ED638-41: Teaching with the Internet - Fall Intersession 2021

  Andrea Lianos       The website that I explored for this project is Seussville (https://www.seussville.com/#/home). This website provides different reading materials for kids to reading and will make them enjoy their reading. The system also provides games and activities of reading books. The site includes a character guide, book catalog, Seuss biography, and tips for parents, and resources for teachers.  This website will benefit the teachers' work and students' learning. The children could watch videos on this site instead of reading.      As I explored further, I learned that those stories that I liked to watch when I was little are developed by this man named Dr.Seuss. Those stories are interesting and fun. I believe that using Seusville's website, will construct students reading and comprehension skills.  

Greda Irons ED 638-41 Dr. M. Rivera Effective Literacy Website#3                                 Actively Learn ( https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/actively-learn)  is  a literacy website that engage every student, and every lesson. It has unrivaled content, thoughtful instruction and differentiation of powerful tools. The content has texts and video for ELA, Science and Social studies with scaffolds and higher-order questions. This website has the built-in tools that improve every student’s close reading skills no matter about their literacy level. According to Maryellen, ELA teacher in MA, Actively Learn offers students the ability to hear text read aloud and look up unfamiliar vocabulary, annotate and see supplementary teacher notes without ever looking up from text. This technology is to make reading fund, engagin...

 Andrea Lainos  December 29,2021 Magic Blox has a large and growing collection of eBooks for kids 1 -13 years old, and the children will enjoy reading and exploring each text by different authors. The children can use their computers and tablets to read the stories on this site. The children need to register in order for them to read the whole text. The children will be able to explore other cultures by reading each text that is provided. For the home page of Magic Blox, it's stated that you need to register and provide different titles of stories. The Magicblox is provided for students to enjoy reading different reading books. As I navigated through this website, I learned that most of our children will enjoy reading the stories because it provides clear text and pictures. By reading the stories to your children it will enhance their reading and comprehension skills. 

  Elvin De Leon ED638-41 Dr. Rivera ILA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #3 Flocabulary ( www.flocabulary.com ) is a literacy website that uses hip-hop music to educate students of all grade levels. According to the website, the idea of using hip-hop music for education stemmed from co-founder Blake Harison’s high school experience where he could not memorize new vocabulary words in class but remembered his favorite rap songs. In 2010, the International Reading Association concluded that Flocabulary significantly increases vocabulary proficiency among students. Flocabulary has since been collaborating with artists around the world in video production.  Flocabulary covers a wide variety of content for each subject. By clicking on Lessons on the navigation tabs at the top of the page, you will find different content to explore. Each lesson from Flocabulary consists of a Music Video, Vocab Cards, Vocab Game, Read & Respond, Quiz, and Lyric Lab to enc...

Maria Patricio ED638-41 Dr. M. Rivera       “How do we make books more accessible to kids?” This question was the catalyst to creating the world’s leading digital library, Epic! Epic ( https://www.getepic.com ) is an exceptional literacy website that holds an extensive selection of animated books, read aloud videos, audiobooks, and educational videos. There are so many well-written stories and age-appropriate books for students in Pre-Kindergarten through middle school. What’s great about Epic is that classroom teachers have free access!          Once teachers log in, the home page is filled with an enticing collection of eBooks and other valuable features. The site divides its digital library into five sections which are as follows: Recommended, AR, Read to Me, Videos, and Audiobooks. Here, teachers can easily explore its educational resources by grade level, subject, topic, Lexile measure, or simply use the search engine at the top to look ...

                 My third review on an effective literacy website is on ReadWorks (http://www.readworks.org). ReadWorks is a free online learning platform that offers over 4,560 K-12 reading passages. They are easily accessed and organized by grade level or lexile measures. Each passage relates with topics that are taught in the classroom because educators create them as well. They are accompanied by text-based questions either multiple choice or written answer type questions. The explicit and inferential questions build a deeper understanding of the elements of a text. They focus students on important information and key attributes of a text, such as text structure, main idea, grammar, and vocabulary. These questions are skill based that are aligned with the Common Core State Standards.             ReadWorks provides various activities to reach all learners. The online platform...

Jerydine Guerrero ED638-41 Effective Literacy Website #3   Storybird              Storybird ( https://storybird.com ) is a visual storytelling platform inspired by art that allows anyone to create visual stories in seconds. Storybird collects artwork from illustrators all over the world and uses it to inspire writers of all ages to create creative stories using those visuals. Storybird's target audience includes children ranging in age from preschoolers to young adults. Storybird allows users to sign up for free to try the service for seven days. During this time period, you have the ability to create and read stories, then after the seven days is up, you can either pay or simply use Storybird to only read and comment on stories. What stood out to me the most about Storybird is that it also offers a family plan where you can enjoy reading and writing with your family. To do so, users sign up for an individual account and u...

