Moreover, successful literacy instruction at school is often tied to the experiences students have at home, therefore the home-school literacy connection is a powerful one. Research on connecting home and school literacy contexts by involving parents in literacy activities with their children found that the success of the program depended on the collaborative efforts of parents, teachers, and students as they focused on fun and educational activities that addressed the interests of both parents and children (Morrow & Young, 1997). These activities included the use of classroom magazines, which were “nonthreatening, not school-like, and could be used by those with different literacy abilities and cultural backgrounds” (Morrow & Young, 1997, p. 736). The accessibility and economical price of Scholastic Magazines+ encourage this type of interaction by allowing schools to provide a copy to each student to extend learning outside of the classroom; students are therefore given the ability to take magazines home to share and engage with family members. The social interaction that occurs between students when reading magazines in the classroom is also important in that they share with each other points of interest, pictures, and highlights from an article. Magazines spark communication, debate, and awareness of current events (Morrow & Lesnick, 2001). Research found that high school students who were assigned to read and discuss articles about politics from a weekly classroom magazine, and who then discussed what they read with their classmates and parents, were more knowledgeable about politics and had a better sense of their ability to understand and influence politics after eight weeks than students who did not receive the magazines (Vercellotti & Matto, 2010). BENEFITS OF DIGITAL LITERACY Increasingly, classrooms are becoming blended-learning environments with a need for diverse print and digital texts (Wertz & Saine, 2014). Scholastic Magazines+ supports teachers and students in these blended-learning environments by providing digital versions of its print magazines and web-based resources. These digital resources are intended to further promote background knowledge and complement the content of its multi-disciplinary texts. Digital versions of the magazine articles offer links to additional content such as definitions of key words, videos, and digital activities. For example, available videos can be viewed before, during, or after reading a text to provide or expand upon background knowledge of a given topic, facilitating a deeper understanding of the content (Bridges, 2015). Background knowledge acquired from various mediums can facilitate learning overall and help students read increasingly complex texts. Additionally, students can utilize a variety of tools in the digital versions of the magazines to enhance fluency, comprehension, and to improve word recognition. Such features include: draw, read aloud 3 , zoom in and out, highlight, and sticky note. The read-aloud audio feature may enhance learning of fluency for early readers by modeling appropriate speed and intonation. When text is highlighted during the read aloud, learners have the opportunity to
3 Available for Pre-K through grade 5 magazines.
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