learning activities expertly designed to teach and practice the language, ABCmouse Aprende Inglés also helps children build confidence in understanding and speaking English as they independently progress along the Step-by-Step Learning Path. While the program is easy for children to use on their own, parents are encouraged to accompany their children in the English learning process and, at the same time, have fun and learn together.

“Everyone at Age of Learning is very excited to be offering ABCmouse Aprende Inglés to all families in Costa Rica at no cost—it’s the first time we’ve made  our English  language learning program available for free in Central America. We want to give Costa Rican children the life-changing  opportunity to become fluent in English from an early age, so they can expand their opportunities as they grow,” says Dr. Rebecca Palacios, a U.S. Hall of Fame teacher with more than 30 years of experience, an expert in dual-language learning, and the spokesperson for  ABCmouse Aprende Inglés.  “We are hoping to reach as many children and their families as possible throughout the country.”

Anyone in Costa Rica interested in taking advantage of this free offer can simply go to www.ABCmouseAprendeIngles.cr  to download the program or open the App  Store on their Android or iOS device, search for the ABCmouse Aprende Inglés app, and download it for free on their mobile devices.

According to Manuel Rojas, advisor to the academic office and coordinator of the Alliance for Bilingualism at MEP, it is extremely important that students have digital resources adaptable to the interests of the student body.

“With the recent approval of the Educational Policy for the Promotion of Languages, guidelines are included that enhance technology as a tool in the language learning process. Based on real content and fun activities with pedagogical intentions, the student population strengthens reading, speaking or listening inside or outside the classroom; with the purpose of expanding exposure to the language and strengthening the entire language learning process,” Rojas says.

Costa Rican families can also visit the program’s new Facebook and Instagram pages for additional information about the app, helpful tips, complementary language learning activities, and much more. On Facebook, go to ABCmouse Ingles Centroamerica.

The post Age of Learning Foundation Offers Families in Costa Rica Free Program to Help All Children Learn English first appeared on Age of Learning.

ReadingIQ

Building on the success of ABCmouse.com® Early Learning Academy, we are bringing the same research-based, educator-led approach to the ReadingIQ digital library. ReadingIQ provides the best of children’s literature, including Caldecott and Newbery award winners, National Geographic and National Geographic Kids books, the complete Boxcar Children series, Curious George, more than 1,000 exclusive titles, and thousands of additional high-quality fiction and nonfiction books from leading publishers.

The entire ReadingIQ library is easily searchable by topic and leveled with both the Guided Reading and Lexile® systems so that children can find titles that match their interests and reading ability. ReadingIQ also includes more than 1,000 professionally voiced titles to support engagement and comprehension for pre-readers and developing readers.

As with ABCmouse, ReadingIQ is available at no cost to teachers for use in their classrooms, with the ability to assign an entire reading level of books to each student to read at home, completely free. Families who would like full home access to all of the ReadingIQ library can subscribe for less than $5 a month or $30 a year. ReadingIQ is available at www.ReadingIQ.com, or can be downloaded to smartphones and tablets through the Apple App Store or Google Play.

According to recent nationwide surveys of more than 1,000 preschool and elementary teachers and 1,000 parents of children 12 and under, sponsored by Age of Learning, lack of access to books is a major challenge for children’s reading development. More than 8,000 elementary schools in the U.S. – 10% of schools – do not have a school library. Yet teachers report that students with access to both physical and digital libraries are significantly more likely to be reading above grade level than peers without such access.

Seven out of 10 teachers report that students would benefit greatly from more parental involvement in reading outside of school, but only one third of parents know their child’s reading level. Moreover, 85% of teachers expect students to read between 15 minutes and one hour per day outside of school, but most students are reading less than the 15-minute daily minimum, and millions are not reading at all. To view our Reading Study, visit www.AgeofLearning.com/readingstudy.

ReadingIQ was created to address these challenges by expanding access to high-quality, high-interest books; strengthening the school-home connection around reading; and encouraging consistent at-home reading. In addition to making entire reading levels of books available for students to read at home for free, ReadingIQ enables teachers to set daily reading challenges, parents to create profiles for up to three children, and parents and teachers to track students’ reading progress.

“When kids master reading in elementary school, it sets them on a path to success for the rest of their lives, but only one third of fourth graders are proficient readers,” said Dr. Rebecca Palacios, member of Age of Learning’s Curriculum Board and the National Teachers Hall of Fame. “ReadingIQ is a game-changer for parents and teachers, giving all children a greater opportunity to become fluent and engaged readers.”

The post Introducing ReadingIQ, an Expert-Curated Digital Library  first appeared on Age of Learning.

