Wonder Stories: Proven to engage child readers like digital games

How do you motivate a child who hates reading? Elliott Hedman earned his PhD at the MIT Media Lab using a sensor to measure children’s subconscious emotional experiences. With this sensor and eye tracking glasses, he observed over 200 children at the Boys & Girls Club and Title 1 schools read digital texts. He discovered the following:

• One in three students hate reading
• Even high performing students become tired of reading after 10-15 minutes
• Struggling readers often start skipping text as soon as they see their first big paragraph.

Leveraging his learnings, Dr. Elliott Hedman created the digital reading app, Wonder Stories. Wonder Stories are books proven to engage readers as much as digital games. Mysteries, puzzles, and adventures let kids participate in the story, staying engaged with reading four times longer than a traditional book. The end result is greater reading comprehension and an enjoyed reading experience.

“We downloaded the app and my child immediately read four books without stopping. She loves it,” Anna R, a first grade mother, comments excitedly.

"When I was six years old, there was only one book I wanted to read: Where’s Waldo. Every time I found Waldo, I felt on top of the world,” Dr Elliott Hedman explains." It is extremely important to make sure learning is fun. A child who loves what they're reading will often perform a grade level or move above expected level and they'll want to keep reading as they grow older. Spend the time and energy to create reading experiences your child loves - this is more important than any other teaching goal."

"Realize that reading is a social phenomenon - many kids read for the attention and approval of their parents or teachers. To this extent, over the summer, try and create reading moments together - maybe you sit down and read a book out loud every Tuesday and Thursday night. Maybe after fifteen minutes of reading, you and your child have a five minute discussion about what they thought. Asking your child questions is the best way to transform day to day reading into a great experience."

Books are organized by difficulty; Normal, Challenging, and Extra Challenging (Normal is easy, but they find no child wants to be put in the "easy" group). Typically, they recommend children from 2nd to 4th grade read Wonder Stories. Though, they have many preschool and kindergarten students who love reading them with their parents.

"I love that it asks kids questions throughout the story and keeps them thinking," Jesse K, a fourth grade teacher, offers.

Wonder Stories is always free for teachers, but for the duration of COVID-19, Wonder Stories is free to anyone looking for a tool to help their reluctant readers.