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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.

Researchers from various universities recently set out to understand how students are utilizing AI to help them understand assigned readings. The study, Self-Regulated Reading with AI Support: An Eight-Week Study with Students, looked at how 15 undergraduate students used AI to help them understand various texts over an eight-week period.

Though a small study that is currently in preprint form (meaning it has not been peer reviewed), it sheds compelling light on the ways in which AI use can support and hinder student learning.

Chris Yue Fu, the study’s lead author and a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington, recently spoke with me via Zoom and a follow-up email to explain the key takeaways from this research.

The Study’s Key Findings

Two things in particular stood out about these results to Fu, the first of which is the attention behavior gap.

“Students could clearly articulate what good AI engagement looked like as they told us things like, ‘the better your questions are, the more helpful AI can be,’” Fu says.

But even when they were taught good prompting strategies, only 4.3% of their prompts actually employed these strategies. Fu says. “They knew better but didn't do better, and that gap didn't close over eight weeks, even though the course was literally about AI.”

The second major takeaway was what the researchers termed “reading through AI” rather than “with it.”

“Students weren't just using AI to help them understand a text. They were using AI-generated summaries as the primary thing they read, and then selectively dipping back into the original text,” Fu says. “The AI output became the text, and the actual reading became a background resource. That was genuinely unexpected.”

Hints At Ways AI Could Be Used More Effectively

Despite those negative-sounding outcomes, the research also identifies ways in which work with AI tools can be helpful.

“For lower-level cognitive tasks, AI is already quite effective. When a student encounters an unfamiliar term or needs a section summarized, AI handles that well,” Fu says.

More effective AI could nudge students toward higher-order thinking, particularly the kind that is often necessary to understand and engage with college-level texts.

For example, after providing a summary of a given text, Fu would like to see AI follow up with something such as, “‘Now that you have the main argument, what assumptions is the author making? Do you agree with them?’ Or after a student asks about methodology, the system might prompt: ‘How would the findings change if they had used a different sample?’”

Fu says that after this study was concluded, there were more AI models designed to attempt this kind of productive questioning.

“The technology is starting to move in the direction our research suggests it should, toward sustaining the conversation rather than ending it after a single answer,” Fu says. “We actually saw evidence that students naturally progress toward this kind of thinking.”

Teacher In The Loop Design

In addition to continuing the conversation and going deeper with questions, Fu and his fellow researchers also called for more teacher control in the ways in which AI chatbots and tutors work in the classroom.

“We envision a system in which the instructor can set learning goals and requirements for specific readings in advance,” Fu says. “For example, an instructor assigning a dense methodology paper might tell the system: ‘Make sure students engage with the limitations section,’ or ‘Prompt students to compare this framework to last week's reading.’”

Right now general-purpose chatbots are “designed to answer questions,” Fu says. “They optimize for task completion. When a student asks for a summary and gets one, the system has done its job, but the student hasn't done theirs.”

Fu adds that there is an opportunity for designing education-specific AI tools “that gently push students toward the deeper engagement we know they're capable of.”

The research Fu led suggests this could be significant in its impact with students. “We saw that capability in the data: students naturally moved toward reasoning when they kept going," he says. "The challenge is designing systems that support that progression instead of letting it get cut short.”

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

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

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

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
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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
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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

SplashLearn uses a gamified setup that allows students to learn math, reading, and more in a fun and engaging way. Since this is school-focused, teachers can monitor progress using a powerful reporting system.

This is a well-developed system used by more than 40 million and, specifically, 500,000+ teachers worldwide. According to the company: "Children who play SplashLearn more than four times a week show learning improvement of more than 77% within the first two months."

At time of publishing, there are more than 4,400 games and more than 4,500 worksheets available to use. That should mean a wide range of options that suits most students in terms of ages and abilities.

What is SplashLearn?

SplashLearn is a teaching tool that focuses on gamified math but also now extends to others areas of learning including reading and problem solving.

Thanks to Common Core-aligned standards, this works to meet the student at their level with a focus on guiding them to the their target for that year. This makes it an effective supplementary learning tool, while also being fun in a way that helps bring students back for more.

Teachers can use this in class or to set homework, allowing students to work toward progressing on their own time -- with any strides made being clearly reported to the teacher dashboard.

How does SplashLearn work?

SplashLearn lets you, as a parent or teacher, assign the right work for each student. You can input the levels they are at, what they need to work on, and a results-based focus. All that should mean a personalized learning experience for each student that adapts to their needs using AI.

This can be used as a formative assessment tool for teachers to see student progress and adapt lessons accordingly. Thanks to the Common Core mapping, this process is made clear from the software end so that teachers can plan around that from the start.

Students can work through questions and they will be given immediate feedback. If a question is missed, they get the correct answer shown with a small explanation section.

What are the best SplashLearn features?

SplashLearn is bright, colorful, and fun, making it a really inviting space for younger students and older kids alike. Everything is laid out in a simple and clear fashion, adapted to suit both smartphone and desktop devices via a browser.

Single player games as well a multiplayer options are available, which can make for a more sociable and real-world experience. Each game offers clear guidance when getting started so even younger students can get going with little to no teacher assistance needed -- even on new games.

Lots of worksheets can be downloaded and printed, making in-class offline practice a real possibility, too.

The teacher and parent dashboard, which offers student progress, is a great way to see how they're developing in order to offer help or adapt teaching as needed.

How much does SplashLearn cost?

SplashLearn works on a payment system in which you can trial for free initially, if you provide your credit card details up front, giving you seven days.

Schools can get a quote-based pricing that unlocks all the features for student use across the school, or district, with teacher dashboard access for feedback.

Parents can pay annually at $60 for math, $60 for reading, or $90 for both. A family plan also offers access for three-child accounts.

SplashLearn best tips and tricks

Go home
Enable home access so that students can access learning when they want, allowing for greater mastery on their own time.

Assign specifically
Give students assignment to suit their interests, areas for improvement, and progress so that they feel pushed just the right amount.

Use rewards
Students earn coins and stars in the games so make these equate to real-world privileges in class to incentivize them further.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Generative AI and the tools spawning from the new technology are changing many aspects of society as these become ubiquitous.

As we look forward to the new year, one might wish to take a bit of time to read up on the concepts and the potential of AI in education as well as within society as a whole.

