http://www.web-pop.com/portal.html

The "Web-Pop Portal" (http://www.web-pop.com/portal.html) website is designed for "web-enhanced reading adventures." The site is great for parents and teachers alike. The website offers great features such as a "book-pop", "link-pop", "parent and teacher pop", "beta book pop", "mail-pop", and "art-pop" links. The "book-pop" link offers parents or teachers online books and stories to assist with enhancing the student's reading abilities. The user also has the ability to purchase books online, hear the author tell their stories, and the chance to email the author's with questions you may have. The "link-pop" link is great for teachers. It allows you yo play and download your favorite songs. This link is also great for children because they have the chance to check out "Barbie", "Theodore Tugboat", "Rugrats", and other children friendly characters that will gain their attention. The other links mentioned above share the same qualities as the aforementioned. They are all designed to assist parents and teachers with enhancing their children's reading ability. Something that stood out about this website was the "Stephen" characters Zibbies and Dunebug. The "Zibbies" feature was an additional website that had games, toys, and other items to help with developing a child's literary skills. "Dune Bug" is a very entertaining online story about life in a zoo. Overall, I would suggest this site to any parent or teacher who wants to help children to read.

James W. Jarvis

Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness
Our group explored websites that have emphasis on phonological awareness. There are activities and games that children can do, and teachers and parents can utilize. I hope they are helpful to all of you guys!

1. Readinga-z
www.readinga-z.com/phonics/index.html

The website focuses all on phonological awareness and phonics. This program uses direct and explicit instructional strategies for teaching phonological awareness and phonics. Reading A-Z provides instructional resources for teaching the sounds and symbols of language and their relationships to one another using 30 phonological awareness lessons and 68 phonics lessons. The website is broken down into eight different sections: Phonological Awareness Lessons, Phonological Awareness Assessment, Phonics Lesson, Phonics Assessment, Phonogram Flashcards, Decodable Books, Read-Aloud Books, and Sound/Symbol Books. Each lesson provide teacher and parent many resources they can use with their kids. In the Phonological Awareness lesson children are taught to notice, differentiate, think about and manipulate sounds – from sounds of words to sounds of individual phonemes. Some of the things the lessons focus on are blend syllables; manipulate initial sounds, segment syllables and onset and rime. Phonological Awareness Assessment is where the children listen for, identify, discriminate, and produce sounds. The assessments cover rhyme, onset and rime and syllable awareness. The phonics lessons contain worksheets that focus on consonants, short vowels, and word families, blending of sounds, long vowels, open vowel, vowel digraphs and other vowel patterns. There are two phonics assessments available. One assessment focuses on the child’s ability to associate a sound with a given symbols which covers decoding simple CVC words. The second one focuses on the child’s ability to decode nonsense words which is blending, long vowels, digraphs, and diphthongs. Phonogram flashcards are usefully in teaching word building. The flashcard focuses on the five short vowel sounds. Decoding books can be useful with a child who needs practice decoding the sound/syllables relationships in words that they have already learned. The read-aloud books help children hear a certain sound that they have been working on. Sound/Symbol books let the children read by themselves while they focus on sound/symbol relationships. All of these lessons are great to do with kids who are struggling and kids that are not struggling. The more practice a child receives the better they will understand the sounds of the letters and how the letters work together. There are so many opportunities to practice certain phonics and phonological awareness on this website. It is a great website for parents and teachers who want their children to become better readers.

Evaluated by: Ashley Chumchal


2. Half Pint Kids
www.halfpintkids.com

The website, halfpintkids.com is a wonderful tool for parents or teachers to use with children to help them with their emergent reading and activities for phonemic awareness.
Half Pint Kids has "readers" that a parent or teacher can buy that are fun to read, easy to decode and affordable. The readers were written by a Kindergarten teacher so they are both practical and effective as each word was carefully chosen. The readers are based upon the principles of phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. Half-Pint Readers introduce only a few sounds or new skills at a time while providing lots of opportunities for practice before adding more skills. The books are centered around a theme and each book builds upon the skills of a previous book.
Half Pint Kids also has over 30 different activities that can be done with a child to go along with the readers. Some of the activities prepare the child for reading while others give instructions on how to teach and blend sounds. After the child has mastered the skill, there are games and activities to review and practice that skill.
The downside to this website is that the readers are not free. They are for sale on the website along with several games and activities to reinforce phonemic awareness.
Overall, this website has many great free activities to do with a child to get them started reading. Whether you plan to buy the readers or not, the website offers valuable information, games and activities that would get any child ready to read!

Evaluated by: Callista Young


3. Free-reading
www.freereading.net/index.php?title=Phonological_Awareness_Activities

Freereading.net is a fantastic website with numerous resources and activities for students and teachers particularly dealing with phonological awareness.
There are five tabs including, Core Activities, Educator-Contributed Activities, About Activities, Teaching Tips and Resources.
Under Find Activities there are many resources including- Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Comprehension, Vocabulary, Fluency and Writing.
If you click on Phonological Awareness there are numerous activities for building students phonological awareness, these activities are ordered in skill level, so once your students master the skill you are able to scroll down to a new level. Each activity provides explicit directions and details and some also provide a video of the activity or skill being learned. Some of the activities are identifying and generating rhyming words, body part game, counting words in a sentence and blending syllables name game.
Under educator-contributed activities there are over 70 other different activities for phonological awareness.

Under about the activities there is a complete overview on the importance of phonological awareness, two important manipulation skills are:

• Oral segmenting, which refers to taking spoken language and breaking it into separate parts. Phoneme segmenting, for instance, teaches students that words are composed of sounds, which they need to understand in order for sounding out to make sense.

• Oral blending, which refers to taking a sequence of sounds and putting them together to form spoken language. Phoneme blending is what students will need to do when they sound out words to pronounce them correctly. And information provided by the national reading panel.

The teaching tips tab provides great strategies and explanations on the lessons and activities that are very helpful. And the last tab which is resources provides picture cards that you can download, sound pronunciation guides in mp3 format that provides the recommended way to segment words into onset-rimes and phonemes

Freereading.net is a very useful tool for educators and great learning activities for students. It is also a collaborative website where you can share lessons and ideas!

Evaluated by: Jennifer Porton


4. PBS Spelling Games
http://pbskids.org/games/spelling.html

PBS is a great resource for young children’s learning. I particularly explored the area, spelling. It was such a wonderful website because how it delivered the phonological practices for kids. I mean, it was fun to go through different games/activities because of its rich sound and visual effects. The activities are animated so colorfully and more than that, the narrator’s exciting intonation was what grabbed my attention the most. I think children would not feel boring doing these activities even though most of them are similar. What they do is, in the spelling section, the narrator tells the sound of the letter for them to guess the correspondent letter that eventually makes up a word. For example, the narrator says, “Which letter makes the sound “p” pig?” And then the child has to choose the letter. When they get right, the narrator encourages the child, saying comments such as “Sensational!” There are different levels, which I thought it was good. In each game, there are always directions read from the narrator in fun background music, that children would never get bored. The only downside is that you might need to dig and choose what games to do according to specific practices you want children to learn. And there are a lot of activities other than the spelling part.
I had such fun time exploring it, and I am sure the kids will enjoy them, and teachers and parents can use them, pulling up this website to do the activities together and have some fun learning the sounds of the letter!

Evaluated by: Yire Lee

Starfall

http://www.starfall.com/

Starfall is an interactive website designed to help children learn how to read through the usage of phonics. The website is mainly designed for preschool aged students to second grade level students. It is also very helpful for special education and students learning English as a second language. The website is visually appealing to children, with pictures and colors, and easy to navigate. The website first starts with learning the ABCs, to get children prepared to learn how to read. It consists of sing-alongs to teach the children the different sounds the letters can make, along with teaching children the vowels. The next section puts the letters in words, and teaches children how to say the entire word, through different short phrases. The next section puts the phrases into sentences. And that section is followed with putting sentences into stories. The best part of the website is that it is interactive. It is more like playing a game, then it is learning how to read. For example, the website will prompt the user with a question like "Who am I?" and the user must click on boy or girl. Simple tools like this can really facilitate the child's learning, because it is necessary for a child to want to learn. When there is a learning game to be played, the child is more willing to learn, and more ready to accept new information.

