Online+Resources+09

Explore and review at least three online resources for the teaching of reading. Write a 250-word review of each website including a summary of its content and your evaluation of its usefulness and applicability to your future teaching context. Please post here and be prepared to share your reviews in class.

If you need a starting place for finding websites to review, try [|Ms. Moorman's social bookmarking account] on Diigo. =Example Review=

Traci's Lists of Ten Summary: [|Traci's Lists of Ten] is a website written by Traci Gardner, “an educator and writer” who has a strong background in computer science, allowing her to put a lot of her lesson plans and online curricular materials on the web. The website has a link to Traci’s ReadWriteThink page of lesson plans, which seem to be good lesson plans. The focus of the website, however, is on her “lists of ten.” She has ten lists, each with a different theme, including “Grammar, Style, and Language.” Each of those themes have three to eight sub-themes, which are links to each sub-theme pages, which also contain a list of ten items. Some of these sub-themes are ten tips for teachers, ten ideas for lesson plans on certain subjects or topics (for example, “Technological Literacy,” “Holocaust Rememberance Day”), or ten writing prompts. 

Evaluation of Usefulness: These lists will be very useful. The site is very easy to navigate. Each list item (even on the some of the sub theme pages) are labeled clearly with the theme or concept. Traci has included notes on how to customize her lesson plans, how to prepare for them, or changes she would make depending on who was in her classroom. Unlike other sites I visited, Traci’s did not seem to be trying to promote anything she had published or boast how talented she was—she created a text-based, no-nonsense site. The only problems I had with the site were the clarity of a few of the lessons and I even found a few grammatical errors in the lists! Applicability to Future Teaching: The “Tips” lists will be great for me when I am starting out as a teacher because she will have already found solutions to problems I would not have even seen coming. They will also be useful because many of the ideas are unique and not boring. Finally, the wide variety of topics the lists cover will make these lists applicable to my future teaching.

