Watch above or download/listen below.

Karl Rectanus has a new mission: change the trajectory of U.S. literacy. The edtech veteran — best known for founding Learn Platform, the evidence and edtech management company — has taken the helm as CEO of Really Great Reading (RGR), one of the country's oldest and most established science of reading organizations.

I was lucky enough to catch Karl for a few minutes. He made it clear that his arrival at RGR is not simply a leadership transition — it's a strategic pivot toward accountability. "Two-thirds of our kids cannot read by the end of third grade," he says. "And they're not reading at grade level by the time they graduate."

RGR was doing science of reading before it became a buzzword, Rectanus notes, tracing its roots to Learning Without Tears around 2005–2006. The organization has evolved from print-first materials — letter blocks, syllable boards, classroom posters — into a full suite of digital tools, professional learning, and coaching. Now, under Rectanus, the organization is going further: positioning itself as the first literacy outcomes company in the space.

Central to that ambition is outcomes-based contracting, a model Rectanus says has never been applied to literacy at scale. Rather than selling books or apps and hoping for the best, RGR will tie its agreements to measurable student progress. "We will be holding ourselves accountable," he says, pointing to more than 5 million foundational skills learned by students using RGR tools in the current school year alone.

Rectanus cites Mississippi's dramatic rise in reading scores — from 49th to 18th nationally — as proof that the model works when implemented with fidelity. "It's not a miracle," he says. "It's a Southern surge. They focused on three things: aligned curriculum, a caring adult, and a feedback loop."

He also addresses the pending federal Read Act, cautioning that legislation alone won't move the needle. "Unless states and districts do something with whatever happens there, it will not mean anything," he says.

His prescription for tech directors and curriculum leaders: stop asking for content, start asking for outcomes.

Since I was young, one of my favorite things to do was read. So naturally, as I got older, I more or less stopped doing it. Part of the problem was that I was waiting for the perfect time and place to read. I wanted a quiet spot with a comfortable chair and enough time to read a chapter or so.

However now, as a father of two young kids juggling multiple teaching and writing experiences, these types of perfect reading moments don’t really exist for me—I'm sure other educators can relate.

Over the years, I’ve had to abandon this idealized reading mindset and adopt a more I-thrive/read-in-chaos mindset. Technology has helped with this, and the combination of using ebooks and audiobooks has allowed me to average about three to four books per month.

I’m certainly no super reader, but as the summer approaches and we all look to get in extra reading, here are some ways in which technology has helped me keep up with my reading.

1. Reading Ebooks

I truly prefer to read a real paper book over an ebook as there’s just something about the way the paper crinkles as you turn the page that can’t be duplicated in a Kindle or other digital reader.

Even so, I read much more when I read ebooks. Unsurprisingly, this is all about convenience. Real books require two hands to hold and proper lighting to see. They also have a habit of getting lost or left at home when you need them most.

Ebooks are always with you. I’ve tried dedicated ebook readers, such as a Kindle, but the best bet for me is just to use a reading app on my phone. This way it's always with me, and when I’m tempted to go online and start scrolling through social media, I remind myself to read for five minutes instead. Often this five minutes turn into 10 or 15 minutes, and little by little, I work my way through more books.

2. Listening to Audio Books

I love going to live author events and listening to them read from their work, but I will admit that during a live reading, my mind often wanders and I can’t follow the plot details. This used to happen to me with audiobooks as well.

To stay engaged, I eventually started adjusting the playback speed. I start at 1.25 speed and then go up from there based on the speed of the narrator. When I’m really dialed into a story, I’ll often listen at 1.7 speed, which approaches the speed at which I actually read.

I also find that audiobooks lend themselves particularly well to nonfiction, first-person narratives, and/or stories with fewer characters. Sprawling multicharacter epics still tend to confuse me a bit when listening. But overall, when we listen to books, we retain about as much information as when we read them, research shows, and that's what I've found.

3. Reading Audio and Ebooks Together

Some worry that when we listen to audiobooks instead of reading, it encourages us to stop reading altogether. This isn’t the case, according to most reading experts. In fact, some have told me that listening to books supports reading books.

I’ve certainly found this to be the case personally, and I've discovered a great strategy to increase my reading is to listen to and read the same book.

Amazon offers Whispersync, a feature that allows you to seamlessly toggle back and forth between your audiobook and Kindle without losing your place. Even if you prefer to use a more independent bookstore-friendly platform such as Libro.FM, I find that with a little effort, it’s not too hard to go back and forth between the two and keep moving forward through the narrative. If I’m listening to an audiobook and want to find my spot in the ebook I’m reading, I just search a particular phrase.

One of the biggest hurdles to me finishing a book is momentum. If I spend too long reading any book, I tend to get tired of it. Listening and reading the same book really fights this and helps me get to 50 pages or so of progress without too much effort.

4. Chunking

As teachers, we are often encouraging our students to make small manageable goals and then start completing those. I believe the same sort of principle is behind what makes social media so addictive. It comes in bite-sized servings. We don’t have to commit to reading any particular text or watching any video, it doesn’t matter if we get interrupted.

I’ve tried to apply this to my reading habits and be less concerned about interruptions. If I have a few minutes to read, I’ll take that opportunity rather than scroll on social media. Audiobooks and ebooks lend themselves well to this technique because chapter and section breaks are less prominent as you read or listen, but the same idea holds true for traditional books as well.

5. Scrolling Past

Another lesson from social media I try to apply to reading is the idea of scrolling past something in which I'm not interested. On social media, the scroll never ends, and if what the algorithm is showing me isn’t interesting, there’s always plenty more to read. The same is, of course, true of regular reading. And those who study literacy say the idea that you must finish every book you start can halt reading progress.

Personally, I’ve started abandoning ship or scrolling past if I find my reading focus waning while reading a book. What I try to do is revisit the book after reading two or three other books, just to see if it was a matter of my being in the wrong mindset. This is occasionally the case, but more often than not, if I don’t finish a book, it’s because it is just not for me. Unless it is something I need to read for research, once I’ve given a book a second try, I move on for good.

A part of me still hates not finishing a book, but I’ve learned to silence that part of me and figuratively scroll past the book I don’t like. This is one of the most effective ways I've found for continuing to read overall.

Watch this conversation above or listen/download it below.

A $9.99 million Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant is bringing together three partners to tackle one of education's most persistent challenges: helping young readers build the skills they need to succeed, especially in rural communities where specialized support is hardest to access. I had a chance to chat with two of the program's architects about their efforts, Allison Zimmermann, CEO of Foundations in Learning, and Dr. Seth King, Associate Professor of Special Education at the University of Iowa.

WordFlight, developed by Foundations in Learning, has partnered with the University of Iowa Reading Research Center and Wyoming State to conduct a five-year study involving 80 to 100 schools. The project builds on previous success—a randomized controlled trial with middle school students that showed the intervention was "extremely successful" in moving students forward on foundational skills and fluency.

The study uses a wait-listed design in which half the schools implement WordFlight in year one while the other half serves as a control group, with all schools receiving the intervention by year two. Independent evaluators from Iowa's Center for Evaluation and Assessment will measure outcomes using assessments not directly aligned with the curriculum.

"We have to stop the bleeding," Alli emphasizes about older struggling readers. "We have to give them the foundation that they need to be successful."

• Tech & Learning Conversations with Kevin Hogan

From AI-powered smart reading assistants to huge libraries of smart texts, there are a lot of tools aimed at helping students improve their reading skills. Simply reading stories, making annotations, and even embedding questions to be answered -- there are many helpful additions to the reading itself to help cement learning.

And with new AI additions, these resources are getting better than ever. The idea is to offer a way to help both educators and students work together to improve literacy skills in the most efficient and engaging way.

Many of these even come in web app forms so they can be easily accessed across a range of devices.

This guide aims to lay out the very best tools to teach reading so you can find the top contenders for a place in your class.

Best tools to teach reading

Best to teach reading skills overall

Actively Learn

Actively Learn is a digital reading platform that helps teachers turn texts into interactive, engaging learning experiences. The tool provides a large library of articles, stories, and curriculum-aligned passages, but teachers can also upload their own materials.

What makes Actively Learn stand out is its embedded questioning and annotation features. Students encounter prompts, notes, polls, and scaffolds -- such as hints, translations, and text-to-speech -- right inside the reading flow, which supports comprehension and encourages deeper thinking.

Teachers can track progress through a detailed dashboard showing how long students read, how they annotated, and with which questions they struggled. These insights help with differentiation and targeted instruction.

Actively Learn works across subjects, making it useful for ELA, science, social studies, and more. The free tier includes strong core features, while paid plans unlock expanded libraries and analytics. It’s a versatile platform for bringing structure and accountability to digital and classroom reading.

READ: Actively Learn guide

Best for social reading

Glose

Glose is a digital reading platform designed to make reading more social, interactive, and accessible across devices. The tool provides thousands of ebooks and audiobooks, and its interface encourages students to engage with texts actively rather than passively. Students can highlight, annotate, leave comments, and respond to each other’s insights in a secure, teacher-managed environment. This shared reading experience helps build comprehension and confidence, especially for reluctant readers.

Teachers can curate reading lists, create assignments, and monitor student progress through built-in analytics showing reading time, engagement, and completion. Glose also syncs across phones, tablets, and laptops, making it practical for homework or hybrid learning. Its flexible library model allows schools to mix free titles with purchased ebooks. With a focus on collaboration and ease of use, Glose is a good option for classrooms looking to build community around reading.

READ: Glose guide

Best for real-time guidance

Amira Learning

Amira Learning is an AI-powered reading tutor designed to support early readers with real-time, one-on-one guidance. Using advanced speech recognition, Amira listens as students read aloud and identifies errors such as mispronunciations, omissions, or hesitations. The system then provides immediate, gentle feedback and prompts students to try words again, offering decoding support, or modelling correct pronunciation. This creates a personalized tutoring experience that aligns closely with the science of reading.

Teachers gain access to detailed fluency and accuracy data, including error types, reading rate, and progression over time. This helps identify students who need targeted intervention and helps with small-group instruction.

Amira fits easily into literacy blocks as a supplemental activity, allowing teachers to work with one group while others receive structured practice. District-level licensing provides access to the full platform. For schools looking to strengthen early literacy and provide consistent, adaptive support, Amira offers a powerful, research-backed solution.

READ: Amira Learning guide

Best for phonics

Lalilo

Lalilo is an adaptive, phonics-focused reading program aimed at supporting early learners as they develop foundational literacy skills. It offers a playful, illustrated environment in which students work through phonemic awareness, letter–sound relationships, decoding, and early comprehension tasks. The program adjusts difficulty automatically, ensuring each child works at an appropriate level that builds confidence without causing frustration.

Teachers can track progress through clear dashboards that highlight strengths, gaps, and emerging skills. This makes it easier to form targeted small groups or identify students who may benefit from additional intervention. Lalilo is especially useful in kindergarten through second-grade classrooms, where consistent phonics practice is essential. The activities are short, engaging, and well-suited to independent rotation work. With its focus on early reading science and its ability to adapt to individual learners, Lalilo provides a helpful layer of structured practice within a broader literacy curriculum.

READ: Lalilo guide

Best for independence

LightSail

LightSail is a literacy platform designed to support independent reading while giving teachers the data they need to guide instruction. The system offers a large library of levelled texts, allowing students to choose books that match both their reading ability and personal interests. As students read, LightSail embeds brief comprehension checks and vocabulary activities to keep them engaged and assess understanding in real time.

Teachers have access to detailed analytics showing reading time, progress, quiz performance, and overall growth. This makes it easier to monitor independent reading and ensure students are selecting appropriate texts.

LightSail also supports goal setting and personalized reading pathways, helping students build motivation and ownership over their progress. Suitable for classroom, after-school, or home use, LightSail provides a structured framework for developing reading stamina and comprehension skills, with a strong emphasis on student choice and visibility into learning.

READ: LightSail guide

In the current atmosphere surrounding K-12 edtech tools, one might be forgiven for thinking that any tool without AI is hopelessly obsolete.

Au contraire, mes amis.

There are many advantages to education technology from a simpler time—i.e., the ancient days of the early aughts.

Such advantages include an easier interface, quicker mastery for both teachers and students, zero cost, and no concerns about data privacy. Not to mention 100% hallucination-free learning.

In this article we explore the uses of PIC-LITS, a relatively simple yet powerful tool for teaching literacy.

What is PIC-LITS?

PIC-LITS is a free interactive literacy website that teaches writing by allowing users to easily combine words and pictures. With this engaging blend of the visual and the verbal, PIC-LITS allows students to experiment with sentences, captions, parts of speech, poetry, and much more.

The site provides hundreds of curated photos accompanied by unique word banks. Each word bank is organized by parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and universal (prepositions, pronouns, and conjunctions). Users of any age can benefit from PIC-LITS, as exercises can be adapted to individual literacy levels.

How does PIC-LITS Work?

It’s easy to get started using PIC-LITS for both teachers and students. While students can create PIC-LITS without an account, I recommend creating a free account so you can save, edit, and share your creations. Users can quickly sign in with Google or register with their email and create a password.

Choose a Photo

To get started, simply click "Create a PIC-LIT" from the main menu and view the featured photograph with its word bank. To the right, a dropdown menu allows users to select a subject, from "Animals, Pets and Wildlife," to "Weird and Unusual." Photos from the selected topic can now be chosen from the scroll below the menu

To view all photos, click "Choose a Photograph."

Create a PIC-LIT

Two options are available for creating PIC-LITS: Drag-N-Drop and Freestyle.

Drag-N-Drop

With Drag-N-Drop, users simply drag words from the word bank, which is specific to each image. For example, the word bank for the above photo—an ambiguous representation of a backlit man in what appears to a tunnel—includes words such as destination, light, traveler, path. scary, shiny, metal, trap, and forever. Yet there are plenty of less dramatic words as well, including beginning, boring, and patiently.

Freestyle

To create a freestyle PIC-LIT, click the "Go to Freestyle" toggle button to the right of each photo and start typing. Text will appear over the image as it would in a text document, with regular lines and spaces. Although you won't be able to drag and drop the text, you can still move text around via the space bar and enter key.

Editing Your PIC-LITS

Editing PIC-LITS is as easy as everything else on the site. Simply go to “My PIC-LITS" and select the PIC-LIT to be edited. Click the edit pencil to view the alternative versions of any word, and select the desired one. To delete a word, just drag it off the image and it disappears.

Each PIC-LIT can be shared via email or Facebook, downloaded as a jpeg file, or printed, if desired.

What are the Best PIC-LITS Features?

LESSON PLANS

The PIC-LITS site makes it easy for teachers to incorporate PIC-LITS into their language arts lessons. Dozens of lesson plans are organized according to types of PIC-LITS, poetry, or parts of speech. Each lesson includes an objective, example PIC-LITS, writing prompts, and examples of correct and incorrect usage.

FEATURED PIC-LITS

When you or your students feel uninspired or are lacking imagination, that’s when the Featured PIC-LITS shine. Browse the gallery to be inspired by diverse images—everything from sunglasses in the snow to camels in the desert—accompanied by equally diverse texts. Just about any idea can be amplified or illuminated using the basic PIC-LITS platform.

VIDEO TUTORIAL

PIC-LIT's tutorial provides quick and clear instructions for anyone using the site, whether student or teacher.

Does PIC-LITS Employ Artificial Intelligence?

Nope! PIC-LITS relies on 100% natural intelligence supplied by site founder Terry Friedlander, his staff, and—of course—teachers, students, and other users.

What's more, PIC-LITS assignments are reasonably immune to cheating with AI. In many cases, there is no "right" answer, as the answers depend on student creativity. In others—such as grammar exercises—the framework provided by the word bank helps to guide students to complete their own work without revealing the correct answers.

In other words, exercises are structured so that kids are encouraged to keep at it on their own.

Is PIC-LITS safe for kids?

All PIC-LITS content is screened and selected by the PIC-LITS photo editor. Additionally, users' email addresses are not shared with third parties.

How Much Does PIC-LITS Cost?

PIC-LITS is 100% free. However, users with excess cash may consider purchasing the amusing and unique PIC-LITS tee shirts and hats available in the site shop.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Amira Learning is an AI-powered suite of reading assistance tools that can act as a personalized tutor for new readers. Amira’s capabilities include a feature that lets it listen to students read aloud and recognize the reading strengths and weaknesses of each student. The tool can also provide in-the-moment suggestions to students, acting as an AI-powered tutor, and also serves as a reading instruction assistant for teachers, helping generate lesson plans and more.

All these services integrate the science of reading best practices. Amira can also adhere to each district’s chosen reading curriculum.

Here’s a quick look at everything you need to know about Amira Learning.

What Is Amira Learning?

Amira Learning’s system is built upon research led by Jack Mostow, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who helped pioneer AI literacy education. Amira uses Claude AI to power its AI features, but these features are different than many other AI tools on the market. Instead of focusing on chat and generative response, Amira’s key feature is its advanced speech recognition and natural language processing capabilities, which allow the app to “hear” when a student is struggling and tailor suggestions to that student’s particular mistakes.

Though it’s not meant to replace a teacher, Amira provides real-time feedback and also helps teachers pinpoint where a student is struggling. For these reasons, Amira Learning is a favorite of education scientists and advocates for science of reading-based literacy instruction. The tool currently is used by more than 4 million students worldwide and across the U.S.

What Does The Research Say About Amira?

In one study by Columbia University, Amira's reading tutor demonstrated the ability to match human tutoring outcomes after just 30 sessions. Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that Amira’s read-out-loud tutoring approach significantly improved vocabulary in students.

These are just a few of many studies touting the benefits of the Amira app. The company notes that other studies have shown Amira outperforming human tutors at scale.

Amira is also constantly improving as AI continues to evolve. Amira is working with Digital Promise on a nearly $10 million grant-funded study to boost AI’s ability to recognize children’s speech overall, particularly children who speak English as a second language

How Much Does Amira Cost?

Amira is available through district-wide licensing, with flexible options specific to meet the scale and needs of each implementation.

Amira Learning Tips and Tricks

Check With Other Districts That Have Used Amira

Amira is used by schools in all 50 states, so if the tool is new to you, reach out to a district that has used it nearby and to their results. Utah has published a report on Amira’s efficacy in schools in the state, and in 2023 and 2014, the published data demonstrates that students who use Amira made significant gains.

Share Data With Students and Parents

A tool such as Amira is only effective if students use it. Reminding students and their parents that students who read with Amira outperform those who don’t can help encourage them to take advantage of the benefits Amira offers.

Read Aloud With Amira

One of the aspects that makes Amira unique is its ability to listen to students as they read. This feature is one of the best examples of AI edtech around, say some researchers.

Let Amira Help You As a Teacher

Using Amira as an AI assistant that can help coach students and identify areas they need to improve on can help make a literacy class more effective.

• AI Reading Tutors Are Already in Schools. Digital Promise Wants To Make Them Better
• The Science of Reading: What Teachers Need to Know

Imagine a low-cost tutor that can work with students whenever they need help reading. This tutor also has the ability to recognize words they are struggling with, and to provide readings and verbal advice tailored to their specific interests, needs, and level of engagement, all of which is done in accordance with the tenets of the science of reading.

Teachers may not need to imagine too much longer. AI already provides helpful reading tutors and could have all the capabilities described above in the coming years, says Jeremy Roschelle, Digital Promise’s Director of Learning Sciences Research.

Digital Promise received a nearly $10 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences to launch and lead the Using Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reading R&D Center (U-GAIN Reading). U-GAIN Reading will build on existing research conducted by Amira Learning, a research-backed Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) already being used by more than 1 million students each year.

The goal of U-GAIN is to turn the page on many of the literacy struggles that students across the nation struggle with by helping to provide research-backed evidence and training data to improve the ability of AI tutors to recognize diverse student voices and further engage students.

“Learning to read remains a national challenge with declining NAEP scores, and those scores show that many students are struggling to read even at a basic level by fourth grade,” Roschelle says.

