Find many strategies and techniques to keep your class engaged and interested! Many of the strategies are also helpful in adult meetings. View the short video on the home page to get a good overview of what to find and how to navigate this site. See the Strategies and Techniques, or Tools, by clicking the button. Not only will all the tools be displayed, but at the bottom, on the left, find a menu with categories to make it easier to find what you are looking for. Most tools now have a video to see the tool in action. There are Opening and Closing Activities, Checks for Understanding, Reading Strategies, and more. There is no sign in to see all the activities. However, by joining the site, you will be able to take and save notes for the different tools of interest. Each tool has an overview of how and when to use it, variations of the tool, and templates (downloaded in Word) for participants to use. Some tools have accompanying videos to show the tool in action. The videos are hosted on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, then they may not be viewable; be sure to look at alternatives for sharing the videos on classroom computers.

tag(s): back to school (63), classroom management (126), reading strategies (98), Teacher Utilities (150)

You are the reporter on Grasswire, a collaborative Internet newsroom! Scroll through to read the most current, most popular stories, or view recent submissions on the right-hand side of the screen. Create an account and sign in to submit your own stories, comment on articles, or up-vote newsworthy items. Since these are user-submitted, take caution in allowing students to explore on their own. Some grammatical errors were noted in a few of the articles. Challenge your students to be the editors and see if they can find any errors.

tag(s): journalism (72), news (229), newspapers (91)

Google Maps Book Mash-up chronicles some of the greatest and most popular stories of English Literature and their settings. Click on any book icon to see the book, author, and the setting. Type in the name of any location to zoom in on the map and find books using that location as the setting. Participate on the site by submitting book information to be included on the map.

tag(s): book lists (162), literature (218), maps (207)

Could you pass the U.S. Naturalization Test? Preparing For The Oath offers learning opportunities and a practice test. Practice listening, reading and oral skills as you take the practice test. As you check for correct answers, use the Review This Question link to learn and practice more information. Additional links offer lesson plans and guides for teachers, word lists, and full transcripts of resources.

tag(s): immigration (63)

Journey deep into Africa's environmental challenges and solutions in this blog-style offering from the Nature Conservancy. Learn about initiatives to save the elephants, promote sustainable grazing, establish fisheries, protect and conserve water, and much more. Don't miss the interactive section about the elephants accessible by clicking "#SaveElephants." Much of the Nature Conservancy's efforts focuses on raising funds for their endeavors. However, the many articles and rich images on this site explain and illustrate the issues well.

tag(s): africa (139), animals (284), earth day (60), environment (238), water (101)

Choosito! is a search engine providing safe access to the worldwide web through filtering of reading levels and subject areas for education. Create an account to add class information and add your collections. Search Choosito! using filters for reading level and subject. Limit searches to Choosito's Library, your collections, or Choosito! Web. Easily share searches using social networking links or save to your library. Be sure to check out the Choosito! Start Guides for a quick overview to getting started with this search engine.

tag(s): bookmarks (46), learning disability (22), Learning Management Systems (20), search engines (49), search strategies (23), Special Needs (54), Teacher Utilities (150)

We hear new buzzwords all of the time, but what do they really mean? Newswordy provides those answers. Each day Newswordy features a buzzword, definition, and its uses in articles and tweets from trending topics. Find the previous day's buzzword by clicking the link on the bottom of the page or click the three bars on the top-right hand side of the page for a list of previous words. Click the title to have random words revealed.

tag(s): media literacy (103), news (229), vocabulary (236), vocabulary development (89)

Start speed-reading with Squirt! Just install Squirt on your bookmarks bar. Clicking Try It Now will show you how this tool works. Back on the home page, click Install Squirt to read the FAQs and install the bookmarklet. When visiting a page on the web, select the text you would like to speed-read. Click on the bookmarklet, and watch the magic of Squirt begin. Squirt shows one word at a time while you adjust the speed of the words you read.

tag(s): independent reading (86)

