Featured 7-15-2014: Biblionasium

 

Designed to engage, encourage, and excite young people about reading, BiblioNasium is a free, social network for children in elementary and middle school.

 

 

BiblioNasium includes the tools to function as a literacy partner, helping teachers efficiently develop and propel an effective, challenging, independent reading program.

 

Differentiate reading programs to meet students' individual needs by monitoring reading logs, creating reading challenges, and helping students expand genre choices and tailor reading lists. Build and manage programs by group, class, grade, and individual student.

 

 

More that you can do with BiblioNasium:

• Track what each student is reading and at what level, using Lexile® measures provided onsite.
• Virtual bookshelves help kids keep track of what they’ve read, what they like, and what they plan to read.
• Kids can share book recommendations and books, building conversation and connections around reading.
• Mascot and reading coach Chip Manzee motivates and entertains kids, challenging them and rewarding good reading behavior.

 Tour the Biblionasium website

 

BiblioNasium has taken measures to keep information safe. Only approved friends and the registered educator can see a student’s name and school.  Other signed-in users can see the student’s anonymous username, books, and other non-personal information. No users can see student information without authorization.

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Featured 7-9-2014: Global Writes

 

Global Writes works with schools and school districts to develop and implement programs integrating performing arts techniques with literacy programs.

 

Global Writes helps schools develop technology applications to share student-created work for publication and feedback. This includes the use of digital media, videoconferencing, podcasting, and blogging.

 

Schools and districts can get assistance in finding local arts partners as a classroom collaboration resource as well as in seeking local funding to sustain arts integration programs.

 

Global Writes helps schools around the world work together to foster communication and collaboration among students around literacy-based projects integrating the arts using technology as a resource.

 

 

Professional development opportunities focus on arts integration with existing literacy curriculum, providing teachers with opportunitites to develop an appreciation of the arts across the curriculum and confidence in using performing arts techniques in their classrooms.

 

 Watch a Global Writes overview

 

Global Writes provides both formative and summative evaluations to monitor student progress in their programs and supplies data to support increases in student achievement and teacher knowledge.

 

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Featured 4-29-2014: Literacy Design Collaborative

 

Literacy Design Collaborative is a community of educators providing a teacher-designed and research-proven framework, online tools, and resources for creating literacy-rich assignments and courses.

 

The mission of Literacy Design Collaborative is "to ensure that every student in America graduates from high school with the Common Core literacy skills necessary for success in college and career.” In the furtherance of this goal, LDC strives to provide continuous, reflective professional development; to integrate literacy and content in K-12 instruction; and to help educators succeed in implementing the high expectations of the Common Core Standards.

 

Core Principles of Literacy Design Collaborative:

• Align with the Common Core State Standards.
• Promote the distribution of reading and writing instruction among all teachers.
• Make tasks central with clear goals.
• Connects reading and writing instruction.
• Use back mapping to identify the specific literacy skills students need if they are to succeed on a task.
• Foster a responsive system that encourages teachers to adjust their instruction in response to the formative information they gather on student performance.
• Encourage local choice with a balanced focus on results as well as means.
• Be teacher-friendly.

 

LDC offers educators an instructional system for developing students’ literacy skills in preparation for the demands of college and careers. LDC does not provide off-the-shelf curriculum units or lesson plans. Rather, LDC encourages teachers to build students’ literacy skills and understanding of science, history, and other content through meaningful, CCSS-aligned reading and writing assignments.

 

 

 Visit the Literacy Design Collaborative YouTube channel

 

Literacy Design Collaborative, as a dynamic community of teachers, is rapidly expanding its library of exemplary instructional modules, effective mini-tasks, and tools and resources for supporting teachers’ efforts to engage students in rigorous, CCSS-aligned learning.

 

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Featured 3-25-2014: SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge!

SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! is a game-based learning and assessment tool designed to engage middle school students with a high-quality game experience in which they can develop real-world problem-solving skills.

 

 

Playing the role of mayor, students are challenged to address environmental impact while balancing the employment needs and the happiness of the city’s citizens.

 

SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! was designed in partnership with assessment experts from Educational Testing Service and Pearson. As well as helping students learn about the factors affecting the environment in a modern city, the game also provides formative assessment information about students’ ability to problem solve, explain the relationships in complex systems, and read informational texts and diagrams.

 

SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! consists of six different missions centered on the theme of environmental impact. In each mission, students are required to solve increasingly complex problems.