As any teacher knows, these types of struggles often have heartbreaking consequences.

“If you learn to read, you learn every subject better, you end up with better outcomes in terms of going to college, better finances, better health," Roschelle says. "Learning to read is just such an important predictor of a student's further trajectory.”

AI and Literacy: Hearing Student Voices and Boosting Engagement

AI reading tutors already have impressive abilities. Amira, for instance, can listen to students read and offer feedback and assistance on mispronounced words and more, but the U-GAIN team hopes to take these capabilities to the next level when it comes to understanding what students are trying to say and recognizing their engagement levels.

Listening To Students

“For this thing to work, it has to accurately hear kids,” Roschelle says. “Many students speak with a dialect or an accent, or from a different regional idiom, and when this kind of technology can't hear a kid accurately, it can't help them.”

He adds, “Teachers experience their kids on speech recognition products, and they tell us the pain [they experience] when a multilingual learner, an English learner, speaks and the teacher can understand what the student is saying, but the technology can't.”

This problem arises because most speech recognition AI doesn’t have enough training listening to kids speak overall, and kids with various accents, in particular.

To help change this, the U-Gain Reading team is hoping to listen to between 500 and 1,000 kids who are using Amira weekly for a half year or more. They are working with linguistic experts from multiple school districts, and are optimistic they can get appropriate permission forms from enough parents to create a robust new dataset on which to train the AI tutors.

“We'll be able to make a big improvement in hearing kids speak,” Roschelle says.

AI Engagement

A student can sit with an AI reading tutor for half an hour each week, but if they’re not engaged, they’re not going to get the most out of it.

“We need that half hour per week, minimum, but they need to be really cognitively engaged in reading, which isn't always fun when you're struggling to read,” Roschelle says. “The really big challenge is many of the techniques we have for detecting engagement works with clicks and work with keystrokes.”

To be effective in this setting, Roschelle says, we need tools that can measure engagement through thing such as the tone of a child's voice in the same way a teacher might be able to.

Harnessing AI's Potential For Individualized Learning

After challenges around engagement and speech recognition are overcome, AI tutors can respond to students in new and robust ways.

“Once we have those, then we have these amazing capabilities of generative AI that we can start to apply to solve problems,” Roschelle says. In particular, Roschelle is excited about the possibility of generating unique readings and responses for each student.

“Most products, Amira included, have a corpus of texts that they can give to a student to read, but they don't necessarily engage every student’s background knowledge,” Roschelle says. “And you read better — this is pure science of reading— when you engage background knowledge and you build background knowledge. Reading isn't just decoding. It's also using knowledge.”

An AI that can build higher-quality customized texts can potentially boost student engagement with the lesson. “We know if kids like dinosaurs, give them more dinosaurs,” Roschelle says.

AI tutors also need to learn to better respond verbally to students who are struggling with a text. Since many new readers are by definition unable to read, responding in a conversational way is key.

“You have to give them verbal feedback,” Roschelle says. “Right now most of the products do that in a limited way with canned interventions.”

He adds, “What we're on the verge of is being able to generate conversations much more like what a parent or a teacher would have with the kid that feature both the engagement and the reading skills, side by side.”

Roschelle is excited about what the U-GAIN Reading team will learn over the next five years, and believes with the help of a skilled teacher, AI can start to make more of a dent in some of the reading struggles students currently have.

“We’re working on the tough problems that will really drive the field to the next generation,” he says.

• AI In Education Executive Order: What You Need To Know
• 4 Studies About AI Tutors Every Teacher Should Know

Night Zoo Keeper is all about creating a digital space for children to learn and practice reading and writing.

The name may already ring a bell as this is based on the UK novel series of the same title. And yes, that's where a lot of the characters you see in the images originate. Although there is no need to have read the books to begin getting involved with what's on offer here.

This platform allows children to use the characters from the book series to create their own that have their own adventures. This allows them to work on spelling, grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing skills -- all while having fun.

This guide aims to explain all you need to know about Night Zoo Keeper for education.

What is Night Zoo Keeper?

Night Zoo Keeper is an online platform that is designed to help children explore creative writing as a way to work on improving basic literacy skills.

While there is a version for parents, there is also one that for teaching and grading specifically. In either case, students are met with the Night Zoo Keeper characters of Will, Sam the Spying Giraffe, and Riya, to defeat the evil Lord of Nulth from destroying creativity.

Aimed at children age 6 to 12, this offers feedback to kids so they can be challenged and grow creatively while reading and writing.

Since the platform is online, it can be accessed easily through a browser, both for the children working on projects and for parents or teachers viewing progress.

How does Night Zoo Keeper work?

Night Zoo Keeper features a selection of word-focused games that help children play through a story while working on their vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing.

Students are able to write their own creative stories, within a helpful guidance framework. They are then given feedback by real-world human tutors, assigned to each student to help guide their progress and improvement.

In the app, students see dialogue boxes as if talking to the characters, which guide them on what to do next. A simple text creation space allows them to create their own writing pieces for submission.

What are the best Night Zoo Keeper features?

Night Zoo Keeper offers teachers a really helpful dashboard that provides feedback on student progress. This makes it simple to get an overview of progress on an individual or class level.

The tutoring team is a really powerful part of this service as it features real human feedback. That's support for the students, but also for the teachers as it shares the work load. Students are given feedback directly, which teachers can also see, allowing them to progress at a rate that works for them.

This is an age-based leveling system so it's important that students are treated as individuals. Since ability levels can vary across ages, this feedback is important as some students may struggle on one section while another progresses with ease.

A wide selection of reading and writing worksheets can be printed for use in class, or to share for students to take home to complete. These are helpfully broken down into sections, including reading, spelling, punctuation, and grammar, writing activities and prompts, writing styles, and lots of sub-sections for each of these.

How much does Night Zoo Keeper cost?

Night Zoo Keeper offers a free seven day trial but ultimately this is a paid for service that is charged.

A few ways to pay are available, including a monthly fee, at £9.99 ($13.24), or if paid quarterly £9.33 ($12.36) totaling £119.88 ($158.85) for the former, or for the latter it's £111.96 ($148.35).

Another way is to pay annually, which works out to £8.33 ($11.04) per month or a total or £99.99 ($132.49) for the year.

Night Zoo Keeper best tips and tricks

Keep track
This is gamified learning fun so keep track of progress in class so students can see how they're doing as a group.

Set a task
Go offline and have students create stories, based on the material, outside of the app for real world creative experiences.

Use the ideas
Take the story writing ideas prompt sheet and work with it in class to build tales and expand into written pieces.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

When it comes to whether students learn better by typing or through handwriting, educators and parents want easy answers, Svetlana Pinet tells me.

“People want to know, ‘What should I do?'” says Pinet, a staff scientist at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language in San Sebastian, Spain.

The problem is that the topic is complex and full of nuance, and students often benefit from learning both typing and writing. “Both exist and we have to do both,” she says. “One is going to yield you something; one is going to yield you something else. It’s not like you really have to choose.”

Handwriting’s Connection To Learning Is Not Settled Science

A 2024 study compared brainwaves in adults who typed vs. those who wrote by hand and concluded that the handwriters had more brain activity. This study was viewed more than 84,000 times and was amplified by coverage in more than 170 news outlets, including a story I wrote for this publication.

Many of these stories overemphasized the implications of the study, essentially suggesting that it was settled science that students learned more when writing by hand than typing.

That’s not necessarily the case, Pinet says, which is why she and a colleague, Marieke Longcamp, wrote a commentary on this handwriting study. Pinet and Longcamp argue that since the study looked at brain scans of adults and did not measure what they learned, it is hard to conclude much from the results.

The abstract, or summary, really makes it sound like it has huge consequences for children learning to write, but it's really not so direct,” Pinet says, adding that the study never tested participants on what they actually learned.

Brain measures, on the other hand, are less direct and can be subject to interpretation. For instance, in this study, in an attempt to control for some of the inherent differences between brain activity in typers and handwriters, study participants were asked to type with one finger; however, Pinet says doing this limited the implications of the research.

“Most people don't type that way,” she says.

Typing Vs. Handwriting In General

Pinet, however, stresses that she is not against teaching handwriting and notes that while more needs to be understood about its impact on learning overall, we do know that writing by hand can help students learn to write and recognize letters.

“This is because the motor action that you're doing when you're doing handwriting is much more precise, and that helps you remember this new letter,” Pinet says. “In typing, the motor action is you’re just pressing a button and it’s the same action no matter the letter. You can say that you're using a different finger, but the action itself isn’t different. If you're writing by hand, writing an ‘A’ is very different from writing a 'B,' and that helps you dissociate them.”

For these reasons, Pinet believes handwriting should remain a part of education. “In some countries, handwriting is being taught less and less, and so it is important to defend handwriting,” she says. “It really freaks me out to think that children will not learn to handwrite, and not only because of the dependence on technology but because we know that it is an important skill and that it does transform your brain in a specific way.”

However, she also believes typing is an important skill for students to be instructed in, and notes that many countries do not have formal typing instruction as part of the school curriculum.

Ultimately, her advice to educators is to try and find the right balance between the two forms of writing. “I think as much as possible, you should encourage both,” she says.

• Busting The Myth of Learning Styles
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Actively Learn, part of McGraw Hill, is a digital learning platform that features a huge catalogue of reading materials. This is all designed specifically for education with both teachers and students in mind.

The company says that through its award-winning offerings it is able to offer a "richer, more meaningful educational experience" for students across a range of subjects.

Founded by Dr. Deep Sran and Jay Goyal in 2012, specifically from doctoral work in educational psychology, it features the creation of an electronic reading environment that they say allows students to construct knowledge that would be impossible with traditional texts.

This guide aims to lay out all you need to know about Actively Learn so you can decide if it could work for your class.

What is Actively Learn?

Actively Learn is an online reading and comprehension system designed specifically for use in education with teacher- and student-specific tools.

The platform works to offer students a vast array of reading options along with customization tools. Everything is standards-aligned, and there is the option to collaborate, too -- ideal both for students and teachers.

While this is primarily a text-based site, it does also offer some videos. All that media covers several subject areas, including ELA, science, and social studies.

Thanks to the ability to view student progress, and offer feedback, this is far more than just a digital library.

How does Actively Learn work?

Actively Learn is primarily a huge catalogue of reading and video materials. Once teachers grant access, students can begin reading and interacting right away.

Usefully, this platform integrates with both Google Classroom and Canvas, so sharing specific reading tasks is easy for most schools.

Teachers and students are able to find reading specific to their needs with helpful filters. You can adjust by age, Lexile level, subject, genres, and more.

Students are also able to engage with questions that go with the text, which can mean Common Core-aligned assessments baked right in for teacher ease.

Since teachers are able to monitor student digital note taking, live, this can be a great way to track progress both in the class and beyond.

What are the best Actively Learn features?

Actively Learn offers a huge library of materials with well over 10,000 ebooks at time of publishing. But should teachers want to use this platform for a specific text that isn't there, the option to upload is also available.

Thanks to the interactive nature of the platform, it allows students to make notes with annotations and use that to interact on a particular text with other students as well as the teacher.

Useful features such as language translation as well as text-to-speech help to make this very widely accessible for a range of students.

Polls embedded in the platform are also helpful as these can be a great way to get a read of the class opinions and spark discussion points for the group.

While student progress can be viewed and monitored by teachers, it is also available to the students themselves. They are able to see their reading proficiency and vocabulary reports to better assess how they're progressing.

How much does Actively Learn cost?

Actively Learn offers both a free version as well as more comprehensively tooled paid version.

The Free version gets you access to hundreds of assignments with pre-built instruction, student reading aids including built-in dictionary, translation, and text to speech, real-time written feedback, automatic grade book, and rental of more than 10,000 ebooks.

The paid plan, Prime, is charged on a bespoke basis and gives you the above plus thousands of additional ELA articles, short stories, poetry, drama, explainers, skill practice, speeches, biographies, personal narratives, essays, and videos with expertly crafted, pre-built instruction. Plus, you get state-specific standards alignments, customization of any assignment and ability to bring in your own, pre-built Extra Help notes, summaries, and scaffolds, automated, personalized feedback on student writing. It also offers real-time data, student and educator collaboration, LMS integrations, priority customer support, and unlimited ebook add-ons available for purchase.

Actively Learn best tips and tricks

Use a poll
Place poll points in reading to have the class comment and then use that to expand in discussions during class.

Monitor live
Have students work on reading and answering the questions during class so you can monitor and intervene where needed, live.

Use you own
Upload your own media, including links, to have students read and comment as part of further educational expansion.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Glose is an online tool that collates a wealth of reading materials and makes it all social.

The idea here is to make reading and literacy a more engaging experience for students. That applies both for them individually by being able to interact more deeply with the text by doing things such as highlighting and making notes, but also in a group in which a more social side is available, seeing each others notes and more.

Teachers can see student progress so that this tool helps guide them on progress or areas of struggle.

This guides lays out what you need to know to see if Glose could work for you.

What is Glose?

Glose is an online reading platform that's aimed at educating student readers with its huge library of interactive reading materials.

Featuring more than one million books, comprised of ebooks and audio books, this is a huge literacy resource for students and teachers to access. Since it's digital, it also works across most devices so students and educators can access it wherever they are and with whatever device is available at that time.

How does Glose work?

Glose is a digital library that works across multiple devices so to get started you will need to download the app. You can then go through the library of books and buy those you want before downloading.

This allows students to download the book to their device for offline reading. But, crucially, it'll also sync that across devices using the cloud so they can easily jump between devices when reading.

This also means that any annotations or notes made will appear on the book, no matter the device that the student or teacher is using. Teachers can invite students to accounts and can then set books and monitor reading progress from a helpful dashboard.

What are the best Glose features?

Glose has a huge library of books available digitally to students. The social aspect of this platform makes for a great way to highlight, annotate, and share comments, allowing students to effectively read in groups without actually being together or reading at the same pace.

The fact there are more than one million titles, including classics, makes this a great way to assign readings and teach how to interact with those novels. Usefully, there is an option to add voice recordings, allowing teachers to offer feedback or guidance. But this can also be a helpful way for students to make notes or share thoughts with other readers.

A helpful Chrome extension allows teachers to clip on web links and share content beyond the book itself, which can make for a great jump off point to further online guided exploration.

Book reviews and the creation of reading lists are also possible, allowing the app to offer even more depth of engagement.

Usefully, teachers can use the dashboard to see student progress. Graphs and multiple data points make it easy to see how the class and individuals are progressing.

How much does Glose cost?

Glose is free to download and get started.

While there are plenty of free titles (more than 4,000), most of the books are there to be bought on a book-by-book basis. The prices vary but once a book is downloaded, it is then owned.

Glose best tips and tricks

Start a book club
A virtual book club allows you to ask questions of students or highlight text for them to focus on and report back.

Paraphrase
Have students make selections of highlights and then paraphrase in their own words to practice understanding and explaining.

Book cards
Have students create book cards and share these as well as comment on others to create interactive discussion online and in class.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

StudySync was founded in 2009 and has since evolved, expanded, and partnered up to offer a powerful ELA learning tool for schools.

Now used by more than 4 million students and teachers, this is a rich source of entertaining educational materials. At time of publishing, this service offers 30 feature-length films, 500+ hours of professionally recorded audio, more than 2,000 texts, more than 20,000 lesson plans, and plenty more.

This core literacy program is Common Core State Standards-aligned and not only offers rich learning materials but also learning activities and instructional resources.

This guide aims to explain all you need to know about how StudySync could work for your class.

What is StudySync?

StudySync is a core literacy program that uses original rich media to make this a super engaging way to learn.

Aimed at grades six to 12, this is Common Core-aligned and uses current research to get the best possible reading, writing, and comprehension instructions.

Three core options are available to pick from: StudySyncELA, for the complete ELA curriculum; SyncBlasts reading and writing assignments to build critical thinking; and StudySync Global, which is an ELA hybrid system built for international middle and high schools.

How does StudySync work?

StudySync offers a huge array of texts that are backed by lesson plans for teachers. Full-length texts, such as Shakespeare, are available, plus excerpts from books, poems, essays, and more. Thanks to built-in activities, these can be worked through in a way that's more interactive than reading alone -- allowing for deeper learning as well as analysis of progress.

SyncBlasts also has a very up-to-date selection of information and resources, including current event stories and nonfiction articles. This makes for a great on-device resource for students to access personally, wherever they are.

What really makes this platform stand out over others though is the rich selection of original media, which remains standards-aligned. These videos use teen actors to create conversation pieces to help students work on discussions.

What are the best StudySync features?

StudySync offers some great original video resources, made with students for students. These can work as a fantastic learning tools but also a starting point for lessons.

Texts are widely varied with a great selection of options. For each grade there are six units, each comprising 30 days of work -- so a good 180 days worth of learning available at a base level for middle and high school ages.

Usefully, it is possible to switch between lexile levels within texts, allowing for various ages and abilities to find their comfort zone.

Thanks to video guidance, printable materials, and plenty of setup guidance for teachers, it is possible to use this service without having a device required for every student in the class.

The option, for some texts, to be available in PDF and epub versions allows for a wide variety of digital and print reading options for students in and beyond the classroom.

How much does StudySync cost?

StudySync offers a few pricing options to suit requirement levels including a free trial.

The plan for students in grades 6-12 is priced at $36.44, which gets you a one-year subscription.

Subscriptions are also available on a contract basis that cater to solo teacher, building-wide, and district-level options.

StudySync best tips and tricks

Present and discuss
This naturally lends itself to classroom discussion and presentations, so keep that in mind when planning.

Use responses
From prompts and extended writing projects to oral projects, there's plenty to get students feeding back.

Give feedback
The developers are into feedback and really integrate it into updates so do give back if you want this to improve.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

While helping to conduct research about the impact of large print format books on student reading, Julie A. Evans met a student who told her he enjoyed the large format books more because the books have "more detail in them than the traditional books.”

This, of course, isn’t true. Large format books use the same text as traditional books, just with larger font sizes. However, the moment stuck with Evans because clearly this young learner had the perception there was more detail in the book because they were comprehending more of it.

That student isn’t the only one who finds this book format helpful. Evans is the chief executive officer of Project Tomorrow, an education nonprofit that focuses on providing schools with actionable research. The organization recently completed an in-depth study with participants that included some 1,500 students in grades 4-12 and 56 teachers and librarians across 13 U.S. elementary, middle, and high schools.

The research found:

• 87% of teachers saw a positive impact on their students’ reading success when they switched to large print books
• 71% of teachers reported that reading large print improved Lexile scores by 2 grade levels among their students who had been reading at grade level, as did 59% of those teaching students who had been reading below grade level
• 55% of teachers saw increased comprehension among students diagnosed with ADHD
• Large format books also helped students who were learning English, had reading comprehension challenges, were easily distracted and/or anxious about reading.

The study was released by Thorndike Press from Gale, which is part of Cengage Group, and which sells large print books.

Evans says Project Tomorrow conducted the research for the study independently and was intrigued by the research because of the potential large format books have to help increase reading scores.

“We don't just take any study. We don't just take any project,” she says. “It's more about things where we think we actually can make a difference.”

Large Print Format: An Option for Any Student

Many educators and caretakers perceive large print format books as designed for students with vision impairments. But this research suggests any student can benefit from the format.

This tracks with what Tasha Squires, a teacher librarian at O’Neill Middle School in Downers Grove, IL, has observed with her students. Squires, whose school participated in this research, says that when given the option of a large print format or traditional format, the vast majority of students choose the large format version. While reading in this format, they’re less likely to lose their place, tend to be more open to reading out loud, and are more engaged.

“They are more successful when they're reading large print because they're actually able to make their way through the book,” she says. “Even though there are more pages in the book, because they're physically turning the pages faster, they're staying engaged in it way better.”

Anecdotally, Squires doesn’t find ebooks with the font size increased to be as appealing to students. “Our kids are on computers the entire day, pretty much,” she says. “We use Google Classrooms a ton. They have their textbooks online.”

That’s why when it comes to reading for fun, “They don't like to read online,” Squires adds.