Amanda's Website Reviews:Teaching Today [|http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com]This is a useful website because it seems to have a lot to offer. There are lesson plans for all grade levels of all subjects. What makes these lesson plans special is that there are different approaches to the lessons based on what kind of learners are in the classroom; some for kinesthetic learners, some for visual learners, and some for auditory learners so that the teacher can reach all of the students. It’s really cool. For the language arts, there are lesson plans about various topics such as how to read propaganda, how to write expository papers, and others. There are also how-to articles for Reading about things like differentiating reading instruction in the classroom or how to see if your students understand nonfiction articles with a highlighter. There are teaching tips offered along with downloads on certain topics and strategic videos from other teachers. The website is easy to navigate with the bar at the top to take you to different areas and you can adjust the search for the age group you want and the subject you want. I think this website is really useful. The lesson plans provided reach all kinds of learners. Furthermore, the teaching tips and the instructional videos for teachers are wonderful. There are even links to the Glencoe website where teachers can purchase materials for their classrooms. I think that this will be a valuable website to me during my teaching career for whichever of the three subjects I am teaching (history, language arts, reading). Kim’s Korner for Teacher Talk [|http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com]I was really impressed with this website. The woman who developed it was a middle school language arts teacher for sixteen years and now works at the high school level as an ESL teacher, so she obviously has a lot of experience in teaching reading to the middle grades. The website was last updated in November of 2008 which means that it is probably up-to-date with most of the curriculum requirements for middle school reading. This website was really easy to understand with its “navigation books” at the bottom of each page which makes it simple to get around. If that does not make it simple enough, there is a site map to follow and it is easy to get back to the homepage. Kim has all kinds of ideas for teaching reading and writing in the middle grades from activities and lessons to definitions of what each topic entails. Her lessons are on various topics from vocabulary to question and answer relationships and making inferences. She also has tips for building a classroom library, ideas about how to teach types of literature like novels, and even tips about organization of your own classroom. Her lessons are easy to adapt to any classroom situation since they are fairly skeletal in structure which allows any teacher to flesh it out to their designs. I think that this will be a really valuable website in my teaching career because it has such wonderful tips and lesson plan ideas. On top of everything else, she provides links to other websites such as Nancy Keane’s Booktalks that provides book reviews for young adult novels or other websites with more teaching ideas. This is a really useful website that provides a great deal of information about reading lesson techniques, books to assign, and topics to focus on. I really recommend it for anyone who is involved in reading or language arts in middle school. Scholastic Website [|http://www2.scholastic.com]The Scholastic Website seems like a really great site with lots of helpful hints for teachers of all grade levels. It provides over one hundred lesson plans for reading teachers in the middle grades as well as student activities and unit plans centered on certain young adult books. These lesson plans, unit plans, and activities are for a multitude of focuses like cause and effect relationships, the elements of poetry, and other such focus areas. It also provides book list exchanges so that teachers from all over can put their book lists online for others to look at and get ideas from. This website provides video lessons from authors about how to read aloud in exciting ways. There are lessons that are focused on books as well as categorized lists of books by the main idea so that teachers can find the right book to read in class or to put in their library. This website seems really useful for a reading teacher. It allows teachers from all over the country to exchange book ideas which is really cool because it provides beginning teachers with models to look to for content ideas. There are also teacher discussions via the Classroom Solutions section on the website where teachers give tips straight from their classroom. I think this website is really awesome because there are so many resources for teachers, from lesson and unit plans to student activity ideas and book reviews/lists for middle school reading teachers. I will definitely be using this website when I get into the teaching world. It is also a great place to purchase mass orders of books too. Anna's Web Reviews: ReadWriteThink []Summary: The International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English put together ReadWriteThink as a way to grant students and teachers access to materials by way of the internet. The website’s slogan is: “Providing educators and students access to the highest quality practices and resources in reading and language arts instruction.” The site is well organized into lessons, standards, web resources, and student materials. The lessons and student materials sites both have linked lists with short descriptions of the lessons/materials. The web resources tab includes links to other websites and useful tools online, while the standards page outlines the 12 IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts. The home page consists of these tabs, the mission statement, highlights, and a simple but to the point chart at the bottom that breaks down the skills for Learning Language, Learning About Language, and Learning Through Language Usefulness: This site seems extremely useful to me. The lesson and student materials pages are very simple and easy to use. I’ve found that the best sites are often those with clear and simple layouts. The fact that it is created by the IRA and NCTE gives it credibility, unlike some lesson plan sites one may find floating about on the web. I felt even that the small chart on the homepage was profoundly comprehensive. Application: I would certainly be able to use this site for lessons and to hold myself accountable to the Standards during my teaching career. It is important to be able to find reliable, credible lesson plan sites. This site provides an atmosphere of support for not only educators, but students as well. MyRead: Stategies for teaching reading in the middle years []Summary: //MyRead// was created by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English and the Australian Literacy Educators Association. The layout of the website is simple, with the tabs and text together covering only the left half of the screen. The home page outlines the foundational purpose and beliefs of the project. The entire site is dedicated specifically to equipping teachers with necessary knowledge, tools, and information for teaching diverse classes of readers in the middle grades. Tabs labeled “Who,” “What,” and “How” contain basic information on struggling readers and how to help them. Other tabs go into more detailed information on strategies for instruction and classroom management, as well and professional development and additional reading. The whole site adopts a positive attitude toward reading instruction, starting with its number one belief: all students can be successful readers. Usefulness: The explicit nature of this website makes it a very useful resource. I especially think that the focus on professional development makes it most useful for teachers who are interested in better equipping themselves, or administrators who wish to conduct workshops with their teachers. Much of the information on the website is information that I have also seen in the books we are using for class. Application: This website will be useful to me in my career because it contains explicit information about teaching reading. It will be important for me to review and stay updated on instructional techniques and common thought on the subject in order to be the most effective teacher for my students. MiddleWeb: Exploring Middle School Reform []Summary: MiddleWeb is a compilation of resources for all involved in promoting the high achievement of middle school students. The website was started using a grant, but is now funded by one advertiser, as the grant money has since run out. The main idea of the website is to supply educators and administrators with useful tools and information. The main site includes tabs for news stories, diaries, chat, resources, and hot links. The news stories have been discontinued, but the website does refer the reader to several other useful education news sites and provides links to the sites. Under the diaries tab, the website provides links for following pertinent blogs, and the chat tab supplies pathways to participate in listserv chats about relevant topics. Under the resources tab, the website lists resources for educators such as lesson plan ideas and tutorials. Usefulness: I think this site is very useful. It is well organized and easy to navigate. All of the tabs are clearly marked, and the outline of the site is clean and simple, without distracting colors or advertisements. Each area contains innumerable links to other educational sites. Links given under the resources tab include supportive materials for new teachers, lesson plans ideas, and a multitude of articles on everything from classroom management to ESL modifications for lessons to current research in the field. Just looking through the list of links I find almost all of them interesting and useful. Application: I will be able to use this website as a resource for reading instruction lessons, and as a refresher for procedures that I will probably forget somewhere along the road. I can also use the website to stay up to date on current research and thoughts on the topic of middle school instruction. Jessica Weber's Website Reviews: The Library Thing Summary: This website functions as a review site, blog, and social networking service about books. A user starts by creating a profile for free. On that profile, you add books that you have read and enjoyed or would like to read. From there, the website draws on its database to suggest other books that could interest you based on your own list of “loves”. On the personal level, this website is a wonderful way for avid readers to expand their horizons, review and make comments about books for others to read, engage in conversation about books read, or use the site as a venue to join groups that focus on interests (ie. authors, genres, special interest, etc.). For teachers, this website could be beneficial in several ways. First of all, it is extremely user friendly and free! It also has several groups pertaining to young adult literature available where a teacher could engage in conversations about books for the classroom. Better yet, students often find one or two books that they have enjoyed reading and then lose interest. The teacher mind can only expand so far and, furthermore, can only read so many young adult books! This website would enable a teacher to enter books that students have liked in the past and get a list of suggestions based on the student preferences. By clicking on that list of books, a teacher could read reviews, summaries, etc. to narrow it down and perhaps find something enjoyable for challenging students.