1. One of the most prominent titles available is Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick, who publishes the AI focused blog One Useful Thing. He is a distinguished faculty scholar at Wharton, where he also is co-director of the generative AI labs. His text is an easy read and I think is a fairly balanced approach to the possibilities and concerns raised by the use of generative AI in society and education.
2. Another general book about AI in education is Salman Khan’s Brave New Words: How AI will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing)*. Khan’s book is a more rose-colored view of an AI-rich future, if that wasn’t evident from the book’s title. However, the creator of Khan Academy and author of The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined, presents his views for a future educational environment much richer due to the influence of AI. If you haven’t read One World Schoolhouse, it is an excellent volume on the potential of education in a digitally connected and knowledge rich world. Khan has also recently chatted with Tech & Learning about how he uses AI to teach.
3. To focus specifically on the classroom aspects of AI, Daniel Fitzpatrick’s The AI Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Education is a well-recommended choice. He writes with co-authors Amanda Fox and Brad Weinstein, and it includes a summary of the AI landscape but then dives into how educators can use AI within their individual classroom environments. Approximately a third of the book is a repository of potential tools for educators to use. It includes some templates for AI policy development as well. It is more of a resource and less narrative than Khan’s or Mollick’s texts.
4. A slighter volume is AI for Educators: Learning Strategies, Teacher Efficiencies, and a Vision for an Artificial Intelligence Future, by Matt Miller, founder of Ditch that Textbook. Miller shares a lot of resources and ideas like his website does in general. At only slightly over 100 pages, you could get through this book while baking cookies for Santa! However, it will most likely become a resource for you to regularly return.
5. For those who are more focused on learning about bias, ethics, and equity issues surrounding AI in education, The Promises and Perils of AI in Education: Ethics and Equity have entered the Chat. by Ken Shelton and Dee Lanier, may be the title to try.
6. Madhumita Murgia, a British-Indian author, provides a great look under the hood of the generative AI engines through the view of those who are impacted by its biases. She shares a less positive outlook through her examples in Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI.
7. A more general read about how AI fits into the geo-political scene is Paul Scharre’s Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Scharre’s text brings great insights into the AI issues beyond many of the issues that are being discussed in the news. He shares how AI is involved in global security, national interests, and the future of freedom. A thicker read, well-sourced, and engaging.
8. For someone looking for a more scholarly approach to the impact on AI in education, check out Erionia Cela’s et al. collection of Teachers' Roles and Perspectives on AI Integration in Schools. It includes academic essays on the impact of AI and how to harness it for blended education, curriculum design, community development, and professional development among other topics.
9. Finally, Tech & Learning advisor Alana Winnick’s The Generative Age: Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Education explores both the opportunities and implications of AI in education as well as the ethical considerations for its effective integration.

Moving forward, generative AI will continue to become an integral part of our society. The tools and technologies emerging from AI are transforming various aspects of our lives, including education. With some background reading, we can better understand its potential impacts and harness its capabilities. The books mentioned each provide valuable insights into the possibilities and challenges of AI.

• Designing AI-Enhanced Assignments for Deeper Learning
• 4 Tips for Designing AI-Resistant Assessments

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.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

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.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

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.

• How Gamifying Education Brings Out the Best In Students
• 4 AI Tools I Actually Use As An Educator

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
• Listen Without Guilt: Audiobooks Offer Similar Comprehension As Reading

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.” 

• Study: Students Who Read Print Learn More Than Those Who Read Tablets
• Reading Intervention Strategies That Drive Measurable Outcomes

The screen inferiority effect is the name scientists have given to the phenomenon in which students, and others, seem to comprehend more when reading print vs. digital texts. The effect was noted as early as 2008, and has been seen in recent studies as well.

“It's inconsequential for some types of content and consequential for other types of content,” says Daniel T. Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia

For leisure reading, the screen inferiority effect is minimal. “People love Kindles, they like reading on their phone, they appreciate the convenience, and so what that indicates is they're not noticing any inferiority,” Willingham says. “It's not ruining the experience for them.” 

When you start reading textbooks, however, the difference becomes more pronounced. “When you get to more difficult content, the effect size is larger and people do notice it,” Willingham says. “They keep rereading, they perceive that they don't understand very well.” 

Because of the extra time screen readers take with texts, readers may end up with comparable test scores to print readers but have to spend more time to achieve the same learning, Willingham says.  

Evidence For The Screen Inferiority Effect  

Studies since the 2000s have observed the screen inferiority effect. One recent study looked at whether this effect still occurs when you compare students reading on a phone or tablet to print, as most research into the screen inferiority effect had compared text reading to reading on a computer. This study still found a small benefit for reading printed text over tablets. 

Ladislao Salmerón, this study’s lead author and a professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Valencia, says though small, this impact could add up over time. “In interpreting this, we must consider that children in schools read every day, so this effect could be accumulated over time,” he says.

Despite this research, many question marks about the screen inferiority effect persist, including what exactly causes it. 

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 for short pieces of text. 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. Yet another theory has to do with personal preference. 

“One thought is it might be due to most readers having a preference for paper and dislike of reading from screens, making it difficult to engage with ebooks,” says Virginia Clinton-Lisell, a professor in educational psychology at the University of North Dakota. “I wonder if this will diminish with time as children are using screens to read from a young age and may feel more comfortable with the devices.” 

Clinton-Lisell is the lead author of a 2019 meta-analysis, a look at multiple studies, that found evidence for the screen inferiority effect. However, since that study was released she has conducted several of her own experimental studies that have not observed the screen inferiority effect. “I am honestly skeptical of my own meta-analysis's generalizability,” she says. 

Natalia Kucirkova, professor of Early Childhood and Development at the University of Stavanger, Norway, says there are a number of factors that contribute to reading comprehension in young children. For instance, whether they reading to learn or reading for enjoyment has an impact, as does the type of digital text being read. 

“Interactive features in digital books can either enhance or hinder the experience,” she says. “For instance, strategically placed feedback can aid comprehension, while distracting elements can detract from it. In other words, it is not the screen that is inferior, but the design” 

Implications of The Screen Inferiority Effect for Educators 

Salmerón believes the implications of the screen inferiority effect for classroom educators and school readers is fairly simple: “Printed texts should not be abandoned,” Salmerón says. “Tablets may be well-suited for internet-inquiry tasks, but paper should be preferred when promoting comprehension of long texts.”

For Clinton-Lisell, the takeaway is that educators should think about how to use digital texts more effectively. “I think the emphasis going forward should be on how to use interactive tools that are afforded by screens,” she says. “Like was shown in my meta-analysis, interactivity, such as questions with feedback and embedded glossary definitions, have great potential for helping learning.” 

In her classes, she assigns digital readings with social annotations. “This way students are more likely to interact with the material and take advantage of the affordances of screens,” she says. 

Willingham says that textbook companies are working to improve the digital experience of textbooks and understand what might cause the screen inferiority effect. “My hunch is that it's not any one thing,” he says. “For example, one of the things that people figured out fairly early on, is that there's a comprehension advantage if you have people reading on virtual pages and flipping those pages rather than scrolling on one long text as you usually do on a PDF. That accounts for a very small boost in comprehension, but doesn't solve the problem.” 

In the meantime, Willingham says the screen inferiority effect should be a factor in the decision-making process for schools and individual educators, although other factors, of course, need to come into play, such as print text cost, access, and age, as digital texts can be much easier to update. Personal preference for educators and students might also come into play. 

“There are people who like paper just because they like paper and there's a certain nostalgia or romance and it feels different,” he says. “Then there are tech enthusiasts who enjoy adopting new technologies.” 

• Study: Students Who Read Print Learn More Than Those Who Read Tablets
• Ebook vs. Print Book Study: 5 Takeaways

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.  

• Ebook vs. Print for Young Children
• Audiobooks Offer Similar Comprehension

Microsoft Immersive Reader is a free AI-powered interactive reading tool designed to help students improve their reading, comprehension, and grammar skills. Though Microsoft designed the tool to support students with dyslexia and dysgraphia in the classroom, it can also be used by any student, or anyone, who wants to make reading on their device easier. Because of its partnership with OpenAI, there are also new AI-powered functions regularly added, including the ability to interface with Reading Coach, Microsoft’s AI reading tutor.

