Interactive Read Alouds with Storia!

Friends~I am so excited to share how I have been using Storia in my classroom.  For those of you that are not familiar, with Storia it is an interactive read aloud site from Scholastic.  You can download it for free and when you do you will receive 5 free E Books.  These books will be kept on on your own personalized shelf.  You can even shop on Scholastic to purchase more E Books for your class.  You can click the image below to head over and download your copy of Storia. 

 It is pretty simple once you get started.  After your download,  your free E Books will be waiting for you.  You can add them all to your shelf at once or just a few.  Be sure to pick the age group that you want.  Teachers and Parents can set up their readers on their own shelf and track their reading.  There is a book order for the E Books to share with your families. 

You will find  games and quizzes that the readers can participate in.  You will know by looking for the lightning bold.  Readers can even click on unknown words and be directed to an online dictionary that pronounces the word when opened.  

There is an app for the i Pad and Scholastic is working on one for the Droid.  

How am I using it?  Well it all started with our shared reading time after lunch.  We started a chapter book called It's a Dog's Life.  This book is a Guided Reading Level Q and a Lexile of 870.  It is perfect for a shared reading or a guided reading group!  I use it with my 2nd grade class as a shared reading to practice inferring and predicting. 

 It is an amazing story of a Dog's Life told through the eyes of a dog named Squirrel.  There is great inferring that goes along with this story and that is one of the main reasons I chose it.  

My students always want a copy of the book to follow along with me as I read.  Our school library never has more than 2 copies.  The town library has one or 2 and we have a used book store in town that sometimes you can get lucky at.  

This time...we got really lucky!  It is an E Book on Storia!  I did have to purchase it but it has been TOTALLY worth it.  So now I can put it up on my Smart Board and my students can follow along.  We do the lightning bolt quizzes together and use the online dictionary tons.  

Now almost all of my students have downloaded it at home and can reread or read ahead if they wish.  

I also have downloaded it for my 4th grader and Kindergartner.  

Below you can see what my shelf looks like.  I named it Room 331 at school.  I downloaded it onto all of my classroom computers and my students visit it daily during our Listening to Reading Center.  

I plan on doing more shopping for E Books for my class. 

 I hope you enjoyed this fantastic tool for bringing shared reading to life in your classroom.  

Please leave a comment and let me know how you are using Storia or how you use shared reading in your classroom!

Be sure to check out my Novel Study for A Dog's Life.  It is a 42 page download filled with thinking and response activities for your students to use during a shared read or a guided reading group!