The Big Read Summary: This website contains a listing of books containing links to various resources about those books including lesson plans, radio shows, project ideas, films, reader guides, essay topics, etc. It is very user friendly- organized alphabetically by Title, Author, Theme, or Poet. The biggest drawback to the website is that, for the moment, the list is far from expansive, but it does include popular classics taught in middle/high school. As a teacher, this site could be incredibly useful granted that the book used is present on the website. It is tailored to include resources that “hook” students and provide various ways to look at the content. For example, if a teacher wanted to introduce //Farenheit// //451// in a new way (instead of doing a PowerPoint slide on the author, etc.)- he/she would have radio shows discussing the novel available. A teacher could also utilize the lesson plans, project ideas, and essay topics sections for any novel. The project ideas appeared particularly strong as I went through the site. They offer active performance assessments instead of traditional projects, many of which include creative ideas for enactments, presentations, parent involvement, projects using technology, and other “thinking outside of the box” options.

AdLit.org Summary: “All About Adolescent Literacy” is a website dedicated to providing “resources for parents and educators of kids in grades 4-12”. It is user friendly and quite expansive. The site offers articles divided by topic on adolescent literacy (a great research resource), a chart of Before, During, and After reading strategies categorized into Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Writing. By clicking on any strategy, the site provides research on the strategy, recommendations for implementation, and links for further research on the topic. As far as usefulness for educators, this is one of the most useful sites I have ever been to. Any teacher trying to organize a reading “process” for the classroom could utilize the Before, During, and After reading resources. The list is quite large, but the website makes it easy to browse by providing a shortened summary of what each strategy is and how to actually implement it in the classroom. If a teacher wanted to know more, he/she could scroll to the bottom and utilize the links to research on the subject. Virtually any subject matter concerning adolescent literary from English Language Learners to Motivation and Engagement to Advocacy, this website has resources for.