This resource can be used in a classroom setting (if computers are present) or at home for outside of school assignments. The website has levels for different levels, and allows a student to move through it at their own pace. This is very helpful in classes with a mix of students who already know the English language, to students who are learning it as their second language. The website talks to the students so that they can orally and visually learn at the same time. The speaker also repeats the sounds, words, phrases, and sentences while the computer screen visually repeats the same.

By Myron Hardy

Teaching Methods

www.bookpop.com

The book-pop website is a great source for children to learn how to read, learn letters, animals, sounds, exploring, etc. The book pop website can be used in the classroom and in the home environment. This website is great for children to learn literacy. The children will have fun while learning to read. This website has different sections like music pop, art pop, story pop, mail pop, and book pop. The children can click on each section that will help them with their listening and reading skills. The sections will help them with their literacy skills. In the music pop section, they can listen to music while reading along to the words. In the art pop section, they can color a coloring sheet and explain what is happening in the picture. In the mail pop section, the children can write an email to the author and creator of this website. This action encourages children to write, print, and read. In the book pop, they can explore and read the story that interests them. In the story pop, children can listen to a narrator read to them while they read along. The book-pop website offers a game site that children can learn letters, animals, sounds that help them with their literacy while having fun. In classrooms, children will have an area with a computer for literacy games. They can go online and explore this book-pop website to learn about literacy and be able to read. For example, an individual child on Friday?s can go to the computer to explore the area of the music pop area. Each Friday a child can do a different section within this website. The teacher can help the child if they have questions or concerns. Each child can write an email to the author or creator of the website. This can promote writing and reading skills. In home, parents can help children explore the website if they have access to a computer. Parents can tell the children to go on the website and read a story each night before bed. Overall, the book-pop website is a great source for children to learn literacy. It is useful because they can have fun while learning to read, write, listen, comprehend, and explore.

By: Lysandra Garcia

http://www.readinglesson.com/article1.htm

The reading lesson website is a fantastic resource for teachers and parents to teach their children to read. The site is easy to navigate and offers many different methods and activities to promote strong literacy development. The site offers tips to help parents and teachers to teach their children to read. Some tips included are simple ideas such as not worrying yourself with their grammar initially or teaching lower case letters first. The site also offers a Q & A section to answer any questions that may concern the parent or teacher. The website also offers a message board hosted by Dr. Michael Levin where you can post your ideas or ask questions concerning language development. Another fantastic option the site offers are the games and activities you and your children can do. They have online movies, downloadable reading lessons, and simple online stories early readers can utilize to enhance their reading abilities. The site even offers articles about reading disabilities just in case your children are having a difficult time learning how to read. And last, but not least, there is a link that is geared for teachers and one that is geared for parents so the adult supervising the reading lesson can best teach their children to learn to read. Overall, this site offers everything a teacher or parent could ever want to use when teaching young people to read. The site offers tips, answers to your questions, games, lessons, and movies to promote a better educational environment for young children to acquire strong reading skills.

By: James W. Jarvis

How students develop reading skills

http://pbskids.org/lions/games/
Between the Lions is a great website for children 3 and up because not only does it read the book to you but the children can follow along to try and sound out the words as they are said. There are three categories for the children to explore which are the following: Games, Stories, and Video Clips. These different areas give children a different way of learning. By watching the words light up while the reader reads the words the child can relate and comprehend how to read words. Also, with the games they aren't just allowing children to play any games but rhyming games so it can help the children understand rhyming and also can help with the similarities in the sounds to spell words in the future. It allows the children to variety on how they want to learn and what is easiest for them. Video clips can include fictional characters but also real people who read them stories. The website contains a lot of authors who read their own books and say their intake on the stories they are telling. The website attracts children which is necessary for them to learn. They need to be interested in what they are learning and how they are learning it and between the lions gives variety for different type of children. Last, It can be used with the parents or for the parents so they learn how they can teach their children or how they can be involved with their children's learning ability.
By: Courtney Kagan

http://www.colorincolorado.org/
The purpose of “Colorín Colorado” is to provide information, strategies, and activities for teachers of English Language Learners. The variety of activities provided help benefit students of all ages and levels of literacy development. The sidebar of this website includes tabs for both educators and for families with ideas and helpful approaches for students to linguistically develop their English. The Educators’ Section can be adapted by teachers in various teaching situations including ESL teachers and general education teachers with ELLs in their classroom. The “For Educators” tab includes links that explain the importance of reaching out to Hispanic Students and families, the ELL Resources necessary for each grade level, the assessment and placement processes teachers must be aware of, as well as other helpful tools and ideas that students may benefit from.The Families’ Section provides parents with an idea of how they can help their child to succeed at school. This tab includes links such as tips that are essential to a child’s bilingual development, informational articles and resources, as well as an entire page dedicated to the requirement for strong Parent-Educator partnerships. In addition to sections specifically for teachers and parents, this site literally offers information on “Topics A-Z” that address a wide variety ideas that can impact students’ literacy development.Colorín Colorado more specifically focuses on the development of Hispanic students and their families considering the vast majority of ELLs in the United States today are Spanish-speaking. However, the strategies the website provides are applicable to students from all bilingual backgrounds.
By: Melissa Berger

http://www.funbrain.com/index.html
This website is great for children in the beginning stages of literacy development. The child and parent can pick the child's reading level at the bottom of the page, and then click on the section labeled, “Reading,” where there are popular comic books for the child to read aloud to the parent. The website is for children from grades K to 8, so the reading is encouraged at all stages for early elementary to secondary education. There is also Madlib activities for children K to 2, where the child must fill in the correct word depending on whether it is an adjective, noun, or verb, and sometimes it depends on what the letter begins with; for example, on the madlibs for the Kindergarten section it says, “'H' is for Henry's Hotdog Hut,” and then it tells the child to pick or type in an adjective, noun, verb, or plural verb that begins with an “h.” This is a great activity for ESL students in developing the foundations of learning the English language by becoming familiar with the nouns, and also by learning that the “h” makes a “hhhh” sound. ESL students can build their phonological awareness for the English language. These games will help strengthen writing/reading skills and vocab. This website has multiple activities to encourage students to read. Web books, word games, grammar and spelling activities, There are also a great amount of other reading tools and writing tools that this website has made fun to encourage the kids to keep practicing their reading and writing skills.
By: Morgan Smith

http://www.rif.org/kids/readingplanet.htm
This website has great activities for students, especially ELL students. Some of the activities include writing a poem inspired by a painting. Printing out a story and illustrating the pictures to go along with them. This encourages students reading development because they have to be able to read the story to know what to draw in their illustrations instead of drawing random things. Monthly calendars in English and Spanish for daily reading activities, like reading a Dr. Seuss book to a younger student. The website also has stories that children can read and listen to online, gives books and information about different cultures. The website has games about languages where you match English words to the words in other languages. There is also an author of the month and an interview that children can read about the author. This website gives students a variety of tools to read online, which encourages reading acquisition. It also provides resources like book titles for students to read and ideas for children to get them involved in literacy development of reading and writing.
By: Mary Rice

Books to Assist with Reading and Second Language Acquisition

All of the following resources have books that assist children with reading and second language acquisition. Each website has a variety of books that can either be purchased to read aloud to children, or provide guided reading to children, by highlighting the words as the book is read out loud. The books are also illustrated so that children can understand the gist of the book through pictures regardless of their reading ability. Some of these websites have books read out loud in different languages as well. All of these resources can be used at home or in the classroom, and are entertaining for children as well as adults.

RIF Leading to Reading: http://www.rif.org/kids/leadingtoreading/en/leadingtoreading.htm

The acronym RIF stands for “Reading is Fundamental.” Although the parent website (http://www.rif.org/), offers a variety of resources as well, this branch off (Leading to Reading) is particularly helpful. The theme is “where young children discover the joy of reading and grownups enjoy the journey.” Providing books and literacy resources for young children between the ages of 0 and 5 years of age, the site can be accessed in either English or Spanish. There is also a link for adults, providing them with books, activities, articles and advice, and other resources to help them assist young ones with early acquisition.

