Educators agree that students should continue to read throughout the summer to ensure they don’t lose the education from the previous year. For many students, they want to read, but they don’t have access to books.
Now, Texas students have access to thousands of titles online for free.
It’s being made possible through online literacy portal, myON, and a shared account made available through Get Texas Reading. That is the statewide collaboration between the Texas Education Agency and Renaissance. The site offers digital books and new articles in English and Spanish for students kindergarten through 12th grade. A multifaceted mobile program giving students access to naturally-recorded audio, text-highlight and an embedded dictionary.
While the light version of the program is now free, Garland ISD has been using the paid version for about a year. Dr. Ricardo Lopez, Superintendent of Garland ISD, said this has been an invaluable resource for the students in his district.
“We’ve already had close to 33,000 books read during the summer and we just barely closed in late May,” Lopez said.
The paid version of the app Garland ISD uses also helps teachers track exactly how long their child has been engaged in the reading and not just how long they have been looking at the screen.
Lopez said the Garland ISD students have read more than one million books for a total of 9 million minutes.
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"This is what every parents’ frustration is. Are they reading on that device or are they doing something else? And that’s why as a parent you have to get behind them to see what’s in front of them. That way you can see their engagement,” Lopez said.
Lopez said it’s about instilling the idea of "literacy for life."
To get your child started on the free version myON, with apps on Google Play and the App Store:
Login page: www.myon.com/school/GetTexasReading
- School Name: Get Texas Reading
- Username: read
- Password: myon
