Discovery Education

Discovery Education (https://www.discoveryeducation.com) is an online platform offering information on technology and science fields. This website also provides excellent literacy resources, as it features a curriculum that integrates STEM content into an interactive experience for students to engage with online.

In addition to being a valuable literacy resource, it’s important to remember that students don’t just read through traditional text—they also read and communicate through coding. This website offers coding practice, which is itself a form of communication and reading in the digital world. For students interested in coding, this website would be an excellent resource.

*Contribution by Anthony Ponce

The Free Reading Program

The Free Reading Program (https://freereadingprogram.com) is a literacy website designed for users to create accounts for their students, providing them with opportunities to complete various literacy activities aimed at improving their skills. The website offers a wide range of activities, from foundational skills to Level 6 content. Each level includes diverse tasks, such as matching words and reading passages followed by comprehension questions.

Users must create an account to access all the materials available on the site. Signing up requires only an email, and accounts are free. Once registered, users can access resources tailored to the grade level they teach or the reading/literacy level of their students. Teachers or account holders can add students to their account and assign passwords for student logins. The website provides activities targeting various literacy skills, including sight words, which feature word lists and basic vocabulary. Additionally, students can read stories accompanied by interactive activities.

One notable feature of The Free Reading Program is the "play" button, which reads text aloud. This feature is particularly helpful for students struggling with reading and literacy. At the end of each activity, a star rating displays the number of attempts and the percentage of correct answers, making it an excellent tool for tracking progress and evaluating improvements in students’ reading and literacy skills.

As users explore higher levels, the activities become increasingly specific. For example, Level 5 includes vocabulary-building tasks focusing on homophones, homonyms, antonyms, figurative language, easily confused words, prefixes, and suffixes. These activities are particularly beneficial for students needing additional practice in these areas.

This website serves as an excellent supplemental resource for teachers to integrate into classroom activities. With its extensive features and diverse reading activities, The Free Reading Program supports students at all levels, whether they are working to improve their literacy skills or seeking extra practice to enhance and enrich their abilities.

*Contribution by Joanna Ponce

Kids World Fun

URL: https://www.kidsworldfun.com/

    Kidsworldfun.com stands out as a valuable resource for promoting literacy among young students. This free website offers an extensive range of literature options, providing over seven varieties to choose from. The diverse selection includes poems, short stories, myths and legends, magazines, e-books, children's books, and quotes specifically for kids. Within each category, users can explore a library of over 30 types of engaging stories, making it a versatile platform for reading with children.

    A notable feature of the website is the "Learn" tab, offering educational content across various subjects such as English, science, math, coding, and even guidance on preparing for spelling bees. For a multisensory experience, Kidsworldfun.com includes nursery rhyme videos that promote rhythm and rhyme, enhancing language development.

 Beyond literature and learning, the website also incorporates a wide variety of games and quizzes to make the educational journey enjoyable. Parents and educators will find additional resources such as arts and crafts activities, coloring pages, and even cooking activities, providing hands-on activities  to children's development.

*Contribution by Julie Perez

Reading Rockets

Reading Rockets is possibly the most comprehensive reading strategies website available. It offers a multitude of research, strategies, and multimedia learning tools. It includes resources for parents, such as booklists, tips on creating a home library, tips on finding books at the right reading level for your child, and tips for reading with your child. Most importantly, it includes booklists, watch and learn videos, author study toolkits, and author interviews.

In particular, the author interviews can be useful. The video interviews are the cheapest and fastest way for students to connect with authors before they write or read. It would be excellent to show the Marylin Singer before a poetry unit and have the students analyze what she said poetry can be. Likewise, it would be fun for students to listen to Lois Lowry’s interview about “The Giver” before or after reading it, and discuss her point of view regarding how controversial it is. Students can then decide for themselves after reading it if it controversial and should be removed from a school reading list.

*Contribution by Erik Miller

A Book And A Hug

      A Book and a Hug -  www.abookandahug.com allows students to find books that they enjoy and love using technology.  Every book is an adventure that can take you anywhere.  Barb Langridge, founder of the website, states, “The magic happens when the characteristics of the reader match the characteristics of the story.”  The site uses a feature called the Reader Personality Types where a reader takes a brief assessment to find out the type of the reader that they are. After answering ten basic questions, the reader can then search the website to find books based on their reader personality type. The four reader personality types include: Team Player, Jokester, Champion or Investigator. 

       Being able to choose a book that you enjoy is not the only advantage of this website.  There are also resources such as lesson plans that can be utilized in many ways. The lesson plans include everything from the introduction/anticipatory set all the way to lesson activities and games. There are also sections that are tied into different curricula and content areas such as character-building, mathematics, science, and language arts. The website is completely free and resourceful for all readers.

*Contribution by S. Paet

Rewordify

Rewordify.com, http://rewordify.com/, a powerful and free literacy website, is dedicated to improving reading, learning, and teaching aimed at improving a learner’s comprehension level.  This app is free, fast, and safe for all users.  Both students and parents can become members and have access for better and monitored learning.  Created by Neil M. Goldman, this site’s aim is to help more people understand materials read to enhance their reading skills. After ten years of teaching experience, Mr. Goldman realized the need to further build on reading skills and decided to develop an app for struggling readers who need to work very hard to understand the materials they read. He further stressed that despite the fact that dictionaries are already in place the help is minimal. As a result, he created this site to allow all learners the opportunity to attain their maximum capability. This application eliminates the difficulty to understand words and replaces them with simplified words while keeping as much of the original meaning as possible. Being a user-friendly site, it gently introduces learners to new words, teaches meaning, and empowers them to make necessary changes as they see fit for enhanced learning. 

The goal of Rewordify.com is to build on the learners reading comprehension and vocabulary development by making the language easier to understand. It also allows the ability to reword sentences or paragraphs in simplified forms. This app is an important part of reading instruction and vocabulary instruction for ESL students, people with reading disabilities, people with a learning disability, or anyone who wants to improve reading skills.  Benefits of this app include saving time when reading hard texts, improves comprehension and self-confidence, improves vocabulary and word retention, reduces frustration, and improves comprehension just to name a few.  This site has received several positive comments from various educators which include “pretty remarkable”, “one of the most innovative websites”, “this is amazing”, “a fantastic web app”, “excellent tool to enhance comprehension”, “makes your life easier,” etc.

            With the use of rewordify.com, materials will become simplified to boost understanding.  When understanding is in place, learning will become productive.  As educators, we ought to learn more about this app and utilize it in the learning environment, especially since it’s free of charge.  Since we are ESL learners, this tool matches our capability and is more appropriate to maximize learning.

*Contribution by Y. Kanichy

Calling all students, parents, and teachers!