Microsoft Immersive Reader accomplishes this with features that allow students to adjust font size and spacing, as well as the background color. Additionally, it has a built-in writing coach and a read-aloud feature that will read text for students while highlighting the text being read. 

I’ve personally been impressed with the versatility of the tool, particularly the read-out-loud feature. The highlighting of the word being read seems perfect for students who are learning to read or who struggle with recognizing words. It’s also a very convenient feature for anyone who wants to listen to text rather than read. 

Thanks to relatively recent advances, read-aloud technology has grown by leaps and bounds in general, and Immersive Read is no exception. Immersive Reader gives two narrator options and while each can sound a bit mechanical, both do a nice job of conveying the meaning of the text with clear and accurate pronunciation. 

For this story, I experimented with using Immersive Reader’s Read Aloud feature to get through a PDF of an academic paper I’ve been meaning to read for close to six months. Instead of diving into this right before I sleep, I put it on while I did the dishes and was through a third of the paper in no time. 

Microsoft’s Immersive Reader is also a readily available tool for many students and educators because it is built into popular word tools such as Word, OneNote, Outlook, Office Lens, Microsoft Teams, Reading Progress, Forms, Flip, Minecraft Education, and the Edge browser. 

Read on to find out everything you need to know about Microsoft Immersive Reader.

What is Microsoft Immersive Reader?  

At its core, Microsoft Immersive Reader reads texts aloud to students while simultaneously highlighting the word being read. This allows the text to become accessible to students of different ages and abilities, and also helps emerging readers learn to recognize new words.

But that’s just the beginning of this tool’s functionality. 

You can choose different narration speeds and voices. Users can also adjust the spacing between words and font size and highlight specific parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. You can also break apart the text of words into syllables, hear audio recordings of words spoken in different languages, translate text, and see words represented as pictures. 

What’s New With Immersive Reader?

One of the tool’s most exciting new functions for educators is its ability to work with Reading Coach. This AI-powered tutor can generate stories on demand for students, coach young readers on words they might be struggling with, and provide assessments of a student’s reading ability.

Using Reading Coach in Immersive Reader is designed to bring the functionality of both tools together. This permits students to practice with Immersive Reader with topics generated specifically to suit their interests.

Which Microsoft Programs Does Microsoft Immersive Reader Work With?  

Microsoft Immersive Reader is available on the following platforms: 

• OneNote Online
• OneNote Universal App
• OneNote for Mac and iPad
• OneNote Desktop (as a free add-in)
• Word Online
• Word Desktop
• Word for Mac, iPad, and iPhone
• Outlook Online
• Outlook Desktop
• Office Lens for iPhone and iPad (iOS)
• Microsoft Edge browser
• Microsoft Teams

How Can Teachers and Students Use Microsoft Immersive Reader?  

The program works seamlessly with Microsoft programs many students and teachers are already familiar with. For instance, to access Immersive Reader from Word, select View then select Immersive Reader. At the bottom of your screen there will be a ‘play’ button. Next to that is a gear to select what voice is speaking and at what speed. 

In the upper right-hand corner of the screen are menu options for text preferences, grammar options, and reading preferences. 

- Text preferences let you adjust font size and increase spacing between words, which may help some readers better see the text. 

- Grammar options allow you to highlight various parts of speech. 

- Reading preferences will allow you to choose the text’s language and has an option to focus on only a few lines of text at a time, which can cut down on distractions for certain students. 

How Much Does Immersive Reader Cost?

Microsoft’s Immersive Reader is free and is built into many popular Microsoft tools. So there’s a decent chance anyone already reading this has access to Immersive Reader and that your students will have easy access as well.

Immersive Reader Tips and Tricks 

Use it With Reading Coach

Pairing this tool with Reading Coach allows a user to take full advantage of Microsoft’s AI capabilities. The whole point of both tools is to make reading easier, more accessible, and fun for emerging readers.

Use it For Math 

While Immersive Reader is primarily a reading tool, it has the capability to read numbered math problems. This can be helpful for visually impaired students who require accommodations as well as those who tend to learn better through audio. 

Use it To Help Students Learn Pronunciation 

Have your students use the tool to figure out how to pronounce words they are unfamiliar with, expanding their vocabulary and their ability to enunciate at the same time. 

Use it To Have Students Quiz Themselves on Parts of Speech 

Immersive Reader’s ability to highlight specific parts of speech is a great way to teach students to recognize these. In addition, there are many classroom applications; for example, you might have your students read a short paragraph and bold every verb in the paragraph. Then set the Immersive Reader to highlight the verbs as it reads. Students can self-assess how many verbs they missed and why. 

Use it To Make Reading Accessible to All Students 

Immersive Reader is designed to help students of various reading levels. Its translation abilities are perfect for students learning a new or second language. Its features can also help those who require vision accommodations or who struggle to decode written language. 

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

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.” 

• Tech & Learning Webinars

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." 

• How to Get Students to Read for Fun
• Listen Without Guilt: Audiobooks Offer Similar Comprehension As Reading

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?

• Best Tools for Teachers

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.

• Best Tools for Teachers

Even educators are often unaware of the important role librarians play in schools, says Melissa Jacobs. 

“A school librarian is a teacher,” says Jacobs, director of library services for New York City’s Department of Education. As such, school librarians are an integral part of any education team, dedicated to providing students with the tools that are necessary for critical inquiry. “A library is about ideas and about thinking,” Jacobs says. 

Today the boundaries of the library extend far beyond the physical school building. During the COVID shutdown, Jacobs led a program that allowed students and staff 24/7 access to ebooks, audiobooks, read-alongs, and other digital materials. Her efforts to date have resulted in more than 2 million digital books being delivered to DOE students and staff. 

Thanks to this success, Jacobs was honored with the Best Overall Implementation of Technology  at the Tech & Learning Innovative Leadership Awards in New Jersey. This initiative and the vital role library access plays in equity, access, and overall educational achievement for students, is of vital importance to her. 

The Need for Library Access 

Jacobs has been a librarian for more than twenty years, the last five of which have been in her current role. During her career, she’s learned firsthand just how important school librarians are to each student’s education. Libraries foster critical thinking that helps students develop a passion for different subjects and learn who they want to be. “That’s the spark that I want this to ignite in our kids,” she says.

However, there are communities in the U.S. that do not have public libraries, resulting in underserved students who struggle with the transition to post-secondary institutions. Jacobs says having access is critical so students arrive at college prepared to function and have the skill sets for information literacy. School librarians need to actively promote that equity. 

“Take advantage of every grant, every program, every conference, and every opportunity to encourage users’ access,” she says. “Purchase titles kids want to read in addition to titles that kids must read. Practice logging in, logging out, and taking advantage of the digital tools embedded in the platform. Help students individualize the experience for themselves as a reader.”

Literacy and The Library 

Only one out of three elementary students in the fourth and fifth grade demonstrate reading proficiency according to recent research. 

One highlight of Jacobs’ career is the digital collection that she initiated, which serves over a million students across more than 1,600 schools. At that scale, providing digital content has been a real challenge, however, Jacobs and her team have built a sustainable online collection using OverDrive and the Sora app. That accessibility is especially important for students who may experience housing insecurity or other economic or financial hardships. “Any DOE student, any New York City public school student, can access this. And to me, that's equity,” Jacobs says.

