¨Children who aren’t reading at grade level by the end of third grade are four times as likely to drop out of high school,¨ Donald J. Hernandez, Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation. The Annie E. Casey Foundation; Center
As a third grade teacher that statistic is worrisome to say the least. It can be challenging to motivate and engage students with drastically different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and personalities. I have spent the past couple months exploring some literacy websites to add to my classroom.
www.sciencea-z.com is my personal favorite. The multilevel readers are wonderful and the students love the videos.
www.frontrow.com is free and the multilevel articles range in topics. I like to assign social studies topics and find articles on individual reading levels.
www.readtheory.com is free and has assessments to help you identify reading levels and monitor growth.
www.newsela.com The news articles are relevant to what is going on and catches their attention. I am still in the 30 day trial, but if any more MineCraft articles pop up, it would be well worth the money.
www.gonoodle.com is awesome for a quick brain break or concept review. The videos get the children up and active. I love the vocabulary games.
Most of these websites can be accessed at home. Hopefully at least one of these tools will catch their attention and help them grow as readers.