The first link is for babies and toddlers (ages 0-2 years). The children can choose from “Stories,” “Nursery Rhymes,” “Lullabies,” or “Games & Finger Plays.” The “Story” section has several different books that are illustrated and read out-loud. As each word is read, it is highlighted. This helps the children recognize the words as they are spoken and written. The “Nursery Rhymes” section has several different nursery rhymes that are read aloud. Although the words aren’t highlighted as they are read, they are printed on the screen so that children can see what the words look like. The “Lullabies” section has a variety of children’s lullabies that are sung in either English or Spanish (or both). The “Games” section has several different matching games, a game where children can play instruments, and a game where children can hear animal sounds. Finally, the “Finger Plays” section is an area where adults are acting out different songs and rhymes such as “I’m a Little Teapot,” “Pat-a-Cake,” “Five Little Monkeys,” and many more.

The second link is for preschoolers (ages 3-5 years). The children can choose to either “Read,” “Sing,” “Play,” “Doodle,” “Explore,” or “Meet Riffy & Rita.” The “Read” section is very similar to the babies and toddlers stories; however, the stories are more advanced. The words are highlighted and read out loud as the child reads along. The “Sing” section has a variety of songs and is really entertaining because the songs are illustrated and animated. The words are also highlighted as they are sung. The “Play” section has a lot of different games and activities for the children. Some are the same as the games for babies and toddlers, but there are some that are more interactive such as “Supermarket Spree,” a game in which the preschooler can fill their cart with different groceries. The “Doodle” section has a coloring book, where children can color online, a scribble pad, where children can draw online, and printouts so that pictures can be printed and colored on paper. The “Explore” section has videos and facts about different kinds of animals such as elephants, frogs, blowfish, and several others. “Meet Riffy & Rita” is basically a playhouse for preschoolers to meet the characters associated with “Leading to Reading.”

One strength of this resource is that it is very user-friendly; children should be able to do the activities and read the books on their own or with minimal assistance at a very young age. As you move your mouse over each link, a child’s voice tells you what the link says. This is helpful for children who can’t read the links yet. It is also entertaining and interactive. Children should find the activities enjoyable, which will encourage them to read and enjoy reading at a very young age. Another benefit is that the website can be accessed in both English and Spanish. This is predominantly useful for children whose first language is Spanish. Although it does not provide books in any other languages, it is also useful for helping children that are struggling with English because it shows spoken and written English, as well as illustrations that assist with understanding. On the Spanish site, the links are said and written in both Spanish and English. This is really beneficial for children’s second language acquisition. All of the resources on the Spanish site are culturally relevant, and vary from the ones provided on the English site.

Although this resource is not geared towards school-age children, it is wonderful for parents to use at home, or for can be used in day-cares or preschools. As a preschool teacher, I would probably use this website for in-class readings and activities. If I had the materials available I would project a story for the children to listen to and read along with. We would listen and read along in both English and Spanish. I would also have them do some of the activities and games on their own and allow them to choose what activities or games interested them. We could also listen to the songs in both English and Spanish and learn to sing along. Furthermore, there are printouts available, such as printable coloring pages with words and illustrations, which I would have the children color in class. It would also be useful to inform parents of the website so that they could take advantage of this resource as well.

Leading to Reading illustrates good teaching because it allows the children to do things on their own, and promotes their independence. At such a young age, children need to be encouraged to read and enjoy reading so that by the time they start first grade, they have the tools to lead them towards success. This is a great website to help youngsters achieve confidence and independence in their literacy acquisition!

(Evaluated by Clare Cryar)

Bilingual Books for Kids Inc.: http://www.bilingualbooks.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=0

Bilingual Books for Kids Inc. is a great website for bilingual readers at different levels. This site offers lists of bilingual books and activities for all ages. The focus of this site is to provide many titles in these lists that you can purchase straight from the web page. This is a pro and con of the website.

On the main page is an index of categories, each with their own description. These categories provide for a simple and easy way to navigate through the website. Each category is a button you can click on, which takes you to another page that has detailed lists. These details include title of the book or activity, a summary, a picture, number of pages and the price. You can buy these products straight from the website or you can look for them in your local library, if you don’t want to buy them. Parents will love this site because they won’t have to do a ton of research to find good quality educational books and activities for their children.

