Reading Education Websites

http://www.readingrockets.org/

Reading Rockets has information on teaching reading, helping struggling readers and children’s books and authors. There is also a reading topics list. You can search topics from A- Z. Information can be found on Dyslexia, STEM literacy, oral language and more.

http://www.raz-kids.com/main/Login

Raz Kids is an award winning website where K-5 students can go to read anywhere and anytime. The books on Raz Kids are leveled and teachers can track and monitor student progress. Students will take comprehension quizzes after reading each story.

http://www.starfall.com/

Starfall teaches children to read with phonics. It is perfect for Kindergarten through 2^nd grade as well as special education and English language learners.

http://www.funbrain.com/brain/ReadingBrain/ReadingBrain.html

Kids, teachers, librarians and parents use Funbrain. Funbrain has games, online books, and comics. Funbrain was created for kids ages Pre-K through 8^th grade and it offers more than 100 fun, interactive games that develop skills in math, reading, and literacy. Kids can read popular books and comics on the site including, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amelia Writes Again, and Brewster Rocket.

http://www.jumpstart.com/

JumpStart is a groundbreaking evolution in children’s learning games and the first learning game delivered in a browser with high-quality 3D graphics and advanced play. It is a completely secure and safe online environment where kids can interact, explore and learn.

http://www.bookadventure.com/

Book Adventure is a free reading motivation program for children in grades K-8. Children create their own book lists, take multiple-choice quizzes on the books they’ve read, and earn points and prizes for their literary success. Book Adventured was created and is maintained by Sylvan Learning Centers.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/

Clifford the Big Red Dog is interactive on this fun website. This website has phonics fun, games, and stories for early readers.

http://storynory.com/

Storynory has published a new audio story every week since 2005.

http://www.theteacherscorner.net/

Teacher’s Corner has lesson plans for multiple subjects, bulletin boards, thematic units and many other teacher resources.

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/

Read, Write, Think has lesson plans that you can narrow down by theme, grade level, lesson plan type and learning objective.

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plans/free-lesson-plans

Scholastic has lesson plans for grades Pre-K through 12^th grade. This website allows you to search for a lesson plan or to view all featured lesson plans. Scholastic also has sections on resources and tools, strategies and ideas, student activities, books and authors and more.

http://www.jumpstart.com/teachers/lesson-plans/reading-lesson-plans

JumpStart offers free reading lesson plans as well as reading activities and worksheets for kids that teachers can use to add fun to any reading lesson plan. JumpStart has games for children to play to enhance the reading skills they are learning in the classroom.

http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/general_content/free_resources/teachers_corner/lessonPlans.jsp?f=m

Lakeshore has great lesson plans and the best part is, they update their lessons every month! They have lesson plans for Preschool to 5^th grade. The lessons are also aligned to Common Core, it doesn’t get better than that.

School Long Ago

In November, we started our social studies unit on life long ago. I taught a lesson on school long ago. I looked at our social studies book and it had two pages of information on school long ago. It was 3 paragraphs and I knew these first graders were capable of more than that. I kept the lesson objective the same as textbook, "Compare and contrast your school to one of long ago." I did research on Google and created my own PowerPoint. The PowerPoint was 20 slides long and covered Hornbooks, Dunce caps, quill pens, one room school houses, child responsibilities, subjects taught and more.

Here is one what my mentor teacher wrote about my lesson, "Ms. S taught a lesson in social studies about history. Our unit is comparing life long ago to now. She compared what school was like long ago to school now. She created a wonderful PowerPoint presentation complete with excellent photographs and visuals so students could compare and contrast school long ago to now. She also created an assessment where students had to write a sentence or two about school long ago and had to cut and paste pictures from school long ago into a school house. Both the PowerPoint presentation and assessment will be ones that I use in the future. They were so appropriate and engaging. After grading the assessment, we could truly see which students met the standard and which will need some re-teaching."

This is usually a lesson my mentor teacher skips so I was pretty excited when she asked if she could keep and use my PowerPoint and activity for the future. Below are some student examples of the assessment I created: