Discover resources and strategies for teaching core content areas. Explore tips, tools, and activities to enhance learning across all subjects.
I enjoyed reading Susan Barber’s post on Building Choice Into Your Students’ Reading. In it, she shared several great ideas for teachers to use during the school year to promote a culture of literacy. As a followup to her article, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss resources that you can use and share with your students to promote a culture of literacy over the summer months. Yes, even now as schools are wrapping up the year, many educators are already starting to plan how they can motivate students to interact with meaningful text and, hopefully, build a deeper sense of enjoyment in reading. Below are some resources I picked especially for you for summer reading fun.
Free Books Online
Most free books are in the public domain, but that doesn’t mean that they are not relevant for our students. But that’s not the only place to find free books. Some parents and students may benefit from signing up for a free month with a particular service even if they don’t plan to extend their usage beyond the complimentary time.
- Children’s Storybooks Online – This site offers web-based books for young children, older children, and young adult readers. A few have audio provided as well.
- SYNC – Sync is a free summer audio book program for teens 13 and up. It begins on April 27, 2017, and goes through the summer. Each week, two complete audio book downloads are made available.
- Open eBooks – Students from low-income families can benefit from these free ebooks, but the school needs to sign up first. Then educators from that school can request access codes to share with students. Each student can check out up to 10 ebooks at a time. The Open eBooks app works on iOS and Android devices.
- Library of Congress Archive – With more than 150,000 books online, you will definitely want to use the search features to narrow down by topic, collection, creator (author), and/or language.
- Reading Resource Project – This program that runs throughout the year provides free books (only shipping is required). Many of the sets include 100 books that can be shipped to you for $88.
- Free Kids Books – Choose to read the books either online or download as a PDF to read offline.
- Kindle’s Top 100 Free Books – Download and read via the Kindle app or online. Lots of selection choices.
- Barnes & Noble’s Popular Free eBooks – Access Barnes & Noble’s list of ebooks that you can download and read on the NOOK app. Be sure to use the sidebar options to narrow search results by subject and age of reader.
- TCEA members are also encouraged to join the iPad in the Classroom Community group where daily announcements are made about free books by Amazon as well as great apps that are available free for a limited time.
Text-to-Speech Readers
Many text-to-speech readers are available that can assist with ebooks. Your device and platform may determine which works best for you.
- Acrobat Reader – Activate Acrobat’s reader to have your PDF ebook read to you. Voices are limited, but you can adjust the pitch and speed.
- NaturalReader – You can download NaturalReader to listen to PDF, DOCX, Richtext, and ePub formatted ebooks.
- Aloud! – This free text-to-speech app works on iOS and accepts plain text, PDF, DOCX, ePub, RTF, and HTML formats.
- @Voice Aloud Reader – Designed for Android users, you’ll enjoy the extensive list of formats this free app can read aloud (TXT, PDF, DOC, DOCX, RTF, OpenOffice document files, EPUB, MOBI, PRC, AZW and FB2 ebooks, and more).
Summer Reading Lists
Hot off the press, these updated lists can give you and your students some direction of what author to check out, the next series to explore, and possibly a new genre to try out.
- Summer Reading for ELL and ESL Students – Lots of lists curated and shared by Colorin Colorado for ELL and ESL students. Great resources for teachers and parents.
- Reading List for New Students at UC Berkeley – Before saying goodbye to your high school seniors, you may want to share with them this list of books for incoming students to Berkeley.
- Houston ISD Summer Reading List – Enjoy the curated lists provided by the Houston Area Independent School Library Network. Each list is a PDF, making it easy to download, share, and/or print as needed.
- B&N Summer Reading – Take advantage of Barnes & Noble’s list for summer reading. Keep a journal (provided on website for download) of at least eight titles you read and you can get a free book!
- NYPL Summer Reading List – The New York Public Library has nicely formatted lists for babies-PreK, grades K-5, teens, and adults.
- The Ultimate Summer Reading List for 9- to 12-Year-Olds – Melissa Taylor has pulled together a great list of books that will be popular with all upper elementary and middle school kids.
After Reading Activities
Making a book more enjoyable can easily be done by including some after-reading activities. Here are few to get you started. These are great to share with parents as well!
