Get Your Children to Read: Put in a ‘Reading Movie’

Get Your Children to Read: Put in a ‘Reading Movie’

Today, children are more interested in television, video games and chatting on the Internet than they are in reading. Many parents probably would say, in fact, that getting a child to pick up a book is a significant challenge.

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Education, children spend an average of four to six hours daily watching TV or movies. That doesn’t mean, however, that screen time has to be wasted time. Parents can use TV programs and movies to their advantage – and actually get their children to like reading.

SFK Media Specially for Kids Corp., for instance, has developed a way to help children improve their reading, vocabulary and comprehension skills by watching movies. Reading Movies, part of SFK Media’s ReadEnt learning system, use a technology called “Action Captions” that makes each word appear on the screen as it is spoken.

The words appear out of the mouths of the speakers in real-time, with no disruption to the flow of the movie. These Action Captions are believed to activate the cognitive elements of the brain so that...