While audiobooks remain popular with students at her school, Squires says demand for ebooks is low enough she’s stopped purchasing any.

Takeaways For Teachers and Librarians

This research clearly indicates that many schools should offer large print books for students as a way to support individualized learning, Evans says.

“Having the option of students being able to choose if they want a large print book or a regular print book is part of that differentiation of the teaching process. It's part of personalizing and meeting learners where they are,” she says.

Squires agrees and notes that one of the best things about large print books as a reading intervention is how easy it is to implement once you have the books.

“After you show it to them, that's really all you need to do,” she says. “There's no professional development with this. None. It's the exact same book that is in small print that the teacher may have already read and might be familiar with.”

• Digital Leisure Reading Does Less to Aid Comprehension Than Print Reading
• The Screen Inferiority Effect: How Screens Affect Reading Comprehension

Membean is not a vocabulary tool alone, says its creators, but rather works on developing word consciousness in students.

While this might sound like something that requires a student to strap into a brain-altering headset, the reality is far less daunting. Membean is actually all about vocabulary training, but in a way that adapts to student abilities and needs, in order to make it as natural as possible.

The idea here is to offer a balance between individual learning and supported guidance, while also keeping teacher engagement time to a minimum. The end result is a tool that's used by more than 40,000 classrooms across 50 countries.

Here's what you need to know about using Membean in your class.

What is Membean?

Membean is a digital tool that teaches and reinforces vocabulary learning. The personalized experience for students is achieved by using cognitive science research. This results in the use of a multi-modal approach that can help students progress in a very effective way.

This is achieved by offering varying ways to engage with any one word, from word constellations to videos, totaling nine approach styles. So this should not only keep things fresh and engaging for students, but also affect a deeper shift in learning.

Thanks to questions and answer tracking, it's also possible for teachers to monitor individual student practice and be alerted to any cases that might require personal attention. This is great for test prep and general vocabulary work for students from grade 6 to 12.

Since this all works online, in app form via a web browser, it should be easy to access for most teachers and students across a range of device types.

How does Membean work?

Membean requires a teacher to create an account through which they can then start creating class groups. Students can be sent a code to join, or teachers can add email addresses to send invitations.

Students are initially quizzed on a selection of words to set a baseline for their knowledge and abilities. This then allows the app to offer students words that are suitably challenging without being too tough or off-putting.

Students can engage with any word across the range of nine different types of Memlets, as the various approaches are called. These allow students to see the word used in different ways as context, so as to better understand it and remember it in a useful and functional manner.

Thanks to SAT- and GRE-testing levels integration, this is a helpful tool for practicing for specific tests, which can make setting working areas very straight forward. But thanks to teacher customization, it's also possible to tailor progress for specific needs, such as dyslexia, for example.

What are the best Membean features?

Membean is great for getting a word into the brain in many different ways to ensure it is properly integrated. Students will read, hear, pronounce, spell, and use the word in context in order to understand it deeply right from the outset.

Students are given feedback help if they get the answer wrong at any stage, helping them to progress. This, as well as outcome results, can all be monitored by teachers through the dashboard. This even has alerts, highlighted in red, so teachers can see at a glance if a student is struggling or needs some extra help.

Daily goals are a helpful way to keep students motivated to progress. But these also act as a guide so that students don't overdo it and end up not wanting to maintain a more steady progress that can work better in the longer term.

Teachers can set and schedule assessments, or send these to the class or individuals to take, as needed. Thanks to the detailed feedback, teachers can even see where students have taken a longer time to answer -- perhaps signaling struggle or a lack of focus.

How much does Membean cost?

Membean offers a free trial and a paid subscription service aimed at educators specifically.

The rate is then varied based on the number of students using the service. So the higher the number, the lower the rate per student. This varies between $8 and $20, per year.

Membean best tips and tricks

Try before you buy
Open a trial account for free and try the service with students to see how it is received before you decide to pay longer term.

Use goals
Assign weekly vocabulary goals and use time in class, or set it for home, so that they can hit those targets to progress.

Reward alerts
The app will alert students when they hit their daily goal. Offer real-world rewards for those who hit this every day for a week, for example.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Rewordify might look like a webpage from the noughties but it's actually a sort of artificially intelligent powerhouse designed for teachers and students.

The idea here is to offer a minimal-yet-robust tool for working on vocabulary. Crucially, the goal is to make sure that the tool varies text so it can meet the student where they are for the best possible learning outcomes.

This was built by an English teacher, designed to help students by introducing them to new words in a more natural way that facilitates learning, without the grind of forcing dictionary-based learning.

What is Rewordify?

Rewordify is a reading and vocabulary tool designed for teachers and students by a teacher of students. As such, it's super minimal but does the exact job it was made for, and it does this well.

The system isn't technically an AI as mentioned above, but neither is most claimed AI these days. Rather, it uses computer-based natural language processing -- something many now call AI -- to re-work sentences in a way that serves students on their learning journey.

This is built to help students learn new words as well as for teachers to track progress, and even comes with printables to further that learning experience outside of the digital part of that interaction.

How does Rewordify work?

Rewordify is free and easy to use, although creating an account can offer a lot more depth to what is offered. Create student accounts and teachers can track student progress, offering assistance or guidance when needed.

Since this can be accessed from a browser, students can use this on their devices, and on their time, as needed. Teachers can set texts to be worked with and students can copy and paste any in before hitting the Rewordify button to get started.

The original text is shown with the newly reworked version above so that the student can work out, naturally, alternative words used and even variations to sentence structure.

Students can even see how many hard words are in that chunk of text and select how many they want to learn in that particular exercise.

What are the best Rewordify features?

Rewordify might be simple to use yet it has some really rich features. For example, a student can rewordify a body of text and then look at it in various ways.

• They can see stats of how many of each word type there is and more.
• They can share or access the document to use as needed.
• Print or access other learning activities from that text output.
• Or select part of speech to see which parts are verbs, nouns, and so on, with helpful color highlighting to make it super clear.

The ability to vary the reading level of the outputted text is a super powerful feature here. This allows teachers to ensure students are working at a level that's appropriate to their progress in terms of Lexile reading measures.

Lots of activities are available that can help to expand the learning around a single body of text. For example, there are quizzes, audio learning activities, vocab exercises, and more -- also available as printables.

How much does Rewordify cost?

Rewordify is created as a free resource to be used by all. This works on all devices via a web browser without the need to pay for or download anything. For the best features you will need to create accounts, but even that isn't strictly required to take advantage of the offerings here.

So, without tracking, charges, or personal information required, this is a truly free resource for teachers and students.

Rewordify best tips and tricks

Level up
Use a single piece of text and work through it at various levels to gain mastery of the words as well as the text itself.

Student led
Have students pick the text they want to input and work with that so they can be engaged on a level of choice where learning comes naturally.

Using Learning
The Learning Sessions section is aimed at improved vocabulary and can be a great break-out option to vary the work.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

In today’s digital world, we seem to be surrounded by news. Clickbait, anyone? Yet the pervasive and often intrusive nature of internet news articles belies the fact that many of these sites are behind a paywall, biased, or feature low-quality reporting.

Still, online articles are a great starting point for all kinds of learning assignments across the curriculum. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best (mostly) free article websites for students. Many of these sites offer not only high-quality topical articles on every subject, but also ideas for lessons, such as questions, quizzes, and discussion prompts.

Free Article Sites

CBS Kids News
A top quality, free service of the Canada Media Fund, CBS Kids provides daily news stories of interest to kids in Canada and the United States. Although the focus is on Canada, the vast majority of articles are highly relevant to American kids as well. Examples include: “What’s an executive order? And why do U.S. presidents use them?” “TikTok creators confessed secrets before the app went dark,” and “Nintendo Switch 2 is coming in 2025.” Even better, the articles are written by students, grades 7-12. Topics are diverse and range from sports, gaming, and animals to politics and interactive quizzes. Stories are printable as PDF and shareable to Google Classroom. An excellent resource for teachers.

The Electric Typewriter
A remarkable free site that compiles and links to the best articles on a wide range of topics, from current affairs to music to sports and more. Ideal for students in grade 11 through post-secondary school.

The Sift
The Sift is a free weekly newsletter for educators that provides summaries, discussion points, ideas for lessons, and links to topical articles in the news. Each newsletter also highlights and debunks fake news making the social media rounds. Classroom-ready resources include shareable Google Slide decks.

Science Journal for Kids and Teens
A fantastic free source for hundreds of downloadable scientific articles aimed at K-12 students. Search by standards, grade level, scientific topic, or method. Each article is accompanied by a teacher's guide, lesson plan ideas, and related articles. Teachers need only to register once to access all educator guides. Be sure to check out their YouTube page as well!

PBS NewsHour Daily News Lessons
Daily articles covering current events in video format. Each lesson includes a full transcript, fact list, summary, and focus questions.

NYT Daily Lessons/Article of the Day
The New York Times Daily Lessons builds a classroom lesson around a new article each day, offering thoughtful questions for writing and discussion, as well as related ideas for further study. Perfect for practicing critical thinking and literacy skills for middle and high school students, it’s a part of the larger NYT Learning Network, which provides an abundance of activities for students and resources for teachers.

The Learning Network
Current event articles, student opinion essays, movie reviews, students review contests, and more. The educator resource section offers top-notch teaching and professional development resources.

News For Kids
With the motto “Real News, Told Simply,” News for Kids strives to present the latest topics in U.S. and world news, science, sports, and the arts in a way that’s accessible to most readers. Tooltips within each article highlight certain words to add a definition, or link to further explanation.

ReadWorks
A fully free research-based platform, Readworks provides thousands of nonfiction and fiction passages searchable by topic, activity type, grade, and Lexile level. Educator guides cover differentiation, hybrid and remote learning, and free professional development. Great resource for teachers.

Science News for Students
Winner of multiple awards for journalism, Science News for Students publishes original science, technology, and health features for readers ages 9-14. Stories are accompanied by citations, recommended readings, glossaries, readability scores, and classroom extras.

Teaching Kids News
A terrific site that publishes readable and teachable articles on news, art, science, politics, and more for students grades 2-8. Bonus: The Fake News resource section links to online games about fake news and images. A must for any digital citizen.

Youngzine
A unique news site for young people that focuses on climate science, solutions, and policies to address the myriad effects of global warming. Kids have an opportunity to express their views and literary creativity by submitting poetry or essays. Free for educators, compatible with Google Classroom.

Scholastic Kids Press
A multinational group of young journalists ages 10-14 report the latest news and fascinating stories about the natural world. Features sections dedicated to civics and international news. Have a student with a strong journalistic bent? In March 2025 Scholastic Kids Press will accept applications for the 2025-26 program year.

National Geographic Kids
A fine library of articles about animals, history, science, space, and—of course—geography. Students will enjoy the “Weird But True” short videos, featuring fun animations about oddball topics.

Freemium Article Sites

AllSides for Schools
From the public benefit company Allsides Technology, Allsides for schools aims to present unbiased news and information for kids through downloadable lesson plans covering polarization and bias, using AI for civil discourse, and comparing bias across news outlets. A free basic account allows limited access. Premium accounts cost between $4.99 and $14.99 monthly and allow 50-150 bias checker uses per month. Classroom and district memberships are also available and offer COPPA/FERPA compliant student access, starting at $200 annually for up to 99 students.

DOGOnews
News articles featuring current events, science, social studies, world events, civics, environment, sports, weird/fun news, and more. Free access to all articles. Premium accounts offer extras such as simplified and audio versions, quizzes, and critical thinking challenges.

• LightSail: How to Use It to Teach Literacy
• Best Poetry Lessons and Activities
• Teaching Students To Use AI More Effectively

LightSail is a digital reading platform that promotes, progresses, and assesses student learning. This uses e-books specifically, so it can work across a host of devices for maximum accessibility for students.

The idea is not just to give students access to digital reading options -- though this does that well -- but to tailor, target, and assess in a way that actually accelerates student reading ability.

Available in English and Spanish, with a huge digital library available, LightSail should make for a highly accessible platform in which most schools can invest.

What is LightSail?

LightSail is a digital library and literacy enhancement platform that's specifically designed for schools and districts.

Thanks to a combination of a wide variety of reading options, built-in assessments, and teacher feedback, this can make for a powerful way to help progress student literacy.

This applies to grades K-12 and spreads a broad range of Lexile measures. By embedding the assessments, this allows students to progress at a rate that is adaptive to their abilities and needs. This is something that can be tracked by the student as well as the teacher for a team effort in reading progression.

How does LightSail work?

LightSail can be signed up for on a school or district-wide level, which provides access to more than 6,000 titles in this digital library. Teachers can buy more, add their own, and create content using the tools. Crucially, these have the assessments built-in so student progress is measurable.

Students gain points for progress and teachers can see this on their dashboard. This makes the process not only supportive and adaptive in progression, but also fun and with feedback to help promote student engagement.

Since students are able to pick what they read, it can make for a freeing experience. But with the ability to arrange by Lexile score, grade, or fiction and non-fiction, it allows for exploration to keep students interested and engaged.

What are the best LightSail features?

LightSail offers a really helpful annotation system that works both for students and teachers. A chunk of text can be highlighted and notes can be added -- making for a great way to collate notes before writing an essay, for example.

Teachers can see student notes and comment on them, allowing for an open dialogue. Usefully these notes can be written or audio, allowing teachers to provide personalized feedback using their voice for students to pick-up when they want.

LightSail is adaptive, so it automatically creates personalized libraries for each student based on their reading ability. This is measured from their comprehension exercise results, carried out throughout the books. While ideal books are suggested, there are also some with lighting symbols -- called Power Texts -- that students can pick if they want to be more challenged and to progress potentially faster.

Plenty of reading customization options are available, such as font size adjustment, highlighting, and more, that can make for a comfortable experience that students control.

All the content and assessment activities are Common Core Standards-aligned (CCSS), making this a really helpful way to teach. Plus, there are lots of supportive materials available for teachers including lesson plans and videos.

How much does LightSail cost?

LightSail comes in a few tier options including Premium and Standard as well as a Homeschooling selection of options. A free 30-day trial is also available.

School-based pricing is charged on a bespoke level, with all features included. The homeschooling options are here:

The Standard plan, charged at $65/year, gets you 20,000+ education videos, 150+ library collection, 1,500+ audio books, 1,000+ live streams, 150+ data points, quotations, bookmarks, vocabulary, spelling, writing, grammar, and more.

Go for the Premium tier, at $99/year and you also get 50,000+ encyclopedia articles, 10,000+ biographies, 360 degree images, world book timelines and maps, and ADHD/dyslexia reading support.

LightSail best tips and tricks

Build up
Use the Content Builder to add your own texts and assessments for bespoke student learning -- great for use with web articles, for ease.

Weekly update
Take the digital progress and add it to the class wall so students can see how they're doing and where they're sitting in the class that week.

Introduce the best
Have students give book reviews so others can know what's a good find worth looking out for on their reading lists.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
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Lalilo is a reading comprehension and phonics learning tool from Renaissance Learning. The company offers many software solutions for students, with its products used by one third of U.S. schools and in more than 90 countries.

While the company has broad experience in reading, assessment, and math tools across Pre-K-12, Lalilo is specifically aimed at reading comprehension for K-2.

Lalilo was a French company, bought by Renaissance Learning in 2021, and incorporated into its offerings. The tool, designed for both in-school and distance learning, has more than 50,000 teachers and 360,000 students using it across the U.S. and France.

This guide aims to explain all you need to know about Lalilo to see if it could work for your class.

What is Lalilo?

Lalilo is a digital tool designed to help students with their reading comprehension and phonics learning. This is done by offering an online-based platform of learning, skills, and assessment, specifically designed for K-2 students.

Usefully, this is an adaptive system that works to help students progress at their own pace, adapting to keep things challenging without being off-putting. Teachers can see this progress using a dedicated dashboard and then apply it to future lesson planning.

Thanks to cartoon characters and a story-based journey, students can enjoy the playful nature of this system. Although, to be clear, it's not as gamified as some platforms -- just enough to keep it light and engaging for this age group.

How does Lalilo work?

Lalilo offers an opening placement test for students that allows them to find the entry level that will suit their learning journey. This early assessment introduces them to the system while also giving teachers a chance to see where they're at with their comprehension.

The lessons adapt to the student but teachers can control this and have automatic progression changed if needed, to keep students back or to skip them ahead as required.

Students make virtual journeys across planets and along the way must complete activities, read books, and complete interactive tasks that involve voice, sound, written words, and more.

Thanks to the use of AI, the system adapts in a way this is flexible, so it may revisit points or stick on an area deemed tricky for that student, rather than being totally level-based in progression. This is smart as students are asked questions about assessments to help give feedback on their experience, not just their performance.

What are the best Lalilo features?

Lalilo uses material that is built for both state and national learning standards so it can be used alongside courses in a very effective way. Thanks to the teacher dashboard, it makes monitoring student progress and adapting to suit, a simple process.

Lots of tools are available in this system, including letter-sound recognition, sight words, word families, and more. The use of voice recognition allows students to practice using a word while seeing it written for a more rounded learning experience.

Since this is built for both in-class and at-home use, it can make for a powerful tool to add to learning outside of school. Teachers can use the dashboard to set tasks for students so that they need to have any completed in time for the next lesson, for example.

Reports can be printed to be shared with other teachers, admins, and parents or guardians as needed. Usefully, there is a section on areas for improvement, making these more than just records but useful calls to action too.

How much does Lalilo cost?

Lalilo offers a free version and a paid offering, the former being limited by having fewer reporting features and dashboard controls for teachers. A 60-day trial of the full version is also available.

The Free version gives you a huge selection of phonics and comprehension programming to help students learn at their pace.

The Classroom license is charged at $250/year for up to 40 students, which gets you the full interactive dashboard controls for teachers and admins.

Lalilo best tips and tricks

Start free
Take advantage of the 60-day free trial to see if this works for your students, school, and way of teaching before committing to paying for full access.

Use in class
Before setting work for at home be sure to use this in class so students are guided and everyone knows what they're doing.

Adapt lessons
Use the feedback from student progress to adapt lessons that build on, as well as progress, the teachings being looked at in the challenges online.

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ThinkCERCA is a digital literacy program with online tools available to help students improve their writing and critical thinking.

The company that offers these tools says that using this platform can increase reading growth by double in a single year -- with 20% of that in the first eight weeks. All that, and it claims teachers save up to 10 hours in just one week with this tool.

Specific teaching and activity tools are available for a range of ages that span from grade three right up to grade 12.

The acronym CERCA stands for Claims, Evidence, Reasoning, Counterarguments, Audience. All that perhaps gives you an idea of the importance of critical thinking and reasoning as a part of this tool's goals.

What is ThinkCERCA?

ThinkCERCA is a curriculum-aligned system that offers a single place to help teach and practice literacy skills for entire classes with individualized learning.

This is very much a hands-on offering in which students are able to use practical skills to help cement learning as well as expand understanding at the same time. It essentially puts critical thinking and argumentation skills into practice to help grow and refine these with use.

The end result can be essays that students submit to teachers for assessment. So there is a directly measurable outcome from the learning, while allowing students to work more independently to free up teacher time to help those that need it along the way.

With practice assessments for ACT and SAT as well as benchmarking tests, this offers a very clear picture of student progress. Regularly updated slides also help with teaching for a well-rounded solution to aid educators.

How does ThinkCERCA work?

ThinkCERCA works online so it can be accessed easily from most devices with a browser and a connection to the internet. Many ways to use the tool are available for assessment and teaching but the standard path works from the reading.

Lots of real-world reading materials are available here, spanning a variety of subjects from English to science and math. Pick from the thematically organized library of options, choose the grade level, and then let the differentiation tool automatically adjust to suit the student before assigning.

Students can then read and work with the text, using vocabulary and audio supports, highlights, and summarization before moving to the automated comprehension assessments.

When it comes to writing, there are prompts to help with thinking as well as writing scaffolds, sentence stems, and even interactive graphic organizers. Also available is space for peer-to-peer debate and teacher support.

Finally, for marking, there are built-in rubrics that are standards-aligned, making it easy to mark fast. But you can also offer individual feedback after monitoring progress in real-time. That monitoring can then be done on school and district-wide levels if needed.

What are the best ThinkCERCA features?

ThinkCERCA offers a well-balanced and auto adaptive framework for reading, analyzing, and writing that is standards-aligned and spans a range of ages. But it also offers a lot of specific tools to work on direct targets.

The helpful library of skills allows students to work on specific lessons and targeted foundational knowledge. Teachers can use benchmark assessments to see how individuals as well as groups are progressing, perhaps using these at specific times throughout the year.

The helpful lesson supports and regular slides updates are available for teachers to help deliver these tools in the most effective way. This can help spark ideas and make for original teaching techniques that engage students.

Tools are organized for specific targeting learning. This includes a benchmark evaluation service, foundational reading course, professional learning, and supplemental ELA writing curriculum. All that makes for a very direct way to teach and learn that can offer results in a very short space of time.

How much does ThinkCERCA cost?

ThinkCERCA no longer offers a free service and instead offers a School or District package which is charged on a bespoke basis. Typically though this works out at around $30-40 per student, varying based on the number of students needing access.

The School plan gets you full access to ELA, social studies, science, and math lessons, shared language scaffolds, aligned to CCSS and other state standards, social studies content, English language arts content, discipline-specific texts, and writing and more.

The District version gets you all the above only with more over-arching data such as end-of-year reviews, curriculum mapping, monthly data meetings, and more.

ThinkCERCA best tips and tricks

Work off the text
Use the huge number of text resources as a start point for class-wide discussion and debate.

Assess regularly
Set assessment dates so you and your students can keep track of progress made throughout the year.

Use resources
Encourage students to use the built-in dictionary and rubric at any time as a way to further expand their learning.

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Microsoft’s Reading Coach is one of the new AI teaching tools from Microsoft that is most exciting to Deirdre Quarnstrom, Vice President of Education at Microsoft.

Designed to help new readers over the summer, Microsoft Reading Coach can be accessed by parents and teachers over Teams. Its features include the ability to generate a story on demand, coach students on specific words they might be struggling with, and provide assessments on each students’ overall reading proficiency.

Quarnstrom says the tool is all about providing more personalized instruction to new readers. “We know that when students are more engaged in the reading, and the content is more personalized, and they spend more time, then that becomes a predictor of reading outcomes,” she says.

Keep reading (no pun intended) for everything you need to know about Microsoft’s reading coach.

What Is Microsoft Reading Coach and How Does It Work?

As a new reading tutor from Microsoft, Reading Coach uses cutting-edge generative AI technology to create a personalized reading experience for each student/user. Students can choose a character and a setting for the story, and a reading level at which they want to read. Reading Coach takes it from there.

“We generate a story using AI and then the student reads that, and we use our AI and machine learning algorithms to then provide an assessment of that reading back to the students,” Quarnstrom says.

Using speech-to-text technology, the Reading Coach will evaluate the words a young reader reads aloud and then provide feedback on the accuracy and speed. Students also have the opportunity to continue on with the story they started. “They can choose from a couple of different paths that they could use to create the next passage,” Quarnstrom says.

Reading Coach works in conjunction with Immersive Reader, Microsoft’s reading tool that allows readers to choose font size and color, and can also read back text to students, supporting accessibility in the process.

Beyond AI, What Are Some Educational Strategies Reading Coach Uses?  

Reading Coach incorporates gamification into the learning process to help enhance the AI lessons and drive engagement.

“Students can unlock achievements,” Quarnstrom says. “This is something that I take from my experience with Xbox and Minecraft and game-based learning — when you present a learner something where they have agency in the learning process, and when it's more personalized, more engaging, they spend more time with it.”

How Much Does It Cost? 

“It’s available free with a Microsoft account or an Xbox account,” Quarnstrom says.

To start using Reading Coach go to coach.microsoft.com. Click the “start reading” button. Then sign in with your Microsoft account. If this is a personal account, you’ll have access, if you’re using a school account, the school account administrator needs to enable Reading Coach.

What Are Some of Reading Coach’s Best Features? 

Some of the Reading Coach features Microsoft recommends include:

• Create AI-generated stories: pick your path through the story chapters, unlock characters and settings to create new stories
• Choose fiction and non-fiction passages from a leveled library

• Read in the fully accessible Immersive Reader that makes reading comfortable for all learners

• Get coaching on challenging words

• Add your own content to read
• Earn badges and see progress

But as with any AI tool, Quarnstrom stresses that Reading Coach is not meant to replace the teacher; instead, all AI tools are designed with the idea of the teacher or parent being thoroughly in control.

“We're focused on empowering educators with these tools, and looking at how we can help save time, help give them back more time to use in the classroom, and also improve their well-being,” she says.

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This summer, more students will be doing their summer reading (or listening) via ebook or audiobook — or at least that’s what the industry data suggests.

A new report from Sora, a K-12 reading platform, found that audiobook checkouts from students were up 20% and ebook checkouts were up 17% last year. Since 2019, digital book usage is up 286%, according to the K-12 ebook reading report.

Even so, not all students are aware of or have access to ebooks, audiobooks, and related digital book content, says Melissa Jacobs, director of library services for New York City’s Department of Education.

“I still think there's a lot of opportunity for growth, and there are some growing pains that publishers and platforms are going through,” Jacobs says.

Jacobs offers how teachers can encourage students to explore ebooks and audiobooks this summer, and how they can use their voices to advocate for more affordable ebook pricing for libraries in general, but particularly school libraries.

1. Remind Students Reading Includes More Than Print  

Many teachers and students need to be reminded that reading is about more than, well, reading. Or at least what we tend to think of, incorrectly, as reading. “To read means to absorb a story, to absorb text,” Jacobs says. “You can do that via audio. You can do that via text.”

Realizing this and reminding your students of it enables readers to control the ways in which they absorb stories and information, Jacobs says. They can speed up or slow down audiobooks, or get text in a language that they are more comfortable reading. “I really think that empowers the reader,” Jacobs says.

2. Help Students Find The Reading Mode That’s Right For Them 

Sometimes students need help understanding how audiobooks and ebooks can best serve them.

For instance, some readers only enjoy audiobooks after they start increasing the playback speed on the recording. Many listeners like to go to 1.25, 1.5, or even higher playback speed because it makes listening to an audiobook closer to the speed at which they might read text.

Jacobs’ learned this lesson in her own home. Her daughter was struggling with reading assignments for school, so Jacobs encouraged her to consider listening to audiobooks and reminded her to try speeding up the playback. “I said, ‘You'll get through a book much quicker,’ and she's like, ‘Wait a second, I do that with my podcasts.'”

It was a lightbulb moment for the young student. “She went from being three weeks behind in reading, and crying that she'll never be ahead and she'll never catch up to being three weeks ahead, and then asked if she could apply to honors English,” Jacobs says.

3. Raise Awareness of The Budget Issues Around School Ebooks 

Buying an ebook or audiobook is different for libraries than for individuals, Jacobs explains. Instead of purchasing a digital copy, they purchase temporary rights to a digital copy, but those rights can expire after 24 months or less, and need to be repurchased.

This can result in buying certain books from certain publishers incredibly expensive for libraries overall, and makes providing access to ebooks particularly difficult for school librarians, given tight school budgets.

Jacobs would like to see more publishers adjust their pricing to better match print prices. “If I was buying a book for a physical print copy, it would be $25, $30. If I'm buying that same digital book, it should be in that same realm that I'm buying the print copy of, it shouldn't be five times that cost,” she says.

4. Remember Digital Reading and Listening Is Here To Stay

“We spend a lot of time, and we will spend a lot more time, reading digitally,” Jacobs says. “It's either on a computer screen or on your smartphone or your tablet, but digital reading is here to stay.”

Encouraging students to explore digital reading can help them unlock new routes of access to books. “I would introduce it to a student as an assignment, as pleasure reading,” Jacobs says.

She adds the best way for teachers to introduce students to ebooks and audiobooks is probably as “an opportunity.”

• Audiobooks for Students: Listening to What the Research Says
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The science of reading has become a hot topic in schools in recent years. Since 2019, more than 45 states have passed one or more bills aimed at reforming reading instruction. These bills were passed in response to a growing consensus among researchers that many classrooms had veered from the best practices for teaching reading. 

However, the science of reading remains a topic so fiercely debated in school districts and universities across the country, it is sometimes dubbed “the reading wars.” In addition, not everything labeled “science of reading” actually follows the science of reading, say experts. 

To help get an overview of what is going on we turn to literacy expert Nell K. Duke, a professor of education and psychology at the University of Michigan and the executive director of the Center for Early Literacy Success. 

What is The Science of Reading?  

“The science of reading refers to a body of research about reading, and that includes research about the reading process, what happens in our minds as we read, but also reading development, how do we learn to read, and how does that proceed for children differently and at different paces, and so forth,” Duke says. “Also reading instruction falls under the science of reading. For example, when we do research comparing one way of teaching reading to another way of teaching reading, and we look at which ones are more successful for kids.” 

The final aspect of the science of reading is the study of the implementation and efficacy of reading approaches at scale, whether in large cities or at the state level or in other places. 

Duke adds that although the science of reading has become a buzzword recently, it’s not new. It dates back to the 1800s and has been used through much of the 20th century. 

What Are Some Teaching Strategies That Don’t Adhere to The Science of Reading? 

Duke stresses that the majority of reading instruction practices employed by educators are at least somewhat effective at teaching reading, but are not always the most effective way to teach reading. “For example, something you’ll often see teachers do is try to get children to memorize certain high-frequency words,” Duke says. “That’s actually not the most effective way to teach those words and have them stick for kids.” 

She adds, “Another example that is so common in schools and has been for decades is to give kids a list of vocabulary words, and then their job is to look the word up in the dictionary and then write a sentence using the word, but that’s less effective than any other technique I’m aware of to teach vocabulary.”  

What Should Teachers Do Instead?  

When a child is learning a word such as “was,” Duke understands that it can be tempting to try and get them to memorize it. 

“That’s not spelled as you might guess, and so you might think, ‘I’m going to have kids memorize that whole picture of the word,’” she says. “It actually is still best to say, ‘was” and listen for the three phonemes the sound in ‘was.’” Then she advises having kids map the sounds of each syllable to the corresponding letter even if it is making a slightly unexpected sound, as is the case with the “a” in "was."

For vocabulary, teachers want to avoid the dictionary scavenger hunt. “One thing that helps with vocabulary is to help children relate new words to known words,” Duke says. To do this, she suggests making a web or map of words that have similar meanings. 

 What Role Does Technology Play in All This  

Duke believes there is potential for technology, including AI, to help students more efficiently learn to read. The trick is making sure to utilize tools that are based on the latest research. 

For example, Duke has worked with Amira Learning, an AI-powered writing tool built on the science of reading, and says this type of collaboration between literacy researchers and edtech developers is what is needed. 

“The right model for the field in my view is one where there is a partnership or collaboration between people who have the expertise in technology and people who have expertise in reading instruction,” she says.  

Why Did Some Schools Move Away From Phonics? 

Some science of reading advocates say that not enough emphasis has been placed on phonics in some districts and states. Duke says that like anything else, reading instruction is subject to trends. 

“Sometimes I think what happens is that because reading is so complex, there's so many different things that go into it, people will pay attention to one of those important things for a while and they let others fall to the wayside, and then they switch to some other one and then others fall to the wayside,” she says. “It's a little bit like if you get really focused on having good sleep habits, maybe you pay a little bit less attention to the exercising. When it comes to teaching, sometimes people have gotten wrapped up in some other focus, like building comprehension or motivation to read and that has led to less attention to phonics. Or at other times people paying less attention to phonics, or less attention to comprehension, or less attention to motivation . . . but the thing that we know about reading is that all of them have to get our attention.” 

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New research highlights that when it comes to writing instruction for middle and high school students, it’s important to get it, well, right.

“It does matter what you do when you teach writing because some things don't appear to work so well,” says Steve Graham, lead author of a new analysis of writing interventions (or “treatments”) for students in grades 6-12. 

The meta-analysis was published in the Journal of Educational Psychology and used data from 406 previous experiments involving 52,529 students. While no interventions studied in this analysis had a negative effect on writing outcomes, some interventions didn’t have significant positive effects. For instance, “Just simply increasing how much students write in middle school or high school does not improve their writing,” Graham says.

On the bright side, however, many interventions did help students improve their writing, and writing practice paired with enhanced instruction could make a significant difference. 

In their analysis, Graham and his co-authors identified 16 categories of writing interventions that had a positive impact on student writing and can serve as a guide to writing instructors. However, Graham cautions even though analysis of this kind provides teachers with tools that have a proven track record, there are no guarantees these strategies will work in all instances. 

“Just because a writing practice worked in eight other teachers' classrooms and had a positive effect, it does not mean that it is for certain going to work in your classroom,” he says. “Because the conditions under which research studies are conducted are different from the ones that may exist in an individual teachers’ classroom.” 

That’s why Graham advises instructors to use these 16 writing interventions as inspiration and to keep monitoring and adjusting their own practices based on what is and isn’t working for their students. 

Note: This study, like most education studies, measured effect sizes in standard deviation, which is the average deviation from the mean score for a group of students studied. In education research, effect sizes are notoriously small, so anything approaching a standard deviation of 1 is significant. For instance, a student with a 1.5 below the mean would require significant intervention.

1. Comprehensive Writing Programs  

Standard deviation: 0.47

These programs include those based on the process approach to writing, or what is sometimes called a writers’ workshop. Graham and his co-authors note this includes “extended opportunities for writing; writing for real audiences; engaging in cycles of planning, translating, and reviewing; personal responsibility and ownership of writing projects; high levels of student interactions and creation of a supportive writing environment; self-reflection and evaluation; personalized individual assistance and instruction; and, in some instances, systematic instruction.” 

2. Strategy Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.76

This method of writing instruction involves explicitly teaching strategies for planning, revising, self-assessing, and/or editing text, the study authors note. Writing strategies range from processes, such as semantic webs to strategies designed for specific types of writing, such as stories. 

3. Digital Writing Tools  

Standard Deviation: 0.31

When students moved from using pen and paper to writing with the help of a traditional word processor over time, there was a marked improvement, Graham says. “The reasons for that are fairly obvious,” he adds. It’s easier to self-edit and move words around, and grammar and spellcheckers also help with the process. An even greater improvement was seen among students who had access to more advanced word processors, which might include the ability to add images and sound, or have gamified elements to help students learn to write. 

4. Transcription Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.71

This positive effect was seen in lessons that included teaching spelling, handwriting, or keyboard use.

5. Computer-Assisted Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.32

This included teaching writing, spelling, and other lessons with the help of a computer program as well as technology provided personalized instruction. However, computer-generated feedback on writing, in and of itself, did not provide a benefit, Graham says. This research predated the rapid advances in generative AI over the past year, so computer-assisted benefits and limitations will need to be updated in the future. 

6. Teaching Critical/Creative Thinking Skills for Writing  

Standard deviation: 0.27 

Teaching students critical thinking strategies improved writing as did teaching them how to add more creativity to their work. “Creativity could be exemplified in a study in which students were taught how to use metaphors, similes, etc., and critical thinking could be shown in a study in which students are analyzing their texts using questions that help them think critically about the veracity and value of the content they're looking at,” Graham says. 

7. Emulating Good Models of Writing

Standard deviation: 0.46

Graham and his co-authors defined this as, “Examining one or more examples of model texts or models for carrying out writing processes and attempting to emulate these models when writing.” This is something many professional writers do intuitively, so it makes sense that it would help with student writers. 

8. Feedback  

Standard deviation: 0.34

“We found feedback makes a difference,” Graham says. This included instructor feedback as well as peer and group feedback but notably not self-assessment/feedback or computer-generated feedback, at least in the studies looked at for this analysis. 

9. Goal Setting  

Standard deviation: 0.44

Whether teacher-assigned or based on students’ own goals for for writing or learning writing skills and processes, goal setting seemed to have a measurable impact on writing success. 

10. Prewriting Activities

Standard deviation: 0.49

“If you engage students in prewriting activities to gather or organize information – so it might involve discussion, or using some kind of organizer to generate and organize your ideas – writing gets better,” Graham says. 

11. Grammar Instruction 

Standard deviation: 0.77 

This positive association was much stronger than in some previous research into grammar’s impact on writing, including work Graham has been involved in. He says the change is likely due to better methodology that eliminated less well-designed grammar interventions as well as other factors. Most of the studies involve teaching grammar in context, he adds. So it was not the old form of grammar instruction that involved fill-in-the-blanks exercises and decontextualized practice around specific contexts. 

12. Sentence Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.73

“We found that teaching students how to create more complex sentences had a positive effect on students’ writing,” he says. “When you write a lot of your cognitive efforts and resources are engaged in taking your ideas, images, etc, and translating them into an acceptable sentence that conveys your intended meaning, and is going to be understandable to the reader. So when you teach kids to be more facile with construction, then there's a positive effect on your writing.”  

13. Inquiry  

Standard deviation: 0.92

“We don't have as much data on this, but the idea behind inquiry is that you're gathering information that you're analyzing, that will help you in terms of your writing assignments,” Graham says. The study notes this could include comparing and contrasting cases or collecting and evaluating evidence.

14. Observing Writers/Readers, Peer Assistance  

Standard deviation: 0.41

Simply observing other writers, readers of writing, or teachers/peers as they model how to go about a writing process or skill, can also improve writing outcomes. 

15. Summarization Instruction

Standard deviation: 0.49

This can take the form of either sharing summarization strategies or direct instruction in which you present a summary, you discuss it, your students practice, and you get feedback, Graham says.

16. Text Structure Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.39

Graham and his co-authors defined this as strategies in which teachers explicitly teach students knowledge about the purpose and/or structure of specific types of text, such as stories or persuasive texts. Once again, few writing instructors will be surprised this is an effective method. 

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What is YouGlish?

YouGlish is a great resource for learning to correctly pronounce words. As the name suggests, this is setup for English speakers and uses YouTube to deliver those guidance videos. But it goes beyond that to many language options.

Crucially, this uses native speakers of the language from which the word originates. This means you can hear how that word is pronounced by someone who can speak it naturally in the local tongue.

Since this uses YouTube as its source, videos are super simple to access and can be played across a host of digital devices.

The option to get the pronunciations from different places around the world is also available. You pick the region you want from multiple options, or all of those, if that's what you select, plus there is an option for sign language.

You can hear the audio playback after you type in the word you want, and it's also written below so you can read if volume up isn't an option -- although this is less helpful of course.

Obviously, all this makes YouGlish a great resource for ELL (English Language Learners) as well as ESL (English as a Second Language) students.

What's New In YouGlish?

YouGlish offers an ever evolving database of words and their pronunciations. At time of update here, the site offers more than 100 million tracks to pick from. The layout is still basic but it just works and that's sort of the point.

Current languages available include: US, UK, AUS, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, and New Zealand. 

How Does YouGlish Work?

YouTube has lots and lots and lots of videos -- as of 2020, there are 720,000 hours uploaded daily. So if you wanted to watch an hour's worth of uploaded YouTube videos it would take you about 82 years. Why is this relevant?

YouGlish is smart enough to trawl all that content to find the word or phrase you want to hear. It then offers a video with that word or phrase spoken in the language you selected. 

The video itself could be about anything but the important part is that the word or phrase will be spoken clearly, in many cases multiple times, so you can hear how it is correctly pronounced. 

For example, type in "power" in English and you get a man talking about fighter planes and the power they have, during which he repeats that word several times in the clip. But this is just one of 128,524 English options from which to pick.

What Are The Best YouGlish Features?

Aside from taking the work out of finding relevant videos for pronunciation, YouGlish also offers helpful options to make it even more clear.

You can activate the subtitles to be able to read the words as they are spoken in the video. This can help with spelling as well as recognition of how the word fits into a sentence structure. 

