Five Fun Summer Tips to Get Children Reading and Prevent “Summer Brain Drain”

Technology and Education Go Hand-in-Hand to Reliably and Effectively
Teach Children to Read

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#learnwithhomer–Summer’s here and even though school is out, reading is an activity
children should still be practicing every day. Learn
with Homer, the #1 Learn-to-Read and award-winning iPad app that has
been proven in a randomized study
conducted of preschool-aged children to increase early reading
skills by 74%, is one such early literacy and phonics program that can
help.

In addition to apps and programs, Learn With Homer recommends some other
fun ways to help children learn to read or read more over the summer.
The following tips come from Peggy Kaye, Learn With Homer’s director of
learning and author of critically-acclaimed Games for Reading:
Playful Ways to Help Your Child Read, and include:

“Whether it’s parents reading with their children or children
reading themselves, research shows that summer reading helps reduce
‘summer brain drain’ and that proverbial ‘summer slide,” noted Stephanie
Dua, co-founder and CEO of Learn With Homer.

According to the National
Summer Learning Association, many children lose ground over the
summer. The research shows that while gaps in student achievement remain
relatively constant during the school year, the gaps widen significantly
during the summer and are often more pronounced with low-income students
who can lose two-to-three months in reading.

“To stop the ‘summer slide’ with reading, it’s important to keep
some structured learning going on over the summer,” noted Dua. “It is
equally important to give your children time to explore the world
independently with no agenda. Plan a campout in the backyard and spend
the night stargazing. Who knows? Maybe learning the names of the
constellations will spark an interest in the Greek myths, or even space
travel.”

And what about apps and technology?

“Technology and learning go hand-in-hand today,” noted Dua. “Kids know
how to use apps, phones and tablets from a very early age, so our
thought was, let’s put them to good use, which is one of the reasons we
created Learn
With Homer.”

Learn With Homer is the #1 learn-to-read app and a reliable and
effective way to teach children to read. Learn With Homer’s program is
based on a blind, randomized study conducted by Dr. Susan B. Neuman,
former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education and professor of Early
Childhood & Literacy Education at New York University. The study set out
to determine whether Homer’s Learn to Read method delivered via an iPad
made a difference in advancing school readiness skills in young
children, especially those skills most predictive of future reading
success. The study was conducted among a group of four and five year
olds in seven classrooms at a Brooklyn preschool program over a six-week
period in the summer, a time when children often experience significant
learning loss. Half of the group used the Learn with Homer app on iPad
for 15 minutes a day without the assistance of teachers; the other half
of the group used a math app for the same period and duration. By the
end of the six weeks, students who used Learn with Homer outperformed
the control group on all areas of the test. In the area of phonological
awareness, treatment students nearly doubled scores, while scores of
students in the control group decreased. The preschool children
increased early reading skills by 74 percent when using Learn with
Homer, the iPad-based early literacy and phonics program.

About Learn With Homer

Learn
With Homer set out to solve a confounding problem: teaching the
world’s children to read. As parents, Learn With Homer co-founders were
trying to teach their own children but were bewildered by the morass of
apps, flashcards, and books on the market, none of which were able to
teach their kids to learn to read from start to finish. In the United
States alone, two out of three children never learn to read well, even
though a child’s reading level by third grade is the single biggest
predictor of future success – the biggest predictor, bar none. Learn
With Homer was started to give kids everywhere a better future —with a
vision to transform the academic trajectory of every child who uses our
product. Homer is a disruptively affordable, simple-to-use,
start-to-finish reading program that children can do on their own. And
it’s available to everyone with a phone in their pocket. To learn more,
visit learnwithhomer.com
or download from the iTunes
app store or follow on Facebook,
Twitter,
YouTube
and G+.

Contacts

Learn With Homer
Jenifer Howard, 203-273-4246
jeni@learnwithhomer.com
learnwithhomer.com