5 Fantastic Apps for Reluctant Readers

Trying to encourage reluctant readers is an age-old problem for parents and educators alike. But luckily education technology brings a whole raft of new resources to bear on this ancient dilemma, providing exciting and engaging new solutions to help bring the world of words alive for even the most reluctant reader…

The Cat in the Hat

This interactive storybook experience encourages reading by immersing the reader in the wonderful world of Dr Seuss. With three different reading models, it is flexible and can be adapted for readers of different ages and abilities, whilst a host of exciting resources like animations, picture/word association and ‘tappable’ objects on every page allow children to truly delve into and explore the story like never before.

Brush of Truth

This great, innovative app engages reluctant readers aged 8-12 by drawing them in to their own exciting, interactive adventure. Confronted with choices at critical points during the story, the user must make their own decisions, leading to new twists and turns in a ‘choose your own adventure’ style story that might lead to glorious success or devastating despair! Also included along the way are challenges, riddles and mysteries to keep the reader engaged and make them want to get to the very end!

Reading Rainbow

This fantastic free app brings multimedia content to reading by mixing exciting e-books with video field trips for children aged 3 to 9. Readers travel to five themed ‘islands’, from ‘Animal Kingdom’ to ‘Genius Academy’, encountering exciting fiction and non-fiction books from acclaimed publishers along the way. Best of all, the stories are brought to life with audio storytelling from professional actors, video clips and other activities to prevent boredom from setting in. And for parents looking to measure their child’s progress, the app even has a digitized reading list which allows you to record how many minutes your child has spent reading.

Grace

Designed specifically for people with Autism, this wonderful app encourages and aids sentence reading among other forms of interaction and communication. Users choose pictures and put them together to form sentences, which can then be shared. A full library of pictures comes with the app but its real beauty is that it can be constantly customized  personalized and updated by adding pictures of your own.

The Jungle Book

Disney classic ‘The Jungle Book’ is transformed into a joyful interactive learning experience with this great app, which allows children to read along with the text but also enlivens it with games, puzzles and colouring. Great for early readers, it has different modes for ‘read to me’ and ‘read aloud’ and is ideal for children who have already seen the film, as being familiar with the storyline can help reluctant readers to feel more confident.

What are your favourite apps for reluctant readers? What do you look for to encourage and inspire a love of reading? Let us know in the comments below!

1st image courtesy of Flickr, danxoneil. 2nd image courtesy of Flickr, Moxkyr. 3rd image courtesy of Flickr, Loren Javier