Letters Home from Camp Tadpole

Primary Reading with Audio Support For Grades 1 - 2

Two little birds, Harvey and Jay, welcome guests to Camp Tadpole. By using the totem pole, students may select a reading level from 1-5. Or, the teacher may set a level for the whole class or individualize levels as desired.

Children are presented with a letter telling about events at Camp Tadpole. As children read, Miss Lizzy will provide feedback and encouragement. She will let students know when they need to try again, and will direct them to the correct answer when necessary. Each letter is followed by a question for the child to answer.

At Level 1, the letters are just one sentence long. At any level, audio support can be set to allow students to click and have any segment of the letter or question narrated. Students may also click to hear individual words.

When using the audio narration feature, the sentence or segment of the letter which is being read is highlighted. This provides nice structure and better enables students to follow along through the letter with the spoken words. The letters from camp children are narrated in child voices. A pause feature allows students to pause and replay as they are reading along. Questions, answers, and individual words are narrated in a clear, well-articulated “teacher” voice.




There are over 150 letters in all, 30-32 at each level. We encourage having students read at the same level until they have read all 30 stories several times. By reading letters over again, children will gain confidence through repetition and success. As students show sufficient competency in their scores at a given level, we recommend they stay at that same level a while longer, but with less audio support available to them. Note that because there is more than one question per letter in the data base, students that are reading the same letter multiple times will still encounter questions they have not yet seen. As letters get longer and more informative, there are more available questions per letter.




When you would like students to work more independently, reading rather than listening, there are other audio support options. You may choose to have the narration feature off, but still allow students to click on ANY word to hear it spoken. Another option is to allow students to click and hear only designated “challenge” words which are highlighted within the letter, the question, and the multiple choice answers. On the program's Summary Screen and in Easy Track, student results are displayed for each category of audio support.