Another really useful option in the menu allows you to control playback speed. This lets you play at "Normal" speed or slow down to hear the words spoken more slowly. You can also go faster if that helps. These options range from "Min" for minimum to "0.5x" to "0.75x" then back to normal before going faster through "1.25x" and "1.5x," "1.75x" and then "Max" for the fastest playback.

A handy button featured below the video allows you to go back five seconds so you can repeat a section over and over without having to use the tracker to find that point.

You can toggle on a thumbnail view to see all the other videos in the list so you can skip to one that looks most relevant. A light icon allows you to play in dark mode for a more focused look.

YouGlish works for a selection of languages and can be played back in multiple accents and dialects for each. The language options are Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and sign language.

Is YouGlish Useful for Teachers?

YouGlish is a very valuable tool not only for individuals, but also for teachers with ELL and ESL students. 

You can narrow down your search by the word, by class, by phrase class, or by context. The tool also provides tips on how to improve English pronunciation – written below the video. This includes the phonetic pronunciation as well as suggestions of other words that help with pronunciation. 

Teachers can use the Restricted Mode to use these videos and guides in the classroom. It's worth noting that educators should be careful about inappropriate words and adult content as YouGlish won't necessarily filter for these. Also it’s a good idea to check the clips before sharing them in a classroom.

YouGlish best tips and tricks

Speak as a class
Use this app on the big screen and have students try to pronounce a word before playing it to the class to hear.

Link words
Explore a language using similar words to show how certain letter combinations are pronounced in that language across different sentences.

Reverse it
Play a word and see if students can work out where that word has come from, despite perhaps it not being as expected.

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Epic! is a name now synonymous with children's reading material as this is one of the largest digital libraries for younger readers in the world. And with new titles added weekly, this is growing bigger and bigger at a fast pace.

While this is fine for use at home, via a wide range of digital devices, it can also be used by teachers for education purposes. In fact, the app is so well developed that it now integrates well with the likes of Google Classroom to help make that teaching process even more straightforward.

This platform isn't a simple library alone though. You can also track progress, so teachers and parents can see how a child is doing with a book. Usefully, there is also a built-in dictionary so kids can check and learn new words to help make learning and reading a more independent process.

Read on to find out everything you need to know about Epic! for teachers, parents, and students.

What is Epic!?

Epic! is a digital library, but it's also an online reader for accessing all that content. New books and videos are added weekly, with more than 40,000 titles currently available. 

The site allows teachers to track student progress, plus provides recommendations for developmentally appropriate stories and novels for each student as their reading skills improve.

Students can read using the platform as it works like an e-reader, allowing them to take in books using a tablet, laptop, or smartphone – anything that runs a browser, essentially. The app version is specifically designed for use on tablets and smartphones, both iOS and Android.

Since Epic! is a child-specific platform, it's very safe and secure with content that is targeted and age appropriate. The books are a mix of Epic! original content and digital versions of already-published works.

What's New in Epic!?

Epic! is always adding news books and videos for students of varying ages so it's worth checking in regularly to see what's appeared. You can also subscribe to the company's newsletter to get updates sent right to your inbox. 

The company says this is now the world's largest digital library for kids, with more than 40,000 books, audiobooks, learning videos, and other options. So getting updates to help you get the best of all that could be useful.

How does Epic! work?

Epic! works like a digital library. Students can get access to the books they want and read when they like. They can also have their own accounts in which they build up a reading list and rate titles. This leads to personalization of content to help them discover new books and progress though their learning journey.

Parents can open an account for their child to get them reading but educators have access to specific tools that make assigning and tracking work easier.

Once a teacher account is started, it's possible to create accounts for each student. The ability to load in a roster makes this quicker and easier than doing it all manually. Teachers can assign reading based on ability, age, category, and more. 

The dashboard allows teachers to check on the progress of each student

What are the best Epic! features?

Epic! uses reading levels and age markers as ways to help find titles for students to read. This not only helps in the setting of work, by teachers, but also in the tracking of student progress through the varying levels.

Since this is a digital platform, access to the content is simple both on individual devices, in class and remotely, as well as on a smartscreen. By putting the book on a big screen, the class can read along together.

The quiz feature uses multiple choice questions to help students further integrate what they've read. This also acts as a useful assessment tool for teachers, though currently, the number of quizzes is fairly low. Perhaps a dedicated quiz creation tool such as SurveyMonkey can help here.

You can download and print monthly calendars with activity for both in the class and at home. A customizable reading challenge is available for offering badges and digital prizes to help encourage student reading.

There are read-to-me books, ideal for younger children so they can follow along with the written words as they hear the story being read.

How much does Epic! cost?

Epic! is free to download and start trying with lots of books available, but for the full Epic! service you'll need to pay. Three tiers are available: Free, School and Unlimited.

On Epic! Free, students get two free hours of reading per week, outside of school hours, and this doesn't even require a credit card to start using.

Epic School is also free but offers students reading in class time. In this case, the teacher uses the dashboard for tracking reading, as opposed to the parent in the Free variant. This version also includes learning videos and audiobooks.

For the Epic! Unlimited service, the price is $11.99 per month. Alternatively, you can pay annually and save a good chunk at $79.99, working out at $6.67 per month. This gets you all the above plus unlimited reading time, progress tracking, and interactive tools such as Reading Buddy.

Epic! best tips and tricks

Research projects
Use Epic! to carry out mini research projects in the class. Have students pick a non-fiction title and then report back on what they've learned. Since many books can be listened to, this even works for younger students.

Work on Fluency
Use the read-to-me books with headphones to have students in the class work on their fluency and pronunciation. This allows them to work independently too.

Use comics
For those more reluctant readers, there are comics available that could work as a gateway into more words-based reading material as they progress.

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A new study finds that students who read print texts understand the content better than those who read the same text on a handheld digital device such as a tablet. The findings could have implications for how digital devices are used in schools, says Ladislao Salmerón, the study’s lead author. 

Salmerón, a professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Valencia in Spain, says the research came out of a concern that massive digitalization of reading in schools may lead to difficulties that must be understood and properly addressed.

The study comparing print texts to text read on handheld digital devices was recently published in The Journal of Educational Psychology. Here is what you need to know about it. 

What is The Significance of the Print vs. Digital Device Research?  

The advantage of print texts over digital ones has been seen in many previous studies, and education psychologists even have a name for the phenomenon: the “screen inferiority effect.” However, by and large, prior studies had compared print readings to reading on a computer screen, not the handheld devices that modern students use for most of their reading. 

Salmerón and his colleagues wanted to see if the screen inferiority effect occurs if you focused on handheld devices vs. print. To answer that, they searched existing studies and performed an analysis focused on only data sets comparing print reading to handheld devices. 

Ultimately, they looked at dozens of studies, pooling results from more than 100,000 students. As with previous research, they found students who read print consistently performed slightly better. 

While small, Salmerón notes, the effect observed is statistically significant and could have large implications. “In interpreting this we must consider that children in schools read every day, so this effect could be accumulated over time,” he says. 

Why Is Reading Print More Effective? 

The reasons for the screen inferiority effect are not fully understood. 

One possibility is called the shallowing hypothesis, which assumes that when reading on digital devices people are generally doing so for short periods of time and reading short pieces of text. This, the hypothesis holds, favors a browsing state of mind and causes people to be less cognitively efficient when reading on devices. 

Another theory holds that the tactile nature of reading, feeling each page, and remembering whether it was at the beginning of the book or the end, helps provide more information cues to connect with your memory. 

Neither theory has been proven. “We still don’t know what causes the screen inferiority effect,” Salmerón says. He adds, research is necessary to understand it. “This is essential if we want to prevent such inferiority from happening.” 

What Are The Larger Implications of the Research?  

This study has direct implications for educators, Salmerón says. “First, printed texts should not be abandoned. Second, educators should consider the goals of the tasks when deciding which reading medium to use.” He adds, “Tablets may be well-suited for internet inquiry tasks, but paper should be preferred when promoting comprehension of long texts.” 

Salmeron says he is not anti-technology, and is working with fellow researchers to try and better understand the screen inferiority effect. “We are trying to envision ways to improve comprehension by means of digital tools,” he says. 

Even so, he says it is harder for him and his colleagues to receive funding because it is often work that does not show a benefit for technology. In addition, he is often criticized by edtech enthusiasts who claim he has an old-fashioned perspective on literacy. 

“My response is that we should not ignore evidence, and should not discard practices that have been proven to be useful such as print reading,” he says.  

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Book Creator is a digital book creation tool that empowers students to become novelists, comic book authors, and more. I’ve always been impressed with Book Cretaor’s versatility and the way in which it encourages more active learning.

Mike Afdahl, an award-winning educator and Coordinator of Technology Services for Northwest GA Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA), says that Book Creator is one of his favorite apps for fostering student creativity. “Any age and technological skill set can create and publish their own book,” Afdahl says. 

The capabilities Book Creator permits go well beyond merely text. “Multimedia options include photos, audio, video, emojis, and even add your own drawing,” he says. The multitude of options give students many ways to express themselves.

Brook Creator’s multimedia features are among my favorites as well as these provide opportunities for students to be creative in different mediums and to tweak assignments to meet passions. For instance, instead of creating a book, a student might use Book Creator to host a podcast or short video documentary, or the students might think of ways of combining these tools that educators haven’t even thought of yet. 

Read on to find out everything you need to know about Book Creator. 

What is Book Creator?  

Book Creator is designed to teach students by getting them excited about creating their own books on the topics they are learning about. Students can upload images, choose from emojis, make recordings and videos, and create and then share a finished book they wrote. 

These ebooks can take various forms, from digital portfolios to comics and scrapbooks to manuals and poetry collections. 

The free version of the tool allows educators to create a library of 40 books. Book Creator includes many templates to make creating various book projects easy and straightforward. Educators can also use it to assign material to students in interactive book form. 

How Does Book Creator Work?  

Book Creator was conceived in 2011 after Dan Amos and his wife, children’s author Ally Kennen, saw that their 4-year-old son (later diagnosed as dyslexic) was making slow progress with the school reading scheme. 

After trying unsuccessfully to get him more engaged, they wondered what would happen if they made their own books about things he loved, including Star Wars, pets, and his family. They also wanted to get him as interested in reading as he was in using a tablet. 

Amos was inspired to launch Book Creator, and today, the educational tool remains built around engaging children such as his son and making them excited about reading and creating. Teachers can have students create a science book based on a key concept from class or they can design poetry workbooks, complete with illustrations and recorded readings. 

To set up a free account, which gives access to most of the app’s features, teachers should visit Book Creator’s pricing website. They then click on the free option and select the school where they work -- the program is for classroom use only. 

Once they’ve signed into Book Creator they’ll be able to make their own books starting from scratch or choose from existing templates, which include themes such as newspaper, magazine, photo book, and more. Educators can then create their “library,” which can be shared with students. They’ll also get an invite code to invite students to start using the app. 

Pricing

The free version of Book Creator gives educator’s access to 40 books, but lacks some features of the paid version including real-time collaboration. 

Individual teachers can pay $12 per month, which allows them and their students to create up to 1,000 books and also provides access to support and ideas from other teachers using the app. 

Volume pricing is available for schools and districts but varies depending on the number of teachers who will be using the Book Creator app. 

Book Creator Tips & Tricks

Create an “About Me” Book  

A great way to get your students using Book Creator and learning more about one another is to have them create an “about me” page using the app. This can include a short bio and photo, for starters.

Assign Student Stories, Poems, and Written Projects of all Kinds 

This is maybe the most straightforward use of the app, but it’s an important one. Students can use Book Creator to write, illustrate, and add video and audio recordings to their written work. 

Support STEM Lessons 

The app can provide a great opportunity for students to organize thoughts and show their work in math and science. For example, science students can write or record their predictions before testing a hypothesis, then compare and contrast results. 

Produce Musical Ebooks  

Book Creator’s recording abilities provide many different ways to utilize it in music class. An educator can write out music and have audio recordings embedded for students to play along with. 

Create Comic Books 

Encourage students to create their own superheroes with the popular comic book template on Book Creator and have them tell stories and/or share work in a variety of topics. 

Support SEL Lesson Plans  

Students can create books, comics, etc., to be collaborative and learn team-building. Or assign them to interview members of their communities and share these interviews in Book Creator. 

Use Book Creator’s “Read to Me” Function  

The “Read to Me” function on Book Creator is one of the app’s most versatile capabilities. It allows users to have the ebook created on the app read to them in various languages while highlighting the word being spoken. This can help early readers learn to read, or provide an opportunity to practice proficiency in English or a foreign language.  

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Quill was created as a free tool designed to be used in education and at home as a way to work on reading, writing, and comprehension skills.

You might think that being free this is lacking in some areas. But right from the premium website build quality to the layout that's clearly had a lot of thought put into it, this is a top tool when it comes to language building.

This nonprofit aims to help a wide variety of kids, from elementary thru middle and right up to high school. That means a selection of OER content right across the curriculum that can help students of varying ages and abilities.

As a result, Quill has been used by more than seven million students to write a massive two billion sentences. Here's all you need to know about Quill.

What is Quill?

Quill is a digital website-based tool that is designed to work alongside the curriculum to help improve student reading comprehension, writing, and language skills.

This is designed for use by students directly, via teachers, administrators, or guardians -- which can help tailor this to even younger students or those that might struggle working alone.

The tool focuses on grammar and writing in order to help students develop. This is done using a selection of area specific tools, all of which are tailored to Common Core skills and even offer differentiation for the likes of ELL, AP English, and pre-AP too.

Crucially, this will all work in a way that can be tailored to the individual needs of each student. So you can work to specific targets to achieve results that are tangible and help in student progress through the year.

How does Quill work?

Quill is very simple to use, initially letting you select which user you are: Student, Teacher, Admin, or Guardian. You can then sign up with your details or use Google or Facebook for quick sign-in to get started right away. You are then able to select the grade ranges you will teach as well as the subjects required including English, Math, Science, History, and more.

You are able to create a class and add students, which is very easily integrated if your institution already uses Google Classroom. You can let students create their own accounts or make ones for them using their names. You then have the option to download a PDF with usernames and passwords listed for all the students, making access for them simple.

It is possible to assign activities to students or the class as a whole. Usefully, there is a diagnostic tool that can be used to assess student ability, so you know which projects will be a good fit for them to work on that are suited to their skills and needs.

Select lessons to get started with options such as Compound Objects and Predicates for grade 7 and above in which students learn to combine sentences by using compound objects and predicates. 

The basic breakdown of tools is Diagnostics, Lessons, Connect, Grammar, and Proofreader. More on these in the next section.

Teachers and guardians then have a dashboard through which progress can be monitored and new work assigned as needed.

What are the best Quill features?

Quill has some very powerful tools that are tailored to ability, which allows students to progress at a rate that is challenging but without being off-putting.

Quill Diagnostic is a super helpful way to assess a student's skill level, which then helps them to be guided toward what it is that they should be doing to make improvements in the areas they need it.

The Quill Lessons are for larger groups, or the class as a whole. These offer writing prompts as well as discussion topics to allow for creative writing as a group or independently.

Quill Connect is a helpful tool that focuses on sentence writing. This aims to build sentence-writing skills to create a more complex end result in which the students know the building blocks used to get to that end result.

The Grammar tool is another helpful addition that offers more writing activities, only this time, as you may have guessed, with a grammar focus.

The new Reading for Evidence tool offers non-fiction texts with AI-powered writing prompts that use the text for evidence for students as they write out their work.

Finally, the Proofreader tool offers students certain passages of text with mistakes, which need to be spotted and fixed in order to progress.

How much does Quill cost?

Quill is primarily free to use although there is the option to go for a Premium upgrade to get more detailed reporting. For the free access you are required to sign-up using an email address, although students don't need to do this if you don't want that.

The Teacher Premium option, charged at $80 per teacher per year, can be tailored for free for 30 days before you decide if you could benefit from the extra features. These include more data reports including activity scores report, concepts report, standards report, and data export capabilities. 

A School and District Premium option is available, at $1,800 per school per year, which gets you all the above plus monthly usage reports and an admin dashboard, plus Clever Secure sync, unlimited teacher licenses, priority technical support, and Quill Academy access.

Quill best tips and tricks

Start as a class
Teach a lesson in the room so students can get to grips with how the platform works, before letting them progress individually or outside of school time.

Use the lights
Student mastery is shown in red, orange, or green so teachers can assess at-a-glance using the dashboard, helping flag when students need help or perhaps could be challenged more.

Proofread
Use the Quill Proofreader tool as a class to work through errors in the text and feedback what happened at each point so everyone can learn as a group.

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Reading Practice is a new feature from Google that is designed to make reading easier for emerging readers, and is available on Google Play Books and Google Kids Space. While using Reading Practice and reading ebooks, young readers have the opportunity to track their reading position, hear what a word sounds like if they get stuck, and lots more. 

After experimenting with Reading Practice myself, it’s easy to see how it would be helpful for a new reader and how it might perform some of the functions of an encouraging caregiver or teacher. I particularly enjoyed the “hear a word” feature, which allows readers to tap a word they don’t know how to pronounce. New readers often struggle with words they don’t recognize or know, and, let’s be honest, some adults still need help here and there – how do you pronounce “macabre” again? 

My only complaint is the default voice words and sentences are read in is cold and robotic. This isn’t ideal given that this tool is geared toward kids, and I think Google should look into creating a fun, more kid-friendly voice for this tool and maybe even a cartoon persona to go with it. (Duolingo has done this very well with the quirky characters it features on its language learning tool.) 

Because it is built into many published ebooks, Reading Practice is a nice complement to other reading assistance tools such as Microsoft Immersive Reader, and offers plenty of learning opportunities for parents, teachers, and caregivers. 

Here’s all you need to know about Reading Practice on Google Play Books. 

What is Reading Practice?  

Reading practice is a reading aid or assistance tool designed to help new readers recognize words and learn new vocabulary. In a blog post announcing the release of Reading Practice on June 1, 2023, Google noted the tool can help early readers:  

• Track their reading position: They’ll see the text highlighted as they read out loud, tracking where they are in the book and helping them focus on the next word. 
• Hear a word: If they’re stuck on how to pronounce a word, they can simply tap it to hear what it sounds like. 
• Sound it out: With a quick tap, they’ll also hear a word broken down by syllable.
• Hear a sentence: For even more context, new readers can listen to an entire sentence.
• Define a word: To learn more, they can tap to see or hear a child-friendly definition of a word. 
• Set a new reading position: They can tap any word to update their position in the book and start tracking from there. 
• Practice a challenging word: At the end of the page, they’ll have the option to practice any words they skipped or mispronounced. 

How Do You Access Reading Practice?  

Reading Practice is available on Google Play Books and Google Kids Space. Google Play Books has a curated selection of kid-friendly books, including some free options. 

Users can also search the general Google Play Books selection for children’s ebooks. While not every book is Reading Practice enabled, most are and you can verify which ones are by looking for the “practice” badge. 

How Much Does Reading Practice Cost?  

Reading Practice is now a built a in feature of Google Play Books, so doesn’t cost anything to enable. However, the ebooks it works with still have to be purchased in most cases, though there are some free selections with Reading Practice enabled.  

What Else Should Parents and Teachers Know About Reading Practice? 

Reading Practice is a fun new feature that educators may want to let their students know about as a possible tool to encourage summer reading. 

Educators should also be aware that it’s a Google-specific product and won’t work with ebooks purchased from other sources such as Kindle or Apple Books. 

Despite the limitations, for existing Google Play Books users it’s a nifty new tool that I predict kids will enjoy and that may help parents and educators encourage reading. However, as with all technology, as good as it is, Reading Practice doesn’t replace a caring parent, caregiver, or educator. 

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community here

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When a child falls behind in reading, an effective reading intervention program can be a lifeline to everything else education has to offer. That’s why having effective reading interventions is so key for every school and district. 

