Get Ready!

World Read Aloud Day 2019

Register today for World Read Aloud Day (WRAD) on February 1^st. This is a day for students all around the world to read aloud together, share ideas and stories, and learn about others. Host an event by reading with another class or author with Skype or Google Meet. Share your students’ love of reading by sharing your story and pictures at #WorldReadAloudDay. To register for WRAD and to download their entire event packet full of ideas and resources, visit litworld.org.

Here are a few resources to help you connect with other classes or authors.

• Skype in the Classroom – Lesson ideas for WRAD also available.
• Authors who will Skype from Kate Messner
• Connected Classrooms Workshop - a Google+ Community in which educators can share their ideas on how best to utilize technology to enhance classroom curriculum and to help educators connect with other classrooms around the world. 

World Read Aloud Day

Register today for World Read Aloud Day (WRAD) on February 1^st. This is a day for students all around the world to read aloud together, share ideas and stories, and learn about others. Host an event by reading with another class or author with Skype or Google Hangout. Share your students’ love of reading by sharing your story and pictures at #WorldReadAloudDay.  For more information and to download a complete teacher guide with ideas and materials, visit litworld.org.

Here are a few resources to help you connect with other classes or authors.

Skype in the Classroom – Lesson ideas for WRAD also available.

Authors who will Skype from Kate Messner

Connected Classrooms Workshop - a Google+ Community in which educators can share their ideas on how best to utilize technology to enhance classroom curriculum and to help educators connect with other classrooms around the world. 

Free High-Quality Fiction and Nonfiction Literature

Website Wednesday

CommonLit offers a free collection of fiction and nonfiction literature for teachers to use in the classroom to help strengthen student literacy skills in grades 5-12. It has a wide selection of poems, short stories, news articles, historical documents, and excerpts from classic literature. 

Teachers can create a class, assign assignments, and monitor student progress. With each selection a teacher also has the option to use the teacher guide, related media, or paired text suggestions. Searching for articles or literature is made even easier with the Search by Theme option. Assignments can be assigned to an entire class or individual students. This enables a teacher to tailor the learning to the student's needs and interest.

Text that is assigned to students comes with many other features and useful tools. The toolbar that accompanies the selection contains a highlighter, dictionary, translator, and text to speech. Text-Dependent and Discussion questions are also included with each selection.  Because the selections can be saved as a PDF, students can save that in their google drive and then open it in KAMI to use all the annotation tools that KAMI provides. *KAMI is a free app and extension that is compatible with google classroom and can be found in the Chrome Web Store.  

NEWSELA

https://newsela.com/

Thank you Peggy Reimers, Director of Professional Development at TCEA, for sharing this website with me today during a lunch and learn webinar.

NEWSELA provides teachers with a database of relevant non-fiction articles. Each article can be adjusted by Lexile for up to five different reading levels. It also has quizzes built into each article.

It's free to use NEWSELA, but if you create an account you have access to all of the articles and quizzes as well as the option to create classes, add students and assignments. 

Article categories include war and peace, science, kids, money, law, health, arts and sports.

ReadWriteThink

http://www.readwritethink.org/

The ReadWriteThink website provides educators with free, high quality resources including lesson plans, interactive activities, mobile apps and printed materials. Their partners include the International Literacy Association, The National Council of Teachers of English and Verizon.

Search their site by resource type, keyword, or grade level. You won't be disappointed. ReadWriteThink provides everything from the lesson plan to the materials needed in class. * Download the free apps for your iPad too - two of my favorites are Timeline and Trading Cards. * Enjoy!