Alleviate Reading Struggles with HomeTeam by Panasonic
This school year, we’ve noticed a real struggle with The Gamer’s reading grades. He reads perfectly fine, and he comprehends pretty well, but where he struggles the most is the time it takes him to read books of no interest to him. We know, as they get older and move into the middle school years, the books available are longer and less interesting as the ones that were available to them in the elementary stage.
We’ve tried several different forms of reading with him, and we’re so thankful that we were introduced to HomeTeam by Panasonic. Originally, I wanted to try this out for it’s original purpose which is connecting families through reading when you’re apart, however, our personal experience with Home Team took a little bit of a different spin that I hope will help others who struggle with reading.
HomeTeam allows you to connect via video or voice chat or voice chat with to read together from a book in Home Team’s library. You can use Home Team in a variety of ways!
- Video chat
- Voice chat
- Video chat and read
- Video chat and play a game
- Play a game alone
- Read alone
The Gamer is required to read however many books equal a certain number of AR points. Because he is in middle school, the number is higher The Entertainer’s number who is in elementary. So before I even introduced him to HomeTeam, I went through the entire set of books available on the website and cross referenced them on the AR finder site to make sure that the books he was reading would count toward is overall grade average. I ended up finding about 8 books that were on his level (Home Team tops out at 6th grade level), and I let him choose the book from the list.
Not only do we take turns reading (he reads a few pages, and I or the Hubs read a few pages), but after a little bit, we take a break and play a game. It’s a great way to keep him interested in reading, and we’ve found that with the breaks in the monotony of reading a paper book alone, he is retaining the information he’s reading a lot better.
Because it’s all done on a computer or tablet, he feels more in his technology element which makes him read with more confidence, and we feel that because of this, it’s helping him succeed.
Of course, what’s good for the goose has to be good for the gander, so even though we’re using this as a fix for his reading retention, The Entertainer has decided that if his brother is going to use the HomeTeam, he’s going to as well.
HomeTeam by Panasonic has a free 30 day trial, and it’s just $8.99 per month thereafter. You can also get a great discount for paying for a year at a time for $89.99. This is a fantastic deal, because you can have up to five people on one account.
HomeTeam can be downloaded from the App Store, Google Play or MyHomeTeam.com, and it’s developed by Panasonic Health & Wellness Solutions in North America. “Panasonic Health and Wellness Solutions, a business unit of Panasonic Corporation of North America, develops consumer and enterprise products and services to better individuals’ health and lives using the latest in technology innovation.”