Matt’s Website Reviews **// Edutopia //**// ; // [|www.edutopia.org] // Summary // :  Although I was first a bit wary due to the big “George Lucas” tag to the site, I found a very well organized educational resource site. This is the website for the magazine with the same name. The website is designed around five tabs: Core Concepts, Special Reports, Blogs, Videos, and Magazine. Each one of these offers a summary of its purpose (or a defense of the site’s position, if needed). There are a number of articles, studies, polls, and blogs available for viewing. // Usefulness // :This could be a fairly useful informational site. There does not seem to be a whole lot on the real resource side, but if one wanted to find an article or look up some type of educational statistic here could be a good place. // Application to Teaching: // As far as everyday resources go, this would not be the teacher’s go to tool. But if a teacher actually wanted to stay updated on educational news, research, and study, this would be a good web site to keep on the favorites list. One of its strengths is that it offers a wide array of videos, where teachers can see in practice activities and lessons, instead of just a written transcript. Also, the content on the site is free, which was a concern when I saw that it was a magazine site. **// Web English Teacher //** ; [|www.webenglishteacher.com] // Summary // : The first thing I noticed on this site was its impressive list of tabs, ranging from “AP and IB”, to Just for Fun”, and of course “Shakespeare.” This site is a link site, where it allows you to go where you want to go (let’s take Mark Twain for example, found conveniently in the alphabetical list on the “Literature Page”). From Twain’s page, there are eight bold headings, the first one being “Background, Criticism, and E-Texts.” Selecting that first heading, we are brought to a full page of links to background, criticism, and e-texts of Mr. Twain, each link including a summary of what can be found at that site. // Usefulness // : Anytime you are thinking of what kinds of resources are available in conjunction with a text, this website would be a great starting place. It can point you in all kinds of directions on the web, leading to useful materials. There are also tabs such as “Vocabulary,” and “Speech” rounding off the number of ways in which this site can be used. // Application to Teaching // : This website is like one big resource book of all kinds of work other teachers, biographers, and anyone on the web has done on what you want to teach. You might come into this website looking for one particular thing, and get lead in a whole new direction. This site, however, does not offer a prescribed, prepackaged lesson, so the researching teaching still can keep their own wheels turning. **// Teen Reads //** ; [|www.teenreads.com] // Summary // : This website, as the title suggests, is dedicated to young adult reading. Offered are reviews, author interviews, book clubs, blogs, and on and on. The reviews give the book length, excerpts, summaries, and of course opinions. The reviewers themselves include librarians, teachers, writers, as well as teenagers, offering a broad range of views to the reviews. There are also a couple of favorites sections, like “Cool and New” and “The Ultimate Reading List,” which can help the unfocused visitor and/or reader pick something out. // Usefulness // : This website is more useful of you know what you are looking for. There isn’t really a means for you to figure out what the most read books are, or to figure out what you might be interested in reading, but if there is a specific book that you are wanting to see reviewed, or if you just want to browse through the whole title list, this site could do a lot to help. // Application to teaching // : For those who have no clue when it comes to young adult literature, this would be a goof resource in terms of figuring out what’s out there. If you are questioning a book before adding it to your shelf, or wondering what to add, this could help answer some of your questions. Renee's Websites:Reading-Scholastic's Resources, http://teacher.scholastic.com/reading/index.htmSummary: Reading-Scholastic’s Resources Network is a really neat website. This website is not only geared toward teachers, but also has links to sources for parents, kids, administrators, and librarians. The site offers an abundance of Reading Resources, which can be browsed by topic, or grade level. The site has a link for teaching resources which includes links so lesson plans, strategies, tools, printables & mini-books, and even a link for new teachers. There is also a link for activities for students to engage in online which are organized by subject and grade level. Under the student activities link, there is a link to the scholastic word wizard dictionary, which is an online dictionary that can be used to look up words. There is also a book and authors section on the website which includes some really neat books lists, and a really cool link “New and Noteworthy” which has a bunch of books for children and young adults.Evaluation of Usefulness: I think that the site is very useful. It is really easy to get around the site and find what you are looking for. Everything is organized by subject matter and grade level. The lesson plans look really great, and there is a wealth of them. I think that the book lists are really useful, as well as the link for parents to get involved in their child’s education.Applicability to Future Teaching: I think that the book lists would be the tool that I used the most. I think it would also be really cool, if computers were available in the classroom, to have the students roam through this website with you, as it could become a resource for them as well. With cool features like the dictionary, and the fun book lists I think students would feel comfortable using this as a resource. Web English Teacher: [|http://webenglishteacher.com/]Summary: Web English Teacher is a very comprehensive web-site. The amount of resources that the site offers is really awesome. The top of the page offers resources on things such a Socratic circles and literature circles. The side of the website offers the views a multitude of links to things such as book reports, grammar, just for fun, mythology, and Shakespeare. Each of the links on the side takes the viewer to an organized resource or lesson plan that can be used in the classroom. The site also includes a blog for teachers to update with their experiences. The side also includes a pretty thorough list of young adult literature, organized by author. I think the coolest link on the site is the interdisciplinary link because it provides the teachers with ways to expand their classroom beyond their subject. The interdisciplinary activities are really neat, well planned out and super creative.Evaluation of Usefulness: The resources that this site offers could be very useful. I especially enjoy the just for fun activities, the online poetry archive could be super useful as well. I think that the most useful/easily adaptable activities are the grammar resources. I think that it is a little weird that the site offers a link to sparknotes under the study guides link. It seems like teachers normally discourage the use of sites like sparknotes, so that part of the site didn’t really make sense to me.Applicability to Future Teaching: This site offers me really different/neat activities to work with. The resources include a variety of subject matter, and the lesson plans for grammar seem like something that I could defiantly use. I could also see myself reading/writing on the blog page.Rock and Roll Library: []Summary: This site is really different, it is focused on “preserving and presenting the historical and cultural significance of popular music through RRL Music Archive, RRL education programs and interactive music community. This site is easy to navigate, and they have a link to the education portion of their website, which takes the viewer to a link to resources. The education resources page offers the viewer a song index(which you must be a member to access), a link to lesson plans, a link to a book list, link to a movie list and a links page which gives link to a bunch of different music websites. The most significant link is the lesson plan link as it takes the viewer to a page that offers limited lesson plan ideas. There is a really neat lesson plan on there that focuses on helping the reader to identify the author’s perspective through the use to music.Evaluation of Usefulness: I think that this site is really cool, but it offers a limited amount of lesson plan ideas. If there were more lesson plans I think that it might be more useful, but the book/song lists are really cool as well. I think that music can be very helpful in teaching, and the website would be a really neat tool to bring music into the classroom.Applicability to Future Teaching: I really enjoy using music in the classroom, because it really gets kids interested. I could see myself using the lesson plans, and well as the song lists in my classroom. Lindsey’s Online Resource Reviews

webenglishteacher.com

Summary: This Web site contains ideas and lesson plans for numerous aspects of teaching reading. It contains information on book reports, children’s literature, drama, ENL/ESL, teaching grammar, mythology, poetry, professional resources, Shakespeare (organized by play), and lots more. It also contains an extensive section on teaching speech, with lessons that could be integrated into the classroom. The ESL section is extensive, sending you to a4esl.org, which has thousands of contributions from teachers. Reading teachers may be interested in the vocabulary section, which has many online quizzes for students. Under the writing heading, there is a section on writing about literature. By using this link, teachers can help students make the reading/writing connection. The most interesting heading to me is the Young Adult Literature heading, which contains biography and background on many authors, as well as lessons and units built around books by that author. In a similar fashion, there is an index to literature sites for teachers. This could be used for high school classes, but probably even adapted for use in college classes. The site is not only useful for middle school or high school teachers. The site contains an extensive list of children’s authors, their books, and lesson plans to go with them.

Usefulness to teaching: This site is very useful to reading teachers because it contains information on many topics concerning not only reading, but English in general. I also enjoyed how the reading/literacy portion of the Web site contains not only lessons to use, but useful lists, such as: “25 ideas to motivate young readers,” or “103 things to do Before/During/After Reading.”

Applicability to future teaching: I would definitely use this Web site to learn more about young adult literature and gain ideas on how to motivate my students to read.

Myread.org

Summary: The top of this Web site declares the site’s mission: “Connecting Students to Learning through Explicit Teaching.” In fact, there is an entire section on explicit teaching on the left hand side toolbar of the home page. On the page, they describe what explicit teaching is and how to best put it into practice, citing “implementing focused lessons” as a critical component. The site also contains a section on monitoring and assessment, with resources to help teachers determine what they need to teach and what they don’t. The Web site also contains a well-cited section on scaffolding learning. There is great information on models of teaching and learning, and why Vygotskian methods of guiding reading should be adopted in schools. The site also includes information on classroom organization and professional development. Under the section of cooperative learning strategies, there are many MyRead guides to be used in the classroom. Some examples of cooperative learning strategies explained include: Think Pair Share, Placemat and Round Robin, Jigsaw, Numbered Heads, PMI, Graphic Organizers, and Effective Listening.

Usefulness to teaching: I think this Web site could be particularly useful for first year teachers because of the vignettes under the section labeled Underperforming readers: who are they? The vignettes are written by teachers and were written from a “non-deficit” point of view. By reading these, teachers can begin to connect students and their learning needs with strategies to help them. In addition, the cooperative learning strategies can help teachers teach underperforming reading students to become more confident, improve relationships with others in the class, scaffold their learning, think aloud, and develop their speaking skills.