Looking for a quiz tool that is better than all the rest? Quizizz is a free tool. It works on any device: web browser, iOS, Android and Chrome apps. You can access hundreds of ready-made learning quizzes or create your own. Join as a teacher, pick a quiz, and use the code for a virtual room to give to your students. Alternatively, you can create your own quiz on Quizizz, even importing questions from excel/CSV files with just a click of a button. Students use the code to enter and submit a nickname, code name, or numerical name (students do not have to register). Quizziz now has to be marked as trusted by an administrator to be able to use it with your Google Classroom account, even if you have been using it. With Google Classroom students can join by signing in with their Google Account; just one click. Even better, if you assign a Quizizz through Google Classroom, all your data gets updated in your Classroom dashboard. You will get notifications when students complete assignments, and their responses and grades show. Teachers can choose to make their quiz public or private. Embed images with your questions. Check or uncheck the settings including music. You can even duplicate an existing quiz to save into My Quizizz. A created Quizizz can have randomized or non-randomized questions.

Don't miss the memes that are displayed when students answer a question; these are sure to be a hit with students. You can also customize your Quizizz by creating your own Memes. Use images of the school mascot, students pets, or favorite game characters to create a set of ten or more memes. Click the My Memes from the top menu, then the plus symbol. You are now ready to start. Be sure to Click "Start Game" after students have entered the code. Send the game link to students (or other teachers to use with their classes) by email, website, or social media. Set time limits of 30 seconds to 5 minutes for students to answer each question. This allows more time for more complex questions. Students earn points for speed and accuracy. Unlike other sites, both teacher and students can see the questions, answers, and the leader board throughout the quiz. Most other tools require the teacher to project the answers and leader board on a whiteboard. The leader board can be turned OFF in this tool as well. And, what is the best part of this tool? Two separate classes can play together using this tool. Quizziz works on any web enabled device including smartphones and tablets, and has an iOS app.

You can now email student reports to parents (even send the student reports to multiple/all parents at once), the main navigation bar has moved from the top to the left, and there is a search bar that you can access on all pages, and now you can search both your quizzes and your reports. Quizizz is now available in Spanish and will soon be adding other languages. Don't miss their new Jungle theme with music, backgrounds, and GIFs... oh my!

tag(s): DAT device agnostic tool (144), game based learning (173), gamification (73), polls and surveys (46), quiz (65), quizzes (89), spanish (105)

Access commonly taught themes for classic literature and discussion questions for that theme. Plus there are Text Sets perfect for social studies teachers! Choose a Lexile'''''® grade level for reading and download the text in PDF format or read online. Each text has a menu across the top offering Paired Texts, Related Media, a Teachers Guide, and a Parent Guide. Accompanying the text are critical thinking questions, an Assessment, and some have Guided Reading Mode. Choose the size of the font, listen to the Read Aloud (and pause it), translate to Spanish, and Highlight. Track student progress. You can search by Book, Genre, Grade Level, Literary Device, Text Set, Theme, and Spanish Texts. All of this for free! What else could one want? Well, you can also request a text, and they will negotiate with the copyright holders to have that text on their site. Take a look at their blog, too! You'll find lots of suggestions and thoughtful reflections for using nonfiction texts with your students.

tag(s): critical thinking (112), differentiation (83), literature (218), reading comprehension (142), spanish (105), substitutes (27), Teacher Utilities (150), themes (10)

TeachThought stretches teachers to think beyond the norm, and try new exciting ideas such as learning in a digital world, flipped classrooms, project based learning, and simulations. A few examples of the articles include: 10 Team Building Games that Promote Critical Thinking, 25 Reading Strategies That Work In Every Content Area, 55 Free Apps For iPads, 249 Bloom's Taxonomy Verbs for Critical Thinking, 14 Brilliant Bloom's Taxonomy Posters For Teachers, and 20 Things You Can Do in 10 Minutes For A Smoother Running Classroom. Join in the conversation, add your opinion, or ask a question. Sign up for TeachThought's newsletter.
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tag(s): blooms taxonomy (7), classroom management (126), critical thinking (112), flipped learning (9), professional development (394), reading strategies (98)