  Lalilo is a web-based learning platform developed specifically for kindergarten through second grade. It was developed by teachers that teach kindergarten through second grade. This is an important feature because it gives the site credibility. Lalilo is a self-paced site that offers differentiated reading and phonics instruction though interactive lessons, activities, and games. Some of the skills addressed on this site are letter identification, letter-sound correspondence, blending and segmenting, fluency and automaticity, as well as comprehension. Some of the guided lessons focus on consonants and short vowels, blends, digraphs, long vowel patterns, sight words, and word families. They provided access to independent reading books from Level A-M as well as listening comprehension books. Lalilo was developed around the Common Core Standards and is structured following the CCSS scope and structure. Each student experience begins with a placement test to determine the initial s...

  Balmeo, Shirley ED 638 IRA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #3         How common is CommonLit used in the classroom ? CommonLit ( https://www.commonlit.org/ ), is mainly used for 3-12 grade level students is a rich-literacy resource offering variety of materials to help improve reading skills. The site is a free, web-based library of text, which includes poems, narratives, informational text, and historical articles.   The collection of text is easily filtered according to Common Core standards, genre, Lexile level, theme, or literary device.   The site provides reading assistance and accessible tools, such as read-aloud, translated in different languages and the use of the annotation tools for students.   Teachers can review students' annotations to gauge student comprehension.   Assessment questions range from multiple choice to short answers, with the discussion questions probing students’ criti...

Greda Irons ED 638-41 Effective Literacy Website #2   My second review on an effective literacy website is on ABC Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress( https://assets.readingeggs.com/brochures/reading_eggs_eggspress_user_guide_brochure-fp-da490864.pdf)  ABC Reading Egg is an online learning platform that is designed to support early reading skills in a fun and motivating way. The program has hundreds of features and guided reading lessons. It has interactive activities that teaches younger children phonic, letter recognition and sight words.  It is mainly for ages 1 to 6 to have essential reading, comprehension, spelling and grammar skills. The program includes 220 comprehension lesson, 216 spelling lessons ad over 2,000 eBooks in the library. It has teacher guide includes some simple steps to follow, as for teachers, they can differentiate learning, assign work, check students’ progress and access detail student report. For this learning site, you can register for a t...

BUsyTeacher BusyTeacher https://busyteacher.org is another great, great resource site. It has 17,300 free printable worksheets and lesson plans for Language Arts teachers. It’s been said that Busy Teacher is a favorite for many ESL teachers on the go. No matter if you teach kids or adults, beginners or advanced students; BusyTeacher will have what you need. It was so easy to me to go through the website and I know using this resource will save me hours in preparation time. Best of all, no registration required. It has many worksheets and lesson plans for the busy teacher. Because the site is well organized, it is easy to explore all the grammar, vocabulary, speaking, reading, listening, writing and pronunciation worksheets available to print or download. In addition to being able to download materials, users can upload their worksheets to the website and share them with thousands of other English teachers by clicking the “submit a worksheet” link at the bottom of every page. Any b...

Elvin De Leon ED638-41 Dr. Rivera ILA Newsletter Weekly Project:  Effective Literacy Website #2 AdLit is a multimedia project under WETA that strives to offer information and resources to parents and educators for enhancing the literacy skills of  struggling adolescent readers. To address the low literacy proficiency skills of eighth-graders in the nation, AdLit’s mission is to help as many adolescents as possible by spreading as much information and resources as possible by using the internet. In the homepage of AdLit, you will find information and resources grouped by different tabs. These tabs include the following: AdLit 101, In the Classroom, Books & Authors, and Topics. You will also find links that will lead you to various blogs and AdLit videos. If you scroll down the homepage, you will also find various featured content that range from articles, books, news headlines, and strategies.  While exploring the In the Classroom tab, you will find a wide varie...

Jerydine Guerrero ED638-41 Effective Literacy Website #2   StoryPlace             StoryPlace ( https://www.storyplace.org/front ), associated with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, is an interactive story-telling website for young children between the ages of pre-school and elementary school that was initially published in 2000. At no cost, each narrative on this website is told using text-based information coupled with simple animations, presented in both English and Spanish. The passages from the stories appear to use voice acting when you click on one of the stories; nevertheless, certain passages are left totally for children to read.  By adding fun animations and voiceovers to read along to, StoryPlace   encourages readers to stay engaged and focused. Users of this website also benefit from other strategies for engaging the reader, such as allowing users to select and name the main characters, as well as a ...