Applicability to future teaching: This Web site will definitely be useful to me in my future teaching, especially the cooperative learning strategies.

Readwritethink.org

Summary: This Web site contains four main sections: Lessons, Standards, Web Resources, and Student Materials. There is also a section on literacy engagements, which emphasizes students in “meaningful language learning.” The sections literacy engagements include: Learning Language, Learning about Language, and Learning through Language. These three terms are the headings of a chart in this section, which outlines activities related to the headings. The 12 standards section outlines the IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts.

Usefulness to teaching: One of the most useful sections of the site is the Web Resources Gallery. The list goes on extensively and provides information on everything from what books to recommend to professional development. One of the helpful things about this section is that each Web site has key words below it to help you determine if the Web site is something you are looking for. This Web site also has many lessons and student materials to use in the classroom as well. The lessons can be sorted by grade band and literacy strand. The lessons are well organized with an index and many emphasize the reading/writing connection. In addition to full-length lessons, mini-lessons may also be found in the section. The student materials can be used instantly in the classroom and is a fun way for students to gain literacy skills.

Applicability to future teaching: I used this Web site to help me with my mini-lesson and I will definitely use it in the future. The lessons are definitely well organized, well-written, and useful.

Stephany Weaver's Webiste Reviews Classiccomics.com Summary: Classic Comics is a United Kingdom publishing company that adapts classic texts into graphic novels. Usefulness to Teaching: The increasing popularity of graphic novels makes this sight integral to engaging that student who's head is often buried in DC or Marvel comics. Students immediately turned off by Shakespeare and Dickens, because of their perceived foreignness will be encouraged to approach these authors in a more accessible form. Applicability to Future Teaching: I would replace Shakespeare films with these comic books in my class room, because reading can be a more active activity than watching a film. The students would absorb more of the characters' gestures and dialogue.

Free.ed.gov Summary: Federal Resources for Educational Excellence offers a plethora of resources from various federal agencies for teachers to use in their classrooms. They divide resources by subject and by type, including animations, videos, primary documents, and photos. Usefulness to Teaching: This website allows teachers to have a kind of "one-stop-shop" convenience instead of using valuable lesson planning time creating animations or searching for photos. Applicability of Future Teaching: This website can be used by teachers from all content areas. I would use this site to create a context for the texts read in class. Photos and primary documents would create a background knowledge integral to approaching any text.

Whatshouldireadnext.com Summary: This website allows you to input the author or title of a book that you have already read and provides you with a suggestion of what to read next. Usefulness to Teaching: So, you've finally got that your most reluctant reader to delve into a book. What will you do once he or she has finished that one? Simply type in the title or author of that book into whatshouldireadnext.com's search engine. Middle school and high school readers will often only read books by a single author, so this site makes available to teachers authors that write similarly to the author the student is devoted to. Applicability to Future Teaching: Most teachers are not hip to the new young adult novels being released, but this site is a good resource for those novels. I would hate to lose a nascent reader, because of my lack of knowledge of young adult novels.

This website starts off by breaking down the age groups into four categories: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Right away I noticed the ease of use that the website has and how it was a lot simpler to use this website than some of the others that I have visited. When the person visiting the website has chosen the age group that they are interested in exploring and clicked on that link, 5 big headings are noticeable. These headings are Literacy Activities, Booklists, Podcasts & Videos, Tool Tip Sheets, and Reading Record. All of these headings provided interesting materials. The literacy activities show some activities that teachers can perform with students to get them involved with and excited about reading. Although some of these activities are obviously designed to be performed in a classroom setting, others can easily be done at home, and preformed by parents that are interested in seeing their children become excited about reading. The book lists are composed of a few lists of books that would be good for children of a given age group to read. These books could be read in or outside of the classroom. A cool feature about this section of the website is that it also has a link that will list award winning books. Another cool part of the website is the Reading Record section. On this section of the website a student can keep up with their readings and share their opinions of certain books using a chart. Overall I think this website could be a very helpful tool, especially the Literacy Activities section.
 * Jeff Jones' Website Reviews** **ReadWriteThink:** readwritethink.org/beyondtheclassroom/summer