The con of this website is the lack of interactive material for kids. This site was not really designed for that, however it can be used in classes with L1 and L2 students. Students can look up bilingual books to read and even further if they are interested in a certain topic, the sites categories may provide books of specific interests. There are books for students learning Spanish or English. Also the library can use this site to order books for bilingual students. It would only be beneficial for students if these books were in the library.

As a teacher, an assignment I could have my students do is to find 3 books from the site that are of interest to them and then choose one to share with the class. The site is easy enough for students to use and everything is packed into one location. Another assignment students could do is to all find a different book in the same category to share with the class. You can teach that topic and then back up the material with books, for example poetry. This site provides books that will help L2 learners with their vocabulary as well as how to relate material from the L1 to the L2 like Universal Grammar believes. Besides vocabulary, students can learn about an array of things such as colors for younger students and relationships for the older students.

I think this website is a gold mine. It has so many books that it would take a while to read them all and the website isn’t limited to just one type of student or one interest. It even has a place at the bottom where you can select a price range if you are interested in purchasing any of their products. Some of the highlights of the site are the categories for infants, ABC’s, 123’s & Colors, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, games, poetry, and books for adults. Teachers, Parents, and students will enjoy using this website to explore and find bilingual books just to their liking.

(Evaluated by Marissa Rosenstein)

TumbleBooks: http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/home_tumblebooks.asp

Is a great Website for children who are learning how to read or already know how to read but are trying to further their reading level. On this Website children can choose from thousands and thousands of books for the computer to read to them. This is great for the beginning learner because as they read along they can see the word and also hear how the word is pronounced. The site also has Spanish books available for English language learners as well. This would be great way for the children to also get to know their neighborhood library because this program will give the children access not only at school but at libraries in their area. When I tried to access this site and review it I couldn’t full access everything in the site. The site didn’t allow me to see the books but I could hear the audio. This could become a problem if the site has a continous technical problem that I encountered, it won’t allow the children to get the full effect and advantages of the site. Now if the children are already reading the book on their own and have hard copy, it won’t that much of an issue. As for the classroom, for the students who need extra help with their reading and the teacher cannot get to every student at once. The teacher can send certain children to the computers to listen to the book while she works with another student and they switch them. So that way the child is getting that reinforcement of pronouncing the correct words. The child can sound out the words they do not know, say what they think the word is and then listen to how its being pronounced. However, teachers should not use this as a substitution for one on one with the teacher. The student could just sit over in front of the computer listens to the book and not make an effort to try to actually read it for themselves. By continuing the one on one time with the teacher, the teacher can evaluate the progress of the child.

(Evaluated by Candyce Pace)

Reading Rockets: Teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle: http://www.readingrockets.org/

Reading Rockets is a great website for children that are struggling to read in any language, need to further their skills, or for people who are trying to teach children to read. It offers resources for teachers, children, parents, librarians, and people of other professions. It is also offered in Spanish for non-English speakers. There are strategies offered for teaching children, thousands of articles posted about how to help with second language acquisition, blogs about helping children learn to read, and a section with long lists of great books for children learning to read. This website is great because it reaches out for children of all skill levels, many different languages, and who struggle in many different areas of literacy.

If you go to the Home page, there are categories you can search on the side of the page. Under the Children’s Books section of the website, there are long lists of books that can help children read. If you go to Books by Themes, it will give you lists of books that will be very helpful for language learners. They have audio books, digital books, picture books, and many more categories. One of the downfalls is that you cannot buy all of the books through this website. You can find them in libraries, or specially order some of them. All of the books have Descriptions under them, or will send you to another website that gives you more of a variety. There is a space for people to comment under the description of the book to give feedback on it. This can be very helpful for people trying to find useful books. The website is easy to navigate and has many options for children to find helpful books; however there is not a specific category for second language learners, so you may have to search more.

There is one thing offered called the Family Literacy Bag which includes a fiction and non- fiction book, a hands-on craft project, an imagination activity, a get real activity, and a bookmark. This packet is offered in English or in Spanish. I think this would be great thing for children to use at home or in the classroom. In the classroom I could have the children search for books which might be of interest to them. However, I think this website is more beneficial for teachers or parents to pick books that would benefit the children. Therefore, I could use this resource to structure my class, find good strategies, and pick books that will help children in all areas. It tells me what books are good for what part of learning, and activities that I can incorporate into the lesson to help further the children’s language acquisition. This site does an amazing job at giving books, strategies, and games for teaching children. I will definitely use this site when I become a teacher.