A panel of education experts explored how to build effective reading interventions with the help of technology during a recent Tech & Learning webinar hosted by Dr. Kecia Ray. They discussed motivating students and staff as well as ways in which technology can help educators differentiate instruction for students with different needs. 

Watch the full webinar here. 

Key Takeaways

Technology Can Help 

Kelly Frasse, Director of Student Services and Professional Development, Sangamon Area Special Education District, said her district decided to use DreamBox Reading Plus, an adoptive literacy program, because they wanted something that could help educators meet students where they are. “We just needed different modalities to teach the students because of the varying learning styles that we have that we needed to address, especially with working with students with disabilities,” she said. 

Dr. Lynn Simmers, Assistant Superintendent, South Allen County Schools, said technology fosters more focused learning. “The students do appreciate the immediate feedback that they're receiving, and so do teachers,” Simmers said. “We're setting goals. Teachers are involved in weekly collaboration meetings. So we're looking at student growth over time.” 

Challenges Are Many so Solutions Need to Be Versatile 

“So I think the challenges with reading intervention programs stem from just the the challenges that we face as educators on a daily basis,” said Kyle Coffman, principal at Riverside Intermediate, Plymouth Community School Corporation. These challenges are linked to the four major assumptions about student learning. “Not every student comes to us at grade level. Not every student learns the same way. Some students need more time than others. And not every child has a home environment that's conducive to academic learning,” Coffman said. This means that reading intervention programs need to work with students with different skill levels from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. “We want programs that are going to help educators address that stratification of need,” he said. 

Celebrating Success 

Keeping kids engaged and excited about any intervention program can be a challenge. That’s why it’s so important to offer immediate and positive feedback. Maria Jenkins, Title 1 Instructional Coach, Silver Creek School Corporation, sets goals with students and provides them with rewards when they meet those goals. Jenkins said it can be helpful for teachers to be mindful of trying to maintain the motivation and excitement of the program.

“You have to celebrate success,” Coffman said, noting that his district offers certificates that students earn. In addition, providing students with a degree of voice in their education is key for building engagement. “Students get to choose what they want to read, I cannot stress that enough,” he said. “I think we all know how important that is.” 

Motivation Is Key 

Tami Zylka, Professional Development Specialist at DreamBox Learning, which sponsored the event, said Reading Plus was designed with student motivation in mind. “We want our students to feel that they are able to improve as readers and become lifelong readers,’ she said, adding that DreamBox reading products are designed in accordance with the science of reading best practices. "[We want to] develop students reading and literacy skills in a manner that is aligned with the science of reading.” 

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School librarian Mindy Engler isn’t a big fan of the term “reluctant reader.” 

“Really, teenagers are all reluctant readers to some extent,” she says. “Especially with everything they divide their time with, to sit down and read a book takes a lot sometimes.” 

Engler is the high school library media specialist at Canton City Schools and offers these successful strategies that utilize both technology and good old-fashioned classroom management. Using these approaches can help inspire reluctant readers … er, teenagers, to spend time with books. 

1. Engaging Reluctant Readers: Provide Access  

Giving kids a chance to read in whatever format they want, whether that’s a print book, ebook, or audiobook, is key to the success Canton City Schools have had around reading, Engler says. 

“Students have access to a school library right here, and two different apps for ebooks,” she says. One app is Sora, which was added during the pandemic, and which kids use to check out books during breaks from school and on the weekend. 

“I love showing people our checkout stats, where I can see that kids are checking out a book at 9:30 on a Friday night,” she says.  

2.  Sustained Silent Reading in The Classroom  

A number of teachers within the district devote a certain amount of time each class or every other class to reading. “They allow students to choose whatever it is that they want to read,” Engler says. 

This practice helps eliminate one of the main obstacles to reading for students (and adults): lack of free time. “With teenagers being busy and having so many other things vying for their attention [it helps] to actually give kids some time in class in school to read a book of their choice,” she says. 

3. Book Club  

Engler has hosted a book club since 2018. Once again, student choice is a key component of the approach. 

“Students choose the books that they want to read,” she says. “I have a big list that I show them, and we show book trailers, and then at the beginning of the year, they choose all the books that look interesting to them.”  

They then narrow it down to one that they read over a nine-week period during which the emphasis is on reading for pleasure not memorizing facts or looking for themes. 

“Another part of getting kids to read is to make it fun,” Engler says. “There's no tests on it. We just read the book and come to the library and have a book discussion.” 

4. Teachers Modeling Reading 

Teachers in the district encourage reading for pleasure by posting what they’re reading, not on social media, but literally on doors outside their offices or classrooms. 

“I have that outside my office, things I'm currently reading and currently listening to and what I've read,” Engler says. Students are also encouraged to share what they’ve read and Engler will post it on a big bulletin board. These efforts help foster an ongoing conversation around reading.  

5. Prioritize Student Choice in Reading 

Engler is an advocate for students choosing what they read when they are reading for fun. “If it's your choice, you're going to be invested in that,” she says. “We tell students if you read the first 50 pages and it's not interesting, it's okay to put that book down and pick up another one that you would like to read. Verse novels, graphic novels, rereading favorites -- all of that is part of that student choice.” 

While Canton City Schools still has required readings, Engler advocates for adding some level of student choice to that process as well, if feasible. “I always say, ‘You can teach things that are in the standards such as setting and theme with any type of books.' So if kids are maybe not as engaged in one book, maybe have lit circles and they can choose a couple of different books." 

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ReadWorks is a reading comprehension tool that is web-based and offers research texts for students to work with. Crucially, it goes beyond just offering reading and also includes assessments.

ReadWorks features lots of different text types, from passages to articles to full-on ebooks. The website is designed to help support reading progress and, as such, has filters to make distributing work correctly very easy. It also offers smart features to help students progress by expertly pushing them at the limit of their ability.

ReadWorks is science-based and uses cognitive research as well as standards-aligned content to help students with their reading comprehension and retention. All this comes from a nonprofit setup that is used by more than five million educators and 30 million students.

So is ReadWorks for you and your classroom?

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What is ReadWorks?

ReadWorks is a scientifically researched collection of reading materials and comprehension tools to help students learn and educators teach effectively.

ReadWorks continuously studies how various methods affect reading comprehension and applies that learning to what it offers. Consequently, it has developed various types of reading, from its Article-A-Day offering to its StepReads, all designed to help progress students above their natural level.

Lots of resources are available so it pays to have work distributed by educators to help students find the right level for them. The inclusion of assessment tools allows teachers to work with and monitor students so they can continue to advance at a suitable rate.

How does ReadWorks work?

ReadWorks is free to use and provides a powerful platform comprising reading resources, assessment tools, and easy sharing to allow teachers to set work for in-class and at-home use.

Texts come in fiction and nonfiction forms and range from passages to ebooks. Usefully, educators can assign certain passages to students along with assessment questions to follow-up the reading. This can then be shared using a link or class code, via Google Classroom for example, over email, or any other method.

Once a class is created teachers can vary the assignments as well as the standards-aligned questions. These come in short answer format but also in multiple choice, which can automatically be graded upon completion. 

It is possible to grade students, offer highlights to sections, provide direct feedback, and track progress using the dashboard. More on these tools below.

What are the best ReadWorks features?

ReadWorks is a complete assignment and assessment tool that comes with a teacher dashboard that allows progress to be monitored for students and groups.

When assigning work, there is a selection of filters that allow teachers to search for texts by grade level, topic, content type, activity type, lexile level, and more.

The content type breaks down into some helpful special offerings. The StepReads offer a less complex version of original passages that retain all the integrity of vocabulary, knowledge, and length, only while adapting it to give access to students who may not yet be able to read at that grade level.

Article-A-Day is another special feature that delivers a 10-minute daily routine to help "dramatically" increase background knowledge, reading stamina, and vocabulary for students.

Question Sets are helpful as these are text-based questions with explicit and inferential types to help build a deeper level of understanding.

Users also have access to a vocabulary assistant, the ability to pair texts, a book studies section, image assisted ebooks, and student tools that allow for text size manipulation, split-screen view, highlighting, annotating, and more.

How much does ReadWorks cost?

ReadWorks is totally free to use and doesn't feature any adverts or tracking.

When you sign up you are encouraged to make a donation as a one-off fee or a monthly amount, but you don't have to if you don't want to. Equally, you can start using this and then make a payment as a donation when you feel it has helped you.

ReadWorks best tips and tricks

Get parental
Have parents create accounts as well so they can assign reading to their kids to further help them learn as the student will know the platform already from working with it in class.

Go daily
Use the Article-A-Day feature to build reading regularity into your students' lives. Do it in class or assign it for at home.

Use audio
Take advantage of the audio narration feature to help students try more challenging reading options while being guided.

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CommonLit is an online-based literacy resource that offers standards-based training and assessments for students.

Created for students of a wide range, from grade 3 up to grade 12, it covers a lot of reading progression. As such, there is a broad selection of levelled texts of varying types that are available for free.

Built to common-core standards, this can be a useful resource for teachers to add to their current tools. It can also provide a way for students to learn at their own pace outside of the classroom.

Thanks to a clear and easy layout, which is filled with rich content, this is a very appealing way to engage students with reading.

So is CommonLit for you?

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What is CommonLit?

CommonLit is a digital resource for teaching and learning literacy skills. That means it offers a wide selection of common-core standards-aligned reading as well as assessment tools.

CommonLit is web-based and can be accessed from most devices. Everything is helpfully categorized and presented in an intuitive way that makes searching and browsing very easy, even for younger students.

Texts range from news articles and short stories to poems and historical documents. A selection of curated texts is also available, which organizes information by literary or historical periods, making it all very helpful as teaching resources. 

A selection of languages is available, plus speech-to-text, all of which help to make the various texts more widely available to a broad range of students.

How does CommonLit work?

CommonLit allows you to browse by category, with a specific Themes section, but also to filter by features such as grades, genders, lexile range, and more. Or simply type in a specific title to search.

Once you've found what you want to read, select the title to be brought into the lander page. Here you have the option to begin reading right away, to select to have it read aloud, or to translate to another language. You can also download the written content as a PDF if you want to read offline or save it for later. 

Tabs across the top provide extra resources, including a Teacher Guide, Parent Guide, Related Media, and Paired Texts. You can adjust font size to suit and favorite to come back to later. The option to share is also available, ideal for teachers who want to distribute specific titles to the class, groups, or individual students. 

Texts also usually feature images either in-line or to the side, which are a fixed size and generally don't require a fast internet connection or a lot of data to access.

What are the best CommonLit features?

CommonLit translates texts into more than 13 languages for access immediately, including Spanish, Arabic, and Russian. Each passage usefully comes with annotations that allow students to define words at the click of a button. But you can also make your own annotations -- which is super helpful if you want to leave guidance or instructions for students. 

CommonLit also offers assessments alongside the texts with varying levels, including guidance and discussion. From multiple choice questions to short answers, there are various types of assessment questions that help provide an idea of student understanding. Guiding questions are also available, which can be turned on or off and that students must answer correctly to progress. 

The offering of extension texts and related content make for a great way to continue to learn around a subject and also to offer reading for students to continue at home.

Integration tools such as Google Classroom and Clever help to make the process of signing in students easier. Lots of features are in the paid-for premium versions though. More on that next. 

How much does CommonLit cost?

CommonLit comes in various forms with a free option as well as paid-for premium tiers. 

The Free account includes the CommonLit Digital Library plus the CommonLit 360 Curriculum. 

The Essentials plan, at $2,000 per school, gets you the above plus introductory webinars, priority customer support, ClassLink and Clever rostering integrations, and on-demand professional development.

The Essential Pro tier, at $3,250 per school, gets you all the above plus the CommonLit Assessment Series, Canvas integration, and administrator data.

Go for the Essential Pro Plus package, at $5,500 per school, and you get all the above plus quarterly virtual 360 PD and consulting, and 360 unit skills assessments. 

CommonLit best tips and tricks

Use the themes
Work through a theme in a lesson or across a week to explore things such as Family, America, Prejudice and Discrimination, Resilience, and more.

Use Text Set
Select the Text Set feature for 50 options in order of historical period, literary movements, or more, to lay out tasks for the class.

Annotate
Have students use the annotation tool to provide feedback and highlight questions that are needed for you to look at in class so you can help.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Once upon a time there was a teacher looking for new ways to teach old subjects.

While storytelling is nothing new, it hasn’t always been applied effectively in the modern classroom. Obviously, storytelling is a great way for kids to learn to love reading and writing. But almost any school subject can be considered through a dramatic frame, from history to geography to science. Even math can be taught through narrative (word problems, anyone?). Most importantly, storytelling gives kids the opportunity to be inventive with language, graphics, and design, and to share their creations with others.

The following sites and apps for storytelling range from basic to advanced. Many are designed for educators or include guides for use in education. And while most are paid products, the prices are generally reasonable and nearly every platform offers a free trial or free basic account.

The End. The Beginning.

Best Sites and Apps for Digital Storytelling

PREMIUM

• Story Xperiential
  Story Experiential offers a comprehensive storytelling curriculum based on the creative process of the renowned Pixar studios. Eight modules cover all aspects of the creative process, from the starting point, “What if?” to the final edits. No unusual equipment is required- students use an ordinary smartphone or camera and free editing software. The program is standards-aligned and can be incorporated into any subject area. A moderated community forum supports kids in giving and receiving peer feedback, while the public exhibition celebrates their work at the program’s end. Although this program is a bit more expensive than many others, it provides a professional level of guidance that few can match. A seven-day free trial will help those interested to decide if it’s worth it.
• Plotagon
  Offering professional-level animation at a deep discount to education users, Plotagon is a remarkably powerful tool for storytelling and moviemaking. Download the app or desktop software and start creating. You need only supply the story idea and text, as Plotagon’s libraries of animated characters, backgrounds, sound effects, music, and special effects cover vast territory. In fact, just browsing the libraries will help generate ideas for stories. A must-try, if not a must-have! Android and iOS: Free with in-app purchases. Windows desktop: For education users, only $3/month or $27/year, with 30-day free trial.
• BoomWriter
  Boomwriter’s unique storytelling platform allows kids to write and publish their own collaborative story, while teachers offer advice and assistance. Free to join and use; parents pay $12.95 for the published book.
• Buncee
  Buncee is a slideshow presentation tool that lets teachers and students create and share interactive stories, lessons, and assignments. A drag-and-drop interface, templates, and thousands of graphics make Buncee popular with educators and easy for kids to use. Strong support for accessibility and inclusion.
• Nawmal
  Students create imaginative videos using a wide range of animated characters who speak via AI. A great way to build communication, presentation, and conversation skills all at once. Free trial for educators. Windows 10 download (or Mac-compatible with Parallels Desktop or Bootcamp engaged).
• Pixton for Schools
  An award-winning platform that’s employed by districts from Santa Ana to New York City, Pixton offers more than 4,000 backgrounds, 3,000 props, and 1,000 subject-specific templates for creating digital comics. Plus, they’ve added features based on feedback from educators to make teaching with Pixton simple, fun, and safe. Highlights include easy logins, integration with Google/Microsoft, and unlimited classrooms.
• Storybird
  A story creation and social media site that allows students to illustrate their original text with professional graphics rendered in a variety of styles. Writing prompts, lessons, videos, and quizzes provide the support that kids need to write well.
• Storyboard That
  Storyboard That’s specialized edition for education offers more than 3,000 lesson plans and activities, while integrating with applications such as Clever, Classlink, Google Classroom, and others. It’s also FERPA, CCPA, COPPA, and GDPR compliant. Best of all, you can create your first storyboard without a download, credit card, or login! 14-day free trial for educators.

FREEMIUM

• Powtoon
  Powtoon is a presentation platform that allows users to create slide-based video animations with special effects, music, and voiceover narration. Choose from among a large collection of editable templates or upload your own slide presentation or video. With an education account, teachers can create an online Powtoon classroom and invite students to join so that resources and assignments can be easily shared. This Powtoon Lesson Plan is a practical example of how teachers can incorporate this engaging storytelling tool into the curriculum.
• Book Creator
  A powerful ebook creation tool, Book Creator allows users to embed all kinds of content, from rich multimedia to Google Maps, YouTube videos, PDFs, and more. Try a real-time class collaboration—and be sure to check out AutoDraw, an AI-powered feature that aids artistically challenged users in fashioning drawings to be proud of.
• Cloud Stop Motion
  Very cool software through which users create stop-motion video projects from any browser or device. Use your device camera and microphone, or upload images and sound files, then add text and animation effects. Try out the simple interface without an account or credit card. COPPA compliant. Free organization/school accounts with unlimited students and classes, and 2 GB storage. Buy additional storage for $27-$99 annually.
• StoryJumper
  Simple online software that allows kids to write stories, generate customized characters, and narrate their own book. Excellent for younger students. The step-by-step teacher’s guide makes it easy to integrate this platform into your curriculum. Free to create and share online – pay only to publish or download books. Try it first – no account or credit card required!

FREE

• Storyline Online
  An award-winning children’s literacy program, Storyline Online couples well-known actors with top illustrated children’s books. Each storytelling video features the actor’s dramatic narration while skillfully animated illustrations unfold to tell the tale. The extensive teacher’s guide that accompanies each book/ video includes a synopsis, standards, suggested grade levels, themes, activities and printable worksheets. Storyline Online is endorsed by the American Federation of Teachers and the American Library Association.
• Pic-Lits
  A simple yet powerful tool that supports literacy through the pairing of images and text. Kids can choose from among hundreds of available images in diverse topics ranging from animals to politics, then drag and drop words from the word bank to create their “Pic-Lit.” Or choose the “Freestyle” option and start typing. Dozens of lesson plans covering ELA topics and poetry offer guidance to educators in implementing Pic-Lits in the classroom.
• Storytelling Activities with Google Tools
  K12 edtech authority Eric Curts displays his considerable expertise with Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets in this video demonstration of using Google tools to write and illustrate stories and poetry. An engaging speaker, Curts dives into “Choose your Own Adventure,” “Emoji Rebus,” “Stop Motion Animation,” and other super creative ways to excite kids about writing.
• Knight Lab Storytelling Projects
  From Northwestern University’s Knight Lab, six online tools help users tell their stories in unusual ways. Juxtapose lets you quickly make a comparison between two scenes or images. Scene turns your image into 3D virtual reality. Soundcite narrates your text seamlessly. Storyline allows users to build an annotated, interactive line chart, while StoryMap is a slide-based tool for telling stories with maps. And with Timeline, students can create rich interactive timelines about any topic. All tools are free, easy to use, and include examples. The easily accessible FAQs and examples for each tool provide excellent support while the shareable links and embed codes let users show off their work. Some projects may require a free Dropbox or Google account.
• Make Beliefs Comix
  Author and journalist Bill Zimmerman has built a marvelous free site where kids of any age can learn to express their ideas through digital comics. Mouse over the main navigation and you’ll be amazed by the number of topics to explore, from 30 Ways to Use MakeBeliefsComix in the Classroom to social-emotional learning to text- and image-based comic prompts. Video and text tutorials guide users. No special talent required!
• Imagine Forest
  Exceptional free site that offers features more common to paid sites, including story idea generator and prompts; built-in dictionary, thesaurus, and rhyming dictionary; writing tips and challenges; and the ability to produce assignments, monitor progress, and award badges. Images and customizable characters are supported as well. Awesome for teachers on a budget.

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Wordle’s popularity has led many teachers to incorporate it into the classroom. And as much as we love Wordle and how educators are using it to teach, it’s not the only word game that provides learning opportunities. 

The Power of Wordle and Other Word Games 

Wordle has been a good reminder for educators about how spelling and playing with words can be fun, says Nell K. Duke, professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Michigan. 

“Sometimes, people have this feeling that phonics and spelling instruction has to be boring, or people avoid it because they're afraid that children won't like it,” she says. “But well-done phonics and spelling instruction can be highly engaging.” 

Instead of, or in addition to, Wordle, Duke recommends incorporating games that have been researched and shown to be effective in teaching children. She’s on the advisory board for PBSkids.org and says that site can be a good place to start. “The PBSkids.org games are developed in consultation with researchers and they are generally well-aligned with things we know about supporting children's development,” she says. 