I liked this website. At first I thought that the homepage was a little too busy for me. It is very colorful, full of words, and seems to lack a little structure at first glance. After looking it over a time or two it could serve as a very useful tool in the classroom. The homepage shows some wordplay taking place, one of my favorite aspects of the website are the sentences with homonyms that are listed on the homepage. These short, simple sentences could easily be adapted into a warm-up exercise or something of that nature for a classroom of students, and could be a fun exercise in any classroom, regardless of the content area. On the left side of the homepage are several links that teachers can use to access lesson plans for different content areas as well as study guides, poetry, vocab, and other professional resources. I can see this being a very useful website to teachers because it contains many links to other websites and ideas for lesson plans. Another aspect of this particular site that makes it useful would be the “just for fun” section. This section contains puns, homonyms and other somewhat tricky parts of speech, and it presents them in funny, kid friendly ways. I would defiantly use this website if I was currently teaching in a classroom. I think that being able to get the students laughing and excited about learning things like homonyms and puns can be a big advantage in getting them excited about school, reading, and academic success.
 * Web English Teacher** : webenglishteacher.com

This website caught my eye right away as something that would be appealing and helpful for both students and for teachers. Teen Reads includes many things that other websites do not offer including sections where a viewer can watch or read author interviews. This section was particularly interesting because I have never seen anything quite like this offered on a young adult website. I have always thought of interviews with authors as being something that an adult crowd would enjoy and appreciate but I never really explored the possibility of a young adult crowd being interested in the same kind of thing. Two other aspects of this website that I found interesting were the Blog section, and the new releases section. I think that both of these help to encourage students to get excited about reading. If students see their friends’ blogging about certain books and saying positive things about that text, it is very possible that they will be convinced to read that same text. Similarly to how word of mouth about a good movie or TV show will often times raise that show’s ratings. The new releases part of the website makes young readers excited about the new books coming out and will also encourage them to finish the “old” books in a timely fashion so they will be able to be some of the first people to experience the new ones. I don’t think that this website is as functional to teachers as some of the others but I do like the setup of it and would encourage students to use it. Some sections that might help teachers include the “cool & new” section and the “award winners” section. These two could help teachers simply because they feature books that have been voted on and prove to be somewhat interesting to teenagers. I could see myself using this website in the future but probably not as much as some of the other websites that we have visited in class.
 * Teen Reads**: teenreads.com
 * Melendy’s Resource Reviews** **http://www.readingrockets.org/****Summary:** This site has reading strategies, lessons, and activities for young readers. It has resources for struggling readers who “require additional help in reading fundamentals and comprehension skills development”. The site has tabs with resources for parents, teachers, principals and librarians. There are also several blogs, an A-Z list of topics, glossary and links to other resource sites.**Evaluation of Usefulness:** This site looks very useful. The tabs for parents, teachers, principals and librarians have information for each person and how they can contribute to improving reading. Many of the lesson plans specify whether they should be used before, during or after reading and are categorized into fluency, vocabulary, comprehension or writing. However, there are quite a few ads for Reading Rockets products and a lot of pushing people to subscribe to podcasts and add Reading Rockets on Twitter and Facebook.**Applicability to Future Teaching:** This site includes a section for first year teachers that looks really helpful. It provides links to other resource sites and even has resources based on states so I think it could be really useful. **http://www.readinga-z.com/****Summary:** This site has a huge selection of books that can be searched through by title author, reading level, language or high frequency words. The sections on phonics, vocabulary, fluency, alphabet and assessment are available by subscription only. The section on poetry includes why teachers should teach poetry, types of poems and activities to teach them and an extensive selection of poetry books.**Evaluation of Usefulness:** The site was useful for book suggestions, especially for younger or lower level readers. It was easy to navigate using the tabs at the top of the page. However, the bulk of the information on the website was not accessible until you dig deeper. For example in the trade book section, it says you can see a list of trade books and then get the lesson plan, worksheets and discussion cards for that book. However you actually have to pay for the lesson plans, worksheets and discussion cards but it doesn’t tell you that until you’ve dug through the website.