Audio Stories for Grades K–6 Now Available on FOSSweb

By Nicole Medina, FOSSweb Multimedia Project Manager,
Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California at Berkeley

FOSSweb has a new resource for students and teachers. The FOSS Science Stories for grades K—6 have been made into audio stories and are now available online at FOSSweb.com. The K—2 audio stories produced in the spring of 2007 were so popular with FOSS users that additional audio stories for grades 3—6 were added.

Audio stories can be a great way to introduce new vocabulary to young readers and English language learners. Students can listen to audio files of the books read by a fluent reader while following along with their student books. Hearing the FOSS Science Stories and seeing the written text together can help students increase their comprehension and fluency. Each audio story is divided into the same chapters as the FOSS Science Stories book to make it easy for students to follow along in the books. The audio files for the K—2 audio stories were developed by the Math and Science Kit (MASK) Center at Educational Service District 113 in Olympia, Washington, and feature readings by Zachary Blanton, a student at Hanson Elementary School in Olympia. Zachary's voice is also featured in the grades 3—4 FOSS Science Stories. Delta Education professionally produced the remaining grade 5—6 audio stories.

The audio stories can be found on the module home pages on FOSSweb. From the FOSSweb welcome page, select your grade level. Click on the icon representing your module to go to the module homepage. On the module homepage, you'll see a "Media" button on the left-hand side of the page. Once you click on this button, you'll see an icon for a variety of media designed for students, including the new audio stories.

The audio player has a listing of all the chapters in the FOSS Science Stories book, including the Glossary. Click on a chapter name to begin listening to the audio files. The audio player also features controls for stopping and pausing the audio recordings and adjusting the volume levels. (Note: Audio recordings of the FOSS Science Resources books are also available on FOSSweb.com/CA.)
To use the audio stories on FOSSweb, you'll need Flash Player 9 and a browser with Javascript. If you do not have Flash 9 or higher, you can download it at http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/