Literacy Resources for Educators

Welcome educators and literacy enthusiasts. This blog was created with the content teacher in mind. Your job is difficult and time constraints are always an issue. Did you know...Achievement on literacy hasn't risen in 70 years (source: Joyce, 1999, p.129). Since the inception of NCLB and the push to meet "adequate yearly progress (AYP)", teachers now have the obligation to provide reading instruction and incorporate literacy strategies as a complement to their daily instruction with the hope of meeting state standards while more importantly, creating better readers and writers across the curriculum. This blog is intended to be a resource, a tool that can help you meet the preceding goals while still allowing you to deliver your content in a time sensitive fashion. Please utilize anything and everything that you find valuable and/or relevant.

Sincerely,

Gregory W. Alsworth, Literacy Specialist, M.S. Ed. Literacy

Web resources for educators

The following links contain literacy strategies, professional articles, and a plethora of other resources for incorporating literacy into your daily routine:

http://www.readingquest.org/strat/ this site has a wide range of literacy strategies with instructions on usage as well as printable masters.

http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ELA/6-12/Reading/Index.htm this site offers a plethora of reading resources for the educator including pre, during, and post reading strategies and much, much more.

http://www.readingquest.org/strat/graphic.html this site has an extensive supply of graphic organizers that are printable and come complete with explanations on how to implement them in your classroom

http://www.sedl.org//cgi-bin/mysql/buildingreading.cgi This site is from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory and offers a vast array of literacy strategies that focus on all areas of reading difficulty. When you arrive at the site there is a drop down menu. Go to "Search by Strategy". Check out the other options as well as the site contains a lot of other valuable information.

http://www.ops.org/reading/secondarystrat1.htm This site was developed by Omaha Public schools and contains both elementary and secondary literacy strategies and reading lesson plans.

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/index.asp?grade=0&strand=0&engagement=0 Site sponsored by International Reading Association. Contains alphabetized literacy lessons for all grade levels and abilities with NCTE standards.

http://academic.cuesta.edu/acasupp/as/602.htm Site posted by San Luis Obispo County Community College (Cuesta College). Contains everything reading. A great section for vocabulary instruction that deals with common roots, prefixes and suffixes (affixes).

http://www.literacymatters.org/content/readandwrite/intro.htm Literacy matters website. Contains teacher resources for incorporating literacy into your lessons. There are classroom applications for the following reading techniques: Questioning, Reading Expository Text, Vocabulary, How to Read a Textbook, and Reading and Interpreting Diverse Materials.
Writing offers information about Writing to Learn and Writing to Demonstrate Knowledge, with classroom suggestions for writing expository text and a research paper.

http://www.englishcompanion.com/room82/readexpository.html Webpage for helping students make sense of expository (informational) texts. Links to other resources and blank strategy masters.

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php Allows for teachers to create and modify rubrics for student assessment. A great tool for clearly demonstrating student expectations.