News Board... Lots of exciting things are happening at Rainbow Reading. Rainbow Reading’s Gone Green! We recently calculated that since we started in 1993 we have published 700,000 books … that’s a lot of students we’ve helped to read but it’s also approximately 420 trees we’ve “used”. In an attempt to do our bit for the environment by replacing resources used we’ve planted 420 trees in our home town, Nelson. And, from now, for every 1700 books we sell we’ll enclose a voucher for a school to buy a tree. New Product … Speak Out Reader’s Theatre A fluency programme for all students Years 3 – 6 developed by experienced educator Meryl-Lynn Pluck in conjunction with Neale Pitches and Sue Watson. CLICK HERE to find out more about Speak Out CDs All titles are now available on CD, for just $12 each. Each CD features one book with each page recorded on a new track for ease of use. Tapes are still available for most titles and cost just $5 while stocks last. MP3 Files If downloading the audiofiles to MP3 players, please just download one story at a time so students will not be tempted to skip through stories. The success of Rainbow Reading depends on students engaging in repeated readings of the same story before moving on. New Titles We have recently published 18 NEW titles. This means we now have 20 books with accompanying tapes at all seven levels. Check out the order form for the list of titles. Check out the new books under Products. New-Look All books now have a NEW-LOOK – same great content with a NEW-LOOK. New Training DVD ...updated and much improved … a real asset, when used in conjunction with the Teacher’s Manual. New Series Now out of quarantine and flying off the shelves! This series is of particular interest to males but females also enjoy it … featuring creatures (and people) with horrifying habits, a true story about someone with a two-holed butt(!), a flying loo, two comic-style books and several procedural texts with instructions for making interesting things! This series of 20 titles with CD support is based on the same proven formula of Rainbow Reading but is not readily identifiable as such. CLICK HERE for a sneak preview. Even Newer Series: for Older Readers At last ... a series of interesting, easy books with audio support of interest to older readers! 10 titles with accompanying CDs (incl an MP3 track) and activities at 7-8 yr reading level. Find out more CLICK HERE. New Market Rainbow Reading and Learning Media have teamed up to publish New Heights, an audio-assisted reading program for students in the United States who are reading below grade level. Please go to New Heights at www.learningmedia.com to find out more. New Language Learning Media, in conjunction with Rainbow Reading, have published an audio-assisted programme in te reo Maori called “Te Huinga Raukura”. Handy Hints: Reading Recovery Levels In response to frequent requests for the Reading Recovery levels of our books, we have had our new white series ( 5-6 year reading level) and our red series levelled. Please click here to view our list of white and red titles with suggested Reading Recovery levels. Please note these are suggestions only as many factors, some exclusive to the individual student such as interest and background knowledge, affect the readability of books. Teachers should use their knowledge of the students and the books to guide their recommendation of titles to different students. Please note also that we do not recommend Rainbow Reading as a replacement for Reading Recovery. Many teachers have found Rainbow Reading to be useful for maintaining and building reading fluency of students while they are on Reading Recovery programmes and when they have finished their Reading Recovery programmes. Rainbow Reading is also an effective programme for students who do not have access to Reading Recovery but students do need to have attained some basic reading skills such as: -be able to recognise the English alphabet and know how each letter sounds -be able to recognise the basic high-frequency words - have a reasonable knowledge of concepts about print especially one-to-one match and directionality -have attained at least a 5-6 year reading level (Approximate Reading Recovery levels 7 - 11). Teachers are reminded the Rainbow Reading Programme is designed to complement rather than replace existing literacy programmes. It provides supported reading that consolidates skills learned elsewhere. Building Fluency Provide students with a tape recorder and blank tape so they can record themselves reading a book. As well as being a lot of fun this will help students to evaluate their fluency and incentivise them to read more. Do you have any handy hints? We’d love to hear from you and we’ll send FREE stickers to anyone whose hints we publish on this site.