Jacobs’ additional advice for managing digital collections is simple. “Remember, a library has a librarian,” she says. “That notion remains true for a digital library. Use the skill sets of school librarians to curate collections and procure titles. Have policies and procedures in place for selection and be transparent about the process with the community. The digital platform also makes a difference and there should be a focus on equitable access, the user experience, and discoverability.”

Opening Up the World  

So far, more than 1.4 million books have been circulated to New York City students this calendar year. In addition to books in multiple languages, Jacobs is especially proud of the distinctive cultural content. “This is a collection that's representative of the diversity of New York,” she says. 

That diversity also encompasses different learning styles. For example, some students are auditory learners, so there’s an extensive audiobook collection. “I think that the Citywide Digital Library on Sora is even more essential in our kids’ lives because this platform is providing different mediums for them to focus on,” Jacobs says. 

Students sometimes read words on the page but have difficulty keeping focused. Interpreting, synthesizing, and analyzing texts can be hard work. Students need every tool at their disposal to ensure that they have sound educational experiences. “They can go to the digital library and access the ebook, which has accessibility features, or the audiobook, or both, or access it in another language,” Jacobs says. 

Educators should encourage students to engage with books and stress the different formats available. “Audiobooks and read-alongs have a much higher comprehension level than just print, which many kids struggle with decoding text,” she says. “Help students identify ways and formats they enjoy reading and engage with text.”

A book can be life-changing for a young person. If a child develops a love for reading, that child goes on to be a lifelong reader and learner. “Books teach you to think,” Jacobs says. “They open up the world. They give you opportunities. And once you build that knowledge, no one could take that away from you.” 

• How to Get Students to Read for Fun
• Listen Without Guilt: Audiobooks Offer Similar Comprehension As Reading

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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• How It’s Done: Reading Students through Digital Storytelling
• Actively Learn: How to Use It to Teach Reading

Even in the age of streaming video and interactive learning apps, reading matters. 

That’s one of the key takeaways in a new study that found a small, but significant, association between reading comprehension and college grades. For the study, researchers looked at 26 previous studies and a total of 25,090 students and found that differences in reading comprehension could explain 8.4 percent of the variation seen in college grades. 

“That's a substantial explanation of college student grades,” says Virginia Clinton-Lisell, the lead author of the study and a professor in educational psychology at the University of North Dakota who specializes in language and reading comprehension. “It's about the same magnitude as high school GPA, and high school GPA is historically regarded as the best predictor of college GPA.”

The study was recently published in the Journal of College Reading and Learning and was funded through a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. 

Reading Still Matters 

Clinton-Lisell began studying the impact of reading comprehension on college grades after encountering the perception from some educators that reading comprehension is less important in college than it once was. “Having students actively demonstrating their knowledge and engaging with the material in a way that's visible is more emphasized now in best practices in college instruction,” Clinton-Lisell says. In addition, audio and visual options for learning are more abundant than ever, and there are anecdotal reports of college professors assigning shorter readings.

Given these trends, Clinton-Lisell and her team set out to discover whether reading comprehension has an impact on college success. Their research indicates the answer is a resounding yes.

“Reading comprehension matters,” Clinton-Lisell says. “It predicts college achievement, it's definitely something we should care about as far as a school. It’s a skill college students need.” 

In addition, if technological advancements or shifts in pedagogy had indeed diminished the importance of reading comprehension, researchers would expect to observe the impact of reading comprehension on college grades decrease over time. However, Clinton-Lisell and her colleagues did not see that in their research. 

Teaching Reading Comprehension 

In K-12, particularly in the earlier grades, there are many effective approaches for developing reading comprehension. “Nowadays, we have a very good idea of how to teach it,” Clinton-Lisell says. “First, just make sure kids have access to books, and that they get to read a lot, that they get to practice.” 

In addition, there are well-established strategies educators can use to support young readers. These include peer-assisted learning and inferential skill exercises.  

As students age, however, the education system is less focused on reading comprehension, Clinton-Lisell says. “We're getting better, but where we need improvement is adolescent literacy, and working with kids who struggle with reading who are in middle and high school.” 

In college, there is little attention paid to reading comprehension and limited data on what interventions work. “We do have lots of college students coming in who struggle with reading, and unfortunately, we’ve found out that doing developmental English courses just don't seem very effective,” Clinton-Lisell says. “They prolong time to graduation, and the longer it takes to graduate, the less likely you are to graduate.” 

Clinton-Lisell would like to see reading comprehension get similar attention to writing because of how closely linked those skills are. “The idea of writing across the curriculum and encouraging professors across the disciplines to have writing assignments and support writing and how to teach writing effectively has been pretty well communicated,” Clinton-Lisell says. “Perhaps a better movement would be reading across the curriculum, and incentives or initiatives to really help professors in various disciplines incorporate ways to scaffold their students’ reading comprehension.” 

• How to Get Students to Read for Fun
• Listen Without Guilt: Audiobooks Offer Similar Comprehension As Reading

Daniel T. Willingham ends every email he sends with two lines describing both what he is currently reading and his thoughts on the book he last read. 

These brief details are part of his signature and one of many ways the psychology professor at the University of Virginia, and author of Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do, promotes leisure reading to his students and others. 

Encouraging leisure reading by students, both over the summer and all year-round, is something Willingham and other literacy experts are passionate about. 

Differentiate Between Leisure Reading and Reading For School 

Kids tend to like reading early on in their school lives but sometimes start disliking it around the time they get to middle school. This might be because they grow to associate reading entirely with school and assignments. “Make sure that your child understands the difference between leisure reading and academic reading,” Willingham says. “This is something I think gets complicated in kids’ heads.” 

The reading kids do in early elementary school naturally follows good leisure reading practices. “No one really cares what the content is. If you don't like a book, the teacher’s fine with it if you just drop it,” Willingham says. “As kids move through school, choice goes out the window, and they're told what they're supposed to read, and they start being asked to do more and more challenging things with texts.” 

Reminding them that reading can and should be fun can help them build lifelong reading habits. 

Let Kids Read What They Like  

“Kids don't like to be told what to do,” says Melissa Jacobs, director of The New York City Department of Education School Library System. “They like to have choice in what their activity is. And so forcing a list of titles on them and saying, ‘You must read this, by this date,’ I think, is going to have the exact opposite effect on our kids that we want.” 

Instead of being told what to read over the summer, kids should be able to explore and decide for themselves about content and whether they want to read graphic novels, comics, magazines, or books. The key is providing exposure to reading materials that engage their individual identities. 

Parents and teachers may have to fight their instincts to try and steer their children’s readings, says Virginia Clinton-Lisell, a professor in educational psychology at the University of North Dakota who specializes in language and reading comprehension. “My older daughter loves graphic novels,” she says. “This is my area of expertise and I know that reading is reading and graphic novels are actually much more complex and rich than people give them a credit for, but there's still a part of me that's like, ‘But she shouldn't be reading books with pictures at this age.’” 

In addition to letting kids choose what they read, it’s also good to remind them that it is okay to stop reading something they don’t enjoy, Willingham says.

You Don’t Need Huge Blocks of Time to Read and Reading Begets Reading

A common mistake kids make is thinking that they need a long swath of time to read. “They’ll be told, ‘You should read 30 minutes a night,’” Willingham says. “And you can see why they would think that means 30 consecutive minutes. But people who read a lot read in little bits of found time, such as when they're online waiting at a bank or something.”

Finding those little pockets for reading opportunities seems to be habit-forming. This is part of the Matthew Effect in reading, which is based upon a bible quote talking about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. “The more you read, the better you read, the better you read, the more you read. So you see a compounding effect,” says Clinton-Lisell. Research has also found correlations between households with lots of books on shelves and children’s interest in reading, but only when parents also regularly read these books.

Let Students Read Ebooks 

In addition to choosing what they read, kids should be able to choose to read via the medium that works for them – whether that’s print, ebooks, or even listening to audiobooks. Willingham advises parents to encourage kids to download Kindle or another reading app on their phone. “Over 90 percent of middle school, and high school kids have phones now. So why shouldn't you have a book with you all the time,” Willingham says. 

Clinton-Lisell’s research has found readers were more efficient when reading from printed materials. However, she still advocates for children reading via the method they prefer. “Despite my own research showing a benefit of paper, I honestly think that it's more important to read a lot, whether that’s paper or screens,” she says. “Go with what works for you.” 

In New York City, Jacobs has seen interest in ebooks and audiobooks increase over the past two years among students, so making these formats available to all students can help build inclusivity and equity around reading access. 

Audiobooks Count, Too 

The same principles for instilling a love of reading hold true for audiobooks, which Willingham says are “a great way for parents to try and get an on-ramp onto reading for a child who hasn't been interested in reading.” 

Clinton-Lisell recently conducted a large analysis that found comprehension was similar when people listen to a book versus if they read one. “Those kids who struggle with the decoding or are finding it frustrating are maybe kids who have a hard time just sitting still and reading,” she says. “Playing an audiobook is a great option. Play audiobooks when you're driving, or maybe have an audiobook playing while your child is doing Legos or whatever else.” 

Listening to audiobooks or listening along with text may also help readers who are second language learners. In general, listening to an audiobook offers many of the same benefits as traditional reading and promotes comprehension skills and vocabulary. 

Help Students Eliminate Digital Distractions 

A potential drawback of screen reading is the possibility of a child, or any reader, being distracted by non-book activities on their device, from texts to social media. And, unfortunately for many, reading still isn’t as enticing as digital pursuits. “Leisure reading is watermelon and pretty much any screen-based entertainment is a chocolate bar, even among kids who really like reading,” Willingham says. 

One way Willingham says parents might overcome this is by asking children to think about whether they actually enjoy checking social media as frequently as they do. “This is a distinction between wanting something and enjoying something,” Willingham says. “I think a lot of times we want to get on social media, but then once we're on social media, we don't enjoy it that much.” 

By helping kids recognize this, it could encourage them to use their phone to read more. 

Make Sure Every Kid Has a Library Card 

Providing all children with choice in the type of reading they explore and the way they consume it is vital, and libraries play a key role in providing this access. “Reach out to the school library and reach out to your public librarian before summer kicks off,” Jacobs says. “Make sure that students leave school with a library card because that library card really can open up the doors – whether physical doors or virtual doors – to a wealth of literature.” 

She adds, “It doesn't matter what type of community you live in. There are public libraries all over the world, and they're there for community and they're there for learning. And it really is equity and access that turns kids into readers.” 

• Listen Without Guilt: Audiobooks Offer Similar Comprehension As Reading
• Ebook vs. Print Book Study: 5 Takeaways

A new meta-analysis looking at reading vs. listening to text either via an audiobook or other method has found no significant difference in comprehension outcomes. The study was recently published in Review of Educational Research and provides some of the best evidence yet that those who listen to a text learn a comparable amount to those who read the same text. 

“It is not at all cheating to listen as opposed to read,” says Virginia Clinton-Lisell, the study’s author and associate professor at the University of North Dakota. 

How This Research Came About 

Clinton-Lisell, an educational psychologist and former ESL teacher who specializes in language and reading comprehension, began researching audiobooks and listening to text in general after hearing colleagues talk about it as if they were doing something wrong. 

“I was in a book club and there was one woman who was like, ‘I have the audiobook,’ and seemed embarrassed about it, like she wasn’t a real scholar because she was listening to the audiobook because she had to do a lot of driving,” Clinton-Lisell says.

Clinton-Lisell began thinking about universal design and audiobooks. Not only could audiobooks provide access to course materials for students with vision or other learning disabilities, but for students in general who might have everyday life obstacles to sitting down and reading. “I thought about my colleague, who was driving a lot who had the audiobook. ‘Well, how many students have long commutes, and would be able to listen to their course materials, during those drives, and be able to comprehend it, and otherwise may not have the time to sit down and read it,’” she said. “Or students who just have to do chores around the house, or watch the kids, if they could be playing their course materials, they could still get the content and the ideas and be able to stay on top of the materials.”

What the Research Shows  

Some previous research suggested comparable comprehension between audiobooks and reading but these were smaller, isolated studies and there were also other studies that demonstrated an advantage for reading. To learn more about the difference in comprehension between reading and listening, Clinton-Lisell embarked on a comprehensive search of studies comparing reading to audiobooks or listening to text of some type. 

For her analysis, she looked at 46 studies conducted between 1955 and 2020 with a combined total of 4,687 participants. These studies include a mix of elementary school, secondary school, and adult participants. While a majority of the studies looked at in the analysis were conducted in English, 12 studies were conducted in other languages.  

Overall, Clinton-Lisell found reading was comparable to listening in terms of comprehension. “There wasn’t a difference where anybody should be concerned about having somebody listen as opposed to read to understand content, or to understand a fictional work,” she says. 

In addition, she found: 

• There was no discernible difference between age groups in terms of listening vs. reading comprehension – though Clinton-Lisell only looked at studies that examined competent readers because those who struggle with reading will obviously learn more from an audiobook. 
• In studies in which readers were able to choose their own pace and go back, there was a small advantage to readers. However, none of the experiments allowed audiobook or other listeners to control their pace, so it’s unclear if that advantage would hold up with modern audiobook technology that allows people to skip back to relisten to a passage and/or speed up narration (anecdotally this helps some people concentrate on audiobooks). 
• There was some indication that reading and listening were more similar in languages with transparent orthographies (languages such as Italian or Korean in which words are spelled like they sound) than in languages with opaque orthographies (languages such as English in which words are not always spelled as they sound and letters don’t always follow the same rules). However, the difference was not big enough to be significant and may not hold up in larger studies, Clinton-Lisell says. 

Implications of The Research  

Audiobooks can help students with a wide range of accessibility needs including unexpected ones such as haptic concerns holding a book or inability to pay attention to text for long periods of time. 

“Audiobooks are also a great way to help students who have reading disabilities so they can build their language base and build their content knowledge from listening, so they don’t fall behind,” Clinton-Lisell says. 

In addition, Clinton-Lisell advocates for greater access to all students whether they have accessibility needs or not. “It's a way to make reading fun,” she says, noting that a book can be listened to while walking, relaxing, traveling, etc. 

Audiobooks are increasingly common in school libraries and text-to-speech is now a built-in feature of many apps and programs. Even so, some educators still see listening as a shortcut. Clinton-Lisell recounted an anecdote about a dyslexic student whose teachers were reluctant to provide listening alternatives because they wanted the student’s reading to improve, but she says such concerns are misguided. 

“Language builds language,” Clinton-Lisell says. “There are a wealth of studies showing that listening and reading comprehension benefit each other. The better you are at reading, the better you'll be at listening. The better you are at listening, the better you will be at reading.”

• Audiobooks for Students: Listening to What the Research Says
• Ebook vs. Print Book Study: 5 Takeaways
• Busting the Myth of Learning Styles

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.  

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People are listening to more audiobooks than ever before. 

In 2021 an estimated 131 million people listened to an audiobook, and audiobook revenue is up more than 17 percent in the last two years. But despite their growing popularity audiobooks still often carry a stigma, particularly in education. 

“There's this sense that it's cheating,” says Beth Rogowsky, Ed.D, associate professor at Bloomsburg University and author of Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn. 

Rogowsky, a former K-12 English teacher, used to believe this as well. In fact, a few years ago when she got hooked on listening to audiobooks she was worried.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I'm really enjoying this. This is not good. I need to read this for it to count,’” she says. 

Then Rogowsky decided to explore the science behind that assumption. For a 2016 study, she split 91 college-educated adults into three groups. One group listened to sections of the nonfiction history book Unbroken, another group read the same section on ebook readers, while the final group both read and listened at the same time. Afterward, participants were quizzed on how much material they had retained. 

“What we found is it didn't matter whether these adults read the book from an e-tablet, listened to an audio version of the book, or did both simultaneously, comprehension was equal,” she says. 

Previous research also found adults got nearly identical scores on a test if they listen to passages instead of reading them. 

While research into audiobooks' impact on children is more limited, Melissa Jacobs, director of The New York City Department of Education School Library System, has seen students respond well to them. 

“I think that they comprehend at a much higher level listening than they do when they're reading text,” she says. “I find that a lot of kids have a very difficult time decoding text. And they lose out on the comprehension of a story, of a book, of a title because they're spending so much time focusing on decoding it.” 

When the pandemic started, Jacobs began purchasing more ebooks and audiobooks and her library system now has more than 19,000 audiobooks available for students on OverDrive’s Sora K12 app. Over the summer, data from the app shows that students were spending about 45 minutes on average engaged with audiobooks, about twice the time they spent on average with an ebook. 

But despite their potential, audiobooks are not perfect and research into their efficacy is ongoing. 

Lingering Questions About Audiobook Efficacy  

Rogowsky’s study compared listening to audiobooks to reading ebooks and there is some evidence that people retain more when reading a traditional print book instead of an ebook. It may also be harder to learn by listening the more complex a topic is. One study compared how well students learned about a scientific topic from a printed article versus a short podcast. Those in the reading group scored significantly higher than those in the listening group. 

Age may also play a role. Participants in Rogowsky’s study were adults between 25 and 40 who had a bachelor’s degree and were proficient readers. Rogowsky says that with younger students, who are still developing their reading skills, there is the potential to overuse audiobooks. “That becomes an issue when instead of teaching our students how to read, we're letting them just listen to audiobooks for longer periods of time, especially in our English classes,” she says. But she adds audiobooks can still be useful with younger grades as it can help them learn to enjoy reading. 

Jacobs says that “read along books,” which provide both text to read and audio, can be a useful tool with students still learning how to read. “For our younger kids, it provides a richer experience having that read along, “ she says. “Also for parents that don't speak or read in English, an audiobook or a read along helps them read with their child.” 

Overcoming The Audiobook Stigma  

Jacobs would like to see more educators embrace audiobooks and more school library systems invest in them. 

“I feel like it needs to be a much more acceptable format and for educators to understand that it's not a cop-out,” she says. “ Not everybody is reading the text. And if you don't want kids to fall behind, and they need to read it, and you're on a timeline, and you have a curriculum map that you're following, and you have deadlines, give them the opportunity to get an accessible format that works for them. There's not a one-size-fits-all. Audio provides a different size that kids need.” 

Jacobs had tried in the past to listen to audiobooks but had trouble concentrating on them. However, when she started adding more audiobooks to her library system after the pandemic started, she gave the format another try, but this time she tweaked the playback settings.

“I increase the speed of the narration of the reader, and it's changed my level of focus, and my ability to listen and actually enjoy an audiobook,” she says. 

Rogowsky says that to overcome the stigma associated with audiobooks more people need to go public with their listening habits, just like Jacobs. 

“The way we're gonna get past that is by more people sharing that, 'Yes, it's not a dirty little secret, I listened to the book rather than read it,'” she says. “Be proud of that, because you're making great use of this downtime. And the way you're going to remember more of what you read or listen to is by talking about it with other people.” 

• Student Ebook Reading Surges During the Pandemic
• Ebook vs. Print Book Study: 5 Takeaways

Summer is a time for being outdoors, exploring, inquiring, imagining, and seeking out desperately needed respite from the long school year. It is the perfect season to dive into a new book, listen to a story, and discover a new author, title, or hobby. Whether it is one book or many, try something new. Read outside of your comfort zone and discover what awaits you between the pages of a book. The more you read, the more you will learn about yourself and the world around you. 

Here are a few summer reading recommendations to get you started. 

Children’s Books 

Listen by Gabi Snyder 

A young girl steps out into her busy urban neighborhood, taking a moment to focus on the sounds on her way to school. A reminder to take a moment to embrace the sounds around us.

The Lost Package by Richard Ho

What happens when a package leaves the post office? Richard Ho brings a heartening story to life of the simplicity and complexity of sending a package from New York City to San Francisco. Beautiful watercolors enhance the tale. 

Little People, Big Dreams Series by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara

Discover the diverse lives of remarkable people in this simply written series by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara. Be inspired by the breadth of accomplishments and achievements that these young people have driving them into adulthood. 

We All Play by Julie Flett 

A delightful book that explores the frolicing nature of animals and people, alike. With a soft color palette the illustrations complement the rhythm of the book. Author Julie Flett interlinks Cree and English introducing readers to a North American Indigenous population. 

Young Adult Books

Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, Nicola Yoon

Six critically acclaimed, award-winning diverse authors weave romance through a powerful, heartwarming, and often funny collection of short stories. 

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

A coming-of-age story that takes the reader on a journey from a London high school to university as a mixed-race teen discovers who he is and how to navigate the world. Fun fact: the audiobook is read by the British author, Dean Atta! 

How To and More 

Summer is an ideal time to pursue a new hobby. Check out these hands-on titles and learn a new cooking technique or master a new drawing skill. 

Mexican Ice Cream by Fany Gerson

Explore the authentic tastes of Mexico in this beautifully photographed collection of 60 ice cream recipes that dives into the cultural tastes of Mexican cuisine. From ripe avocados to Mexican chocolate to shaved ice with a diverse array of fruit syrups, this delicious cookbook will cool off the heat of the summer. 

Drawing with Christopher Hart Series by Christopher Hart

Drawing with Christopher Hart Series brings the how-to of drawing anime to life. Learn how to create your own anime characters, and master the techniques behind anime eyes, hands, character design, and fashion. Then, use these techniques to write and illustrate your own manga stories. 

With millions of educators and students involved in our great national remote learning experiment, companies are listening to teachers' feedback about how to improve their digital learning platforms. 

One such company, Curriculum Associates, has recently added new features to i-Ready to meet emerging educator needs during school closures and beyond. These features include a new instructional report for educators as well as new reading comprehension lessons for middle school students. Currently, the i-Ready program serves over eight million users nationwide and approximately 25 percent of all K–8 students across all 50 states. 

