K. Penaflor- IRA Effective Literacy Website #7

 

ReadWriteThink

http://www.readwritethink.org/

ReadWriteThink is the seventh IRA literacy website I wanted to explore. ReadWriteThink’s mission is to provide educators, parents, and afterschool professionals with access to the highest quality practices in Reading and Language Arts instruction by offering the very best in free materials. ReadWriteThink is partnered up with IRA (International Reading Association, NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) and Verizon Thinkfinity. IRA’s goal being partnered up with ReadWriteThink, is to help improve the quality of reading instruction, dissemination information about reading, and encouraging the lifetime reading habit within children. NCTE’s goal being partnered up with ReadWriteThink is to improve teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education.  Lastly, Verizon Thinkfinity’s goal being partnered up with ReadWriteThink is to bring teachers, students, and parents free, online education resources.

The website offers many useful resources for teachers, parents, and afterschool professionals to use with children. For the teachers, ReadWriteThink offers lesson plans, student interactives, mobile apps, calendar activities and free printouts. For the calendar activities, students and teachers are kept up to date on upcoming holidays and occasions, and are provided lessons and activities to do in class and at home. The free printouts are a great tool for teachers and parents to reinforce literacy skills taught. Under the Professional Development tab, ReadWriteThink offers strategy guides, professional library and online professional development. Under the parent and afterschool resources tab, the website offers activities and projects to do at home, games to do with a parents, tools, tips, and how to’s for parents, and printouts and podcasts to help implement and reinforce what was taught.

Although many of the literacy website I find are for students, ReadWriteThink is a great website for parents and teachers. This website offers numerous literacy activities and lessons to do at school and at home. The activities reinforce what is taught and provides extra practice for students. I enjoy how the website provides tools, tips, and how to’s for parents, which is important for a teacher to provide to parents. It is important for a teacher to provide additional help for parents because it will help them feel confident that they are able to help their child when the teacher is not around. I also enjoyed how the website offered mobile apps for teachers and parents, because students are constantly using technology in and outside of the classroom. Students are becoming more efficient when using tablets, game systems, telephones, computers, and so much more. By providing these educational games to parents and teachers, this will allow them to use technology when teaching new skills that will ultimately make learning fun and engaging. Lastly, I really like how the website offered many resources for the teacher. ReadWriteThink provides lesson plans for teachers, student interactive activities to help make learning fun, calendar activities, and printouts. The calendar activities of upcoming holidays, such as Martin Luther King Jr., and provides activities, games, projects, and lessons that could be done both at school and at home.

I’ve come to realize that although there are a lot of resources and online games for students, it is just as important to provide resources for teachers and parents to use as well. I am glad I found this website and will keep it handy for future use.

Image Source:

http://www.westfield.ma.edu/personalpages/draker/edcom/final/sp11/sectionb/blueberry/readwritethink.jpg

Information Source:

http://www.readwritethink.org/