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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Seven Steps to Better Reading.
National Reading Campaign present Readers Save the World! Reading is Good for You.
The Four Levels of Reading based on How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren.
Seven Steps to Become a Better Reader.
How Audio Promotes Literacy. Benefits of Audio to Learning How to Read.
Slowing Down the Distracted Generation. Tips and Tools to Get Children on the Written Word.
The Importance of Close Reading.
Inside the Brain of a Struggling Reader.
The Science of Speed Reading. How speed reading courses could improve the ability to quickly understand a large quantity of material.
"Sheep on the Moor" by Anton Mauve, 1838-1888, Public Domain
"Water Carriers of the Ganges" by Edwin Lord Weeks, 1849-1903, Public Domain
"Portrait of Pope Pius VII and Cardinal Caprara", Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine, by Jacques-Louis David, 1748-1825, Public Domain
"Sheep on the Moor" by Anton Mauve, 1838-1888, Public Domain
LITERATURE AND READING
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Web English Teacher - Very extensive guide to language arts sites and lesson plans.
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Read, Write, Think - Lesson plans for language arts from the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English.
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Literature and Language Arts - Lesson plans from EdSiteMent.
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Literature Lesson Plans - These are for middle and high school students. This site is from Discovery Education.
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Language Arts Lessons - From Education World.
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Literature Lesson Plans - Lesson plans for grades k - 12.
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Poetry Teachers.Com - Site of ideas for teaching poetry, poetry theater, and poetry contests.
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Using Poetry to Teach Reading - An article from Reading Rockets.
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Reading Rockets - News and articles to help improve the teaching of reading.
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25 Ideas for Better Book Reports - Article from Education World
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Teachers@Random - From Random House, Bantam, Doubleday, Dell. Ideas for teaching Young Adult literature with books from these publishers.
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Book Discussion Guides - Guides for books for children and young adults. This site is by the Multnomah Public Library.
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Biblionasium - An online reading community for children, parents, and teachers. This is a social reading community for young readers. Teachers may submit booklists.
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Books R4 Teens - Book summaries, teaching ideas, related media and texts, and links to related web sites. This site is by the University of Texas at Austin.
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AdLit - A site promoting adolescent literacy. Explore the teaching strategies and topics sections for teaching ideas.
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Vocabulous - Lesson plan with worksheets for improving middle and high school vocabulary.
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A Five Day Lesson Plan for Introducing Nonfiction - From Scholastic.
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Lesson Plans and Other Resources on Content-Rich Nonfiction and Informational Texts - From the National Council of Teachers of English.
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Using THIEVES to Preview Nonfiction Texts - From ReadWriteThink.
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Nonfiction Reading Strategies - links to middle school lesson plans selected by The University of Missouri
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Folger Shakespeare Library - lesson plans for Shakespeare's plays.
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Shakespeare in the Classroom - Teaching ideas for all grade levels. From PBS
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The Project Gutenberg Homepage - Electronic books. These books may be read online or downloaded to your computer or ebook reader.
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Many Books - Many free ebooks.
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The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1919 edition - The whole book is now online and searchable. You can also locate poems by author, title, and first line.
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Online American Literature Resources - Extensive list of links for American literature from Colonial period to 1865.
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Books for Children and Young Adults - links to more literature sites.
DETAILS FOR INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS
RECOMMENDED READING
RECOMMENDED READING
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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
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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.
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Guys Read
The Guys Read Virtual Vault of Good Books, built by Jon Scieszka. These are the books that guys have said they like.
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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.
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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.
THE BEST PLACES TO GET THE "SAME" TEXT WRITTEN FOR DIFFERENT "LEVELS"
November 16, 2014 by Larry Ferlazzo
© 2012 Francisco Osorio, Flickr | 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.
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News In Levels offers similar resources, but without the ability to track student progress online. The site is free.
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For The Teachers has similar leveled articles available for download. It, too, is free.
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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.
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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.
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Reader Laurie suggests Embedded Reading, which has these kinds of similar “leveled” texts in English, as well as in other languages.
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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.
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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
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Windows to the Universe Science related articles at a variety of reading levels.
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Ben’s Guide to U.S. Government for Kids Government related articles at a variety of reading levels.
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​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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CAST Text to Speech Resource Guide Great guide for all things text-to-speech
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Natural Reader: Free download to add text to speech to a PC.
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Built in Text to Speech on Mac
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System Preferences/Dictation & Speech/Text to Speech
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On iPad
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Settings/General/Accessibility/Speech/Speak Selection
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On Chrome (Chromebook)
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Read and Write Google Chrome Free for Teachers: https://rwchrome.texthelp.com/drive/support/home
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Snap&Read Universal Online, subscription-based reading tool for that reads accessible and inaccessible text aloud, dynamic text leveling and translation into over 90 languages.
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Kurzweil: Online subscription tool that adds reading supports to etext. Includes text-to-speech, highlighting, space for teacher prompts/questions.
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DIGITAL BOOKS AND TALKING BOOKS
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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
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 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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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, 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 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.