Weekly Reflection #2 – Discovering Epic! Books

Epic! is a website that allows students to access a wide range of books and gain access to some resources to help assist them in reading. Please watch the screen cast video I made to see some of my favourite features!

Video created by Hailey using Google Vids

Epic! books is a great tool for the classroom as it can help support students reading. The “read to me” feature makes reading accessible to students while supporting them in pronunciation, fluency, and comprehension.

Another benefit of this website is the variety of books it has, as building a big classroom library takes time and is costly. This website allows students to try a wide range of genres, reading levels, and types of literature. Additionally if a student finishes a book that is in a series, the next book is likely on this website so they can keep their reading groove!

A set back of this website for me is that it can only be accessed during school hours and school days. While it is a great tool for in the classroom, it isn’t beneficial for supporting reading at home. I really wish it was accessible at home, as some students won’t have access to help reading outside of the classroom. One way I could try to support students with reading at home is sending home books and having recordings of me reading them that the kids can access on a class website, although I will have to look into if that is legal to do.

I think Epic! Books is great for all ages as there is books for all reading levels available and different genres to catch the students interest. While playing around on the website I found “Goosebumps” by R.L Stine, which is a series I really enjoyed as a kid. There wasn’t a ton of those books on the website, but I think as a teacher it is a good way to see what books the students like before purchasing physical copies for the classroom.

I do like this website, but I don’t think it should become the only source of reading in the classroom. I think there is benefit to physical books, and especially read-alouds with the class. Reading face-to-face with the students allows for discussion, connection and fun, so I will make sure to incorporate lots of that also. 🙂

Thank you for reading this weeks reflection! See you next week where I will discuss my experience with stop motion video and being in a classroom!

This post was written by Hailey.