Effective Literacy Website #7

I chose PBS Guam (Education) as my final website to review. It’s important for educators to know the available resources we have locally for our students and their families, and our families as well. PBS Learning Media has many classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted digital resources that focuses on strengthening public media to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Resources found on their website is aligned with Common Core State Standards (CCSS) which is inclusive of interactive videos and in-depth lesson plans.

On the home page of PBS Guam, I clicked on both the Kids and Education tabs. The Kids tab takes me to a page with many learning resources that appears to be tailored to the preschool or early childhood learners. The initial page begins with their options to watch their children’s programs.  There are also many activity coloring sheets and other free stuff to choose from. Children can also select from some fun games to play or storybooks to read.  There is also a link to “cool websites” but didn’t seem to be working when I clicked on it. The education tab seemed to be more of an instructional page for educators on PBS Guam’s resources. I liked this feature because it has different tabs on technical requirements, searching and browsing, interactive lessons, teacher tools, how to get started on google classroom, and even professional development. Creating an account was easy because I simply used my GDOE email to log in. Once I was logged in, I had the option to view the webpage as a student or as a teacher. After selecting the teacher view option I found many video resources when I clicked on a content/subject matter which I was excited about. After reviewing six other literacy sites I have to say I wasn’t too impressed with PBS Guam. I wanted to register my child for PBS Kids Guam but registration required a fee. Also, I didn’t feel the focus was on literacy even though when I was growing up I always associated PBS Kids with the Read-a

Effective Literacy Website #6

MagicBlox is an electronic library with a variety of books for children between the ages of 1 to 13 years old. The goal of MagicBlox was to make books easily accessible and fun by providing children with a reading experience at low or no cost and without having to leave your home. On that same token, if you do leave your home like going on a long or short trip, you and your child can take MagicBlox and your eLibrary with you anywhere! After registering on their website, parents, teachers and children can choose one of three access passes that best fits their reading desires. The Ladybug Access Pass allows users to choose and read one full book each month at no cost. If you want more book choices each month you can sign up for the Book Worm Access Pass but pay a small fee of $4.99 a month, this pass gives you the choice of up to five books each month. If you just love, love, love reading and five books a month just isn’t enough, you may want to sign up for the Butterfly Access Pass and pay an annual fee of $38, but get unlimited access to all books each month.

All the wonderful books found on MagicBlox is reviewed and audited for quality before publishing on their eLibrary. Authors and publishers have the opportunity to upload their books for review to be added to MagicBlox’s eLibrary shelves. Monthly payments from Access Passes are used to help purchase these books so that children can read them for free! Additionally, that same money is used to also help pay the authors, this depends on how frequent their books are read by the users. MagicBlox can be accessed on your computer, iPad, tablets, as well as your iPhone or Android devices.  MagicBlox knows that among children who read eBooks, 20% of them are reading more books for fun! What better way to improve literacy in young children than to provide free books to them whether online at school or home, or on the go using your tablet or iPad!

When initially selecting a book, users can narrow their selections by choosing from the drop down menus. The first drop down menu allows them to choose the preferred reading level, then a category from the list, they can select book features like illustrations, music, chapters, or narration. Other ways to narrow their book choice is by selecting a language, the listing date, or simply going through the books in alphabetical order. MagicBlox might be a great tool to use in the classroom for the primary grades to foster extensive pleasure reading!  

Effective Literacy Website #5

 

I’ve been familiar with Scholastic since I was in elementary. I remember bringing home the reading scholastic book order forms and always took my time going through each and every page circling the books I was hopeful my parents would say yes to ordering. Being the second oldest of five children it wasn’t easy convincing my parents to buy something for me. Now that I’ve discovered the website as an educator, I’ve found another great resource to access books and literacy lessons that’s beneficial to my teaching.

