Read, Write & Think!

Looking for engaging ways to introduce your students to reading more or to encourage them to write outside of the classroom? Here is your answer—all of the materials at this site are created by experts to be fun, educational, and easy to use outside of school. readwritethink is an online literacy learning center. Its mission is to provide educators and parents with access to the best quality practices in reading and language arts instruction by offering the very best in free materials. Every lesson plan on readwritethink has been aligned not only to the IRA / NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts but to individual state standards as well.

You will be able to engage your students in online literacy learning with these interactive tools that help them accomplish a variety of goals. It helps students from organizing their thoughts to learning about language, all while having fun!

Furthermore, it has a complete section devoted to parents and afterschool professionals so learning can continue outside of the classroom.

Vocabulary Builders

When you mention the words "parts of speech" or "spelling vocabulary" do your students get that glazed over look in there eyes? Hopefully those days are soon over. There are a couple of engaging interactive websites that not only support your curriculum but are fun to use.

Elementary to Secondary teachers here is a educational website designed to build your students English vocabulary. Vocabulary.co.il is a fun educational website created for the purpose of building ones reading, phonics, or English language skills. They offer free online word games which are specifically designed to motivate students to learn by having fun while practicing spelling, phonics, and vocabulary.The vocabulary games include an online word search, crossword puzzle, and hangman (hangmouse). It focuses on having the student make connections between words and ideas and between words and pictures in order to build vocabulary skills. As you know those connections make the process of building vocabulary skills faster and more efficient.

Vocabulary.co.il is not only for the general education teacher but ESL teacher as well. It has vocabulary games dedicated to the ESL student. They range from common foreign language phrases to specific vocabulary lists, including numbers and colors.

SpellingCity.com is a terrific site to enhance your students spelling skills. Their slogan is, "SpellingCity.com has transformed spelling practice from a chore to something fun and it's free". The best part of this site is that the students can enter in their current spelling list to practice and then test themselves. It also has corresponding handwriting worksheets for the Dolch word lists. The downside to SpellingCity is that to fully utilize all it has to offer teachers need to buy a membership.

Parents and students are able to use both of these website effortlessly. It is ideal to use for a school to home connection because you can suggest certain educational games for the student to play that corresponds to the curriculum you are currently teaching.

TextMarks - Breaking Through the 21st Century Divide through Text

Teachers, do you find it's difficult to get ahold of your students' parents, or communicate on a daily basis with them? How easy would it be to send one mass text to your parents every day letting them know what homework your students have? Not so easy, you say? Not anymore! 


With TextMarks, sending a free text message to all subscribers is simple and easy. After you create a FREE account, all you need to do is create a  "group keyword", announce it to your parents and tell them the simple directions to sign up for your daily text (they text the keyword to 41411 and are automatically signed up). You login everyday to TextMarks and send a text. Simple, easy and fast. The most important part? Most parents text and would appreciate that daily text. It doesn't cost them anything (only if they don't have unlimited text - they would have to pay their own standard text messaging fees). TextMarks does NOT charge any fees, but they do send ads in the text. A short ad at the end of the text to have better instant communication with your students' parents? I'll take it. 


Sign up today and simplify your life! You can even embed a widget on your website that sends the text to that widget, so parents can just check your website every day if they don't want to receive the text. 


Says Jeromy Sumner, a Sixth Grade Teacher in Springfield Public Schools, 

"Textmarks helps me to reach my students on their level! I am able to forward my homework assignments to the entire class with one click. Parents even signed up so that they could receive homework lists and special announcements from me. Every classroom should use this service - it has helped increase the percentage of homework turned in each day, as well as reminding students of school events, library day & to bring in that field trip money!”