  Maria Patricio ED638-41 Dr. M. Rivera ILA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #2 Instilling a love of reading in young children is key to their literacy success. KidLit TV ( https://www.kidlit.tv ) is an exceptional website that brings books to life and can help engage students by providing supplementary activities, appealing videos, and informative educational resources that all make reading fun! It also offers parents, teachers, and students an array of free online read-aloud videos, podcasts, crafts and activity ideas as well as drawing and writing tutorials that support learning enrichment and entertainment. Just a little backstory, KidLit TV was formerly founded by Julie Gribble along with a diverse group of award-winning authors, illustrators, filmmakers, teachers, librarians, and parents. Sharing a huge passion for bringing children’s literature, Gribble and her team worked endlessly in creating this web-based platform with meaningful and engaging content...

     My second review on an effective literacy website is on Vooks ( http://www.vooks.com ). Vooks is an online learning platform that allows for streaming of hundreds of read-aloud animated storybooks. It offers many teaching resources such as lesson plans and worksheets that accompany their books. The supplemental resources help educators extend the learning beyond the storybook itself. There are themes, summaries, discussion topics, and vocabulary cards that are in pdf files, which makes it convenient to access. Themes include special occasions and holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day and many more. There are also arts and crafts activities that relate to some stories. These activities are easy to follow because there are video tutorials with step-by-step instruction.           Personally, I signed up for Vooks’ 7 day free trial to view some of the stories the website has to offer. I must say the...

Belinda Lynn Welles ED638 fall 2022 Dr. M. Rivera International Litercy Association Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #1 ABCmouse is a site that offers supplemental activities in literacy, math, science, health, social studies, arts, and music. An excellent resource, ABC mouse, is a free subscription for all teachers to use at school and add to the curriculum. If you are a teacher and you want to give it a try, all you have to do to get started is to sign up for a free subscription, and you will be on your way to fun learning for your students. ABCmouse.com’s reading curriculum spans the entire range of early reading, from learning the names of each letter and the sounds they represent to being able to read books, starting with a few words on a page and gradually advancing to paragraphs. The curriculum for first grade also includes writing and language skills, such as sentence structure and punctuation, parts of speech, and practice with writing genres. ABCmouse i...

Balmeo, Shirley      ED 638 ILA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #2  IXL   (https://www.ixl.com/) Practice Makes Permanent      I wanted to review this learning platform as the Guam DOE recently purchased classroom usage.   I had heard great things about it from other teachers so I wanted to see firsthand what it was like.  Initially, I thought it was primarily for elementary level students.   However, after further review of the site, I realized it was for students K-12, offering a variety of practice skills, based on grade level and standards.   I wanted to see how it would help my students improve on some of the skills for the semester.       Founded by Paul Mishin in 1998, the IXL is a subscription-based learning site for K-12. The IXL is a personalized learning platform used by over 400,000 teachers worldwide. What is great about this site is that it covers over 7000 sk...

  Andrea Lainos  ED 638-41 Effective Literacy #1       Storyline Online receives over 140 million views annually from children all over the world. Reading aloud to children has been shown to improve reading, writing and communication skills, logical thinking and concentration, and general academic aptitude, as well as inspire a lifelong love of reading. The storyline online will bring the love of reading to the children at homes and schools. Storyline online will help children connects their lives to the story. This will help advance children’s literacy and improve children’s lives. Each book includes supplemental curricular developed by credentialed elementary learners.       This will help the children to be creative thinkers. It will have them to have the ability to read and write. Since these days we are depending on technology, I believe this website will be a benefit for teachers and parents to use with their children to expand t...

  Quill.org boasts to teach and remediate grammar fundamentals with a focus on English language learners. It is designed to appeal to an older audience as it is devoid of bright colors, cute characters, point incentives, and accommodation badges. The basic subscription is free and offers developed student paced lessons in bundles that can be assigned individually or to the whole class. Setting up your class is very easy as it is able to link directly to Google Classroom to import student rosters and post assignments and announcements. Students are given a class code and personalized instructions can be downloaded and printed to give each student. Quill also provides detailed reports on student progress and daily activity. The only reports available with the free subscription are an activity summary, activity analysis, and diagnostics report. The activity summary allows you to review the activities that your students have completed and the level of proficiency that was demonst...