Learn about the early years of air transportation through the jet age using this site from the Smithsonian. Scroll down to read an explanation of the earliest to newest planes, mail carrier uniforms, and documents. Find activities and lesson plans under the Learn tab and click Explore to find stories, collections, and topics that range from Aviation and Early Flight to Spaceflight. Use the left menu to find many more air and space aviation topics.

tag(s): 1920s (15), 20th century (61), aircraft (16), aviation (38), flight (31)

Find free downloadable ebooks of many classics. Some titles available are: Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Little Women, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Iliad, The Red Badge of Courage, Oliver Twist, Heart of Darkness, A Christmas Carol, and many others. Find an introduction (or Gallery) to the books by scrolling down the page. View the menu on the right to see all titles. Download the PDF to get the full book.

tag(s): literacy (110), literature (218), reading lists (79)

Baen Ebooks features a small section of free fiction ebooks from the past few years, and a rather extensive list of free nonfiction titles. There are several downloadable formats with easy instructions. A free discussion guide accompanies some of the titles. Much of the site also has ebooks for sale. Registration is required for that section. This review is for the free portion of the site.
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tag(s): ebooks (39), independent reading (86)

Provide the best literacy program for your students by implementing ideas and assessments from Reading and Writing Resources Project. Find high quality, research-based reading and writing resources developed by a Teachers College, Columbia University and Lucy Caulkins. Assessment information includes running records, the concept of print, letter/sound information, high-frequency words, and independent reading benchmarks. Additional Assessments include Independent Reading Books, Comprehension Proficiency, and Monitor Reading Volume and Stamina with book logs and daily reading examples. Under Book Lists find units of study for teen readers with titles and authors categorized by genre with quality literature suggestions. Many videos depict classes in action discovering Narrative, Informative/Explanatory, and Opinion/Argument writing. One video series shows Danielson's Framework for Teaching evaluations, with classroom teachers being observed using reading/writing workshop. This includes PDF's with the notes and scoring. Find a baseline of excellent student writing sorted by grade level using Readers' Notebook and student writing samples. Nonfiction text sets give examples or resources for you to use in the classroom. Find text examples to use with your students featuring health and consumer science topics.
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tag(s): assessment (146), book lists (162), reading comprehension (142), reading lists (79), science of reading (33), writers workshop (31), writing (317)

Get into the world of bugs with this informative site featuring insects of all kinds! Choose from topics such as Pests, Beneficial Bugs, Pollinators, Stories, Blogs, and Videos. View videos with facinating titles such as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Insects and Monarch Status Update, and much more. Be sure to check out the tab at the top labeled Tip Sheets to find a few projects for your citizen science enthusiasts.

tag(s): citizen science (27), insects (69), Project Based Learning (24)

Join Tripp and his brother Ping on a mission around the globe. Register for this site and view exciting travel videos designed to teach English! The videos clarify difficult words. You can also see the city where you are traveling. After the short videos, answer questions about characters and words in the video. Listening activities include rehearing the text of the video and choosing the correct response. One activity demonstrates how underlined words are linked to a picture dictionary; the explanations for the words come orally. Although the changes to the next page are a bit slow, the game format motivates you to want to go on and find out what the next task is. The few free lessons on the site make it fun and useful.

tag(s): listening (73), multilingual (67), virtual field trips (80)

Welcome to the 1800's and The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. Find a ready-made unit (PDF from Glencoe) with information about the author and ideas for introducing the novel. In this unit, the novel is divided into several sections, and each section has, a Before You Read, Vocabulary Preview, and Active Reading activities. Towards the end, you will find suggested companion novels and short stories with ideas and questions that relate back to The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.

tag(s): literature (218), literature circles (3), novels (31), reading comprehension (142)