Maintaining Children’s Attention and Improving Their Reading

I‘ve been reading a lot of questions on several Blogs and Facebook pages recently about maintaining children’s interest and attention while they are doing their schoolwork, whether it be at home, or in the classroom. At the same time I have been seeing comments about problems that parents and teachers are having with children’s lack of interest in reading. So as a parent of 2 children, I’d like to share something with you that has really helped us with our 2 children, in both areas – and at the same time.

We’ve found that using online video attracts the attention of the child and maintains their interest for longer periods of time more than any textbooks we’ve used. It makes learning fun and they are more motivated to learn.

Zane Education provides online education videos teaching 11 subjects and 250 topics for the K12 curriculum. And all of their videos except for Math videos are subtitled.

Recently released research by the Availll Institute has demonstrated the link between using subtitled video and improvement in reading skills. That research has indicated that subtitled video has the ability to improve a child’s reading skills by as much as 12 months, in as little as 6 weeks. So while our children enjoy using the educational videos, my wife and I have been making special efforts to use the subtitles to best effect. By having our children watch the video presentation the first time, and then go back and watch it again with the audio track turned off and reading the subtitles, we have noticed three significant benefits,

Firstly they enjoy using video to learn with. Secondly by watching the video with sound turned off it really helps them to remember and understand the topic being taught. Thirdly we have noticed a significant improvement in respect of their reading skills and a better understanding of the context in which the more difficult words are being used. And yes, we have noticed a big improvement in their spelling too.

As far as we are concerned the fact that all of these additional benefits are resulting from simply using Zane’s education video as a teaching tool and an education aid, has certainly overcome any pre-conceived ideas and reservations we had.

What more can you ask for than to have your child improve and take a greater interest in their reading, while at the same time learning a range of curriculum material that needed to learn anyway.

For more info on the Improving Reading Skills .

For more information on the Benefits for Teachers and Parents using subtitled education video to develop greater interest and participation by children in their own education.

For more information about the many other children using the Zane Online education video service go here

Good Luck!