Epic! is a wonderful resource for educators, students, and families. It is like putting a library right in your lap. Instead of searching on the internet for curriculum related books, this website has filters and categories that make finding the book you’re looking for much easier.
I believe this resource can be a springboard for student curiosity. They can scroll through dozens of categories and find a book that interests them. Here are a few way educators could implement this reading platform:
- use Epic! for read aloud books for language arts. This helps develop students fluency. When they hear oral language a strong fluency is being modeled. For example, they can hear words being pronounced the proper way.
- find books that can apply to curricular connections (ie. if you’re studying aquatic animals, students can go on and search for books for their research project)
- Read aloud books can be put on during lunch time
- Teachers can send book recommendations to the students mailbox found on the website
- The teacher can record and assess student involvement and progress on the site
- Students will be able to see the enormous selection of books available to them and will hopefully get excited about reading! There are multiple types of reading material: chapter books, comic books, fiction, non fiction…
I especially love this website because it makes access to books easy for students that may like to spend time online, but at least this way they’re doing something educational. Every student has access to the same material. I also like how a book can be read aloud, and then read by the student without the audio. They can read the same text multiple times which helps build fluency.
I definitely plan on using Epic! in my future classroom. The filters allow me to not only pick a category, but also the age range and shows how long a book is. It provides read to me, and audiobook options. You can create a favorites library and click on collections that other people have created. This website is as revolutionary as when public libraries were invented in my opinion.
Checkout my screencast about Epic! here: (it won’t embed!!)
