Literacy Centers

Phonics and Phonological Awareness

Construct a Word from the International Reading Association's ReadWriteThink Web site gives students practice with onset and rhyme. Students choose an ending (an, at, ed, ing…) then see how many words that can make using a bank of letters.

Word Family Sort from ReadWriteThink helps students recognize word patterns by having them sort a series of words into short-vowel word families.

Picture Match, also from ReadWriteThink, is a matching game that reinforces the concept of beginning-letter and short- and long-vowel sounds by prompting students to identify a series of pictures and match them to the first letter or the vowel in the words they represent.

PBS's WordWorld gives students phonics practice with cute animated activities involving simple words. Try an eBook, a simple rhyming story that is read aloud. Click on the flashing words on select pages to see the word "morph" into a WordFriend.

The Electric Company is back with from PBS with videos and interactive games to help students learn to decode words and build vocabulary.

Starfall.com features many activities for beginning readers to practice phonemic awareness and phonics.

ABC Match from ReadWriteThink is a game that lets students practice letter-recognition fluency while honing their memories.

With Alphabet Organizer from ReadWriteThink, children can create their own alphabet book or chart. They simply click each letter they want to include, and type a word that begins with that letter. When they are finished they can choose to print letter pages with room to draw, or a chart.

The Between the Lions Web site from PBS provides several interactive word games for early readers. Between the Lions also offers several printable activities for offline literacy centers.

The BBC Little Animals Activity Center features three word games: end sounds, first sounds and rhymes. Students click to match words.

The Superwhy Web site from PBS provides several games designed to help build letter and word skills. The About the Site page describes each activity for teachers.

Clifford Interactive Games from Scholastic provides several phonics games for young students.

Comprehension

Into the Book from ECB lets students practice these reading comprehension strategies: using prior knowledge, making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, summarizing, evaluating and synthesizing.

What’s in the Bag from Read Write Think gives students very simple practice inferring.

The Patchworker Game from the BBC asks students to put words in the correct order to make a sentence, creating a puzzle that makes an illustration for the sentence.

The Story Mappping interactive from ReadWriteThink includes a set of graphic organizers designed to assist students in prewriting and postreading activities by focusing on the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution.

The Mystery Cube from ReadWriteThink helps students identify and summarize story elements in this popular genre. It can be used as a postreading activity for mysteries students have read or as a prewriting activity for students writing their own mysteries.

Vocabulary

Word Play from Between the Lions animates the meanings of each word that is clicked.

Synonym Sam’s Lab, also from Between the Lions gives students practice choosing words that mean the same as a given word.

The WordGirl Web site from PBS designed to promote a love of language and words. Activities involve choosing or identifying words in context. The guide to activities for kids describes the purpose of each activity for teachers.

Eye on Idioms from ReadWriteThink includes a series of exercises, in which students view the literal representations of seven idioms and then examine the metaphorical meanings of the idioms.

Fluency

The Screen Actors Guild Foundation sponsors Storyline Online, an on-line streaming video program featuring actors reading children’s books aloud.

The Stories from Between the Lions feature audio readings with text that is highlighted so students can read along. Stories include fiction and non-fiction.

Clifford Interactive Storybooks lets students click on each sentence to hear a story. Students choose a word to end each sentence.

Read Along Stories from Reading is Fundamental (RIF) features several illustrated stories with text matched to audio. This Reading Planet site also has lots of other great reading activities for independent readers. Students can read "choose your own ending" books, read or write book reviews, submit poems, play games and more. If they join the club, students can track the books and minutes they read on their own home page. A great page to return to often and explore.

Writing

The Story Maker from Random House’s Seussville let students write a story by choosing backgrounds and characters and writing their own dialog.

The Instant Poetry Form Finder allows students to type their own words into a variety of poetry frames to create their own works.

Acrostic Poems from ReadWriteThink gives students an interactive tool for creating acrostic poems.

Diamante Poems from ReadWriteThink enables students to learn about and write diamante poems.

The Letter Generator from ReadWriteThink is a tool for students to learn the parts of a business or friendly letter. Students are guided through composing letters containing all the essential elements needed for both styles of correspondence.

Fractured Fairy Tales from ReadWriteThink guides students through the process of composing a fractured fairy tale to print off and illustrate.

Let students write their own online comic strips at MakeBeliefsComix by choosing characters and filling in blank talk and thought balloons.

Electronic Text
Give students a chance to practice their reading skills with these electronic texts:

Squish the Fish from the Shedd Aquarium features simple rhyming text for early readers (also available in Spanish).

Animals features several short texts for beginning readers from National Geographic.

Dinosphere from the Indiana Children’s Museum provides three activities at each of three levels: Level 1 - non-readers, Level 2 - early readers, Level 3 - readers.

Creature Feature from National Geographic

Weird News from National Geographic

The Disaster Area from FEMA

The Sweet Lure of Chocolate

America’s Stories from America’s Library

Democracy Kids

Energy: Fueling the Future

Power Plants in Action

The First Thanksgiving

Africa for Kids

Hippo Quest

Dogsledding 101

Pest World for Kids (bugs)

Living in Space: Designing a Space Station

Fireworks of Glass (art)

Carmine’s Portraits (art)

Living in Space: Design a Space Station

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