The Starfall reading program is designed to be fun, exciting, and to instill confidence in young children as they learn to read. The website and companion printed materials are clear and effective tools to help you implement proven teaching methods. Our website was created by carefully observing the way children learn using a computer. The Starfall Website is easy for students to navigate independently, but it is not intended as a surrogate for the teacher.

Primarily designed for first grade, Starfall is also useful for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and second grade.

This folktale is about three monks who visit a village filled with unhappy people. The villagers do not welcome the monks, so the three monks decide to make stone soup to teach the villagers a lesson in happiness.

Julian meets Gloria, a new girl in his neighborhood. Together they make a wish kite, with wishes fastened to its tail; both wish for lasting friendship.

This site offers free original stories online for children ages 3-12 including MY novels.

This African folk tale explains how many African tales came to be known as ŕSpider stories.ĚŇ In this tale, Ananse, the Spider man, travels up to the sky to offer to buy Nyame, the Sky Gods, stories. Nyame asks Ananse to bring him Osebo the leopard-of-the-terrible-teeth, Mmboro the hornets-who-sting-like-fire, and Mmoatia the fairy-whom-men-never-see. Ananse agrees to the price but Nyame believes that Ananse is too small and weak to accomplish such a task. Ananse uses his intelligence and cunning to trick all three creatures. He returns to Nyame with payment for his stories. Nyame calls his court together to sing the praises of Ananse and declares his stories ŕSpider stories.ĚŇ

Outcomes Art CPK.2 Explore a variety of drama strategies including: • role • imaging • parallel play • journeys • meetings. CPK.4 Create art works that express own observations and ideas about the world.

ELA CRK.1 Comprehend and respond to a variety of visual, oral, print, and multimedia texts that address identity (e.g., exploring interests), community (e.g., belonging), and social responsibility (e.g., contributing). CRK.2 View and interpret the basic message of visuals and objects in a variety of texts including models, photographs, dramas, dance creations, and videos. CRK.3 Listen, comprehend, and respond to gain meaning in oral texts. CRK.4 Comprehend, retell, and respond to basic ideas in stories, poems, songs, and informational texts read to them. CCK.1 Compose and create various visual, multimedia, oral, and written texts that explore and present thoughts, ideas, and experiences CCK.2 Use and construct symbols, pictures, and dramatizations to communicate feelings and ideas in a variety of ways. CCK.3 Use oral language to converse, engage in play, express ideas, and share personal experiences.

Social Studies PAK.1 Understand and respect the agreed-upon rules of the classroom, playground, and school, and recognize that rules and expectations are designed to promote a state of safety, selfregulation, peace, balance, and harmony PAK.2 Recognize situations in which disagreement may be part of living, studying, and working together, and that resolution may be an avenue to progress to a state of peace, balance, and harmony.

Check this site out for fun videos of stories being read out loud.

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions and Common Core literacy strategies to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary using the illustrated text, "The Stranger." This story uses a mixture of pictures and words to explore the idea of the changes of the seasons and the expected natural events that occur with it' colder weather, leaves changing color, Jack Frost and migration. Chris Van Allsburg walks a fine line between reality and fantasy to create a mystery about the identity of the stranger who will represent the seasonal change from summer to fall. The Houghton Mifflin authors identify the storyĺĺs theme as an allegory for autumn and the use of personification to make the association.

Strategies for Academic Success accompanies the online first-year University of Saskatchewan Arts and Science course by the same name. The textbook has a reader-friendly format arranged to help you develop the essential skills and provide the information you need to succeed in university.

Strategic reading allows students to monitor their own thinking and make connections between texts and their own experiences. Students who make connections while reading are better able to understand the text they are reading. It is important for students to draw on their prior knowledge and experiences to connect with the text. Students are thinking when they are connecting, which makes them more engaged in the reading experience.

Students gain a deeper understanding of a text when they make authentic connections. However, teachers need to know how to show students how a text connects to their lives, another text they have read, or the world around them. In this strategy guide, you will learn how to model text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections for your students so that they may begin to make personal connections to a text on their own.

In this strategy guide, you’ll learn how to use kidwatching to track and support student learning. Teachers observe and take notes on students’ understanding of skills and concepts and then use the observations to determine effective strategies for future instruction.

Yetta Goodman popularized the term kidwatching, the practice of “watching kids with a knowledgeable head” (9). In kidwatching, teachers observe students’ activities, noticing how they learn and what they do to explore their ideas. Teachers then examine anecdotal notes and other evidence to see how and when students engage in learning. After this review, teachers use their observations to differentiate activities to meet the needs of individual students. The strategy is based on “a seek-to-understand stance by attempting to look at life, literacy, and learning through the children’s eyes” (Mills 2). By discovering how students learn, teachers are able to choose the most effective strategies for each pupil.

In this strategy, students read aloud to each other, pairing more fluent readers with less fluent readers. Likewise, this strategy can be used to pair older students with younger students to create “reading buddies.” Additionally, children who read at the same level can be paired to reread a text that they have already read, for continued understanding and fluency work. This research-based strategy can be used with any book or text in a variety of content areas, and can be implemented in a variety of ways.

This lesson for English Language Learners (ELLs) discusses the physical effects of stress on the human body. In this lesson, learners will practice reading, listening, speaking and writing. All activities are automatically graded with feedback provided to the learner upon submission.

This is a Zuni play about an ant in the search to find out who is strongest of all. The ant talks with numerous characters to find out who is the strongest. At the end, he learns the lesson that everything is stronger than something else.

This 1 hour webinar looks at tools and intervention strategies for students between grades 4-12. These are things you can use right away!
*Word Reading
*Fluency
*Background Knowledge, Vocabulary, Language Structure
*Comprehension

Slide Deck (copy and paste this web address into your browser) https://drive.google.com/file/d/101wp9pG1KyP6Ualr5SjXalgGI_qOxNKj/view

This process and template provide teachers with a structure to infuse structured literacy cross-curricularly. This includes a 9 step process, as well as a template to plan on, and an example. 

This site offers several online decodable books covering different letter sounds while introducing phonetic and sight words. Reading prompts and discussion points are imbedded throughout the book, with discussion questions at the end.

The document attached below is a summary of Equitable Education for Students With Reading Disabilities from the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission. 

Summer reading challenges from Common Sense Media. For all ages.