**Applicability to Future Teaching:** It is difficult to evaluate the site’s usefulness, because the majority of the information and lesson plans are only available with a paid subscription. The site looks like the lessons would be detailed, but there’s no way to tell until you pay. **http://www.readinglady.com/****Summary:** This site was created by a literacy coach in New York. She uses a few books for inspiration and blogs reviews about the books she reads and the lessons she creates from them. The sections of the website include comprehension strategies, author studies, poetry, writing, assessment and readers theatre. Each area has downloadable posters, strategies, study guides and worksheets that she has created.**Evaluation of Usefulness:** This site looks really useful, especially for English teachers. All of the downloads are available under a documents tab and easy to find. The list is quite extensive and the lesson plans look easy to follow and implement. I really like that you can pick and choose to find exactly what you’re looking for.**Applicability to Future Teaching:** Though I’m not planning on teaching English or reading, I think this site is useful for teachers of all subjects and levels. With a little bit of tweaking, most of these lessons can work for new books, subjects and levels. I think this site is especially helpful for new teachers who just need a place to get started and lessons to build on. Amy Restivo's Reviews: 1. TeacherVision Reading Teacher Resources ([]) a. Summary: TeacherVision is the teacher web resource for the Family Education Network; launched in 2000 by the Pearson media company, it is an online network of learning resources. The website as a whole has resources for all facets of teaching, including content, classroom management, and professional development. The page for reading teacher resources includes many tools for teachers, including literature guides, reading comprehension activities for K-12, phonics activities, other content area connections, as well as other tools like graphic organizers, lesson plans, rubrics, etc.b. Evaluation of Usefulness: I think this is a useful website. There is a wealth of ideas and I really like the resources that connect other content areas to reading, such as math, history, science, technology, etc. The only bad part of this site is that you can have a 7 day free trial membership but then you have to subscribe. The fee is about $40 a year and gives you access to the whole site. Based on the fee, I am not sure how many people would actually pay for access to the site and thus how useful it would be to the general teaching population.c. Applicability to Future Teaching: I could see myself subscribing to something like this in my first year or two of teaching to help me gain ideas and try out different things in my classroom to see if they work. I would not subscribe every year though, especially after I had built up my own repertoire of resources. 2. Lexile ([]) a. Summary: This is the website for the MetaMetrics Lexile framework of reading; it is a framework that is used in schools to assess students’ reading ability in relation to texts of different difficulties. The website has a section explaining what the framework is and the assessment as well as scores, a section explaining how you can use the scores to help students improve their reading, and a tools section which includes a book finder.b. Evaluation of Usefulness: Overall the website is not the most useful in terms of resources for teaching reading. However, it is very useful to understand the Lexile framework and your students’ scores, and to know how those scores could inform you about your students’ reading levels. Although scores are not everything, the Lexile score can help you look out for those students with lower reading levels who need extra help and scaffolding. As well, the book finder could be a really useful tool to help your students find ability appropriate books that also peak their interests.c. Applicability to Future Teaching: I would use this website at the beginning of the year when I get my students’ scores and want to see ideas for individualizing reading instruction. As well, I would use the book finder anytime that I was not sure what book to recommend to a student. I would use their score and interests to help find possible suggestions of books in their range, and even if I thought those books were not exactly right, perhaps it would give me a better idea of what other similar book to recommend to that student. 3. The Reading/Writing Connection Website ([]) a. Summary: This is the companion website for Carol Booth Olson’s book, The Reading/Writing Connection. It is free, maintained by the publisher, and is meant as a supplement to the book, though you do not have to have read the book to use any of the resources. It goes chapter by chapter and has supplemental materials such as charts and activities that go along with the material presented in each chapter. In addition to the chapter by chapter materials, at the end there is a list of literature discussed, works cited, and technology resources.b. Evaluation of Usefulness: The website is useful if you are reading and using the book and want to implement the strategies Booth Olson suggests. As well, the resources that she gives towards the end of the list are useful as ways to find more information on reading and comprehension strategies that have been vetted by someone who knows her subject. Included in that list are sites with educational software and videos, so that could be useful to incorporate more technology into the classroom.c. Applicability to Future Teaching: I like Booth Olson and her book, so I would use this website to help me complete the activities she writes about in her book. I would also definitely use the technology resources she has reviewed and recommended. There are so many websites with resources, from large multi-disciplinary sites to individual teacher pages to sites for teaching specific texts. I think it would be a great list to go to whenever I wanted new ideas for my teaching and wanted more trustworthy sites than just using google.