 

 

 Watch SimCityEDU: Engaging 21st Century Learners

SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! addresses such 21st century skills as critical thinking and problem solving. It also aligns with several Common Core standards such as citing specific textual evidence to support conclusions, integrating information from texts and diagrams, reading and understanding text and making logical inferences from it.

 

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Featured 3-24-2014: Subtext

Classroom groups can exchange ideas right in the pages of digital texts using Subtext, a free iPad app, opening up opportunities to engage students and foster analysis and writing skills.

 

Subtext was built to support classroom reading, with practical features such as getting everyone on the same page in class to insight into how your students read.

 

With Google Books and Feedbooks built in, you can search for any book or digital document, or import your own ePub formatted documents. You can also share and discuss web pages with a class in the same way as books.

 

A set of annotation tools helps to engage students and foster analysis and writing skills. Students can highlight key passages or tag a set of commonly-used literary concepts.

 

 

Set up a closed class groups in Subtext to keep your students focused and secure as they read. They will only see notes from you and their classmates.

 

Subtext can help you follow how students and classroom groups progress, including reading speed, word look-ups, highlights, notes, and quiz results.

 

See Subtext in Action

 

Subtext is aligned with the Common Core Standards. When students read with Subtext, they are encouraged to analyze what they read, articulate what they think, and make connections between texts and the real world.

 

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Extra 3-21-2014: NYPL Children's Books

 

A group of librarians from The New York Public Library read more than a thousand titles this year, shared countless stories with the children who visit their branches, and compiled Children's Books 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2013.

 

This list includes the titles NYPL’s librarians thought to be the very best children's books for toddlers through sixth graders. 

 

 

Many of the stories focus on classic, timeless themes, stories that reveal feats of bravery, quests for justice and redemption, friendships lost and found. In these books, "heroes and heroines find ways to slay dragons, right wrongs, and prevail against all odds. They offer reassurance and inspiration in a world that can sometimes seem strange and dangerous."

 

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Featured 3-12-2014: LessonWriter

LessonWriter instantly creates personalized print, web, and mobile-ready literacy lessons using any text providing literacy and critical-thinking support to help students read and understand more.

 

LessonWriter is fast, free, and easy-to-use allowing users to create comprehensive literacy lesson plans and student materials from any content in minutes.

 

LessonWriter key features:

• Unlimited customized lessons from any digital texts
• Automatic text-specific literacy support
• Graphic organizers, prompts, and questions to support higher order thinking
• Accommodation settings and differentiated Instruction tools
• Unlimited classes and unlimited differentiation groups
• Teacher’s lesson plan with standards
• Lesson resources and ready-made lessons
• Instant reinforcement materials: vocabulary flash cards, word searches and question review sheets.

 

 

 Watch a video demo of LessonWriter

 

A premium LessonWriter account adds more features such as lessonizing any web page instantly, teaching all your lessons online, unlimited student accounts, a variety of lesson designs, and double the word limit.

 

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Featured 3-5-2014: Teaching Kids News

Teaching Kids News produces daily, timely, relevant kid-friendly news articles for kids, classroom educators, and parents. A new article, based on what is actually happening in the world, is offered every day (except holidays).

 

Every story is in kid-friendly language and is appropriate for kids in grades 2-8. As well as accessible vocabulary, Teaching Kids News provides context for everything in each story, so students can understand what’s going on, and why.

 

In the Curriculum Connections, students are encouraged to think critically about the story and also about the way the story is presented. Does the story exhibit a bias? How might the story be written differently by another journalist?

 

Teaching Kids News strives to "teach balanced literacy in a meaningful way.” Teachers have a current events resource that can be used for shared, guided, and independent reading lessons. At the bottom of each article are Writing/Discussion Prompts, Grammar Features, and a Reading Prompt that will enable you to connect with your students and solve real-life issues.

 

 

The articles are intended to work well in a classroom setting, in small groups, or for individual students. Each article can be a nearly complete lesson plan.

 

 See a video introduction to Teaching Kids News

 

Teaching Kids News has a sister site, Getting Kids Reading, with tips, activities, games, websites, research information and ideas that will help you get your kids reading.

 

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Featured: 1-23-2014 News-O-Matic

News-O-Matic from Press4Kids* offers children aged 7 to 11 their first daily newspaper. News-O-Matic produces five news stories each day, covering world news, science, sports, and more.

 

News-O-Matic readers also have access to history timelines, news games, interactive maps, and many other features. Readers also have the opportunity to rate the articles, ask questions, and submit drawings that relate to the news.

 

Each News-O-Matic article is aligned to the 3rd- and 4th-grade levels of the CCSS for English Language Arts and Mathematics. The articles provide students with necessary and exciting nonfiction content. The free daily Teacher Guide will indicate the precise correlations. Recall, comprehension, and discussion questions included within the guide will provide further practice. 

