It’s rare these days to find a quality educational website, resource, or app that does what it needs to following sound pedagogy and research and is free. But I’m very happy to report that Teach Your Monster to Read is one of these rare breeds. The website is designed to make learning to read fun and covers everything from letters and sounds to reading full sentences; a complete list of what is covered in each of its three games is available here.
Students create a monster and take it on an adventure through a magical world. They travel to exciting places, meet fun characters, play games, and win prizes as their monster learns the first steps of reading. Mini-games help them develop speed and accuracy in letter recognition. There is also reading for purpose with magical, little books.
The web version of Teach Your Monster to Read is completely free. The teacher simply creates an account for him/herself and then adds students. The password requirement for the students can be turned off to make it easier for them to log in. There is currently an iPad version of the first game, but it does not sync to the web version at this time. It is $4.99. A similar Android version is planned, but has not yet been released.
