SUGGESTED WEBSITES FOR READING RESOURCES
General | Specific
GENERAL
*ABC Teach For a fee this site provides documents that are instantly available to their members for downloading and printing. Free samples are available to preview.
Bookshare gives print disabled people in the United States legal access to over 34,500 books and 150 periodicals that are converted to Braille, large print or text to speech audio files. A recent grant from the U. S. Department of Education provided funding is to fully support all schools and students 26 years old and under with qualifying print disabilities in the United States, K-12 and post-secondary. They will provide these students with access to the entire Bookshare.org collection of accessible electronic books and to software for reading those books.
Early Reading Information, provided by The Pacific Regional Education Laboratory, helps educators make teaching and learning decisions about reading for pre-kindergarten through grade 3 students. Developed from a collaboration between Reading First and PREL, information is organized by grade level (pre-kindergarten through grade 3); reading component (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension; and resource type (knowledge/research; materials/resources; activities/strategies; assessment, policy/standards, and family/community). Searches can be refined by selecting a grade, component and resource type.
*Enchanted Learning For a fee ($20 for teacher use/$25 for teacher/student use) this site provides: Search by subjects (K-3, Writing, Biology, Physical Science, Languages, History) A-Z theme resources and an online “Little Explorers Picture Dictionary”. You can explore this site prior to purchasing a 1 year subscription.
Florida Center for Reading Research has developed an extensive site for teachers, parents, researchers and administrators. For teachers, this site has extensive student activities in each area of reading listed by grade level (K/1, 2/3, 4/5). It is also a source for Reading intervention choices Florida chose to use based on research.
IDEA site explains the 5 areas of reading. Also includes DIEBLES online assessment. Even if your district does not use DIBLES, this site has a good overall explanation of what goes into learning to read.
Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators is a Discovery Education site with categorized list of sites useful for enhancing curriculum and professional growth.
Nancy Keane’s Children’s Literature is the place to be when you are looking for ready-to-use booktalks, lists of recommended reading, book reviews by children or other information about children's literature. Nancy is a librarian that has compiled a wonderful list of over 5000 ready-to-use booktalks (synopsis of a book) for children in Grades K-12. Make sure you take note of the ATN Reading List for an extensive list of books by Readership, School Subjects and Themes. This makes it easy to pick a topic and find books to support it.
PBS Teachers has standards based resources for Pre-K – grade 12 teachers. Teachers can customize their search by grade and subject through free registration. Some lessons link to PBS shows, books or their PBS student site.
Read Write Think provides lessons, standards, Web resources, and student materials for teachers from grades K through 12. Teachers can sort through lessons by grade, standards, and literacy engagements (Learning Language, Learning about Language and Learning through Language. ReadWriteThink, established in April of 2002, is a partnership between the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Verizon Foundation. )
*Reading A-Z for a fee offers thousands of printable teacher materials to teach guided reading, phonemic awareness, reading comprehension, reading fluency, alphabet, and vocabulary. The teaching resources include professionally developed downloadable leveled books, lesson plans, worksheets, and reading assessments. It is a comprehensive resource for all teachers but especially those with limited materials, teachers becoming comfortable at a grade and for children that need material above their grade level. The other Learning A-Z sites can be previewed from this site.
Scholastic Tools has some free helpful features among their many items for sale. The flash card maker, rubric maker, build a calendar, To Do List and Classroom set up tool are a free help.
School Bell is an amazing site by Kathy Gursky for K-3 teachers. Resources are broken down by month, theme and subjects i.e. Dolch Word Practice for kids and Words Wall Ideas for teachers. I can not recommend it enough.
Schools of California Online Resources for Education has on-line Cyberguides (lesson plans) for teaching a wide variety of books. You can search by K-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-12. Also available under the Activity Bank sub-link, are a Teacher Activity Bank and Student Activity Bank with resources for graphic organizers, and specific rubrics.
Silly Books produces submitted children’s stories into animated books, complete with voices, music and sound effects for all to enjoy. They have cash prizes for the winning authors. SillyBooks is an animated world of free reading, writing and learning fun for kids.
Starfall is a popular site primarily designed for first grade, but also very useful for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and second grade. ABC’s, Learn to Read, It’s Fun to Read or I’m Reading can be used by teachers during instruction or by students independently. There are great free downloads for student material. Also available are low cost writing journals and books at the Starfall Store. This site is great for both teachers and parents to use.
Teachers’ Lounge (Professor Garfield Site of Garfield fame) is a fabulous resource rich web site that adds humor to learning. It has Kids Content, Instructional Materials, Printable Material, Electronic Fieldtrip and Instructional Resources to name some of its excellent resources. It is well worth the time exploring and using this site. The Professor Garfield Foundation is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational collaboration between Paws, Inc., the global headquarters for Garfield the Cat, and Ball State University.
Web English Teacher is a comprehensive site for all grades.
WrightsLaw is an excellent resource for Special Education Law and Advocacy. “Parents, educators, advocates, and attorneys come to Wrightslaw for accurate, reliable information about special education law, education law, and advocacy for children with disabilities. Begin your search for information in the Advocacy Libraries and Law Libraries. You will find thousands of articles, cases, and resources about dozens of topics” organized by topic or key word.”
What is Phonemic Awareness?
(PA) “Phonemic awareness is the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds or phonemes and the ability to manipulate these phonemes either by segmenting, blending, or changing individual phonemes within words to create new words.” LD online article/6254
Florida Center for Reading Research has developed grade based student activities books. This center conducts research and disseminates information on teaching. There extensive ideas and lessons that are broken down by grade and area. This is a must visit site.
General Listening Activities were developed by the Saskatchewa School System. They are intended to develop auditory perception and, at the same time, to establish key concepts needed for phonemic awareness and graphophonic abilities.
Get Ready to Read has resources to help preschool children get ready to read. Teachers have a free screening tool or children can play free animated online games and build essential skills with Get Ready to Read!’s Inky the Octopus and PBS character Gus the Bunny from Between the Lions. Teachers can print out their 36 Get Ready to Read! activity cards for early literacy skill-building.
Visit Orson’s Farm on the Professor Garfield Site for your students to practice PA.
Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines by LD Online provides information on the role phonological awareness in early reading. This article is for all teachers.
Reading Workshop developed by Manetee County FL School System is a fabulous site that includes practice activities for PA. There are also other resources like a Kids Computer Lab for grades K to grade 3 and Print and Read books. Click the red dot on Phonemic Awareness for specifics in that area, after you check out the computer lab. This website is currently being update and is not available at this time.
Pro Teacher Directory is a free network of teachers that contribute ideas on various subjects. They have some good ideas but watch for annoying pop up ads.
*Songs for Teaching Songs that teach PA can be bought through a CD or bought individually by download. You can listen to a preview of songs prior to buying.
*These websites are provided for information only. The Sherlock Center does not endorse these websites and is not responsible for the materials/subscriptions purchased.