Rather than the term “gamification,” Duke prefers the term “puzzlefication” to describe the way in which she recommends incorporating word games into the classroom. “One thing about Wordle is that you're not competing with other people. It's sort of a personal best kind of thing,” she says. “When you say gamification, for a lot of people the association is one of competition, one of accruing points, etc. And I don't actually think that would be good advice for teachers of young children. We don't want to create situations where some children are winning and some children are losing on a regular basis.” 

Other Word Games Beyond Wordle  

Esther Keller, M.L.S. Librarian at Marine Park JHS 278 in Brooklyn, created her own customizable version of Wordle on Canva so that she could play more than one game per day with students, and students couldn’t give away the word of the day. (Here is a link to her template for educators who are interested.)

Keller also recommends the app-based game Wordscapes. Her interest in these games goes beyond helping students with spelling, vocabulary, and reasoning. “Mostly, I'm finding these games as a social-emotional [exercise] for the students,” she says. “It's a way for them to collaborate together on a puzzle and be a team.” 

Spello is a Wordle-inspired game that can be customized with multiple words and is designed to help students learn words their teachers assign for spelling homework. Tom Davies, a software developer in the United Kingdom, designed it. “I am dyslexic myself, and my two boys have also inherited my issues, so the weekly spelling lists from school have always been tricky,” he says. “When we started playing Wordle the boys were very interested and I saw that it could engage them, and had the idea.” 

Spello will read words to students and help them learn as they guess. “Unlike other spellings apps we have tried, Spello guides you toward the right answer with hints rather than being a simple black-or-white answer, which is more supportive and less frustrating,” Davies says. “For teachers, Spello allows you to easily create your own lists and then share them with your class via a link.” 

• How to Teach With Wordle
• Canva: Best Tips And Tricks For Teaching

Universal dyslexia screening is a focal point of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ education agenda. 

On the campaign trail in 2021, Adams, a former New York Police Department Captain, said that early interventions aimed at students at risk of developing dyslexia would not only increase literacy but could reduce the city’s prison population over time. According to Adams, 30 percent of those incarcerated in the city are dyslexic, while a study conducted in a Texas prison found nearly 50 percent of the population was dyslexic. 

While details on what universal dyslexia screening in New York City, the nation’s largest school district, might look like remain limited, city education officials recently announced that they are planning to open a school focused on serving students with dyslexia. 

Universal dyslexia screening is not required in New York state, however, it is required in 39 other states and is an important evidence-based intervention, say researchers. 

How Does Universal Dyslexia Screening Work? 

Dyslexia affects approximately 20 percent of the population and accounts for 80 to 90 percent of learning disabilities, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity. Early recognition of the risk for dyslexia and other word-level disabilities through universal screening in kindergarten, and then providing those students with intensive intervention, is a key early literacy strategy, says the National Center on Improving Literacy in a white paper. 

Hank Fien, Ph. D, director of the National Center on Improving Literacy and co-author of the white paper, says that when children who need additional support learning to read are provided that support early, it can make a huge difference. 

“There are going to be those kids who are going to respond very well, immediately to those interventions,” he says. “We may prevent them from ever being evaluated for disability because they've solved their issue of learning to read words effectively, and then learning to read connected text accurately and fluently.” 

Other students identified in the screening may still struggle with reading and still receive a dyslexia diagnosis, or diagnoses for another learning disability. However, early evidence-based literacy interventions are still helpful to these students. “Most of them still respond to some degree, and in the absence of getting that support, their disability may have been even more severe than it would have been had we not intervened early,” Fien says. 

Dyslexia Screening Does Not Equal A Dyslexia Diagnosis  

The type of dyslexia screening that occurs in schools – which typically involves a series of brief tests to explore a student’s ability in areas such as reading, writing and spelling – merely identifies young students who are struggling to read and is not to be confused with a medical diagnosis that is generally provided by a healthcare provider. 

However, even when it comes to medical diagnoses, there are disparities that can result in certain students not getting the support they need. “Mostly it's wealthy individuals that can refer their child to get a formal medical diagnosis,” Fien says. That’s why even if it’s not a formal diagnosis, universal screening for dyslexia can help give all students the additional resources they need.  

Where Is Universal Dyslexia Screening Required?  

“It is now the norm that states require universal screening in their early elementary grades,” says Brian Gearin, Ph. D, a researcher at the Center on Teaching and Learning at the University of Oregon and a co-author of the National Center on Improving Literacy’s white paper. “It varies a little bit, in terms of which grades universal screening occurred, [and] the extent to which schools do that is a slightly different question because all we can say is that there are laws that say schools are supposed to do this.” 

Only 11 states do not require universal dyslexia screening. These are: 

• Alaska
• California
• Hawaii 
• Idaho 
• New York
• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania
• South Dakota
• Utah
• Vermont
• Wisconsin 

Education and policy leaders looking to advocate for screening requirements in their state can use resources available on the National Center on Improving Literacy website, which provides links to the research that supports these policies. 

Enacting screening policies in more states and making sure existing policies are effectively enforced, can help more students get screened during the critical, early-intervention window. “There's much more evidence behind early intervention programs addressing these issues, versus waiting to catch these kids in upper elementary or middle school or later,” Fien says. If you wait, the odds of success can be relatively low, and it becomes much more expensive to address, he says.

• How to Teach With Wordle
• Study: Young Readers Less Likely to Comprehend E-Books

In today’s digital world, we seem to be surrounded by news. Clickbait, anyone? Yet the pervasive and often intrusive nature of internet news articles belies the fact that many of these sites are behind a paywall, biased, or feature low-quality reporting.

Still, online articles are a great starting point for all kinds of learning assignments across the curriculum. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best free article websites for students. Many of these sites offer not only high-quality topical articles on every subject, but also ideas for lessons, such as questions, quizzes, and discussion prompts.

Student Article Websites

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CommonLit
With thousands of high-quality, Common Core-aligned reading passages for grades 3-12, this easy-to-use literacy site is a rich source of English and Spanish texts and lessons. Search by theme, grade, Lexile score, genre, and even literary devices such as alliteration or foreshadowing. Texts are accompanied by teacher guides, paired texts activities, and assessments. Teachers can share lessons and track student progress with a free account. 

DOGOnews
News articles featuring current events, science, social studies, world events, civics, environment, sports, weird/fun news, and more. Free access to all articles. Premium accounts offer extras such as simplified and audio versions, quizzes, and critical thinking challenges. 

CNN10
Replacing the popular CNN Student News, CNN 10 provides 10-minute video news stories on current events of international importance, explaining how the event fits into the broader news narrative. 

KiwiKids News
Created by a New Zealand primary school educator, Kiwi Kids News features free articles about health, science, politics (including U.S. political topics), animals, and the Olympics. Kids will love the “Odd Stuff” articles, which focus on unusual news, from the world’s biggest potato to centenarian athletes. 

PBS NewsHour Daily News Lessons
Daily articles covering current events in video format. Each lesson includes a full transcript, fact list, summary, and focus questions. 

NYT Daily Lessons/Article of the Day
The New York Times Daily Lessons builds a classroom lesson around a new article each day, offering thoughtful questions for writing and discussion, as well as related ideas for further study. Perfect for practicing critical thinking and literacy skills for middle and high school students, it’s a part of the larger NYT Learning Network, which provides an abundance of activities for students and resources for teachers.

The Learning Network
Current event articles, student opinion essays, movie reviews, students review contests, and more. The educator resource section offers top-notch teaching and professional development resources. 

News For Kids
With the motto “Real News, Told Simply,” News for Kids strives to present the latest topics in U.S. and world news, science, sports, and the arts in a way that’s accessible to most readers. Features a coronavirus update page.

ReadWorks
A fully free research-based platform, Readworks provides thousands of nonfiction and fiction passages searchable by topic, activity type, grade, and Lexile level. Educator guides cover differentiation, hybrid and remote learning, and free professional development. Great resource for teachers.

Science News for Students
Winner of multiple awards for journalism, Science News for Students publishes original science, technology, and health features for readers ages 9-14. Stories are accompanied by citations, recommended readings, glossaries, readability scores, and classroom extras. Be sure to check out Top 10 tips to stay safe during an epidemic. 

Teaching Kids News
A terrific site that publishes readable and teachable articles on news, art, science, politics, and more for students grades 2-8. Bonus: The Fake News resource section links to online games about fake news and images. A must for any digital citizen.

Smithsonian Tween Tribune
An excellent resource for articles on a wide range of topics, including animals, national/world news, sports, science, and much more. Searchable by topic, grade, and Lexile reading score. Lesson plans offer great ideas for the classroom and simple, usable frameworks for implementing these in any grade. 

Wonderopolis
Have you ever wondered if llamas really spit or if animals like art? Every day, the award-winning Wonderopolis posts a new standard-based article exploring intriguing questions such as these. Students may submit their own questions and vote for their favorites. Be sure to check out “Wonders with Charlie,” featuring acclaimed writer, producer, and director Charlie Engelman.

Youngzine
A unique news site for young people that focuses on climate science, solutions, and policies to address the myriad effects of global warming. Kids have an opportunity to express their views and literary creativity by submitting poetry or essays. 

Scholastic Kids Press
A multinational group of young journalists ages 10-14 report the latest news and fascinating stories about the natural world. Features sections dedicated to coronavirus and civics.

National Geographic Kids
A fine library of articles about animals, history, science, space, and—of course—geography. Students will enjoy the “Weird But True” short videos, featuring fun animations about oddball topics.  

• Best Tools for Teachers
• New Teacher Starter Kit

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community. 

This Book Creator tips and tricks guide is here to help you utilize ebook creation in your class in an effective and creative manner. 

At its core, Book Creator is a free tool that allows educators and their students to create multimedia ebooks based on class assignments and topics. The app’s self-publishing ebook format empowers students by allowing them to take authorship of the material they learn in class. 

But given Book Creator’s robust functionality, there are more ways to utilize ebook creation in the classroom than educators might initially realize. 

1. Use Book Creator to Create an “About Me” Book  

A great way to get your students used to using Book Creator and to have them learn more about one another is to have them create an “about me” page using the app. This can include a short bio and photo, for starters. Students can also add audio and video components to their page letting more of their personality shine. Ultimately, the various student’s pages can be combined into one “ebook” about the class.  

2. Use Book Creator for Student Stories, Poems, and Written Projects of all Kinds 

This is maybe the most straightforward use of the app, but it’s an important one. Students can use Book Creator to write, illustrate, and add video audio recordings to their written work. A response to a reading can be part written and part visual. Or students can write a poem and then include an audio clip of themselves or a classmate reading the poem. By the end of the semester they can create a book of all their written work, complete with a table of contents, cover, and title. 

3. Use Book Creator to Teach Math and Science 

Book Creator’s uses extend beyond English and humanities classes, The app can provide a great way for students to organize thoughts and show their work in math and science. Science students can write or record their predictions before testing a hypothesis, then compare and contrast results. They can also take notes on the experiment and track it with visuals. For math, they can use it to create math riddles. 

4. Use Book Creator To Produce Musical Ebooks  

Because of Book Creator’s recording abilities, there are many ways to utilize it in music class. An educator can write out music and have audio recordings embedded for students to play along with. More advanced music students can use it along with recording apps such as GarageBand. 

5. Use Book Creator to Make Comic Books 

Comic books are a popular template on Book Creator and can be used to tell stories and/or share work in a variety of topics. From graphic novels to step-by-step guides to various stories, students can have fun creating work in this visual medium.  

6. Use Book Creator to Support SEL Lesson Plans  

The tool is well suited to supporting SEL objectives. Students can create books, comics, etc., to be collaborative and learn team building. Or they can interview members of their communities and share these interviews in Book Creator. They can also use the app to create and track thoughtfulness and other SEL goals. 

7. Use Book Creator’s “Read to Me” Function  

The “Read to Me” function on Book Creator is one of the app’s most versatile capabilities. It allows users to have the ebook created on the app read to them in various languages, while highlighting the word being spoken. This can help early readers learn to read, or provide an opportunity to practice proficiency in English or a foriegn language.  

8. Use Book Creator to Support Accessibility  

Brook Creator has many tools that can help support different learners. The Read to Me function can help those who have difficulty decoding language. The ability to embed video within the ebook can provide sign language translations. In addition, having each student record a video of them signing a portion of the book is a fun way to teach students sign language. Using the app educators can control aspects such as font size and colors to meet the individual needs of learners. 

• Best Tools for Teachers
• What is Book Creator and How Can Educators Use It?

Language! Live is a curriculum-based intervention that can help students improve their literacy when struggling. It is aimed at students in grades 5 to 12 and uses a blended approach to language and literacy education.

The Language! Live program, from Voyager Sopris, is built for both in-person and remote use, and works across multiple formats so students can learn both in the class and from home using a digital device.

The goal is to accelerate struggling students to grade-level proficiency in a relatively short amount of time. It does this by using research-based and structured literacy instruction. Using both teacher-led instructions and text-training practice, students can progress quickly and effectively in literacy learning.

Language! Live was developed by Louisa Moats, Ed.D. who is an internationally renowned literacy expert. She has authored many scientific journal articles, books, and policy papers on reading, spelling, language, and teacher preparation.

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How Does Language! Live work?

This program starts students where they are and allows them to work on their own but also with teachers on such topics as rereading and close activities supported by print materials and ebooks.

Both students and teachers have dashboards to organize and track their progress. Teachers can see each student’s time on task, items completed, and class targets. A robust integrated assessment system keeps teachers advised of student progress in the program. 

Teachers can also find all program tools and resources (both online and print) at their fingertips. On their dashboards, students see all of their assignments, class pages, and their own avatar that they can embellish as they earn points.

This program is an excellent use of online word training that is available at each student’s level. Interactive lessons, certificates, and avatars as ongoing incentives are available, as well as the ability to do online recording. There is even a class page that incorporates social media traits such as online feedback, newsfeeds, and weekly point totals. 

Student data is available for teachers to have instant information on their students. An interactive library, complete with online texts, includes video and audio enhancements.

How Effective is Language! Live?

This program is what every adolescent with reading deficits and their teachers have been waiting for. Many schools have adolescent students who are struggling readers, missing vital skills. This software provides a high-quality, research-based program that is specifically targeted to the adolescent population reading two or more years below grade level. 

Focused on middle school and high school students (grades 5-12) with reading-skill deficits who need a program that is presented at their age levels, the videos and interactive lessons are presented by students of their age group and with self-guided online word training.

Multiple entry points meet students where they are with both foundational and literacy skills to quickly move them up to grade level. The program also focuses on keeping them there when they do make it to grade level. 

It effectively combines word training online with teacher-led text training and uses standard Lexile scoring in assessments.

How Much Does Language! Live Cost?

Voyager Sopris has a selection of pricing options available, tailored for either student or teacher needs.

A student buying Language! Live will pay $109 for a one-year Levels 1 and 2 license, $209 for a two-year license also for Levels 1 and 2, $297 for three years, $392 for four, and $475 for five years.

A teacher will pay $895 for a Levels 1 and 2 one-year license, two years $975, three years $995, four years $1,015, and five years $1,035. 

The difference is that a teacher package includes the teacher dashboard, print materials, sound library, electronic teacher editions, additional resources, and a robust data-management system.

Is Language! Live Easy to Install?

This program is easily integrated into any classroom and backed up with data that is efficiently reported online. It also addresses skills in vocabulary, grammar, listening, and writing for a complete package. 

Teachers work with students on text lessons after they use the online resources for word work so that technology training and teacher interaction is combined. Additionally, PD for teachers and ongoing support is always available.

• Helping Special Needs Students with Remote Learning
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• Top 25 Learning Tools For When School is Closed

What is Google Sheets and how does it work for teachers? That's a term searched by many a teacher looking to dip their toes into the waters of free online spreadsheet creation tools. So if you're here, you've found your way to the right place as we're going to make everything clear so you can dive right in.

This will guide you into the world of Google Sheets so you not only know what it is and what it can do, but also how to work it, easily. If you already use Google Classroom, this is a must have for your digital toolbox.

• Best Google Docs Add-ons for Teachers
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• How do I use Google Classroom?

What is Google Sheets?

Google Sheets is a cloud-based spreadsheet tool. Think Microsoft Excel with fewer limits. It allows teachers to create useful spreadsheets for planning class, for marking, for student editing, resource organization, activity reviews, quizzes, and lots more.

Essentially, it has the potential of a blank sheet that allows you to build new and creative ways to interact with the class. Google Sheets can be as closed as you like, offering a multiple choice quiz, for example. Or it can be left open to interpretation to allow you and your class to create something totally new from the ground up.

That Google Sheets is cloud-based holds a lot of importance as it means that sharing with students is as easy as sending a link, or posting it in Classroom, and also allows for collaboration. Students can work together on projects and see live edits, and as a teacher, you can check-in to see how progress -- if any -- is being made.

As with Excel, Sheets allows you to input formulas so cells can automatically calculate results based on what's entered in other fields. This can include self-grading quizzes that total up scores as the student goes along, for example. 

How Does Google Sheets Work?

Once you're signed up with a Google account, you can open the Sheets app in the browser window of most devices, or via the app on Android or iPhone. This then allows you to create a new sheet.

The key here is that you're not limited to simply selecting a new blank sheet as there are multiple templates that can provide a starting framework. For teachers, specifically, there are plenty of options to pick from thanks to third-party templates that are available online.

To use a template you've found online, or been shared by a fellow teacher, you can simply make a copy and then use that a your own, editing as you like. This is also a great way to share with students, allowing them each to edit a copy so the original remains yours to use as a template. 

Despite being cloud based, you can work offline with every change you make being saved online once you get a connection again.

What Are The Best Google Sheets Features?

The first most standout feature of Google Sheets is that it's free! Despite packing in huge amounts of power, potential, and usability, it is accessible to everyone.

Collaboration is the next best feature. Being cloud-based, you can get a shareable link to send to anyone who can access the sheet from most devices, including smartphones. That means access anytime, anywhere – ideal if you want to make a quick edit when on the move. Collaboration means more than one person can work in the sheet at the same time, which is ideal for students using it for a group project.

So much can be done with Sheets that it can get complicated. That said, most tasks are very easy to carry out, especially when it comes to the basics. Also, the fact that a lot of features are explained online means you can do most things without worrying about the need to remember how. That includes building dashboards, writing formulas and even building applications, like an auto marking assignment.

For teachers and students there are some really creative ways Sheets can be used specifically. 

How Is Google Sheets Useful for Teachers?

There are lots of useful ways to use Google Sheets in the classroom. Many have already been created by other teachers that have been shared online for you to edit. But there are many options that you can build from scratch as well.

Build a Gradebook with Google Sheets

The great thing about keeping your gradebook online, in Sheets, is that you can access it anywhere, anytime as needed. While Google Classroom does already offer some grade-based automation, this Sheets method allows you a lot more creative room.

You can use the data to create graphs and charts, for the class or individual students, to see at a glance how progress is being made, or not. 

Since you can use functions and formulas, the tool will allow you to determine grades without needing to sit down and work through the math – Sheets automates the process for you.

Gradebook is available as a template right there in Google Sheets.

Create Rubrics in Google Sheets

Transition your paper rubric to Sheets for lots of positives. For example, you can use conditional formatting to auto color code your layout, and have formulas embedded to auto score.

You can more easily pull out data from an individual student and then have that available to view or share with that student or their guardian. This is done easily enough by duplicating the master rubric tab for each student.

The platform also allows for easy duplication, should you want to use that rubric for another class or again for the following year.

Here is a free template for a rubric that you can copy and use right now.

Use Google Sheets as a Resource Point

Do it right and you can essentially organize an entire course into a single sheet. This could have assignments, reference books, and links to rich media such as videos, all in one sheet.

All you need to do is structure the sheet to look like a calendar with columns for date, unit, chapter, assignments, notes, slides, homework, and videos. All that should allow you to organize your work for the year in one place.

