It seems that most children these days would agree with the latter. Most students are growing up disliking, even hating, to read. Although where I work we do have a few children that stick there nose in a book all day, it seems that getting children to read anything is a challenge. When we do invite the children to pick up a book, older students tend to pick books meant for younger readers or they pick books such as "Where is Waldo". It seems that marketers are beginning to understand this trend and are supplementing the act of reading with a task a simple as watching a movie.
MGM has recently been producing "Cliff Notes Ultimate Study Guide". This ultimate study guide is a package deal which includes a movie and the cliff notes that go with the corresponding book. Chris Franchino, the marketing director at MGM, doesn't see it as a bad idea. He thinks that students who purchase and use these products are doing work. What he is missing is that it is just another way of teaching children that there is a way around reading. Instead of playing to the children's dislike of reading they should be creating products that encourage reading. Even if they are products such as books on CD's or through iTunes.
Despite my feelings towards MGM's "Ultimate Study Guide" they are also reproducing movies meant for younger children to include a caption option. These new products are part of their Follow Along series. This caption option is easily turned on by a parent and plays the movie as normal with captions that go along with the words. As the characters speech the words that they have said light up in yellow. I feel that this caption option is will be a successful tool for children learning to read. As the children watch their favorite movies they learn to associate written words with the words spoken in the movie.
Inspiration for this post came from Principled Discovery
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