How Encouraging the Use of Footsteps2Brilliance at Home Can Make Your Students Better Readers

Are you a teacher in Osceola County? Perhaps you teach little ones who already know how to read, or at least have a solid foundation of basic reading skills. So, why should you still encourage parents to use Footsteps2Brilliance at home? The Osceola Reads team can think of a few reasons!

Footsteps2Brilliance supports what you are teaching in the classroom.

The app contains books and activities that strengthen the skills your students are learning. Whether they are just learning letter sounds or establishing fluency at a first or second-grade level, it's important to present them with a challenge in the form of new ways to apply these skills. Children can be more open to learning when they don't realize that's what they're doing! Tell parents tips on how Footsteps2Brilliance can be integrated with their home life, as part of evening storytime, to pass the time in the car, or waiting at a doctor's office. This way, their children can be doing homework without knowing it.

The app supports parents efforts to teach children early literacy skills.

If you teach pre-k, you can show parents how Footsteps2Brilliance can help them begin supporting reading skills at a young age. Encourage the use of letter games, stories, and songbooks in Level 1 to guide reading practice at home. We suggest choosing one or two letters a week for a 3- to 4-year-old. Parents can play See It, Catch It with their children to help with letter recognition, then try to point out those same letters as they see them in daily activities. Once a child has mastered letter recognition, he or she can move on to letter sounds with Funny Phonics. Memorizing these basics before pre-k or kindergarten can help your child build up to more complex skills later. This is especially important to emphasize to parents who have younger children at home because older siblings can be a great influence when it comes to reading!

Using Footsteps2Brilliance helps children maintain a positive attitude about reading.

As a teacher, you know that when children see adults around them treating reading as a priority, they adopt that belief and are more likely to maintain healthy reading habits well into adulthood. Associating reading with fun screen time is one way that parents can send the message that reading is important. Be sure to tell parents that this doesn't have to be difficult or expensive. All it takes is 15 minutes a day of reading with the app, which can happen anytime, anywhere, and their child will be a reader for life.Did you know that Osceola Reads can easily register your classes? Submit a request to get your school signed up. If you aren't interested in registering your entire class(es) or school, you can still encourage parents to register their children online. Just send them this link: