December 16

Websites Worth Sharing: Roy the Zebra

I’m always on the lookout for interactive websites to support emergent readers. The Roy The Zebra website http://www.roythezebra.com/index.html  has interactive games, guided reading texts with teachers supports, songs and more.roy1

When you select Interactive Reading Games from the menu, you have the option of choosing from a variety of Word Level Games and Sentence Level Games. The games are embedded within the webpage, but there is an option on the left to launch it in a new window if you prefer.

roy2

If you choose Guided Reading Stories from the top menu, you’ll get to choose from several stories. There are no auditory supports and the stories are pretty simple, but the Pre and Post reading supports and  the accompanying worksheets make for nice reading practice.

There are even a few songs (lyric sheets included) that you can use, and Roy IS pretty cute, as far as Zebra’s go!

 

October 14

Website Worth Sharing: Newsela

newselaSometimes it is hard to find leveled non-fiction text to support Common Core ELA standards. Newsela might be just what you’re looking for: http://www.newsela.com/

This site has lexile leveled non-fiction news articles on a variety of subjects- see the categories in the screenshot below. In order to get full access, you need to register and create a class. They will provide a class code that your students can use to join your class. They create their own username/password and then read an article of their own choice or one that you assigned to the class. Each article has 5 levels of text that they can choose (lexile scored). What a nice way to differentiate.  Some of the articles have quizzes that can be taken. Many of the more current articles do not, but may in the future. The quiz questions are aligned to the Common core standards. You can login as a teacher and see who took the quiz and how they did (click on “Binder” at the top of the page). You can also see who logged in and viewed the assigned article.

If you want to try it out from a student viewpoint, you can go to the website, join my class by clicking on “sign in” in the upper left and using my code “twotw”. Read an article of your choice or the one I assigned and then take the quiz if one is available (not all articles have quizzes-there is an anchor icon on the ones that do). The quizzes remind me of something that would be on the Smarter Balance test. This is a free website and looks pretty slick to me!

April 22

Website Worth Sharing: ReadWorks

If you are looking for supplemental materials to help teach reading, you should definitely take a look at the ReadWorks website. It was created by a non-profit, so everything is free. There are skills based and literature based units and lessons for grades K-6 (Use the “lessons and units” link on the top menu). I think the non-fiction passages and questions would be especially useful (go to the non-fiction passages link- they have over 1,000!). One of the best things is that the lessons are now aligned with the Common Core ELA Standards. Integration with Google Classroom makes it really easy to assign work to students.  http://www.readworks.org/

January 3

Website Worth Sharing: Wonderopolis

Wonderopolis posts an article each day about a topic you and your students may have “wondered” about. These topics are kid-friendly (Why do you get ice-cream headaches?) and interesting.  This website can facilitate online literacy practice when used with students. Reading and gathering information from websites is a specific skill and should be addressed like any other type of literacy. This would be a great “starter” for the day or could be used as a center activity.

If you have an eBoard or a website, you can add the Wonderopolis widget to your site. Check it out on my eBoard.

May 11

Website Worth Sharing: Whyzz

When that teachable moment comes up, sometime Googling a topic doesn’t come up with age appropriate explanations (gotta love the college websites). Wikipedia isn’t really written at a 3rd grade level either. The Whyzz website was designed to help parents answer their children’s questions, but teachers could use this too. It would be a good resource for research or for reading practice. When you go to the site you can submit a question in the question form, but browsing the existing answers might be a better way to go. As with any user-edited site, it’s always good to check consult a second source, but they provide other resource links at the bottom of the answer pages, so it’s easy to do.

http://www.whyzz.com/