Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Epic! offers thousands of high-quality free books for educators teaching grades K-7. Create an account using your education email to begin. Add up to 30 student profiles to your account to receive personalized recommendations based on reading ability and interests. Students can freely access books on any device, but only during the school day. Educators receive feedback, including the time spent reading, page flips, and the number of books read. Students earn badges and rewards as they reach milestones. Resources include classroom posters, lesson plans, teacher tips, presentations, and letters to parents in PDF format. Find educational videos by Smithsonian, Blue Wonders, Animal Wonders, and Encyclopedia Britannica. Epic! also offers titles in Spanish. Tutorial videos reside on YouTube, as do some of the educational videos. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): classroom management (154), DAT device agnostic tool (134), ebooks (50), movies (51), reading lists (79)

The Unite for Literacy Library offers many online books for young readers with audio. Browse through the home page to choose books to read from the library shelves. Narrow down your choices using picture icons for different themes such as animals or families. Select and click a book to read. Click the speaker icon to hear each page. The narration is also available in many languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese.

tag(s): audbk (25), audint (12), audio books (42), audtxt (19), independent reading (85), interactive stories (23), preK (352)

Freckle Education is a Common Core-aligned program with resources for math, ELA, science, and social studies for K-8 that adapts to individual student skills. Freckle has over 50,000 math questions matched to all math standards and more than 500 ELA non-fiction articles that often cover social studies and science standards as well as all ELA standards. There are five reading levels offered for each article. Sign up to create a class account and add student information. Students login in through an iPad app or with the online web version and the class code. Students complete a diagnostic pre-test and then begin working at their individual level. Awards of coins for completion of levels promote student engagement and enjoyment of the program. Freckle also promotes student collaboration through their inquiry-based, cross-curricular lessons. Other features include a scratch pad for working through problems, virtual manipulatives, and individualized printables for practice. Receive detailed analytics and student reports on your dashboard. You may encounter a warning about how Freckle may not work on your browser and to use the Chrome app. For this reviewer Mozilla FireFox and Microsoft Edge seemed to work fine for a student pre-test and the teacher dashboard. This program is great for supplementing your instruction, differentiating, blended learning classes, and remote learning. Freckle was titled Front Row.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): collaboration (142), differentiation (103), independent reading (85), inquiry (39), reading comprehension (146), Research (92), Teacher Utilities (233), writing (304)

Newsela offers four leveled news articles at five reading levels for teachers to choose from. The articles will be available for four weeks; Newsela Lite is free for any teacher to access four pre-selected news articles, select and lock reading levels for students, see alignment to state standards, schedule assignments and set due dates, access students' quiz scores, and respond to students' writing prompt submissions and annotations. Many of these features were on the "premium" account until the 2023-2024 school year.

In case you're wondering - Newsela features current events stories tailor-made for classroom use. Click "Products" on the top menu and slide down to browse content in subject areas (social studies, science, etc.). Stories are student-friendly and can be accessed in various formats tailored to different reading levels. Use Newsela to differentiate nonfiction reading. Newspaper writers rewrite a story four times, resulting in a total of five Lexile levels per story. All articles feature embedded Common Core-aligned quizzes that align with reading levels, allowing for checking comprehension, customizable assignments, writing prompts, and annotations. An account is required to use Newsela, both for teachers and students. However, students sign up using a teacher- or parent-provided code rather than an email address. Click the Resources tab at the top to find guides and short webinars. Teachers can create classes and assign reading-level-specific articles to individual students or download printable PDF copies of the article in any of its reading-level versions. There is no outside advertising.

tag(s): DAT device agnostic tool (134), differentiation (103), guided reading (31), independent reading (85), news (222), reading comprehension (146), remote learning (33)

ReadWorks provides a free, research-based, and Common Core-aligned reading comprehension curriculum. Click Explore Content from the top menu to search through hundreds of lesson plans organized by grade level, topic, or titles. Register to download materials and save lessons to your folder. (A valid email and password is required). Be sure to start with the Teacher Guide to see all the many features ReadWorks offers about using and teaching the provided lessons and differentiation. For a quick start, click Explore Content then select options from the left menu: Text Options - Reading Passages, Aritcle a Day, and Paired Text, Curriculum Support, Grade, Topic, Text Types - Nonfiction, Fiction, or Poetry, and Lexile. There are thousands of reading passages along with question sets to support learning activities for grades K-12. Each selection contains the text with audio, a vocabulary link, and a questions set. In the left margin, you will find related resources such as standards and related materials. Teachers can create classes to assign reading and track assessments (which are automatically graded). After signing up with email, click on Admin from the top menu and create a class. Students join the class by using a code and their Google account. No Google account? No problem. Create a roster and provide the class code to students. Easily create assignments for the whole class, or individuals as a way to differentiate. This is a perfect tool to use for remote (or distance) teaching and learning!

tag(s): characterization (16), context clues (15), figurative language (20), guided reading (31), main idea (8), parts of speech (39), plot (13), point of view (9), reading comprehension (146), reading strategies (85), sequencing (22), Teacher Utilities (233), themes (16), vocabulary (260)