Research shows that the summer slide has a significant, cumulative impact on academic achievement, particularly for children in low-income households. The summer slide is a key factor behind a stunning statistic: by the end of 5th grade, disadvantaged children are, on average, nearly three grade levels behind their more affluent peers in reading (source: The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading). And, according to the National Summer Learning Association, summer learning loss accounts for two-thirds of the achievement gap in reading between children from low- and middle-income households by 9th grade.

But there is hope. While the school year will start before we know it, there’s still time for children to reinforce what they learned the previous year and prepare for the next one. Engaging and effective learning experiences can help prevent the summer slide by getting children excited to continue learning over their summer break.

Below are some helpful tips that families can use to maintain academic achievement over the summer from National Teachers’ Hall of Fame inductee Dr. Rebecca Palacios, Senior Curriculum Advisor at Age of Learning.

Visit Your Local Public Library

Visiting the library can help develop a love of reading and learning at an early age. In addition to thousands of books, libraries offer technology access, research areas, and fun learning activities.

More than 8,000 public libraries nationwide make ABCmouse.com available for families to use on site at no cost. Families get full access to the more than 10,000 ABCmouse Learning Activities, including books, songs, puzzles, and games that encompass key academic subjects. Patrons in some areas, including the San Francisco Bay Area and Detroit can also check out ABCmouse accounts from their local library to use at home through the Bring Learning to All initiative.

Read, Read, Read!

A 2004 American Academy of Arts and Sciences study concluded that children should read at least 4 to 5 books over the summer break to prevent summer  learning loss. Research shows that books that are “just right”for children–those that aren’t frustratingly hard or too easy–make the best learning experiences.

Regular reading matters: Choose a fun and engaging weekly book that you can read aloud as a family. Read a chapter each night, if it’s a longer book. Here are a few tips for making these reading sessions even more interactive and engaging:

1. Talk to your child about words in the book that rhyme or begin with the same letter.
2. Ask your child questions about what is happening in the story as you’re reading.
3. Discuss the book’s characters: their names, appearance, feelings, and actions.

With thousands of books to choose from, ABCmouse provides rich reading experiences for children in preschool through 2nd grade at their listening-comprehension or independent reading level.

Be Prepared for On-the-Go Learning 

Whether you’re on a plane, at the park, or in a store, every outing can be a learning opportunity! Ask questions and show kids different colors, shapes, words, and numbers in the world around them.

Listening and singing along to music is also a wonderful way for children to learn about the world around them and build a rich vocabulary. You can now access 175 ABCmouse children’s songs, including a special summer playlist that teaches the alphabet, numbers and operations, shapes, colors, and geography, on major streaming platforms such as Spotify, Google Play, and Pandora. Children can sing along to “The Letter S Song, “The Statue of Liberty,” “Five Little Monkeys,” and more.

Families can also download seven ABCmouse apps that offer ABCmouse content for offline use, making ABCmouse even easier for families to access—no matter where they go.

A recent research study showed that students who regularly used ABCmouse for at least 70 minutes per week over the summer demonstrated literacy gains equivalent to one month of academic instruction! These gains were sustained well into the following school year. Invest in summer learning today and reap benefits for your children this fall, and in all school years ahead.

The post Closing the Achievement Gap: Tips for Preventing Summer Learning Loss first appeared on Age of Learning.

Over the past school year, more than 145,000 teachers—including 1 in 4 kindergarten teachers in the U.S.—serving millions of students used ABCmouse in their classrooms. Students completed more than 100 million ABCmouse Learning Activities during the year.

Although summer has just begun, we’ve been hard at work building new features and capabilities for ABCmouse for Teachers and ABCmouse for Schools for the 2018-2019 school year. We’re excited to share four of these today in a series of blog posts:

1. Digital Library Experience 
2. Standards-Aligned Collections
3. A New Teacher Experience
4. ABCmouse Ambassador Program

The post After Record Year, ABCmouse for Teachers and ABCmouse for Schools Add Major New Features for the 2018 – 2019 School Year first appeared on Age of Learning.

ABCmouse.com is the leading and most comprehensive online learning resource for children ages 2 through 6+, with more than 5,000 carefully designed learning activities encompassing reading and language arts, math, science, social studies, art, and music.

To date, children have completed more than 800 million learning activities on ABCmouse.com.

Joining more than a dozen ABCmouse.com apps, the ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy app is available in all major app stores:

• iTunes Store
• Google Play
• Amazon Appstore for Android

We look forward to Bringing Learning to Life^® for children across the U.S. and around the world with this new app.

The post Age of Learning Launches New App to Access More Than 5,000 ABCmouse.com Learning Activities for Preschool – Kindergarten first appeared on Age of Learning.