Maria Patricio ED638-41 Dr. M. Rivera ILA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #1      ReadWorks ( https://www.readworks.org )   is an excellent online website that contains a library of literacy content, curricular supports, and digital tools for K-12 teachers. It offers a multitude of leveled reading passages and detailed lesson plans that are supported by proven research and aligned with Common Core State Standards. Its goal is primarily centered on providing educators with quality literacy teaching tools to improve reading comprehension and help solve student achievement gaps.        What’s great about ReadWorks is that teachers can easily set up an account and instantly begin to search through the site’s wide range of free resources from both fiction and non-fiction texts to integrated tools and lesson plans at no cost. Reading passages can be filtered out or sorted based on keywords, content type, activity, grade or Lexile l...

  Raz-Plus is a reading program designed for readers from kindergarten through fifth grade. It does require a paid subscription and is quite pricey ($216.00). It is intended for purchase by school districts and not individual teachers. This program can be accessed from home by the students on cell phone, iPad, tablet, or computer. Raz-Plus is one component of the Learning A-Z family of programs focused on literacy. It offers over 50,000 leveled books for students to explore. It also provides option to print or project books and materials for whole group, small group, or individual instruction. This feature sets this program apart. Being able to use the materials and resources through whole group instruction provides teachers with the flexibility to meet students where they are. Each student added to your class is initially brought to their dashboard which depending on their reading level could be a space landscape where the students simply click on planets or for higher readers a...

  Jerydine Guerrero ED638-41 Effective Literacy Website #1                               Scholastic ( https://www.scholastic.com/home ) is an excellent literacy website that connects educators and families through accessibility, engagement, and expertise. It is the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books. With a little history background, Scholastic began as a magazine called  The Western Pennsylvania Scholastic , which was first published on October 20, 1920, by Maurice R. "Robbie" Robinson. Scholastic has experienced tremendous development over the years, and they recently celebrated their 100th anniversary on October 22, 2020. Scholastic does a great job in appealing to such a large age range, from children in Pre-Kindergarten to 12 th  grade.              You can navigate through the tabs ...

Greda Irons ED 638-41 Effective Literacy Website #1                              Into the Book (https://reading.ecb.org) is a reading comprehension resource for elementary student and teachers. It focuses on the eight research based strategies: using prior knowledge, making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, summarizing, evaluating and synthesizing.  Each reading strategies will help create meaning of text which our students see every day. The website provides reading strategies to choose from and provides videos to watch as the teacher explain how to use the reading strategies to create stories and understanding the story following the eight strategies to make reading literacy. It also shows how each of the strategies can come together in a whole story. However, it is a very fun way for students to enjoy as they learn and it is an ea...

Balmeo, Shirley ED 638 12/21/2021  International Literacy Association Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #1 A whole learner is being able to read, write, and think effectively.   One of the rich-literacy websites I came across is Read, Write, Think (https://www.readwritethink.org/).   This is a great resource for literacy instructors and students from K-12.   Since 2002, the site has provided a plethora of free classroom information for practices, lesson plans, videos, and applications for students to improve their reading and writing skills.     It features an extensive list of books to help improve in their reading and digital retelling, read aloud activities, and paired readings as well as suggested authors with specific lesson plans and assessments with standards and grade levels.   Authors for the site are comprised of a diverse group of classroom teachers, media lab technicians, and library technicians, offering educators ...

  Elvin De Leon ED638-41 Dr. Rivera ILA Newsletter Project: Effective Literacy Website #1   Reading Rockets ( http://www.readingrockets.org ) is a media literacy initiative that is geared towards providing information and resources that help us understand how young readers learn to read and how educators and adults can facilitate the learning process. The Reading Rockets initiative received the David M. Rubenstein Prize in 2016, the top honor in the Library of Congress Literacy Awards program. As part of their mission, Reading Rockets strives to help children who struggle to read using research-based and best-practice information. To spread this useful information to as many people as possible, Reading Rockets provides a variety of online services and resources a couple which include professional development for educators and television programs such as PBS.     On the website, you will find the following categories: Teaching Reading, Helping Struggling ...

      An effective literacy website that I came across is  www.abookandahug.com .  A Book and a Hug allows students to find books that they enjoy and love using technology. Barb Langridge, founder of the website, states, “The magic happens when the characteristics of the reader match the characteristics of the story.” The site uses a feature called the Reader Personality Types where a reader takes a brief assessment to find out the type of the reader that they are. After answering ten basic questions, the reader can then search the website to find books based on their reader personality type. The four reader personality types include: Team Player, Jokester, Champion or Investigator.         Being able to choose a book that you enjoy is not the only advantage of this website. As an educator, there are also resources such as lesson plans that can be utilized in many ways. The lesson plans includes everything from t...