Mrs Redeker believes that an important part of Kindergarten is to fall in love with reading books! Audiobooks allow reading to come to life through sound effects, music, and voice inflection. This allows students to connect with a book! Listening to reading teaches children how to read more fluently and with expression, but it also allows them to work on their listening skills at the same time.

Knowing that the addition of a listen to reading station in my daily centers would improve her students’ ability to read, Mrs Redeker applied for and received a grant from the Education Foundation. This grant has given students a great model of fluent and expressive reading. I have seen an increase in students’ vocabulary knowledge due to them hearing many more words than just the simple words they are able to read currently.

Mrs Redeker’s research and grade level teacher inputs has shown that the best way to implement a listen to reading center is through the use of an iPad. Today’s students are growing up with this form of technology in their hands. They are aware of how to use them, and how to get started on an iPad right away. I knew that by setting up an easy to use center would allow students to enjoy the activity more that becoming frustrated. I now have videos of books with an expressive reader accessible through QR codes that the students simply scan with the QR reader app.