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What results can you expect from using audiobooks in your classroom? | ||||
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Why do audiobooks produce these results? | ||||
1 Audiobooks enhance reading levels and comprehension. Audiobooks help differentiate between language as written or spoken and provide the link between the two. When students discover this bridge between text and speech, the world of reading opens for many. The sound/symbol link provides a necessary key to language arts resulting in improved content comprehension, heightened use of imagination and picture-making, proper pronunciation and inflection, sentence structure and accents through example. Improvement in reading levels and vocabulary leads to increased writing skills as well. 2 Reading becomes an enjoyable and anticipated activity. Text dramatization results in a deeper emotional reaction to what's being read - this deeper involvement is a welcome change from the bombardment of visual overstimulation. Visualizing one's own pictures as a result of being read to is mentally stimulating. Character identification - important for emotional maturation and the development of life skills - is greatly enhanced through the use of audiobooks. Books will become a source of comfort as reading becomes easier and paves the way to greater confidence and knowledge. Improved communications skills and a heightened curiosity about the world around us result because literacy broadens horizons. Many children are never read to and many parents stop reading to their school-age children, but research has proven being read to is crucial to learning to read well and develop language skills. Audiobooks can fill this gap - resulting in immediate improvement in listening skills, vocabulary levels and reading comprehension. As an added benefit to students' increased skill levels and self-esteem, teachers often find that behavioral problems in the classroom decrease. 3 Audiobooks are the link to language for special needs students. There's no better tool than audiobooks for special education - ESL, At-Risk, inclusion, remedial, Title I. Pronunciations, speech patterns, image correlation, and content comprehension are greatly improved by hearing at the same time as seeing. Special needs students are excited to hear their first books - often understanding for the first time what a joy books can be. At the same time they are gaining a quick understanding of plot, they subconsciously absorb narrative structure. Better character identification allows students to enter imaginatively and empathetically into the experience of others, thereby developing abilities to decode and understand moral behavior, problem-solving and building relationships. And using audiobooks as a classroom activity means remedial readers aren't singled out for special classes, but can stay and learn with the others. Being "included" can't help but build confidence and much-needed self-esteem. 4 Audiobooks offer a shared learning experience. Regardless of individual students' learning capacities, emotional maturity, social backgrounds or interests, audiobooks played in the classroom can create an atmosphere which foster a collective experience. Audiobooks transcend different learning styles and levels, promoting total classroom participation in follow-up discussions, activities, and writing assignments. Students sharing their impressions and responses to the audiobook can enhance each other's horizons, leading to appreciation of different viewpoints. | ||||
| "Audiobooks
are a powerful literacy tool. I've used them in my classroom for over ten years
and watched audiobooks change my students' lives." - Phyllis Jacobs, Head, Reading Department, Atlantis Academy, Miami, Fl. | ||||
We hope you'll try Audio Bookshelf's award-winning audiobook productions in your classroom to see these results for yourself. On our website we provide suggested activities and Curricular Connections to many Audio Bookshelf titles. Whether you are new to this literary genre or have experience and success using audiobooks in your classroom, you are sure to find that Audio Bookshelf productions will support your efforts to increase your students' love of reading! | ||||
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Contact us the following ways: Toll-free: 1-800-234-1713 e-mail: info@audiobookshelf.com Fax: 401-842-0440 Write: Audio Bookshelf 44 Ocean View Drive Middletown, Rhode Island 02842 AUDIO BOOKSHELF - ALWAYS UNABRIDGED! Call for a catalog! | ||||
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