The object of Cosmic Reader is to listen to a story while looking at pictures, and then answer questions and follow instructions related to that story.
Cosmic Reader helps improve the ability to understand successive sentences and derive meaning from a story (listening comprehension). It helps improve the ability to listen to spoken directions of increasing length and complexity, comprehend them, and keep them in memory long enough to plan and carry out the required action (following directions). Cosmic Reader also helps build an understanding of English language conventions and vocabulary.
Listen with your child during the exercise
- Listening Comprehension – Is the student listening closely to the story in preparation for the comprehension questions?
- Language Conventions Questions – Listen in as the student works on the exercise. Ask the student to repeat the sentence back to you and explain why he or she would choose one picture over the others before clicking on the picture. This will help you identify if the student is having trouble with listening comprehension and/or attention skills or if the student is not familiar with some of the grammatical concepts. Proceed with the rest of the interventions below to help the student.
- Following Directions Questions – When presented with a 2-step direction, have the student immediately move the mouse to the correct shape as soon as he or she hears the first step. Once the sentence is done, the student simply needs to click the first object and complete the second part of the sentence.
Practice the skills being developed in Cosmic Reader
Resources: Picture cards showing people, places, things, clocks, sunset, sunrise, calendars.
Activity: Using the picture cards, discuss with the student the meaning of “who”, “what”, “where” and “when.” Ask the student to choose a picture card and create a question sentence based on the picture, e.g., Who is sitting on the bench? or Where is the dog hiding?
Use chapter text
Resources: Cosmic_Reader_Practice_Text
Activity: The Listening Comprehension activity challenges students to answer questions that are specifically designed to build comprehension and memory for details, main ideas, and relationships within the story. Use your best judgment when using the text because the main goal of this section is to strengthen listening comprehension.
However, at times it may be beneficial to share the text of the story with the student. Students who need extra support may read the story before listening to the exercise.
