Sunday, September 2, 2012

Start to Read, early reading program from School Zone

I seldom see products from the publisher School Zone in any of the local Singapore or Malaysia bookstore, but I came across the material of "Start to Read  Early Reading Program" last week at Popular Bookstore, Singapore. Check out the following links to learn about the products.

   


The price is about SGD10 per set, comparable with the price in US.  However, Popular Bookstore is having a discount of 20%- 25%.  Below are the 3 sets that I purchased. 




I started using the level 1 book today. Like all other sets, each set comes with 5 reader books, 1 CD, 1 activity comprehension book and a parental guide. 



I like the approach taken in this reading program, where the kids are supposed to listen to the audio CD first, to sharpen up the listening skill. I discussed the story with my 5 years old.  My daughter could not get some of the words when we listened to the CD, but that does not matter. I could not get some of those words too. :-)  But I can tell that roughly, she knows what's the story about. It's my hope that she can get used to the native pronunciation through this listening exercise. 

Then I let her read aloud and then let her listen to CD per instruction.  Again, the audio CD is very helpful for non-native speaker like me. After reading the books, we listened again to the CD. This time, we could almost gets everything. One more good point, the books are colorful with interesting graphic and certainly my 5 years old loves this very much. 




I was wondering  how to ask her more detailed questions... but the comprehension book saved my day. The comprehension book carries a few simple questions related to the stories.  



If you are interested, go and take a look at Popular Bookstore now!  If you read this much later date, well, you can always buy from Amazon. From my experience, the shipping is not that expensive.