Random House Kids is an interactive website made by the book publisher, Random House. This website provides games, information about authors and illustrators, and books designed for your child's specific website. One of my favorite tools that this website offers is a book finder tool. This book finder allows you to select an age of the child and a category of stories, and it will provide for you a number of different books that your child could be interested in reading. This is a child safe website that you could trust with your child alone. I would absolutely encourage this website for helping your students to become excited about reading and learn of new books that they would enjoy reading.
Students of all ages love the Magic Tree House series and this website offers even more enjoyment for these wonderful stories. The Magic Tree House website offers students an introduction to different time periods and cultures. The site also has non-fiction companions for learners to want to read more about a specific topic. The site gives students quizzes to test their reading comprehension, and then leads readers into interactive adventures with the main characters, Jack and Annie. For students, it provides a fun way to deepen their knowledge of the books and the culture while encouraging them to read. The site isn't only helpful for students. For teachers, the site provides resources and worksheets to help develop lessons into which the books can be tied. Overall, this is a wonderful and fun source for both students and teachers!
Gamequarium, although not the most visually appealing site, is a wonderful source for students looking for extra help with reading. The most helpful tool that I found on this website was the link for young readers. This page offered interactive short stories, word families, and a place where children can listen to stories being read to them. The site also offered many tools for more experienced readers including book talks, book web sties, and author sites. The only thing that I was disappointed with for this particular site was the layout for the website. If I were to come across this website on my own I would likely look past it simply due to the way it looks, but I encourage you to use this useful resource!
e-Learning for Kids is a website that is helpful for all grades. This website provides different games that will give students extra help with synonyms, capitalization, figurative language, word recognition, and reading comprehension. My main focus with this would be reading comprehension. The website gives students different books to read with the computer or alone, and at the end of the book there are a few different multiple choice questions that would help the student see what was most important in the book. This would be a very helpful tool to use at home with your child! I will use it in my classroom both as a reward for students when they finish their work as well as a way to interact together as a class. This is one resource that we would use the smart board with. To elaborate on that, I will give all students an opportunity to come up to the smart board and complete part of one of the many different activities that this source offers. Overall, I see e-Learning for Kids to be a very helpful source for you, your child, and the rest of my classroom!