 

 

For schools without tablet technology, News-O-Matic will be accessible via a free daily School Version emailed in PDF format.  

 

Watch a video about News-O-Matic

News-O-Matic helps develop a daily reading routine while encouraging readers to become knowledgeable, global citizens.

 

*Incorporated in 2012, Press4Kids is a publisher of daily news applications for young readers built by journalists, educators, and entrepreneurs. Their goal is to inform children about current news and world events as well as to encourage them to read on a daily basis. All Press4Kids publications are 100% ad-free. 

 

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Featured: 10-29-2013 EduCore

At the EduCore™ website you will find current, relevant, evidence-based tools and professional development to ease the transition into a new era of teaching and learning based on the Common Core State Standards.

The Literacy Tools at EduCore provide resources to learn more about the Literacy Design Collaborative and the Common Core. Find out about the LDC, the components of the LDC framework, and how you can use it in the classroom.

Classroom Challenges include both problem-solving and content development formative assessment lessons. Learn more about Classroom Challenges and the Mathematics Design Collaborative in the Math Tools section. You can access lesson plans, student materials, PowerPoint slides, and other resource materials to facilitate their implementation.

Registered users of EduCore can collect and save their favorite resources as well as maintain a journal of their experiences.

The EduCore website was created by ASCD with funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Featured: 9-10-2013 Rewordify

Rewordify is powerful, free, online reading comprehension software designed to help people comprehend difficult English faster and learn words in new ways.

Paste a difficult English sentence, paragraph, or more, or enter a website URL and click the 'Rewordify text' button. You'll get an easier-to-understand version of the text. The modified version is also specially highlighted to help build vocabulary.

The Rewordify technology aims to develop independent learners by helping people read, understand, and learn what they want to read, on their own.

 Watch a video overview of Rewordify

 Try the RewordifyTeacher Demo

Rewordify is completely free. There's nothing to register for, no app to buy, no software to install. The site displays no ads and requires no log-in or user registration.

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Featured: 8-22-2013 Kid in Story Book Maker

Create visual stories in support of learning, social modeling, and early literacy with Kid in Story Book Maker.

Place your student’s picture on every page of the story using Kid in Story Book Maker’s templates. It's easy and fun to make any child the star character. You can also write your own custom story or modify any of the templates.

Kid in Story Book Maker was specifically designed to benefit children who use visual narratives to complement auditory directions, model task analysis and expected social behavior, reinforce routines and to engage struggling readers.

The free Kid in Story Reader allows teachers and parents to share stories they create with students, friends, and family via email or Dropbox.

 Watch the Kid in Story Demo

Kid in Story Book Maker is available from the iTunes App Store for $6.99 (USD). It is compatible with iPad and requires iOS 5.1 or later.

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Featured: 7-16-2013 The American Novel

The American Novel offers a comprehensive exploration of 200 years of the American novel, with detailed information on more than 50 American novels and authors, as well as the literary movements they inspired.

The Literary Timeline lets you scroll through 200 years of the American novel.

Six Novel Ideas uses six themes such as Melting Pot and Violence to explore the American novel throughout its history.

Test your literary know-how in the Elements of the Novel section of the site. The Lit Quiz will test your knowledge of the major works and authors of the American novel. In the flash quiz show, To Tell the Truth, decipher literary symbols or guess story characters. Use the Context and Hypertext feature to learn more about the historical, social, personal, and literary influences of important American authors.

The American Novel is a companion website to the PBS American Masters TV series Novel Reflections On The American Dream. The series explores the characters, plots, and themes of seven novels written since 1900, that deal with wealth, poverty, and the nature of success and failure in America. Passages from each book are dramatized through still photography that is inventively animated coupled with original and archival footage.

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Featured: 4-16-2013 Widbook [Writing]

 

Widbook is an intelligent platform where authors and readers have the opportunity to share their best digital content with people worldwide.

On Widbook, you can begin a book from scratch or upload your already completed or in-progress content in order to publish it. The Editor Tool enables users to visualize their work and use features such as keywords, bookmarks, highlights, real time chat, and more.

Invite people to make comments and add suggestions to your work. Widbook is a creative way to share content and spread ideas. Give some suggestions to another author or add a comment to a book.

 Watch the video: Widbook - Write, read and share!

Using Widbook, friends can share and post their favorite books, stories, and comments on their social network. Find books, save the favorites onto your bookshelf, and follow the authors.

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