This is not only useful for organization for teachers but it's also great for students as a point of reference so they can see everything they need in one place. Of course, you can set this to "view only" so nobody can edit it, ensuring that it's secure and under your control.

Create Student Portfolios in Google Sheets

Google Sheets offers a fantastic way to create portfolios for all your students. This is a little more complicated as it integrates with Forms, but is worth doing. Students enter their information in Google Forms, which is then collated in a Sheets file for you to access and analyze from a single place.

This is a great way to have students give feedback on things such as goal achievements with the ability to upload supporting material, including files, images, and even videos. 

Use Templates in Google Sheets

We've mentioned it previously, but if you've skipped ahead, it's worth repeating: Check out the templates! 

Many are already available right there in Google Sheets, and are great for teachers with options for gradebooks, attendance sheets, schedules, and plenty more.

• Best Google Docs Add-ons for Teachers
• Google Classroom Review 2020
• How do I Use Google Classroom?

Edgenuitytoday announced new courses designed to address the learning loss and gaps in knowledge expected to occur as a result of COVID-related school closures. 

A recent NWEA study indicates that students may return to school in fall 2020 with only roughly 70 percent of the learning gains in reading and less than 50 percent of the learning gains in mathematics compared to a typical school year. In mathematics especially, students in some grades are expected to return to school “nearly a full year behind what we would observe in normal conditions.” 

To address this disruption – and to promote readiness for the upcoming school year – Edgenuity has developed these new solutions to support students in mastering critical concepts and skills from the last school year while preparing for future courses.

• Booster Courses focus on the critical concepts and skills students in grades 6-12 must master to be prepared for the next level course. Available for English language arts and math, these courses can also be used over the summer or at the beginning of the school year to help get students up-to-speed or simply for review.
• Concept Recovery Modules focus on single standards coverage for recovery, remediation, and review, and are a flexible option for schools wanting students to focus on standards mastery and recovery. The modules can also be used any time of the year to support student success and address ELA standards covered in grades 6-12 and math standards covered in grades 6-11.
• Pathblazer Courses for Summer School and On-Level Mastery for mitigating learning loss for students in grades K-6 who are working below grade level. These courses enable teachers to use Pathblazer’s instructional content to provide extra learning opportunities so students can refresh their learning and master skills and content covered during school closures.
• Learning Loss Courses cover all standards that would have typically been addressed in the last 8-9 weeks of a school year and are an ideal option for students to complete the last quarter of their courses, especially in high school where credits may not have been earned. These shortened courses are available in each of the core subject areas in grades 6-12. 

All of Edgenuity’s Learning Loss solutions are customizable and can be used individually or in combination. Districts interested in learning more about Edgenuity’s Continuing of Learning solutions can visit this page.

With brick-and-mortar schools closing down across the nation and the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students are left without many of the most important learning materials they had access to previously. Books in print form are one such loss.

As a result, ebooks and audiobooks have become key for kids learning at home. More than 10,000 schools have adopted OverDrive Education’s Sora K-12 student reading app since the national emergency was declared on March 13, bringing the total to over 26,000 worldwide. 

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to building capacity in school libraries while students are learning from home,” said Eleanor Friedman, Supervisor of School Library System at Southern Westchester BOCES in New York. “Our partnership with OverDrive Education has allowed our school libraries to continue providing service and access to materials for our students, which is our utmost priority.” 

Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, many publishers have provided popular and educational titles for a no-cost ebooks and audiobooks collection. This collection of 260+ titles includes favorites like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and curricular essentials like Call of the Wild to provide students and educators of all grade levels with the digital content they need to learn remotely.

“Since transitioning to distance learning, Sora enabled our teachers to assign digital novels they had previously taught in print, but no longer had access to,” said Shawn J. Maas, Media Specialist at Cypress Bay High School in Florida.   

Teachers can use Sora to assign titles to students and monitor their reading progress, while students can earn achievement badges for reaching reading milestones. The app also expands access to reading beyond curricular assignments, as students can use Sora to borrow leisure reading materials from both their school and local public library. 

Challenges with distance learning have also raised concerns about an early summer slide, as news reports reveal variable results from online instruction. To help slow the slide and ensure that students have access to digital books while school is closed, OverDrive Education has extended its summer reading program, Sora Sweet Reads. For the next two months, students can read popular juvenile and young adult ebooks like Black Panther (available through June 15), Ms. Marvel (available June 15-July 31) and Big Nate From the Top. Audiobook titles include Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus and Akata Witch. 

For additional free resources, students and educators can register for the SYNC Audiobooks for Teens program, sponsored by AudioFile Magazine and powered by Sora. Targeted at teens aged 13 and older, SYNC provides access to two free audiobooks per week in Sora over 13 weeks.

With pre-K and Head Start schooling severely disrupted by coronavirus closings, the effects of missed early childhood education are borne most heavily by those who can least afford to fall behind. Worse than the usual "summer slide," the "COVID Slide" could be the reality for many children.

That's why Waterford.org, a national early education literacy nonprofit, has announced a $9 million dollar investment to launch the Waterford Upstart Summer Learning Path in 9 states.

This is a condensed version of Waterford.org’s flagship at-home kindergarten readiness program, Waterford Upstart and will be used in Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio, and Texas. The investment will provide a standards-aligned kindergarten readiness program to 15,000 children and their families, preparing them for kindergarten in Fall 2020. Registration is open today and can be accessed at www.waterfordupstart.org/summer.The program will begin June 1st for all expansion states and will be free to all participating families.

Waterford Upstart Summer Learning Path expands upon Waterford.org’s core mission to assist communities that have the least access to educational and technological learning options. The summer expansion aims in particular to support the students and families who have been affected by COVID-19 either through personal economic hardship or due to the indefinite closure of many PreK and Head Start options. The educational disruption caused by COVID-19 could result in a class of four-year-olds being unprepared for kindergarten this fall.

The average Waterford Upstart graduate begins kindergarten reading at a nearly first-grade level. Every year, roughly 2.2 million four-year-old children in the United States, particularly children from low-income households or who live in geographically isolated areas, are unable to access site-based preschool for a variety of reasons including cost and transportation. Waterford.org looks to fill those education gaps with the Waterford Upstart program.

“Our partnership with Waterford.org has enhanced programming in Head Start, increasing school readiness for hundreds of four-year-old children transitioning to kindergarten. Many of our communities are under-resourced and working with Waterford.org helps to fill gaps.” said Nita Norphlet-Thompson, Executive Director of the Mississippi Head Start Association. “We are excited to see Waterford.org collaborating with us to continue to support Head Start children and their families.” 

With Waterford Upstart, parents will receive weekly contact from a personal coach to keep the family on track. Through Waterford Mentor, families will also receive push notifications, letting them know what their child is learning and ways they can continue that engagement offline. Waterford Upstart’s personalized online program will be used 25 minutes a day, 5 days a week during the condensed summer program. This will help students achieve the number of minutes necessary to be kindergarten ready and still falls well within the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) and World Health Organization’s recommendations of no more than one hour of screen time per day for four-year-old children.

The program’s offerings also account for the nation’s digital divide in technology and internet access, as 9.4 million children in the United States do not have access to the internet at home, and will provide internet installation and tools such as laptops to families that do not have these resources.

With NYC schools remaining closed at least through September, preK-2 students citywide are in need of high-quality educational content that's easily accessible from their homes. While young New Yorkers are learning via the New York City Department of Education (DOE) online education program, keeping them engaged and excited about their education is a ongoing challenge in this time of isolation from teachers and classmates.

That's why Mayor Bill de Blasio, Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, and The WNET Group announced the launch of Let’s Learn NYC!, a new educational public television program produced by The WNET Group in partnership with the New York City Department of Education featuring lessons for children in pre-K through second grade that will supplement remote learning. 

“This new program will provide even more fun and innovative learning opportunities for students and families to engage with together,” said Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza. “Every weekday, our youngest learners will be able to participate in story time, interactive lessons, and hands-on projects all from the safety and comfort of their own homes. We hope to see you there!” 

School buildings are closed, but across the city, families and educators are working to ensure students continue their education. Episodes will air on weekdays at 11:00AM EST on THIRTEEN starting Monday, May 4 and will continue through the end of the school year. The episodes will also be available to livestream at thirteen.org/live.  

Let’s Learn NYC! will be hosted by DOE instructional leaders and coaches with expertise in teaching young learners. Educators will film segments from their homes using their phones, tablets, or laptops, and send them to THIRTEEN to be edited, scheduled and aired. Programming will offer age-appropriate content that is aligned to standards and lessons for early childhood education and includes foundational reading skills, literacy, math, social studies, and science. 

Literacy lessons will focus on foundational skills such as phonics and fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension, and writing. Each episode will include a “story time” that helps students connect the literacy instruction to important facets of their lives. Other content area lessons will focus on children having fun with numbers, discovering science, and finding out about the world around them. The broadcast will also include “Parenting Minutes,” short videos produced by The WNET Group with information on social-emotional and early childhood learning for families to use with their children. 

Let’s Learn NYC! will be broadcast commercial-free on THIRTEEN, New York City’s PBS station, which is available for free to nearly all City residents. The program will also be available to livestream on the station’s website. Following each broadcast, each episode and supplemental learning materials will also be made available on schools.nyc.gov and thirteen.org/letslearn. Archived videos will include English and Spanish captions. 

This program is made possible by the Fund for Public Schools’ NYC Schools COVID-19 Response Effort, enabling public-private partnerships to support school communities directly during this time.  

Lexia Learning reports that after seven months of using Lexia Learning’s Lexia® Core5® Reading (Core5) program, 3,250 K-3 students in 10 elementary schools throughout the state of Utah have made substantial literacy gains. The elementary schools highlighted in a recently released report are exemplar schools using the Early Interactive Software Program grant offered through the Utah State Board of Education, and their students have been consistently using Core5 since August 2019.

In an earlier research report on a large Utah school district, researchers had also observed that in addition to progress within the program during the 2018-2019 school year, students’ performance in Core5 aligned with their end-of-year scores on the Acadience Reading assessment. Nearly all of the students (94%) who ended the school year working on material above their grade level in Core5 also scored in the At or Above Benchmark ranges on Acadience Reading.

Developed by Lexia Learning, a Rosetta Stone (NYSE: RST) company, Core5 provides a structured approach to six critical areas of reading. The program provides students of all abilities in grades pre-K–5 with scaffolded, standards-aligned activities. 

In the 10 exemplar schools, the percentage of students working in or above grade level almost doubled, increasing from 46% at the beginning of the fall to 90% by the middle of March 2020. The proportion of students working below grade level decreased substantially, from 54% to 10% in just over half of a school year.

For more information go to: www.lexialearning.com/Utah.

Today at LearnLaunch 2020, MetaMetrics® unveiled the Lexile Framework® for Listening. The Lexile Framework for Listening measures both the listening ability level of students and audio complexity of resources so students can be matched to ability-appropriate audio materials.

In addition, the company announced Listenwise, a listening-skills building company, is its inaugural partner for implementing the new framework. Listenwise curates the best of NPR programming and other podcasts for the classroom, providing teachers with content that exposes students to stories and current events with relevance across disciplines. Listenwise podcast lessons will soon include Lexile audio measures for each story.

The Lexile Framework for Listening is based on the same foundation of academic research that has validated MetaMetrics’ assessment items over the last 35 years. To develop this new Lexile Framework, MetaMetrics worked in partnership with Listenwise, Achieve3000, DaDaTeach Away and Tales2go, Inc. to conduct field studies with more than 17,000 domestic and international students in grades 1-12.

Teachers are always concerned about “adding one more program” to their plates. So, as our district team researched the merits of personalized learning, we saw that implementing a personalized learning program could help us reach several of our instructional objectives without additional burden on our teachers. In fact, if we implemented a comprehensive program with fidelity, teachers would have more tools, training and technology to help them differentiate instruction. 

We wanted to:

—Train teachers how to differentiate instruction and provide technology to help them

—Have students take more responsibility for their own learning

—Close reading gaps for our struggling students

Muscogee County School District is near Fort Benning, Georgia. As a military community, a large percentage of our 31,500 students are transitory. Also, we have a 24% poverty rate, and 78% of our students are on some kind of meal assistance program. The district felt that it was critically important that personalized learning ensured that our students did not have gaps or redundancies in their instructional programs.

Fortunately, we received a grant from the governor’s office that allowed us to pilot personalized learning in second and third grade in three of our more challenged schools last year. We had already done the background research on the devices we wanted to use from durability and capacity standpoints; we selected Chromebooks and piloted a personalized learning initiative. The program results were impressive in terms of student engagement, and our teachers reported a greater sense of efficacy. The results confirmed our theory that personalized learning would help us achieve our goals, so the school board gave us the go-ahead to move forward districtwide.

Ed Elements helped us plan and execute the rollout of devices. We piloted the 1:1 Chromebooks in second and third grade last year at three schools; we just deployed Chromebooks in all middle schools at the beginning of the current school year; and we plan to deploy them to all of our high schools in January 2020. Then at the beginning of next school year, we will issue Chromebooks to all elementary students—completing the 1:1 rollout.

Choosing Reading Curriculum and Supplemental Programs

When I first arrived as superintendent and reviewed the reading gap data, I was concerned that there was not a standard approach to literacy instruction throughout the district. In addition to the gaps and redundancies in our instruction, we were also transitioning from a low-level statewide assessment to a much higher level assessment.

All of this was the catalyst for searching for a curricular reading backbone. We chose one product for the district, but even as we standardized the reading curriculum, we saw that teachers needed more assistance with differentiating instruction. Many teachers were challenged by how to fully utilize different aspects of the reading program because these topics were not a part of their pre-service teacher education. So, we wanted to address that, while at the same time teach the scientific aspects of reading. We also needed something to help us differentiate instruction and provide quality Tier 1 instruction that aligned with our MTSS scalability from Tier 1 to Tier 3.

The district developed pacing guides and we continued to use the supplemental resources we had found successful. Although we had a solution to serve upper-level reading, we still had a need to provide support for lower grades. The grant allowed us to use Lexia Core5 Reading to focus on grades K–2 at three high-need schools. After the pilot results, we decided to implement Lexia more broadly and use it with our struggling readers in all elementary grades.

The Right People with the Right Plan for Personalized Learning

Last year’s pilot got off to a strong start because we worked with early adopters in our district who volunteered to be part of the pilot. You have to be comfortable with the concept of personalized learning and interested in learning yourself. Teachers attended a boot camp where they learned about implementing personalized learning and what that really meant. Differentiation is part of personalized learning, but the terms are not synonymous. The boot camp training helped teachers really understand that, and they became better teachers. It is possible to personalize learning without technology, but using technology that offers explicit, systematic instruction frees up time for teachers to address the individual needs of each student and provide higher-order feedback.

What we saw from our pilot last year was that students began to take more ownership in their learning, they were more engaged and behavior significantly improved at those three schools. One of the outcomes of the pilot was that we saw the ownership of the learning move from teacher to student. 

The instructional software is great for generating immediate feedback about the student relative to mastery, but using the higher-order feedback—the information that teachers gain from the software to work more effectively with individual students—that is the real art of teaching. We’re providing both the art and science of learning through personalized learning. The results speak for themselves. In one of the pilot schools, 100% of the students closed their learning gaps and achieved their progress goals as defined by the state. The other two pilot schools had similar results.

Moving Forward

Nothing begets success like success. The early adopter teachers in the pilot received all the training and support they needed to be successful. This year they are working with colleagues to help them achieve similar results in fourth and fifth grades in those same schools. After seeing the success that their peers had last year, there is an organic excitement and energy around personalizing learning. The teachers are carrying this forward. It’s not a mandate from the administration.

We have also been working with our local university, Columbus State, from which 65% of our teachers have graduated. Pre-service teachers take part in the professional training from EdElements. We include them in this approach to teaching so they can hit the ground running as beginner teachers in our system. This has been a win-win for us. We provide a bridge for them from college students to first-year teachers, and they come out better prepared and knowledgeable about the process and resources we utilize. The hope is that they will be more successful in their early careers, and we will reduce the turnover that often happens in the first three to five years of teaching.

Our district is enthusiastic about this shift to personalized learning, and Lexia is a big part of it. Core5 is research-proven and now classroom-proven in our district. We believe in balanced literacy, in which phonics and decoding are so important, and it does this very well. And, of course, the information the program provides to teachers gives them tremendous insight into the needs of each student. We are helping students build a learning path and supporting their personalized learning through our technology and devices. I think this is an efficient and effective way to supplement our reading instruction and help students close their reading gaps. 

OverDrive Education’s K-12 student reading app Sora is now available in over 23,000 schools worldwide – a 28% increase over 2018, and schools using Sora saw student reading time nearly double throughout the 2018-19 school year. Sora was named one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of 2019. With Sora, students have 24/7 access to ebooks and audiobooks from not just their school’s digital collection but also their local public library. 

Sessions at this week’s Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC) at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami (Booth #2213) will demonstrate how Sora and digital books increase student reading by providing the flexibility to meet the ever-changing needs of the 21st-century classroom (complete schedule here). OverDrive Education, the leading ebook and audiobook service for schools, will also share best practices and highlights, such as the year-end lists below. 

Based on data from 23,000 schools worldwide, the following lists represent the most popular titles during the 2018-19 school year. 

The top five ebooks for K-12 students in 2019:
1. Wonder by R. J. Palacio
2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney
3. Big Nate Makes a Splash by Lincoln Peirce
4. Pray for a Fire Drill by Lincoln Peirce
5. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas 

The top five audiobooks for K-12 students in 2019:
1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling
2. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'engle
3. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling

4. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
5. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan 

Comparing the beginning of the 2018-19 school year to the end, educators found that students using Sora nearly doubled the amount of time they spent reading per month. Contributing to this increase is the option for students to add access to their local public library’s digital collection, expanding their selection of age- and grade-appropriate popular ebooks and audiobooks. Students who added public library access in Sora increased the number of books read by nearly 50%. 

Sora, which is now compatible with Google Classroom, can also show educators a variety of insights, such as an aggregate view by school of the number of books students have opened daily, plus the average reading time per session. 

Visit FETC Booth #2213 from January 15-17 to learn more. 

For more information about OverDrive’s service for schools, visit company.overdrive.com/education/k-12-schools/ and FETC Booth #2213.

Lalilo

K-2 literacy program offers comprehensive, adaptive activities

Pros: Focused design. Great skills coverage. Offers student-driven, adaptive learning with at-a-glance data.

Cons: Activities could use text instructions and better modeling. More support videos would help. No placement test (yet).

Bottom Line: An easy-to-recommend tool thanks to its broad coverage of key skills and nice balance of student-driven and teacher-differentiated learning.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Cambium Learning Group’s Voyager Sopris Learning today announced that LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling), the company’s professional learning on language and literacy skills, has earned accreditation from the International Dyslexia Association (IDA).

Authored by Dr. Louisa C. Moats and Dr. Carol A. Tolman, LETRS for elementary school teachers is backed by more than 30 years of evidence-based, scientific research.

“Earning this accreditation from IDA is a great honor for us because we so consciously tried to align LETRS with the IDA Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading,” Dr. Moats said. “We now have independent validation that we succeeded.”

Topics covered include knowledge of the structure of language, knowledge of dyslexia and other learning disorders, and understanding of how to teach young readers the basics of phonics and word recognition.

IDA’s Program Accreditation initiative is guided by four main principles:

1. Prioritize the interests of K–12 students above all else;
2. Embrace diverse models of educator preparation;
3. Maximize student impact through innovative partnerships designed to advance improved educator preparation practices in reading; and
4. Commit to a growth-oriented mindset.

Neither a curriculum nor a program, the LETRS course of study focuses on preparing PreK–3 teachers with the essential skills for diagnosing reading issues, prescribing evidence-based strategies and assessing the effectiveness of the instruction provided to support all students. The newest version of LETRS includes online instructional videos, journaling and processing activities as educators build background and a common understanding of comprehensive reading instruction.