(Evaluated by Micah Morgan)

Fun Literacy Activities to do with Kids

The following resources are fun websites that teachers/parents can use to encourage their children to get interested in reading. The child will not only be interested in reading, but these sites are a fun and interactive way to get them to learn. All of the websites are literacy based and can attract all types are literacy learners. Teachers can use any of these websites for free time for their students, or share a story in class as an interactive classroom activities. Check out the following websites to use in your future classrooms:

1. Website: http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/

There is an awesome literacy website for kids created by teachers! This site includes activities based upon Scholastic’s Clifford:The Big Red Dog! . The focus is “Interactive Storybooks: Phonics for Early Readers.” The first section is for interactive reading and there are four stories to choose from. You can choose to read a story either in English or Spanish and then click on the sentence for a read-a-long. In some sentences, there is a fill in the blank where the child has to choose the correct word to complete the sentence. This is a great activity to help develop vocabulary and fluency through practice. And since there is an option to read the story in English and Spanish, it is a great practice for ELL students in helping develop those basic reading skills. In the “Games” section there is a concentration activity where the student is asked to find the words with the same middle sound. For example, “rice has the same middle sound as mice” and so on. Also in the games section, the “Make a Word” activity has the children working with vowels to make the correct word sounds and words. There are also letter and sound matching activities. These help students to identify words having the same beginning letters and words that are similar sounding. All of these games help with basic literacy skills every child needs to know before becoming a strong reader. This site is also a great teacher resource. It has a link to many more Clifford lessons that can be utilized in the classroom and also a teacher guide to help give a better understanding on teaching early literacy skills to young children and ELL learners. This site encourages children to not only learn but to have fun doing it with a loving character they are familiar with. After interacting with the site, children will have the foundation and building blocks for their early literacy skills to spring into action.

By: Alyssa Sacco

2. Website: http://pbskids.org/lions/

One great website that includes great activities to encourage children literary is PBS kids site. It is focused on the hit show Between the Lions: Get Wild About Reading. Any child who is really interested in reading will really enjoy this site. This site has many different sections, and the one that can be best utilized with literacy for children is the section called Stories. Everything is so interactive for children. Once the child scrolls their mouse over the name of the section the name is actually read to them and this is a great feature to have when reading. In the Stories section the student can pick any story that interests them. Sometimes the stories are read by an adult or shown through pictures. I think this would be great for a parent or teacher to show their kids. A teacher could have students log onto the Internet and everyone in the class would have to read the same story. Then the next day the students can have a discussion on the story or do an activity to make sure they understood the story. Like the students could make a little book about what happened first, middle and last in the story. A downfall to the site is that if the students could not access the site from home. The teacher could show it in class to accommodate all students. A great thing that this site also does it after the story is read there is a game that goes along with the book. These are fun activities that go with the previous book just read. Another great thing about the stories section is that the book is written out for the student while it is read out loud. Also, as the site reads each word it highlights the word so the child can keep track and pace with the story. This is a great way to teach kids how to read because this helps them visually see the words along with hearing the way the words sound, which can be great for English Language learners. Being able to see and hear the words can be easier connected in an ELL’s mind. This is a wonderful site and there is even a link at the bottom for teachers and parents to check out. Also, students can look at video clips or play games. Overall this site is a great resource to show children because the child will have so much fun while learning!

By: Stephanie Nguyen

3. Website: http://www.mightybook.com/

Another great website to use to promote literacy in the classroom and outside of the classroom is Mighty Book. This website provides a fun and very welcoming learning environment for children, such that they will not even notice they are learning! Not only does the website promote learning, but it incorporates art and music from famous artists in a creative way. The website is composed of audio and visual story books in which children can read along and listen to, songs in which children can sing along to and learn, jokes, puzzles, games and even lesson plans and worksheets for teachers and parents to print and use. The wonderful thing about the audio and visual story book readings is that as each word is being read, the word changes to red drawing the child’s attention to which words are being read. This helps children keep up and follow along while the book is being read to them. This is a valuable tool for children that may be hard of hearing. This also promotes multi literacy in a way such that English language learners can hear the story while being able to correlate sounds to words. The pictures are great scaffolding devices so that ELLs can, in a sense, predict what is happening in the story, if they do not fully understand. Some ideas as to how you could use Mighty Book in assignments or in the classroom are:

· Have children listen to a story for homework and write a summary.

