Reading Street Supplement

http://web.me.com/jtenkely/Reading/Home.html
http://web.me.com/jtenkely/Reading/Home.html

What it is: Over the summer I worked with a teacher at Marquette Elementary school in Gary, Indiana to supplement their reading curriculum.  They used Pearson’s Scott Foresman Reading Street, but were struggling with the program.  Students weren’t understanding concepts and were really struggling with even the basics.  Marquette held a summer remedial reading program where they aimed to supplement the curriculum and help students to become more successful in their reading.  I took a look at the Reading Street curriculum for third grade and noticed right away that a huge number of concepts are presented, but there is no depth or opportunity for students to really learn and understand the concepts.  My goal was to take the curriculum (in this case Unit 6 for third grade) and supplement it with technology.  My goal was to add some richness to what was presented.  I aimed to give students the chance to learn, practice, and create with the material presented.  Because we were working in a summer program, we were able to spend more time with the material and work with fewer students.  Below you will find my curriculum guide for 3rd Grade Reading Street Unit 6.  Even if you don’t use Reading Street, or teach at a different grade level, I encourage you to take a look at what I did with the curriculum.  I hope that you will find some ideas that you could use to supplement the curriculum you are using in your classroom.  I created a website for Unit 6,  called Reaching for Our Goals,  so that students had one place to access all of the websites and resource they needed. (If you study suffixes, parts of speech, commas, compound words, punctuation, MLK, Space, the Wright Brothers, or Jim Thorpe there are some great links.)   I also created a wiki (this is an example) where they could collaborate and show off their finished projects.  On the wiki, you will find example thinking pages, VoiceThread projects, and Animoto projects.

http://marquette.wetpaint.com/
http://marquette.wetpaint.com/

Childtopia Listening and Reading Comprehension

What it is: Childtopia is like 10 websites in one…they have so many cool things going on that I am going to break it down into sections so stay tuned… The Childtopia Listening and Reading Comprehension portion of Childtopia is hands down my favorite. Students can choose from 14 different engaging stories. They can choose to listen to story being read to them or they can read the story themselves. Throughout the story their are comprehension questions for the students to answer.

How to integrate Childtopia Listening and Reading Comprehension into the classroom: Childtopia Listening and Reading Comprehension is perfect for students who are struggling with comprehension. The site can be used with the whole class using a projector or individually for comprehension practice. The options that the site gives are wonderful. This portion of Childtopia would be well used in a remedial reading setting. This would make a fabulous reading center activity!

Tips: This is one that you will want to bookmark for easy access!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Childtopia Reading and Listening in your classroom.