Increase Your Students' Reading Skills
With These Great Internet Tools
section is a companion to the August 16th Call For Help show
seen on Tech TV. ClassBrain's
Cynthia Kirkeby was the guest speaker.
seems to be all about reading, but are there really any tools out there to help
our kids read better? We think there are. The following are Internet
tools that can help your students improve their reading skills, often with a
lot of fun along the way.
PRINTABLE ABC PAGES AND LETTER WORKSHEETS
has created a set of printable ABC coloring pages
and we've located some wonderful ABC coloring collections
elsewhere on the Internet. Simply pick your favorites, print them out, and have
fun coloring with the kids.
the first steps to reading is recognizing letterforms. Use our language
worksheets to help students identify the correct letter.
Adventure Foundation has a wonderful program that recommends books based on
four simple questions. The Book Finder's
recommendations are based on: the
child's grade level; whether the book should be at grade level (or above or
below it); whether the book is fiction or nonfiction; and the types of books
they like to read. After filling
in these items, the child gets a list of suggested books. If your students register, they can take
quizzes on the books they read to check their comprehension. This is currently a free resource.
Reading List has developed a book finder to
assist parents and students in selecting books that correspond with a child's
ability to read.
ONLINE INTERACTIVE STORIES
favorite choice for interactive stories is BBCi's The Little Animals Activity Centre. Their new Story Bear section has
stories that can be read or listened to online which are fully interactive.
There's lots of fun in the simple stories and activities along the way.
Mighty Book has stories that
children can read online. The site is broken down by age: 2-4, 4-6, 6-8,
8-10,and preteen. For the most
part, the site seems most appropriate for young readers. Each of the stories is illustrated and
has attached audio. The student
then can read along while the story is being read to them. This is a wonderful
site for young readers.
Between the Lions is a PBS site for kids
who are learning to read. There are numerous online stories for them to
explore. The stories are not paced
stories like the ones at Mighty Books and audio is not attached. This makes a
good step-up reading site for children who enjoy reading stories online and
want to do it "on their own."
for Literacy is a section created by Scholastic that lets young children
work on their reading skills. Pre-readers will enjoy matching items to their
town locations in Nina the Naming Newt.
Leo introduces individual letters and Reggie lets children play a simple
game with rhyming words.
BBC section for Literacy
This section has games for kids from 5-11 that help them with phonics, parts
of speech, and other reading issues. The games are created in Flash, so there
is smooth animation and fun interactions. The Little Animals Activity Centre
has wonderful phonics-based games for kids from 4-8. Characters, like Digby Mole, help children understand word
endings, first sounds and rhyming sounds.
This is a fun way for kids to get a first introduction to letters and
the sounds they make.
Alien Scavenger Hunt
from Game Goo lets children "capture" the letters that spell short
words. As each word is captured, it's shown at the top of the screen in its
proper place in the word. When all of the letters are caught the announcer says
each letter and then the word they create. The words change each time the child
plays the game. This is a fun game for early readers.
STORY BASED LESSONS
Adventure is a nicely written story adventure that has vocabulary quizzes
and questions built into it. The
story is read out loud by a narrator and key vocabulary is highlighted with
glossary links built in after listening to each of the story's episodes. The
student can take quizzes or do crossword puzzles and other drills to work on
their vocabulary and comprehension.
This is a good exercise for listening skills.
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY, & WRITING
Our favorite grammar site is the Guide to Grammar and Writing. This site is an amazing resource! Wondering what a preposition is? You'll find everything yove ever
wanted to know about them from Professor Darling. This English language site is one of the gems of the
Handbook at the Writers' Workshop, University of Illinois is a clear and
helpful guide for students, parents, and teachers. Well-presented examples help take the mystery out of certain
parts of speech in the English language.
looking for some good vocabulary and grammar quizzes for your students or
yourself, activities for ESL Students has a wonderful selection. Our favorites are under the Flash Quizzes for English Study. These are great quizzes for anyone
interested in improving their language skills.
A+ Research and Writing
time for a teen that you know to write a paper for school, send them to this
step-by-step guide. As they work
their way through the steps, the terror of doing a major school paper should
start to subside.
PARENTS & TEACHERS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS
you have a child with a learning disability, you may need to file an IEP
(Individual Education Plan) with the school. This plan allows the parent, teachers, and school to modify
classroom participation to accommodate the special needs of certain
children. Many times this can be accomplished
in an informal fashion with the student's teacher, but if you need it, this is
a great way to make sure that your student doesn't get left behind.
may include something as simple as moving an ADD student to the front of the
class to limit distractions or as complicated as complete plans for a
redesigned curriculum with adjusted assessment standards. The following links
will take you to some very helpful information on this topic.
The IEP and
Legal Issues from the University of Utah. (This may be helpful regardless of the state in which you live.)
Documentation Tools for Planning and Delivering - If you're a parent, be sure to download the Parent
Pamphlet(PDF) about a third of the way down the page.
AceReader Pro is a wonderful
little program that you can download to help increase your reading speed. There are preset drill and reading
comprehension tests built into the program. Our favorite part of the program is its ability to pace you
on your own files. All you have to
do is import them into the Expert Mode and set your preferences. This program is not free, but if you're
trying to increase your speed of reading this will help.
TypeIt4Me is a very helpful little tool
for OS X. (Sorry, it's only for Mac
users.) This little program works cross platform in any of your programs that
handle text, such as AppleWorks and Word.
It allows you to create shortcuts for long words or phrases that you
repeat on a regular basis. Although Microsoft word allows you to program
shortcuts, it can be confusing if there are words or phrases that are close.
TypeIt4Me allows you to select them from a pull-down menu.
wonder why we've included this in an article on helping your kids with reading
and language skills. Although this
is a wonderful shortcut for those of us who deal with long titles or scientific
names, it seems like a great way to assist children that have learning
disabilities such as dyslexia or dysgraphia, or mobility problems due to
conditions such as cerebral palsy.
Instead of struggling with certain words, the student could insert it
through this program. TypeIt4Me is
a helpful writing aid that may make it easier for certain students to
regularly sells for $27.00 but they only charge $14.00 for students.