SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review) A before, during, and after reading technique to help students break down text to increase comprehension.
Snapverter is a good application that allows you to convert classroom papers, images and pother teaching materials into Google Drive friendly files. 'Snapverter is an add-on for Read&Write for Google that converts printed documents and inaccessible digital files into readable PDF files for easy sharing and reading aloud in Google Drive.' Using OCR technology, Snapverter is able to recognize text from worksheets, handouts, book pages, and other printed materials.
The Open Library is a collection of more than one million free ebook titles. The collection is cataloged by a community of volunteer online librarians. The ebooks in the Open Library can be read online, downloaded to your computer, read on Kindle and other ereader devices, and embedded into other sites. Some of the ebooks, like Treasure Island, can also be listened to through the Open Library.
To get a book recommendation just type in the title and author of a book that you've recently read and the Book Seer will spit out a list of related titles and authors that you might enjoy.
Announcify is a free text to speech application that is available as a Chrome browser extension. With Announcify installed in your browser any time you're viewing a webpage you can simply click on the Announcify icon in your browser and have the text of the page read to you. A bonus aspect of using Announcify is that in order to make a webpage easier to read it enlarges the text of the webpage and removes all sidebar content.
Embed a layer of questions, quizzes, and rich media annotations into any reading assignment
Track mastery of literacy skills and Common Core standards in real-time
A before reading strategy to increase student engagement with text and comprehension. In this strategy students write a paragraph from a list of words given to them by their teacher. Students must use the words in the order they were given in the list. Students are asked to share their paragraphs with the class. Then students read the assigned text and make revisions to their original paragraph.
A during reading strategy that is used to help students break down text. Students use post-it notes to mark things they understand and things they do not understand in the textbook. They use these post-its to fill in a graphic organizer. When finished reading students share information they've learned as well as information confusing to them.
Finding books that kids will like can be a difficult task. Literature Map is a tool that might make that process easier. Literature Map provides a web of authors you might like based on authors that you already enjoy reading. To use Literature Map just type an author's name into the search box and webbed list of authors will be displayed. The authors' names closest to the author whose name you entered are the authors whose work you're most likely to enjoy.
Using the commenting feature of Google Documents is a good way to create a record of classroom conversations about an article that you have shared with your students. Using the commenting feature is also a good way to have the conversation about an article occur entirely online.
Booktrack is a new way for students to read stories and texts accompanied by a movie-style soundtrack. Students also create Booktracks, using their own writing or works being studied in school. This short video provides a great overview of Booktrack Classroom and how it can produce immediate results with your students.
"Students and teachers can login to the DocHub app (or DocHub.com) using their Google account. From there, it is possible to upload any PDF, text document, or Microsoft Office file from Drive, the web, or even your computer/Chromebook download folder. Once a document had been uploaded, students can highlight, draw, insert text boxes, and even incorporate sticky notes. These annotated PDFs can then be sent to Drive or even shared with a link. Unlike some other web-based annotation tools, all of the annotations remain with the PDF after it has been sent to Drive though the sticky notes only appear when shared with a link."
"Get your class, student group, or club using technology to collaboratively write a real book. BoomWriter is totally free, and groups of five children or more can use it to read, write, compete and get published! Register your school or club on BoomWriter today."
Quick Rubric is a new tool from the folks in Photos for Class. This is a new web based application that allows you to easily set up criterion-referenced rubrics to score your students performances and assignments. You can use Quick Rubric to create rubrics to help you assess things such as oral presentations, writing projects, reading comprehension, storytelling and many more. Rubrics are also proved to be of great help when grading students works especially essay and long narrative writing.
"Send from Gmail is one of our favourite Chrome apps we have been using for some years now. Send from Gmail provides you with a quick way to share web links and other online resources with a single click. For instance, if you are reading a blog post that you want to share with one of your colleagues, you simply click on 'Send from Gmail' button and a new compose window will automatically open with the page title as the subject and selected page text and link address as the message. All you have to do is to simply type in your addressee's email and hit 'send'."