- 103 Things to Do Before/During/After Reading – Regardless of the age of the reader, there are TONS of ideas that they can do to further enjoy and reflect on the book they just read.
- 10 Fun Post-Reading Activities – Though these activities are geared more for classroom use, students can still do a few during the summer.
- Teaching Reading: 20 Activities After Reading – Pick a few of these to share with your students before they leave for the summer and challenge them to complete them and share with you prior to returning.
- No Prep Post Reading Activities – These easy activities don’t require any preparation ahead of time and may be the perfect activities for kids to deepen their love for reading.
- Post-Reading Activities for ESL Students – These are great activities for students to do after reading a story or book…even if they aren’t ESL students.
Please share with us your school’s reading list for the summer, your favorite book you read as a kid, or possibly a one that you anticipate reading this summer for fun. We’d love to hear from you!
There’s been a lot of discussion over the last year about implementing genius hour in the classroom. Genius hour is the strategy of giving time for students to do self-directed learning on interests that they are passionate about. Google regularly provides employees 20 percent of their work week that can be devoted to “passion projects,” believing that this will better engage the staff and make them more excited about all of their work. There is nothing magical about the “20 percent” number; it’s more important that you give students some time for open-ended learning in which they can pursue their own interests. Here are a few resources to help you get started integrating this educational trend into your classroom.
that the option to access the Google Play Store on your Chromebook is enabled in the dashboard. You can check your Chromebook by going to Settings. Scroll down until you see the Google Play Store (beta) section. If the option is greyed out, then you’ll need to bake a batch of cookies to take to the domain administrator and ask if they can enable the feature. (Giving cookies increases the chances of having this feature enabled by 64 percent.) If you log in with your personal Google account on the Chromebook, you’ll notice that it is already enabled. But you do NOT want to use your personal account with your students and other teachers. For safety reasons, you always want to use your district account, even if that means bribing the domain administrator or waiting a few days for it to be enabled. 
Once the option to enable is made available, you’ll be able to enable it in Settings and manage Android preferences (similar to if you were setting Android preferences on an Android phone or tablet).
Yippee! You have it enabled. So where it it? Click on the Launcher icon which, by default, is the icon on the bottom left on the shelf. You will now see the Play Store (beta) icon. This beta Play Store is currently a stipped down version of the Play Store you would see if you accessed it through the browser. And yes, you will need to use the beta Play Store to install Android apps. When accessing the store via the browser, your Chromebook will not be an option in the dropdown list of compatible devices. Once you click on the beta store, you will recognize the various categories to help you narrow down what type of app you are looking for. If the developers have not completely finished updating the app in question, it may be available as a beta version. When I spot checked several of the Android apps I have on my phone, almost all were available and ready in the Play Store. You might even find that some app developers have made their product available as a Chrome app (that you install via the Web Store) and an Android app (that you install via the beta Play Store). Either way, once installed, they will appear in your launcher window.
Autodesk SketchBook – Whether it is illustrating, diagramming, or sketchnoting, you’ll find this to be a simple app to use. When done, save the image to your Chromebook.
Trello – More than just a to-do list app, Trello can help you keep track of projects. You can work alone or collaboratively with classmates to keep track of project-based learning activities.
Trading Cards – This isn’t your traditional trading card maker. Templates provided include fictional person, real person, fictional place, real place, object, event, and vocabulary. Once you enter information on the front and back of the card, you can share it as a photo to your photo gallery.
Pic Collage – Share your message with pictures! Pic Collage lets you start by selecting your photos and then adding them to a grid with templates (start with a themed background) or freestyle (begin with a blank slate and add to it). You can also easily add text and search for photos on the internet to add to your collage.
On April 25, Amazon announced a new Alexa designed just for children. 
As with any tool, the strength of the learning that results comes from how much thought students have to put into it in the first place. So they should definitely be asked to storyboard their cartoon first and have it peer edited for clarity, flow, and understanding. The app encourages students to use “Story Arcs” in planning their masterpiece. According to the website, “A Story Arc is a scaffolding tool that helps you map out a story’s plot. Whether they’re learning Language Arts or Science, kids can practice communication skills using story arcs as formulas for convincing arguments.”