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READING STANDARDS FOR FICTION & INFORMATIONAL TEXT

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS

If our students are to graduate with the requisite reading skills, then the foundation must be established in the early grades, with emphasis on print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, word composition, and fluency. These foundational skills paired with the Reading standards will develop readers who can decode words and sentences with automaticity, so they can derive context and make meaning of a text that they read.

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Ultimately, the act of reading is a cognitively demanding skill. With careful guidance and instruction, students can fluently read words and sentences, so they can have access to the world of ideas presented to them in print. 

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MIDDLE GRADE ELA CLASSROOMS MISSION

1.  Emphasis on literature with an integrated examination of themes across genres; some specific genre studies. 

2.  Literary nonfiction as a means of exploration on matters of science, social studies, and other specialized disciplines. 

3.  Informational text as it can be used to research and support an argument. 

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Students need to experience a range in text variety, complexity, and length. As teachers wrestle with the percentage of time, they focus not on the formula, but on the intention of using a balance of informational texts to build background knowledge to lead into and/or supplement a more complex anchor text. Units of texts need to be thematically aligned to support the development of background knowledge, which supports comprehension. 

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LITERATURE AND READING

DETAILS FOR INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS

RECOMMENDED READING

RECOMMENDED READING

  • NoveList K-8 Plus

    Find just the right book by subject, age, awards won, Lexile Reading levels, Common Core standards; even books made into movies, and much more.

    http://galesupport.com/migeoipcheck/migeoipcheck-ebsco.php?database=NOVEL

  • What Should I Read Next?

    Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our huge database of real readers' favorite books to provide book recommendations and suggestions for what to read next.

    http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/

  • Guys Read

    The Guys Read Virtual Vault of Good Books, built by Jon Scieszka.  These are the books that guys have said they like.

    http://www.guysread.com/

  • Book Adventure

    A fun, free way to motivate your student to read!  Kids in grades K-8 can search for books, read them offline, come back to quiz on what they've read, and earn prizes for their reading success.

    http://www.bookadventure.com/Home.aspx

  • Reading Rockets

    A national multimedia project that offers a wealth of research-based reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better.

    http://www.readingrockets.org/

THE BEST PLACES TO GET THE "SAME" TEXT WRITTEN FOR DIFFERENT "LEVELS"

November 16, 2014 by Larry Ferlazzo 

© 2012 Francisco OsorioFlickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

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Having the “same” text written for different levels of English comprehension can be a life-saver for a multi-level class of English Language Learners or for a teacher with a mainstream class that includes some students that are facing other challenges. They can be an important tool for differentiation.  But where do you get these different versions other than creating them yourself?

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  • Newsela provides several “levels” of the same newspaper articles, along with accompanying online quizzes, that students can read and take. For a small fee, Teachers can create a virtual classroom, assign articles and monitor student progress. However, students can read the articles for free without having to pay anything.

  • News In Levels offers similar resources, but without the ability to track student progress online. The site is free.

  • For The Teachers has similar leveled articles available for download. It, too, is free.

  • Breaking News English

  • Text Compactor lets you paste text into it and then automatically shares different versions with fewer words. It seemed to work pretty well when I tried it.

  • Rewordify is like a super-sophisticated Text Compactor on steroids. You can read my previous post about it: “Rewordify” Is One Of The Most Unique Sites Out There For English Language Learners & Others.

  • Reader Laurie suggests Embedded Reading, which has these kinds of similar “leveled” texts in English, as well as in other languages.

  • I learned about CommonLit from the amazing educator Suzie Boss at her recent Edutopia post. It’s a neat site that doesn’t actually provide the “same” text written for different “levels.” What it does do, however, is provide leveled readings – with prompts — on the same theme. It’s pretty neat.

  • Books That Grow has a library of texts that have each been edited to be made accessible to different reading levels. And it has some other unique features — teachers can create virtual classrooms to assign and/or monitor what students what are reading and students can click on words that are new to them to see definitions and hear how they are pronounced. They are also planning on adding comprehension questions. The texts can be read on any device.

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FURTHER SITES TO REDUCE COMPLEXITY

Reducing Complexity

  • Windows to the Universe   Science related articles at a variety of reading levels.

  • Ben’s Guide to U.S. Government for Kids  Government related articles at a variety of reading levels.

  • ​Actively Learn A flexible reading platform that lets you customize the reading environment to meet your students needs. Teachers choose digital text (add your own or use free or for purchase text from the site) and add comments, questions, prompts, videos etc. into the platform to chunk text. Students also have access to text-to-speech, dictionary and a note taking space built into the platform. Actively Learn is free to use, but additional features can be purchased.

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TEXT TO SPEECH

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DIGITAL BOOKS AND TALKING BOOKS

  • StoryLine On Line:

    Listen to stories read by Screen Actors Guild members - follow along with the text

  • CK-12 
    CK-12 provides open-source content and technology tools to help teachers provide learning opportunities for students globally.  Free access to high-quality, customizable educational content in multiple modalities suited to multiple student learning styles and levels, will allow teachers, students and others to innovate and experiment with new models of learning.

LITERACY IN THE DIGITAL AGE

NEWSLA

Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction text that’s relevant. Articles are updated daily with real-world news from major publications. Newsela makes it easy for an entire class to read the same content, but at a level that’s just right for each student.

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TWEENTRIBUNE

TweenTribune is a news site brought to you by the Smithsonian that provides daily news articles for students. Articles are selected by professional journalists working in collaboration with teachers and students. As a Smithsonian resource, it has a plethora of science and history focused articles. This is a perfect website to find content-specific resources for our history and science teachers.

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WONDERPROPOLIS

Wonderopolis is a magical place where natural curiosity and imagination lead to exploration and discovery for learners of all ages. Each day, Wonderopolis poses an intriguing question and explores it in a variety of ways. Their approach both informs and encourages new questions, sparking new paths of wonder and discovery in family and classroom settings.

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GOOGLE NEWS ARCHIVE

Google, the greatest search engine of all time (we are a bit partial), has created a news repository. It’s a searchable archive of newspapers from around the world, dating all the way back to the 1700s.

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DOGO

DOGO is a robust online network that aims to empower students to engage positively with digital media and a worldwide audience. The website caters to children, embodied in their name “dogo” — which means ‘young’ or ‘small’ in Swahili. DOGO is comprised of several websites that foster both fun and interactive experiences by providing kids the opportunity to earn badges for reading and expressing their opinions. Students can connect with peers from around the world virtually and build their own personal learning network around digital texts in the ELA classroom.

INFOGRAPHICS TO STUDY...
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