Our Mission
All kids love hearing a good story read to them by someone they know and trust. Yet by the time they get to third grade, many lose their innate impulse to engage with the written word.
Reading science tells us that kids are more likely to read if they think of reading as something you just do, not something you’re taught in school. If they start out by hearing good stories with which they can identify and engage, then they're more likely lo love reading throughout their life.
After all, we all share the same innate ability to talk - first by listening, then by imitating the speech we hear around us. Toddlers mimic us adults and practice speech until they get it. Stumbles and mistakes are part of the process. It's the same with reading.
Nowadays, amid rising concern about declining rates of literacy, reading theories compete with each other. Do kids spend enough time on science and social studies? Do they get enough exposure to a knowledge base and sentence structure? Is it better to teach them facts or how to think? phonics or reading on sight?
In our classrooms, resources are limited and training programs are expensive and slow. Trying to teach these skills is hard, and teachers get burned out. No matter what method is used, many kids - especially those from low income families - lack the background knowledge that is critical to decipher the written words.
It is obvious that getting students to read in class is not enough. Suppose there was a way to make reading a part of our kids' everyday surroundings - something they experience in their daily lives. Suppose educators could enlist family as collaborators in literacy training - and at the same time give kids and adults an enjoyable meaningful experience.
Read Me A Story could be such a way. It can excite kids to learn about the world around them. Yes, it doubles down on the way kids are learning nowadays - on screens. It makes reading less a skill set to be learned than a way to learn about the world around them.
Fair Use
Our mission at Read Me A Story is to share the magic of reading great stories aloud to our little ones. We believe that all of us own these stories in common. They belong to us grownups as our legacy, to be treasured down through the years and passed along to our children and grandchildren, so they'll know what made up our world and opened our minds to its beauty and wonder.
The Doctrine of Fair Use is a provision of U.S. copyright law that permits read-aloud activities to be moved from the printed page to classroom or bedroom, and now to the internet, in order to enhance "learning, reaching out, or equitable opportunities". Such "transformative purposes" are not considered copyright infringement as long as they do not harm the work's core markets, such as competing with the publisher's efforts to sell books.
This means that when parents, grandparents, teachers, or others read aloud using online tools like Read Me A Story app, fair use allows the same practices that are permissable when in person.
The Doctrine of Fair Use can be condensed into two essential questions:
1. Is there an educational purpose?
2. What, if any, is the harm to the original's core market?
For instance, reading a storybook online to pre-readers is considered a transformative activity since it supports learning to read and may reinforce group identity. The point is not whether the story in question was intended to be read online, but whether this sort of activity takes on new significance in this context, which it typically does.
To answer the second question, one can ask whether reading the story online will interfere materially with the sale of physical books, or even audio-books if available? In general, as Carrie Russell of the American Library Association has pointed out: “Reading aloud is not displacing a sale or serving as a substitute to the work ... Listening to an audiobook is not the same as story time.”
Overall, Fair Use provides a powerful way to ensure that every kid has full and equal access to educational resources. As we learned during the time of the pandemic, we must be willing to respond to changing circumstances. Using technology to help close the gap for ethnic, disabled, and marginalized students remains a call to action.
Adapted From: Reading Aloud: Fair Use Enables Translating Classroom Practices to Online Learning by Meredith Jacob et al is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.