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.

Quizlet - Vocabulary & FlashCard Games

Are you looking for a way to get your parents involved at home, without it being a big hassle? Want students to practice vocabulary in their spare time, but need it to be a very specific vocabulary list? Using Quizlet, you can search for flashcards made by other users, create your own flashcards for class and at home, and even share everything you create with your fellow educators and more importantly, parents! it's incredibly easy to get started, just a quick and easy (and of course, free) registration and then you are on your way! Quizlet takes the hassle out of studying for vocabulary quizzes, practices world language vocabulary, and even can make it engaging! It automatically creates games such as Scatter, where you have to drag words and definitions on top of each other to make them disappear, and (my personal favorite), Space Race, where you write the word or definition before the word races off the screen. It's easy, automatic and free! 


It is a great way to utilize this with parents who are having a hard time finding time to study vocabulary sets with their students. Just create, send, and watch magic happen when your students tell you how "FUN" it was to "STUDY". ( The words "fun" and "study" have never been in the same sentence before now!) Needless to say, if you want to engage even the parents and really get them involved, Quizlet is definitely a great way to get started!