Readtopia™ Coming Soon!
Don Johnston, Inc. will be releasing Readtopia and make learning to read an experience! Readtopia™ is a comprehensive reading curriculum for middle and high school students with autism and other complex needs. It brings first-hand experiential learning into the classroom—teaching students standards-aligned social studies, ELA, and science content.
For many, reading is not a natural act, but everyone naturally derives learning from first-hand experience. The purpose of Readtopia is to bring first-hand experiential learning into the classroom, so students can bridge the gap between learning through reading, and learning through experiencing.
In so doing it taps students’ natural learning capabilities, and channel them into reading capabilities so students can begin to more fully participate both in school and in life. Readtopia takes students on-location throughout the world as they learn to read through original video, activities, and graphic novels.
Readtopia…
- takes students down 1,000 feet in a submarine as we learn about oceanography.
- hears from Sacagawea to understand the journey Lewis and Clark faced heading west.
- experiences a reenactment on an actual Civil War battlefield to experience the harsh realities that shaped the history of our country.
- brings students into a volcano in Iceland as a way to introduce them to the book Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Readtopia leverages experience to support and reinforce reading instruction. All of this is supported by authentic literature, phonics/early reading instruction, and informational text that builds foundational reading skills. Readtopia delivers the curriculum through thematic units that will help you transform classrooms into laboratories of experiential learning.
All of the Readtopia resources will be available online to subscribers. Browse the tabs to see each program component in detail including Videos, Leveled Text Graphic Novels and Authentic Text, Informational Text, Phonics / Sight Words / Vocabulary, and Assessment. A Teacher Guide is included with each thematic unit. It walks teachers through each step of implementation chapter-by-chapter.
The group developing the program is an interdisciplinary dream team that has turned dreams into reality. Team contributors include specialists in literature, literacy, history, education, photography, film, alternate assessment, and exploration and include, Karen Erickson, PhD, Caroline Musselwhite, Ed.D., Don Johnston, Jerry Stemach, M.S. CCC-SLP, Helen Sillett, Ph.D., Mary Krenz, Carol Seibert and Mike Byrne photographer and filmmaker.
The team has traveled the world to capture the sights and sounds of legendary stories so that your classroom can help students transport themselves through reading.
To see (and experience) a preview of the new program visit the Don Johnston, Inc website at http://donjohnston.com/readtopia/ !