“We are always listening to our educators and working to improve our programs to meet their evolving needs, especially in challenging times like these with extended school closures,” said Rob Waldron, CEO of Curriculum Associates. “We expedited the launch of our new i-Ready features to further support our educators during remote teaching so they have all the resources needed to continue to deliver timely, data-driven, personalized learning in the most efficient way possible.” 

i-Ready’s new Personalized Instruction by Lesson report for classes and groups allows teachers to view student performance on recently completed lessons and status of lessons in progress. This simplifies grouping students by pinpointing those working at similar levels in a domain, as well as identifying where students are struggling, to help facilitate timely intervention. 

New reading comprehension lessons focused on connecting ideas in complex passages will also be added to i-Ready to engage middle school students in critical thinking. Lessons for Grade 6 are now available, and lessons for Grades 7 and 8 are coming soon. Additional i-Ready features and resources will also be available this summer to support student learning in the upcoming school year. 

i-Ready was recently recognized as a 2020 CODiE Award finalist by the Software & Information Industry Association. It was recognized in the Best Formative Student Assessment Solution category of the Education Technology awards for its ability to identify the learning gaps and standards students have not yet achieved and its ability to assess and help close those gaps to improve student achievement. 

In addition to the CODiE Awards, i-Ready was also recently recognized by the 2020 EdTech Awards as a finalist in the Personalized Learning Solution category. 

About i-Ready

i-Ready supports differentiated instruction for K–12 teachers and students, combining assessments and insights with individualized instruction in reading and mathematics. 

The Diagnostic provides educators with actionable criterion-referenced and normative data to create individualized lessons. Teachers administer the Diagnostic at the beginning of the school year to chart a course for their instruction and to personalize i‑Ready instructional paths. A midyear and end-of-year Diagnostic helps students and teachers measure growth and have data chats. Teacher-led and online instruction continues throughout the year to help students address their learning gaps and access grade-level learning.

To learn more about i-Ready, visit CurriculumAssociates.com/i-Ready.

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.

Readorium

Science and reading come together in aging but effective platform

Pros: Varied activities and adaptive instruction help students comprehend scientific texts.

Cons: Parts of the platform are showing their age, and it can get repetitive; there's a big focus on earning (and spending) money and tokens.

Bottom Line: There's not much out there that focuses specifically on reading science texts, so if your students can get past the dated design this could be a handy tool to turn to.

Read more.

Site of the Week picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best edtech 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

National Geographic Learning has partnered with not-for-profit assessment organization NWEA to help teachers assess student proficiency and personalize learning paths across K-12 reading instruction. NWEA assessments will be integrated with National Geographic Learning’s Panorama reading program, giving teachers insight into what each student knows and how they can differentiate instruction.  

Starting this fall, the MAP Growth assessment from NWEA will be administered as a benchmark test and then paired with National Geographic Learning’s skill lessons to give teachers the ability to use the MAP Growth results to create customized assignments for students. Educators will have access to progress reports up to four times a year to offer ways to close achievement gaps.  

National Geographic Learning’s Panorama reading program uses fiction and National Geographic nonfiction, as well interactive text and video, to help students learn how to read science and social studies content. 

For more information, visit NGL.Cengage.com/panorama.

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. 

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. 

I still remember the storybooks I created when I was younger. They were made by stapling or gluing construction paper over notebook paper and illustrating the pages with crayons and marker. Students still enjoy creating physical storybooks, but now their stories can be preserved digitally forever with free web tools and apps. The tools and apps below make it easy for students to illustrate, animate, and share their stories with friends, family, and a wider audience. Not only can students create stories about any topic, but they also have the opportunity to be published authors which motivates many to continue reading and writing.

Tips and Ideas

The following are tips and ideas for further supporting students through the process:

• Students can create their own storybooks, work in pairs, or contribute to a class storybook.
• Provide students with templates, checklists, and rubrics.
• Read, Write, Think has several interactives that walk students through the story creation process- Story Map, Literary Elements, Flip Books, the Hero’s Journey, Story Cube, and Fractured Fairy Tales.
• Walk students through the self and peer editing process.
• Students can create stories that retell history, portray themselves as superheroes, set in the future, highlight different cultures, or to teach others math, the alphabet, or to be better citizens. The choice of topics is endless!

Tools and Apps for Creating Digital Storybooks

• Book Creator– Web, iOS and Android app to create and publish digital books with personal photos, audio, video, and more.
• Elementari– Create a free class account for up to 30 students. Students use the web tool to create a storybook with sounds, animations, shapes, and more.
• Buncee– Web tool and iOS app to create and publish a digital storybook with free library of animations, stickers, templates, frames, stock photos, video, audio, and more.
• Storybird– Web tool that is easy to create a written storybook.  Students choose art created by professional artists and add their words and ideas.
• My Storybook– This web tool requires no registration and is simple to use with very young learners and elementary students. Children create a storybook with drawings, images, characters, and more.
• Storyjumper– Choose characters and backgrounds to visualize a written story. Not able to embed.
• BoomWriter– Create collaborative class storybooks. Features include peer editing and a voting process.
• Google Slides and Docs are also great free options. Students can easily search and insert images, add video clips, and more! Student collaboration is easy and students have access to accessibility features and translation tools. Publish as PDFs or embed as a slideshow.

To thank you for your sharing, friendship and support over the years I am sharing free tips, learning resources, web tools and apps for 25 days in my Digital December STEM Advent Calendar. Just click on the calendar below and a post will appear for that day. NOTE! The post will not appear until that day. If you enjoy these resources, then take one of my fully accredited continuing education and graduate online courses or check out my latest book, Hacking Digital Learning Strategies with EdTech Missions!

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is a Technology and Computer teacher, education consultant, and author of books including Hacking Digital Learning Strategies: 10 Ways to Launch EdTech Missions in Your Classroom. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

Curriculet 

Pros: Great customization features help teachers boost students' close reading skills with text checkpoints that test comprehension.

Cons: A recommendation tool for related reading could increase personalization and engagement; adding paid features can get pricey fast.

Bottom Line: An excellent tool for in-text assessment. Maximize the platform's usefulness by uploading your own texts and setting up CCSS-aligned checkpoints.

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

Nearpod Student Engagement Platform has integrated with Microsoft’s Immersive Reader. This early integration with Immersive Reader, launching in beta, provides interactive tools to support students’ reading and comprehension skills, such as enhanced dictation and syllabification. These tools make learning more accessible, particularly for students who have reading disabilities and English language learners (ELL).

The number of ELL students nationally has been steadily rising over the last two decades, and today nearly 10% of all US K-12 students are learning English, while also trying to keep pace with fellow classmates who are native speakers. Meanwhile, the number of K-12 students who received special education services, to address challenges including reading disabilities, increased from 6.4 million to 7 million between 2012 and 2018. 

Key features coming to the platform include:

• Text-to-speech capabilities that let students hear text read aloud and check pronunciation
• Ease reading with the ability to adjust text size, font and color
• Language translation of words or blocks of text using Microsoft Translator’s 52 languages
• Line focus helps students concentrate on a single sentence or line they are reading   

In addition to its integration with Immersive Reader, Nearpod is also integrated with Microsoft’s Office 365 SSO and Microsoft Teams, as well as a dedicated app for Windows 10.  Teachers can add Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Sway documents to Nearpod lessons, and can save files to Microsoft OneDrive. 

