Inside the ELA Classroom

The Lexile® Framework describes the text complexity necessary for our students to meet the demands of college and career. Through the redesigned "stretch" Lexile bands, teachers have a framework to determine what complexity level students should be reading - and at which grade level to make sure they are ultimately prepared for the demands of careers and college. With the Lexile focus, an upward trajectory of incorporating more appropriate text to meet the demands of differentiation converges to allow incorporating personalized challenge through individualized goals of student-specific rigor to ensure students grow in literacy skills.

Taken from the GaDOE presentation updated August 7, 2017.

CommonLit is a great FREE resource for teachers to use across the content. Text sets cover a range of cultural, historical, and political topics with relevant reading passages.

Browse this resource by book, genre, grade level, literary device, text set, or theme!

The ReadWorks Student Progress feature allows teachers to track individual student progress and use data to help inform instruction.

Teachers can view student progress:

• By individual student results
• ​By class results
• By month and over time
• By product type, including question sets, vocabulary activities, and Article-A-Day

The Teacher-grading tool in ReadWorks allows educators to grade written answers on a scale - zero, partial (25%, 50%, 75%), or full credit. Students answers are displayed next to each other which allows for comparison. The program allows for constructive feedback to students.

How to Grade Written Responses

ReadWorks is a nonprofit organization that provides K-12 teachers with a high-quality library of nonfiction and literary articles, teacher guidance materials, and integration tools.

Research has shown that teachers struggle with motivating students to engage in more independent reading (especially for reading at home). Students either exclaim to not like reading or prefer their favorite video game. Find a few strategies below to motivate students to read more.

The website Bookopolis provides students a method to receive and provide recommendations from their peers. This site captures thousands of student-written book reviews.

Epic! Books allows students ages 12 and younger access to more than 10,000 digital books. The program is free to elementary teachers and librarians.

This online reading log motivates students to read more with extrinsic rewards. Students earn Wisdom Coins for logging reading, answering open-ended and reading comprehension questions. The coins are used to "buy" accessories for their Owlvatar.

Many of our schools have participated in the Read to Succeed program in the past. Consider dusting off this exciting program. Students who complete six hours of reading earn a free ticket to Six Flags. The program is free for teachers and schools to participate. The 2017-2018 program begins soon.

The internet has a wealth of resources. Find below some websites that may be of interest.

New York Times Learning has a trove of resources. One highlight is the text to text options that connect current events with other nonfiction articles or famous pieces of literature such as A Raisin in the Sun.

Family Literacy & Picture Book Month

National Novel Writing Month

Geography Awareness Week (November 12-18)

World Kindness Day (November 13)

Thanksgiving

Black Friday - Real LIfe Reading

Cyber Monday

Giving Tuesday