Scholastic Education is one of the webpages that can be found on the website. This page provides an array of literacy solutions for classroom instruction. Educators can find literacy solution programs for either the whole class, small group, or independent reading. Furthermore, there are programs for integrated reading and writing, digital solutions, early learning, as well as a program on extended day & summer! This way children will be enriched all year long. Users have access to the available resources tailored for all learners from grades K-12. A guided reading leveling resource chart is also provided and used as a general leveling guide to help teacher, administrators, librarians, and parents make decisions on books to purchase for the appropriate estimated reader’s level(s).  The chart includes levels on Guided Reading, Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA), and Lexile Levels.

Teachers can become a member of scholastic for free by simply registering on the website. I just registered as a teacher and now I’m eager to explore the many free resources available to me, my students, as well as my kids. There are thousands of free lesson plans, current book lists to use in your classroom, an many student activity ideas. Teachers can also build their library classroom with their 25% off (or more) discount. They can use their discount on guided reading sets, activity books, paperback collections, and so much more when they shop in the teacher store. If that hasn’t convinced you to sign up, scholastic teachables also have lessons and activities in a variety of subjects and skill levels ready for printing! Scholastic has a site for everyone in the family! A parent site, kid site, administrator site, and a librarian site can also be found on scholastic education. With the many resources available on scholastic it’s hard to go anywhere else.

Effective Literacy Website #4

            Reading Rockets is a literacy initiative that offers information and resources to help young kids learn to read, help educators and parents understand why so many of them struggle when reading, and how caring adults can help foster literacy growth. The website is easy to navigate with a menu at the top of the home page that includes categorized drop down tabs. Some resources available on the teaching reading tab include classroom strategies and reading basics. Each strategy in the library includes instructions on how to use the strategy, a classroom video, downloadable templates, examples, recommended children’s books to use with the strategy, differentiation for second language learners, students of varying reading skills, students with learning disabilities, and younger learners. If educators or parents are unsure of which strategy to use and when, an easy to follow chart is also provided on this page which simply identifies if a strategy should be used before, during, or after reading. Educators are also offered professional development through the site’s Reading 101 course. Reading 101 is a self-paced course for K-3 teachers and is developed by Reading Rockets. The website offers articles and videos on topics of why some children struggle with literacy. Strategies to target the problem in understanding the specific problems a child may be experiencing with reading can be found on the Helping Struggling Readers tab as well.  A quick video overview for parents and teachers is also provided on the same page but can also be accessed here à Target the Problem activity.

Reading Rockets is a national multimedia project that has a plethora of research-based reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help children learn to read or become better readers. The website provides a variety of platforms parents and educators can explore, to include children’s audio books where you can find summer booklists, holiday gifts, and award-winning books to name a few. They also provide videos on their PBS shows with their current series Launching Young Readers, as well as literacy blogs, and newsletters to connect and share. Additionally, there are links to headlines on their Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, RSS, and Youtube. The reading topics A-Z tab offers an overabundance library of classroom strategies, articles, parent tip sheets, and information on assistive technology to name a few. All resources and topics available provides research-based and best-practice information for parents, educators, and anyone who works with young children to help improve their literacy skills. 

Effective Literacy Website #3

            Wonderopolis is a website where learners of all ages discover answers to questions that start with curiosity and imagination! On Wonderopolis’ home page, an intriguing question is posed daily and explored in many ways! This question is called the Wonder of the Day! Created by the National Center for Families Learning in 2010, Wonderopolis became one of the most popular education websites. This website is used as a platform where young and old minds alike are nourished by curiosity and wonder. Wonderopolis covers a wide variety of content that is purposefully aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the STEM Educational Quality Framework, and Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.

            The website design is easy to navigate with vibrant colors and icons attracting even the youngest of learners! On the home page, you’ll find the wonder of the day. By clicking on this wonder users will have access to many answers that most people simply wonder about, references to these answers are also provided on the right side labeled wonder sources. Furthermore, the webpage will display which content area and standards the question is linked to. Users have the option to join the discussion through the leave comments feature after reviewing the rules and/or guidelines for leaving comments. All comments are subject to approval by Wonderopolis and may or may not be approved for publishing. Wonderopolis’ explore page allows users to see and review old wonders of the day. The what are you wondering tab allows users to join the wonder creation by typing in what they are wondering, their question! In addition, Wonderopolis features a free online summer-learning destination that provides families and programs with five different Camp Kits to choose from for a fun filled, interactive summer. Camp Wonderopolis helps build vocabulary, background knowledge in science, reading comprehension, critical thinking, and other literacy skills. 

