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"Jon Scieszka's Trucktown series' Web site is a unique opportunity for younger struggling readers to read along with the books and then play games with the books' characters. " (Hill, 2011)

"Most of the resources can be used in KS1 and KS2 but some do lend themselves to the upper age group and above. The aim is to provide high quality resources that can be used in stand alone literacy lessons, can form the basis for a whole literacy unit or can support literacy units that you already have in place.   With the many book based activities I would advocate using the book alongside the digital resource.  "

There are 54 nonfiction read-along books that include words, images and sound.  You can sort books by subject including: Community, American History, Animals, Civics and Government, Environmental Studies, Plants and Flowers, Science and Social Studies.  You can also sort books by level (A or B).

Common Sense Media has just released a fantastic new tool for integrating digital citizenship into your curriculum. The Interactive Scope and Sequence lays out simple lessons organized by grade level and divided into topics such as Digital Footprint and Reputation, Creative Credit and Copyright, Cyberbullying, and more.

Teach your Monster to Read: First Steps is a new, free game to practise the first steps of reading. Combining top quality games design with essential learning, the game is built on the principles of synthetic phonics and follows the teaching sequence of the Letters and Sounds programme. It has been assessed by reading experts at the University of Roehampton.

Site with a game and accompanying worksheet to explore onomatopoeia 

A site created by Lissa and Kelly with tutorials and information on 7 Web 2.0 tools to use in the classroom. 

Purpose of the Teachers' Lounge The purpose of the Professor Garfield Teachers' Lounge Section is to provide free, user-friendly, and standards-based learning materials for the classroom teacher, parent, tutor, or mentor. These materials are intended to support and supplement the ongoing work of the classroom teacher by providing leveled materials (plans, activities, downloadables, and printables) that are retrievable by grade level, subject, and/or national standard. Every effort is being made to provide pre- and post-assessment tools where appropriate and useable.

"Turf Mutt is a nice free resource from Discovery Education. Turf Mutt features ten free environmental science lesson plans for K-5 teachers. The lesson plans have clearly defined objectives and detailed directions for carrying out each lesson plan. The majority of the lesson plans span several days. The lesson plans use a combination of hands-on activities, see Discovering Dirt, and reading/ research activities. Although not directly connected to the lesson plans, Turf Mutt has some videos to help students learn about topics in Environmental Science."  Richard Byrne

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.Richard Byrne

A great idea for using Voicethread in a way that is engaging. 

"When working with K-2nd grades, it's often the case that students are able to verbally communicate their ideas, but typing those out is another matter.  Using Present.me, we solved this issue for a second grade class that was creating slideshow presentations.Present.me is a web service that lets you create effective presentations through your PowerPoint files.  What makes this site unique, is it lets you add a narrative to the presentation. Once you upload your PowerPoint, you can record a narrative through your webcam and microphone as if you were presenting the slideshow. The final presentation then appears with your webcam recording on the right and slides on the left. A filmstrip view of the slides is also given on the bottom of the presentation. The elementary school I was working with used Google Docs, then converted the presentation to a .PPT file, which Present.Me only accepts.  After the presentation is uploaded, it is queued for the students to record their own words to describe each slide, and time when they want each slide to advance. Once they are finished recording, they have the option to record the presentation again if not satisfied with what they did.  Otherwise, you can then publish the presentation, giving it a unique URL that can be shared with anyone. The free plan of Present.me only lets you publish up to 10 recordings per month; each of these presentations can be 15 minutes long. Having the students work in groups allowed the class to stay under the ten recordings limit. " Richard Byrne