Summer Reading and Listening Practice--Children's Storybooks Online

A good book is a good book, whether it's a children's picture story book or a book written for adults. One of the best ways to improve your reading skills is by following along in the book while someone else reads it to you. Children's books are a good place to begin--if you have young children, they can listen and follow along with you. Then you can take them to the library to check out the same books and read them together. Click on the link below to see and hear some children's books read on YouTube:

LINK: Read and Listen to Children's Books on YouTube

Try reading along as some one reads Forrest Gump's favorite book, Curious George, by clicking the link below:

LINK: Curious George on YouTube 

More Online Reading at Rock Island Public Library Website

If you live in Rock Island, get a Rock Island public library card so that you can read and listen to children's books online at the Rock Island public library website. An online book is also called an ebook (meaning, an electronic or digital book). You must register your Rock Island public library card at their website (I'm not sure if a Moline public library card will work). If the website asks for your library card number, enter the number on  the back of your card (under the bar code) to read the books. If it asks for a PIN, the PIN is the last four numbers of your library card number. Once you've registered your card, you can go into your account and choose a different ID and PIN. Here is a link to the RIPL website to register your card:

LINK: Enter Your RIPL card number and PIN (last four digits of the card number)

Below is a link to Bookflix children's books online, at the Rock Island Public Library website:

LINK: Bookflix Ebooks at Rock Island Public Library

The Rock Island library website also gives you access to the TumbleBook online library. The link below takes you to a place to enter your R. I. Library card number. Once you get into TumbleBooks, you will find books for both younger and older children, including nonfiction books, graphic novels, videos, and games:

LINK: TumbleBooks at the R.I. Public Library

Books found under the Story Books and Read Alongs tabs include audio (you can listen to someone read the book as you follow along).

The pictures below show a description of a non-fiction book for older children at the TumbleBooks link, and a page taken from the book. These are pictures only, not a link to the online book.

Improve Your Reading Speed

Breakingnewsenglish.com is a website that can help you improve your reading speed. Many people learning English don't do well on the TABE reading test because they read so slowly. If they had more time for the test, they could answer all the questions, but the TABE is a timed test. Reading faster (and at the same time understanding what you read) requires practice. At the BreakingNewsEnglish website, you can select a reading and practice increasing your speed.

My suggestion: Click on the link below to go to the speed reading section of the BreakingNewsEnglish.com website. Click on a story. Most stories begin at a speed of 100 or 200 words per minute. Try a slower speed, and then try a faster speed. If the first speed is 200 and you want 100, you may need to go to the homepage and change the level (1, 2, 3, etc.) of reading, then return to the speed reading section.

LINK: Speed Reading at BreakingNewsEnglish.com

Links to Videos on PowerPoint Basics and Editing Pictures

Click on the link below to watch the video on working with slides in PowerPoint (2016 version--the same that is on our computers at school).

LINK: Video on Working with PowerPoint Slides

Click on the link below to watch a video on inserting and editing pictures in your PowerPoint slides:

LINK: Inserting and Editing Pictures in PowerPoint

List of Popular Songs Heard in Forrest Gump

Click on the link below to go to a website that lists the popular songs heard in the movie Forrest Gump. Underneath each song it tells what was happening in the movie while that song was playing. You can also click a "play" arrow and listen to part of the song.   

LINK: List of Songs Heard in Forrest Gump

Websites for Researching Your Forrest Gump Topic

At the end of this post are links to websites that will give you good information on your topic. The articles are shorter and easier to read than the ones on Wikipedia.

Warning: When you do a search for your topic at ducksters.com or history.com, sometimes the first few results are marked with an upside-down triangle symbol    . The triangle means that these results are ads  Ad  or sponsored links. Clicking on one of them probably won’t take you anywhere useful, so skip these results and click one further down the list that doesn’t have a triangle. Here is an example of such an ad:

          

 Useful websites for researching your topic:

LINK: http://www.english-online.at/index.htm

LINK: www.ducksters.com

LINK: www.simple.wikipedia.org

LINK: www.history.com

LINK: www.biography.com

The following website has general information about the Forrest Gump movie itself:

LINK: http://gumpesl.blogspot.com

(Forrest Gump movie notes, timeline, movie script, and more)

How Do You Find the Main Idea?

Below is a link to a college reading center website. It outlines helpful steps for finding the main idea of a reading selection. There is a section on finding the main idea when it is stated directly, when it is contained in a "reversal" statement, and when it is not stated directly, but implied.

My suggestion: Click on the link below. Read the first page (copied below the link), which gives some general instructions for how to find the topic and the main idea of a reading selection. Then continue reading about three different ways the main idea may be found:
1) directly stated main idea, 2) reversal transitions, and 3) implied main idea.

LINK: How to Find the Main Idea of a Paragraph