Effective Literacy Website #2

Into the Book

 is an online reading comprehension tool for elementary students and teachers. This website provides early readers with interactive reading activities using eight research-based strategies. These strategies include prior knowledge, making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, summarizing, evaluating and synthesizing.

Into the Book was developed by PBS Wisconsin Education along with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and a team of experienced educators. Easy to navigate tabs include a student website with interactive reading comprehension activities, a teacher website with videos, teacher guides, lesson plans, as well as a matrix that links all activities to (CCSS), and a professional learning tab with a collection of resources behind each lesson.

Students can easily start the activities by clicking on the students tab. Logging in allows for the student to save their activity. Students can also skip the login and go straight into the interactive activities. Once they login, the student can choose an activity on any of the reading strategies mentioned above.

The teaching tools tab welcomes educators to resources on the various strategies to include prior knowledge, making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, summarizing, evaluating, synthesizing, as well as using the strategies together when teaching literacy. It is understood that combining strategies is needed to help students gain a fuller understanding of text. The professional learning tab provides online resources for self-paced professional development, educator effectiveness, webinars, and educator standards. When using the Behind the Lesson resource, educators are provided with a brief description of each learning strategy as well as examples of educators effectively teaching their students to be strategic readers. 

Effective Literacy Website #1

The All About Adolescent Literacy (AdLit) website http://www.adlit.org/ is a national multimedia project offering information and resources to parents and educators of adolescents who struggle in literacy. Writing teacher, researcher, and policy advocate for 20 years, Dr. Rafael Heller expresses his concern for children who don’t learn and master literacy skills in the early years of elementary. Research indicates that many children succeed in reading during their kinder to 3^rd grade years but often experience a “4^th grade slump”. AdLit focuses on bridging this gap by providing free resources, strategies, video modules, newsletters, and much more for both parents and educators to help foster literacy growth in their adolescents.

AdLit provides a webpage on information regarding Common Core State Standards (CCSS). On this page, called Common Core Classroom, parents and educators have access to frequently asked questions regarding common core like what is common core and who created the standards. Links to the actual standards are also on the webpage for quick reference without having to go to the actual common core website. Classroom video modules provide educators with virtual and self-paced professional development for teachers individually or for the use in professional learning communities. These videos provide lesson summaries, alignment to CCSS, teaching materials, classroom strategies, teacher reflection, what experts say, and comments from other teachers. A tab for effective teaching is also on the Common Core page. This page provides educators with links with up to date information on how to be an effective teacher using CCSS.

AdLit.org offers many current articles on their Hot Topics tab. The articles provided are research-based and best-practice information for parents and educators fostering adolescents and their growth in reading and writing.  The page offers over 30 links of “hot topics” of literacy articles from About Teaching Reading to Policy/Legislation/Initiatives, and more.  As an educator and mother of three, one of my favorite tabs on AdLit is the Classroom Strategies tab. This page offers a plethora of strategies for literacy instruction. Not only do they provide a list of strategies, the strategies are categorized for instruction according to when you should use them. For example, there is an organized list of strategies you can use before reading or writing to activate students’ prior knowledge. The other list includes strategies you can use during reading/writing that help students make connections, monitor their understanding, generate questions, and help them stay focused. A list of after reading/writing strategies are also provided to give students the opportunity to summarize, respond to their questions, discuss, and reflect on the text. AdLit.org is an educational initiative of WETA (a flagship public television and radio station in DC) and is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and by the Ann B. and Thomas L. Friedman Family Foundation.  Many parents, educators, and struggling readers can benefit from the resources on AdLit.