Resources for Parents & Teachers

Reading Websites and Apps for Kids and Teens:

CommonLit - a free website and online tool for teachers and students to read short texts and excerpts and complete assignments with them. As a teacher, it is a really great digital tool for monitoring comprehension progress with individual students, and for incorporating digital literacy into close reading and annotating texts. Texts include fiction, nonfiction, and poety, and are organized and listed by grade, lexile level, and subject area. The database incorporates a variety of topic areas and types of texts, and students can read them with audio, look up words (in English and Spanish), and hilight on the text. There are places within the text where students can click on bubbles to bring up guiding questions for them to check their understanding as they go. Each text also features assessments with multiple choice comprehension questions and discussion questions for students to respond to in writing. Finally, each text and assessment is clearly labeled to the Common Core standard(s) it addresses (for teachers in schools who follow Common Core).

ReadWriteThink - a well known source for parents and teachers looking for articles and ideas to help promote and develop children's literacy skills. I like that the website is organized into classroom resources for teachers vs. resources for use at home by parents vs. professional development research articles and resources. You can also navigate the website by age-group/grade level. This is a website I commonly recommend to parents looking for ways to support their child's education at home, and over the summer.

ReadWorks - A free resource for teacher and classroom use that has leveled reading passages and comprehension questions. The platform can track students' individual progress and report it to the teacher. It's basically an online reading skills progress tracker. All of the text selections have audio available recordings available with them to support lower students, and the passages are clearly labeled with the common core standards they address for each grade level.

Bookout - I've bragged about this before, so if you want more details, look up my Introductions post, but in general, this is a kid-friendly app for tracking reading time, progress, and habits.

GoodReads - GoodReads is similar to Bookout, but you have to create an account on their website, and they have both an actual website and an app for mobile devices. GoodReads doesn't allow you to time your reading, set reminders, or create goals like the BookOut app, but you can create different shelves to sort and organize the books you've read, are currently reading, and want to read. You can track progress in books as you read by updating your page count.

NetGalley - a free readers platform that releases digital books that users can view and read. NetGalley is often used by new authors as a way to build an audience and readership for first or new novels prior to their release in bookstores. Many of the books available on the platform ask for users to request access rather than immediately granting it, and limit the online readership numbers.

Writing Websites & Apps for Kids and Teens:

WattPad - a free publishing platform for writers seeking to reach readers and receive reader feedback. Kind of like an updated Fanfiction.net or Fiction.net database for writers and readers to share with one another. The database is organized by genre, but you can search for authors, titles, and topics. The app version is also unique in that readers can react and comment on stories line by line.

Nanowrimo - National Novel Writing Month is a project that started online about a decade ago and has been steadily growing each year. Each November, users on the website set a goal (usually of 50,000 words) to complete by the end of the month. I've competed in the challenge a few times, sometimes winning, others not. It's free to create an account and join in the effort, but Nanowrimo is a nonprofit organization, so they try to encourage donations from their users. As you write, you add your progress by typing in word counts by day. They even will graph your progress and show you how you measure up to where you should be to meet your goal by the end of the month. Nanowrimo now also has an off-shoot in the summer called "Camp Nanowrimo"--for those of us who have more free time in the summer.

Articles and Research Reports about Elementary & Middle Schoolers and Reading Habits:

Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Additionally, GoodReads keeps booklists for all sorts of books, including books for children and teens:

Best School Assigned Books 

Middle School Booklist

Books for Middle Schoolers

Young Adult and Middle Grade Books WITHOUT romance

Best Graphic Novels for Middle School

Young Adult Books for Reluctant Readers

Best Books for Middle School Boys

Middle School Classics