Tween Tribune: A digital look at current events

Tween Tribune is a great web site with news articles age appropriate for children, tweens, and teenagers. With Common Core advocating for more nonfiction texts for our students this site offers daily reports. Whether Common Core sustains, nonfiction texts will always be important for  Categories of news include: animals, art, book reviews, education, entertainment, fashion, food & health, inspiration, national news, science, sports, and technology. With such a wide variety of topics, teachers may use this site to help pinpoint individual student interest which will help motivate students to read. Promoting reading through text complexity and informational text helps students become involved in a more rigorous content which promotes greater success in career and college.

Tween Tribune offers high-interest articles, leveled text for grades K-12, self-scoring quizzes, lesson plans, critical thinking questions all at no cost!

Here’s how it works

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Free Rice (not just vocabulary practice)

I have always enjoyed word games. Free Rice is just that a simple word game that has been around since 2007. Free Rice is a non-profit website that is owned by and supports the United Nations World Food Program. It is made possible by the generosity of the sponsors who advertise on this site.

Free Rice has two goals:
• Provide education to everyone for free.
• Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

If you haven’t visited the Free Rice website lately you will want to check out some new categories that are great for your students when they need a few minutes of filler time. At the top of the vocabulary box look for the words CHANGE SUBJECTS with an arrow pointing right. Click on the arrow to find a broad listing of …

Kahoot!

Kahoot! is an awesome tool teachers and students are falling in love with! This game based system motivates our classrooms and is backed by academic research in blended learning. Used as a hybrid of face to face and traditional learning, Kahoot! brings a great learning platform to classrooms that helps educators motivate and involve students in questioning, discussing, and surveying! It is one of the most user friendly platforms I have run across in some time. The snapshots and long term tracking help educators make just in time adjustments in teaching. This is a super digital tool for formative assessment. Kahoot! has also recently released a way for teachers to instantly “kick” inappropriate student nicknames from the lobby screen. Kahoot! is committed to providing a safe and enjoyable learning environment.…

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Newsela: Daily Relevant Nonfiction Texts

Newsela is a free web-based program that offers daily relevant nonfiction news stories for your students. Each article has five adaptable Lexile levels for easy differentiation. Students can read interesting news articles, take quizzes, and monitor their progress. Aligned with Common Core the teacher can drill down to see specific standards each article offers.

The Pro ($) version allows teachers and students to annotate articles to give personalized learning experiences. With a variety of topics teachers can easily differentiate based on students interests as well as reading level. Newsela stands out as an exemplary web tool that offers high interest and relevant news stories and works well for grades 4-12, but I use it for 3rd graders too! Whether you have one classroom computer or thirty, Newsela should and can be easily integrated into your classroom instruction.…

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