Web 2.0
Literacy Tools for Kindergarten to Grade Three
By Julie Rumer
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Into the Book
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Starfall
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Free Reading
5
This website is very helpful for new readers as well as readers that need to work on specific skills. It is a free site, and has a student area and a teacher area. There is an option for students to sign in, but this is not necessary and is only available should students want to save their work.
Once inside the student area, the students can explore many ways to read and comprehend material. They can work on specific skills (Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questions, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating, Synthesizing) or they can also do activiities that link those specific skills together.
The teacher area offers additional resources to design your classroom according to your students' needs, free downloads, strategies, and the option to "tell a friend".
This is a great tool for everyone learning to read and work on reading comprehension. It is especially great for younger children because they do not take personal information as noted in their Privacy Policy.
This site is an amazing tool for extremely young readers. It was originally started in 2002 as a free service to teach children to read with phonics. Since then it has expanded to include Pre-K material, Kindergarten curriculum, Common Core Grade 1 curriculum, and activities that are ideal for children in the Pre-K- Grade 3 range. It is also ideal for those in special education and those students that are learning English as a new language.
The entire site is bright, fun, and features lots of activities at lots of different levels. Students can start at the beginning with learning the ABCs, start with smaller stories (Zac the Rat), and eventually progressing to more advanced stories, plays and activities. The site also offers themed activities, and has a parents and educators section. This is welcomed for parents that would like to do a little extra work at home, or for homeschooling families.
The curriculum is free, but there are options to pay and get materials over and above what is offered online. Since there is no obligation to buy these itehms, there is no need to register or create an account, which also protects the younger students online. They are free to utilize the activities without compromising their personal information.
All in all, a very great site!
This is an excellent site for educators that want to draw on the experiences of other educators when planning their early literacy lessons.
Teachers have the ability to connect and discuss with other educators different strategies and tips for early literacy activities. They also can share tps that have worked for them. Additionally, they have the ability to create materials on this site that can bring the subject matter to life for their students, such as creating an animated pre-reader with sounds. The teachers can also have the ability to share these works with other educators registered on the site.
There is also a 40 week curriculum that educators can access and use, in addition to the free library of supplementary activities. Membership is required on this site, but it is a free site and very useful.Educators are free to use the material as long as they follow the attribution terms set out in the Creative Commons licenses attached to each activity. It is also mainly for educators, so the privacy of registering is not so much of an issue when dealing with younger students. You can check out the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy by clicking on the words. All in all, a very useful site for teachers!