ReadWorks

ReadWorks has come a long way in a few years.  This year, with my new position in middle school, and with the focus being on increasing student vocabulary acquisition, I decided to take another look at what they had to offer.  I am so impressed with the streamlined approach to selecting articles, assigning them, and reviewing the data.

Above you will see a picture from my teacher dashboard.  I assigned the article, A Drop's Journey.  I can easily see the Lexile number, genre, and how many students have submitted the assignment.  I can also see that I have allowed this article to be read aloud to the students.  I can also quickly click on "Class Results" and view the data from my class.

Did I mention that this resource is entirely FREE?????  Check it out, you won't be disappointed.

Post-It Speech and Thought Bubbles

Sometimes when we are reading a book in class with great illustrations, I'll put a post-it with a speech or thought bubble in the book so that the students can infer what the character is thinking or saying.  I made some templates...feel free to use them :)

Speech Bubble https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7SsbSy9Hn82cmI4ZW1pYlBxSFU/view?usp=sharing

Thought Bubble  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7SsbSy9Hn82LTJFRkR3czFRSGM/view?usp=sharing

Book Wizard by Scholastic

Scholastic has a website/app called Book Wizard.  This website/app is very helpful for the teacher looking for those "just right" books.  Books can be found by using reading levels as well as by searching for titles.  Once found, most books provide the genre, interest level, reading level, and some even include free teaching resources!  The app includes a scanner, which helps the teacher to quickly identify the above mentioned categories.  

Some minimal cons include that not all books are listed, not all categories have information provided (ex. some might not include the genre), and not all have free resources.  However, as far as FREE resources goes, this app/website is definitely worth checking out!

Literacy Tools

Holli Taylor presented at ISTE 2014 on Literacy and the Web 2.0 teacher.  The first handout linked below has links to apps/websites that support guided reading.  The second handout is an example of the "menus" that she uses for guided reading.

https://www.isteconference.org/uploads/ISTE2014/HANDOUTS/KEY_87891843/Literacytoolsfortheweb2GOPDF.pdf

https://www.isteconference.org/uploads/ISTE2014/HANDOUTS/KEY_87891843/ReadingCenterMenus20132014.pdf