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Online resources are a great way to individualize/personalize reading habits: "Teachers trying to motivate or teach students to read can find lots of reading resources online. This includes printable worksheets, lesson plans, reading diaries for students, reading certificates for encouragement, fun activities, audio-visual aids, and tons of other resources that teachers can use in the classroom. Some teachers like to use audio hooks - audio extracts that stop just where the story gets interesting. The teacher can then hand out copies of the book, since students are much more likely to want to read the book after hearing the hook. For students who can read on their own, it is important to have the type of books they like to read. In some classes, this may amount to a very large collection of books. It is also important to ensure that the language of the books matches the reading abilities of the students. An alternative to stocking up on a large collection of books that meet these criteria is to use e-libraries to encourage reading."

"Reading Should Be Enjoyable, Not a Chore "Ask nearly any parent or student what they think of reading logs, and I'm certain you won't hear words like "inspiring, motivating." The Atlantic did a great job addressing this outdated and ineffective approach to building lifelong learners in "Can Reading Logs Ruin Reading for Kids?". " T/h N.LaFave

"Improve Reading Speed and Comprehension Spreeder.com is free online speed reading software designed to improve your reading speed and comprehension. Spreeder is a free service provided by 7-Speed-ReadingTM. If you like this site, please have a look at our powerful 7 Speed Reading Software." This looks like an amazing tool-- You can paste in your own text and it will pop up in a timer box. When you click the Speeder button it will tell you how long it took to read the passage. But no comprehension questions!

This site is filled with stories of interest to Adult ESL learners at many levels. Each story has a pre-reading, timed reading and audio component.

This project was designed to create leveled reading selections that are appropriate for and valued by adult learners. These materials, combined with the research-proven strategies of repeated reading and guided oral reading, aid in building learners' fluency and comprehension skills. The materials correspond to Casas 200 - 235. This project helps adults become better readers and more informed consumers, parents, employees, citizens and community members. The focus of these reading selections will be on topics such us: Civics, Employment, Housing, Health, School, Money, and Government. This project is funded in part through an EL/Civics Grant from the MN Dept. of Ed - ABE Division and mini-grant from the Minnesota Literacy Council.

Encourages the use of synthesis and deeper reading than just "beginning, middle, and end" by having them put together several readings, e.g., about an autistic child and a psychological case study to analyze a character in fiction. Uses case studies from non-fiction articles to create prototypes of, for example, a robot that pushes emotional or intellectual thinking to the extreme. Scenarios from fiction show what their prototypes have and what they need. As they read they are now thinking about how the reading speaks to humans. The video also has a running text commentary that helps visualize how a teacher can make students think about their reading, see patterns, examine their own thought processes and progress. Questions to consider in the margin, as well as connections to the Common Core Standards.

"Research supports the focus on text complexity and vocabulary. "The Baseball Study" by Recht and Leslie (1988) began by identifying the correlation between reading comprehension and student knowledge. Recht and Leslie discovered that students with low reading ability but high knowledge of baseball, outscored students with high reading ability but low knowledge of baseball on tests of comprehension. Landauer and Dumais (1997) took it a step further, finding that students acquire vocabulary up to four times faster when they read a series of related texts. Combined, these studies indicate the immense possibilities when we equip our students with the necessary vocabulary, providing them with sufficient prior knowledge before tackling reading tasks." This blog entry explores 5 terrific tools to help students, including one that makes texts simpler to help lower-level readers.

This page has short readings. After reading your time will be displayed and there are a couple of comprehension questions. Good for additional reading practice. You could assign a class a reading and then have them write about it at Google Docs.

"How we read online. By Michael Agger "You're probably going to read this. "It's a short paragraph at the top of the page. It's surrounded by white space. It's in small type. "To really get your attention, I should write like this: Bulleted list Occasional use of bold to prevent skimming Short sentence fragments Explanatory subheads No puns Did I mention lists? "What Is This Article About? "For the past month, I've been away from the computer screen. Now I'm back reading on it many hours a day. Which got me thinking: How do we read online?"" This is a topic I've written and published on, so it's interesting to see another person trying to grapple with the same problem. It's worth exploring repeatedly.

"Subtext and Tellagami are two amazing free apps that can expand the way you discover information about each student's reading comprehension. By using their combined power, students can produce and publish valuable information about their reading comprehension to help their teachers better understand them as learners." Meets Common Core standards for bringing visual material into readings. Gives students a way to read and answer questions collaboratively, then respond with an avatar speaker in Tellagami. Powerful combination.

Taking visual reading notes is not just for so-called "visual" learners. Everyone can benefit by visualizing what they are reading and making notes as they read. Review of notes later is also key to success in remembering what is read.

This is an excellent compendium of how to do "close reading" which in fact means re-reading for various purposes. Teachers can teach how to read on multiple levels--vocabulary, metaphor, main ideas--and how these inter-relate, with an eye to how this can lead to writing a thoughtful, original paper. This blog is well worth following for help with pedagogy and teaching high school and academic learners.

"Reading Bear is a free service that offers narrated lessons on recognizing and pronouncing letters and words. There are also some lessons on prefixes and suffixes. Students can control the pace of each lesson to match their needs. "After each lesson on Reading Bear students can take quizzes to test their skills. The quizzes present a picture and a set of words. Students have to match the correct word to the picture that they see. Through the narrator, students receive instant feedback on each question in the quiz." I am not convinced that these topics are a good idea for K-3, but if this is in your curriculum, this site might be a good option.

"he introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps. " While this is a pay-per .pdf file, it looks to have some significant data about the effect of technology on reading and math. Worrisome!

"Twurdy is actually based on Google, but it analyses Google results for readability, so it can help you to find more lower level texts for learners without you having to read through every result from Google to see if it's simple enough. Just type in the topic of the text you need and click on your Twurdy type. You have a choice of three different Twurdy types. The differences are mainly speed (how fast you want your results) vs complexity (how thoroughly you want the results analysed) I would recommend choosing Twurdy with Pop as this will analyse the number of word on the page, length of sentences, number of syllables per word and also the popularity of the words in the text." After finding a good text, you could create lessons with Hot Potatoes for it. Nik's blog entry also includes related links for reading, such as "Prompting reading speeds" and "Comparing Texts to aid Noticing"

Step-by-step guide to getting students engaged with a longer work. Readily adapted to ESL/EFL students. Reading novels or longer short stories gives students to read extensively, while re-reading can be guided so that the text is engaged on many levels.

"iStoryBooks offers dozens of children's stories (some free, some for sale) like The Ugly Duckling. The app gives you the option to read each story or to read along with each story while listening to the narrator." Looks like a good application to use in a one-computer classroom, where a small group of children might listen to a story in the corner. Read along while listening is a great way to learn to read and learn the sounds of a new language.

From R. Byrne: "On Google's advanced search page there is a tool for refining searches according to reading level. This tool on its own can be very helpful in helping students locate materials that are appropriate for their reading abilities. It can also be helpful to combine use of the reading level refinement tool with a domain level refinement. "

An interesting article on why boys don't become readers, as girls usually do. Some suggestions on finding literature for boys and creating good reading habits.

This site has many readings, mostly non-fiction, graded by U.S. school grade level (K-6), with accompanying lesson plans and connections to U.S. Common standards. Nice to have pre-made lessons, but the readings are not authentic, of course. Use as supplemental activity, or cheap source of downloadable pdf files with readings and activities.

Makes some important points about how the literature about teaching reading confuses strategies with skills with tactics. A thoughtful article that might help untangle reading myths. Blog by Grant Wiggins.