Nearpod’s platform also integrates with leading Learning Management Solutions, including Canvas, Blackboard and Schoology. Nearpod’s Lesson Library offers standards-aligned content from publishers like Common Sense Education, BBC Worldwide, Pulitzer Center, Newsela and ReadWorks.

To get started, Nearpod users must enable Microsoft Immersive Reader in their advanced settings granting access to every student via web browser. To learn more about Nearpod’s integration with Microsoft Immersive Reader, visit: nearpod.com/blog/microsoft/

When the district announced our transition to a phonics-based literacy approach using a new reading program two years ago, I was a little skeptical. I’ve grown used to administrators telling me that a new piece of tech will fix things and make class better for students. Gradually moving toward a blended learning environment for teaching reading meant we had to trust a program to deliver effective lessons that meshed well with teacher support. We all went into training with some concerns.

I was lucky enough to have a student teacher that year, so while she taught a few periods out of the day, I had time to study our new approach to teaching reading. The more I learned, the more I believed that this was what my students needed: technology that helped them to break down and sound out each syllable of a word.

After two years of implementation, I’ve seen major change in my students. Some of my students with reading disabilities came to my class reading 35 words a minute. Without adequate progress, they’re liable to feel defeated and believe that their inability to read is just part of their school experience. To see them smile and get to 90 words a minute makes my year. Here are a few ways I made the transition to a blended learning environment while jumpstarting my students’ love for reading.

COMBINING ONLINE WORK AND FACE-TO-FACE INSTRUCTION

During the first year using the new program, Reading Horizons Discovery, the students and I were actively learning it together. After the first year, I was confident in using the program, mostly because my students’ progress was something I’d never seen before. While the computer components of my class were beneficial for both myself and my students, walking through activities face-to-face with students was still crucial.

We usually start with a whole-group lesson. I like to get my students to stand up and do work around the room before they log in to their computers for a lesson. During this time, I can use my assessment data to pull students aside for individual lessons based on who didn’t pass the last lesson. The computer component allows me to identify what their needs are. First I want to know what my students understand and what they don’t, then I interact with them to help them through their struggles.

SETTING SPEED AND QUALITY GOALS

I like to supplement my lessons with what we call a “One-Minute Read.” We read the same passage for a week. On the first day, we read it for one minute, assess how far in the reading we got, and set a goal for the end of the week. We set the goal based on speed and quality. If students meet the goal at the end of the week, I give them candy.

With this short activity every day, they get a chance to practice their reading fluency alongside their phonics. In the beginning of the year, they often groan when I tell them it’s time to read. It’s not long, though, before they see themselves meeting their goals, and they smile widely.

They see the benefits of quality practice. They walk into class and ask, “Can I read to you?” They practically beg. Their love for reading has come alive.

APPLAUDING IMPROVEMENTS, NO MATTER HOW SMALL

Sometimes students feel a little defeated when they open up their standardized tests and see a long passage. It’s intimidating if they’ve never encountered dense text. But showing them that they know the words on the page changes their attitude toward reading and testing.

Breaking down each syllable of a word teaches students how to put words together by sounding them out. It teaches them to look for certain clues in a word that tell them how it sounds. It clicks for my students. My students are more engaged and thrilled about their growth. Their reading fluency has improved, and their reading scores have gone up hundreds of points on their standardized tests from the beginning to the end of the year. The program reinforces my lessons, and I think the combination has been a game changer. When my students reach their goals, big or small, I celebrate with them.

To other teachers considering a transition to blended, phonics-based learning, I would say this: Success isn’t going to happen overnight. There will be days where you feel like it’s not working. When I go home at night, I run through the day in my head and assess what worked and what didn’t. Then I head into class the next day with a clean slate. There’s always room for improvement.

The important thing is to keep going. There are days where you’ll have to regroup, but little by little, you’ll see it really is making an impact. Regardless of their level, a phonics-based literacy approach moves students forward.

Melissa Cassada is a special education teacher at Lewison Elementary School in Evans, Georgia.

ReadingIQ

Great looking, free library has a reasonable diversity of titles

Pros: The collection consists of high-quality, recognizable books and covers lots of topics.

Cons: Some of the most commonly found features of digital libraries are missing.

Bottom Line: This is a reading app that focuses primarily -- and successfully -- on the reading; don't expect many bells and whistles though.

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

Research draws a direct correlation between students’ frequency of reading for fun and their average reading scores. The more frequently they read, the higher the students’ reading scores.This white paper provides insights into the benefits of an ebook program at your school. You’ll learn how:

• Librarians and classroom teachers are working together to give students access to ebooks as part of their curriculum as well as for pleasure reading
• Student devices provide easy access to a district-wide library of ebooks
• A user-friendly interface engages students with interactive components
• Digital reading supports personalized learning
• Good readers have better academic outcomes

Click here to download the full whitepaper

826 Digital

Popular after-school program shares its resources with teachers

Pros: Writing activities have creative age-appropriate topics that'll connect with students.

Cons: Some activities use web videos but don't include links, so teachers have to search online. There's not much on offer for primary grades.

Bottom Line: This is a worth-bookmarking resource thanks to relatable writing lessons and motivating examples of actual student writing.

Read more.

Site of the Week picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed byCommon Sense Education, which helps educators find the best edtech 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

Curriculum Associates is updating its i-Ready program.

The updates, which will be available for Back to School 2019 and which were recognized by the Tech & Learning ISTE 2019 Best of Show Awards, include a new student experience, new support for middle school students, a new Mathematics Diagnostic available in Spanish, new accessibility features, and more robust historical reporting. 

For grades K–8, there will be new instructional lessons and a new student dashboard with an age-appropriate design. New age-appropriate introductions will play before the Diagnostic to encourage every student to do their best. 

i-Ready will release approximately 100 new lessons designed to engage middle school students in their learning. These include 60 new reading comprehension lessons for Grades 6–8 featuring culturally-responsive passages, as well as nearly 40 new online mathematics lessons for Grades 6–7 that cover algebra and algebraic thinking and numbers and operations. 

With the lessons, students will engage more directly with learning concepts, see substantially less talking from i-Ready characters, and receive responsive instruction that adjusts the pacing of a lesson to meet the learning needs of each student. 

For educators, i-Ready will include new guidance, tools, and resources built for the  challenges of the middle school classroom. This includes ideas for class-wide and school-wide activities, guides for holding data chats with middle school students, and recommendations on using Teacher-Assigned lessons in middle school to address on-grade level content. 

A Spanish-language version of the i-Ready Diagnostic for Mathematics will also be available. 

To learn more about the new i-Ready enhancements, visit www.i-ReadyCentral.com/AlwaysGettingBetter.

Epic! - Unlimited Books for Kids

Free, expansive digital library unlocks treasure trove of books

Pros: Seemingly boundless library includes popular, well-loved authors and series.
Cons: Assessment tools are limited, and it'd be great to have multiple book styles for each book (audiobook, read-to-me, and typical solo reading).
Bottom Line: This large collection of books and videos on a wide variety of topics is an easy -- and free -- enhancement to any classroom library.

Read more here.

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