Campaign Urges Turning Captions on to Improve Reading Skills
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 09/17/20
Want
to promote more reading? Encourage students and families to turn on
the captions while they stream video. That's what a new literacy
campaign targeting students aged 8 to 12 is promoting. "#captionsON"
is an initiative launched by Caption
Cool.
Caption Cool has no products other than free
stickers
it will send to any teacher, administrator, parent or literacy
champion who signs up on its website.
According
to the organization, 30 minutes of screen time with captions on is
comparable to reading 30 pages of a grade 5 book.
Caption
Cool was created by Leib Lurie, co-founder of Kids
Read Now,
a nonprofit that produces a K-3 summer reading program and gifts
books to students across the country. Lurie entered the literacy
business in the early 1990s with a $249
appliance
that would plug into a VCR and show captions on the television
screen. He and his wife, Barbara Lurie, a teacher and reading
specialist, launched Kids Read Now in 2012.
Their
latest project has drawn the attention of "literacy champions,"
including educators, to promote the practice of running captions
during student screen time.
"We
endorse #captionsON because we believe it will motivate more
children, particularly disadvantaged youth and English language
learners, to turn their screen time into reading time," said
Chris Piper, superintendent of Troy
City Schools
in Ohio, in a testimonial on the Caption Cool website. Troy is where
Caption Cool is located.
"Reading
is so important and exposure to text, like captions, builds fluency
and comprehension for students," added Laura Bemus, assistant
superintendent of curriculum for Greenville
City Schools
in Ohio. "My lifelong love of reading was established as a child
and through making choices of great reading material of high
interest."
More
information about #captionsOn is available through
the Caption Cool website.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.