• · Project a story in the classroom so that the words are big enough for the children to really pay attention to and have students write about and illustrate their favorite part of the story.
• · Have students explore this website during centers and write about what they explored and learned about.

Overall, this website is a great tool for promoting multiliteracy in a fun way for your students and children; however one limitation is that to be able to take advantage of all the website has to offer you have to subscribe to it. That consists of a monthly fee, which may be inconvenient. Regardless, the samples the website posts are great tools.

By Noura Wakim

4. Website: http://storylineonline.net/

Storyline Online is a website that streams videos of celebrities reading children stories. After reading the story, students can do activities related to the book. I think this is a good resource to be used in the classroom. This website provides auditory and visible text for children who are seeing/hearing impaired. I would show the story videos in the classroom and then have the students write a summary of the story. They could also talk about the story to one another, discussing their favorite/least favorite parts. For homework assignments, children can write a journal entry from the perspective of a character in the book. I think this is a great resource for multiliteracy classrooms because it gives students several different opportunities for language development. It provides activities that allow students to speak, read, write, and interact with peers. It is helpful for English Language Learners because it shows the pictures in the book as it is being read. This helps them connect the visual representations to what is being said verbally. Storyline Online illustrates principles of good methodological practices because it provides various forms of learning for the students.

By: D’Anna Siciliano

5. Website:www.starfall.com

Starfall is a great website for children to explore. This is a great way for children to increase their knowledge of literacy. They will be attracted to the bright colors and the entertainment of the different activities and will not even realize this is an educational learning website.

The list of strengths of this website goes on and on. One strength is that there are four main activities the children can interact with. The way Starfall is set up is that children progress through each activity. After the child goes through the first activity and learns everything he/she can, they are capable of moving on to the next activity. The activities have the children start from going through each letter of the alphabet and ending with being able to read short books.

The “ABCs” link takes the children to a page where the child can choose any letter in the alphabet. Here, it sounds out the letter and then uses a word that starts with that letter. The strength of this link is it is a fun exercise for the children because it also uses animation and music to interact with them and makes it an enjoyable experience. The “Learn to Read” link takes the children to a page where they can choose if they want to read books or play games. They have 15 books to choose from and as they read the book and they come across a word they do no know how to read, they can click on the word and it will slowly pronounce it to the child. They also include different videos of the concepts of the alphabet, left to right, and vowels. The “It’s Fun to Read” link takes the children to the page where they can choose from different categories of reading. The can choose from stories about artists, magic, poetry, music, tongue twisters and riddles. Here they can practice reading and the words can be read to them by clicking on the words as they go along.

You can use this resource in the classroom by having the teacher use it at the computer center. When the children have “free time”, they can choose to go over to the computer center and visit this website and explore literacy by themselves. The teacher could also have the class sit around the computer and she/he can guide the students through the website and do it together as a class. For homework assignments, this website is a great opportunity for kids to practice reading outside of school. You could assign the students a couple of letters a night to go through and then in class the next day do different exercises with words that start with those letters. You could also assign the students to read a certain book on that website and then do an activity on that book the next day in class.

A limitation for assigning homework to the website is that the teacher does need to take into consideration that not all of the students will have access to a computer at home. Therefore, the teacher should have an estimate about whether being able to assign this type of homework assignment is reasonable or not. The teacher might encourage those students without access to a computer to visit a public library or stay after school in an after school program and do the homework at that time. I don’t think there are that many limitations to this resource because this website allows the child to sound out each letter as they read the word and gives them multiple opportunities to practice.

By: Amy Yarbrough

All of these sites are definitely a great tool to share with friends and families that will help children become successful in literacy! Please check out these sites and use for future reference. Enjoy!