Ebe (2010) shows that students are better able to understand stories about characters and places familiar to them regardless of the supposed reading level of the text. They also have texts that are relevant to readers of diverse backgrounds like After Peaches, a story about a young Mexican girl who is adjusting to her new life as an immigrant to Canada. They have a lot more authentic children’s literature including popular series like Big Nate and older classics like Bridge to Terabithia. While I would say that the nonfiction is interesting and high quality on both RAZ Kids and Epic!, the Epic! has a fiction collection that absolutely blows RAZ Kids out of the water. By contrast, Epic! is full of books that are simply meant to be enjoyed by young people. Their books, for better or for worse, are also clearly written for pedagogical purposes. From what I can tell, RAZ Kids only seems to have books that were specifically written and copyrighted for their site. I’m giving Epic! a slightly better grade than I gave RAZ Kids in this area because I feel the quality and range of books is striking. My review will reflect what I learned about quality E-Books and independent reading for ELLs in my twenty-eight source literature review, but ultimately some of this comes down to opinion as well.Ĭomprehensible Input/Selection (Can students find books that interest them and learn language from them?)Īccording to Krashen and Bland (2014), to maximize language acquisition via comprehensible input, learners need access to books which are not just interesting, but “compelling” (so interesting readers get caught up in the zone and are intensely focused on the book). I would love to hear from educators who have used this website more extensively at. I signed up for Epic! for Educators and spent about an hour and a half playing around with both the teacher and student views. The only disadvantage is that you would have to login to Epic! with your teacher account on any device which you intend for students to use. However, this means that entirely free you have access to many great books for your class. Their revenue model is to encourage parents to pay to have their own account to use at home. You can create an account for free if you are a teacher or school librarian with a valid school email address and use it in school with as many students as you want and for as much time as you want. Epic! is a website full of E-Books and Audiobooks (recordings of books without the printed text).
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