J, K, L ... better late than never, right?

J is for Journaling ... Journaling is a great way to practice writing skills.  I remember the early years of my career when my English students kept journals, which I read weekly and scored!  Now I wouldn't even have to carry that stack of notebooks anywhere!

Journaling by Journey is a Chrome App that can be added and used wherever you have access to Chrome.  You can add pictures with your entry, "lock" it from prying eyes (WAY better than those tiny keys that I always lost) and even record the location of where the entry was made.

OR ... you can go ahead and journal using good ol' Google Docs ...

K is for KAHOOT!!  Who doesn't love a good Kahoot?!  Kahoot has undergone some great upgrades in the last year - you can now play 'ghost mode' which allows students to play their former selves to see if they've improved, you can also send your report straight to Google Drive, you can even enjoy a new look AND new music!  If you haven't used it in awhile ... take a peek!

L is for Lucidchart!  Lucidchart is a great way to create charts of any kind OR start with their templates and fill in your own information (a great source for a Venn Diagram)!  Just drag, drop, and connect and you're off and running.  Saves straight to Google Drive in a handy folder called Lucidchart.  Next time you ask your students to create a timeline or a flowchart, consider Lucidchart.

I love to read!

I do!   I. LOVE. TO. READ.

And ... we know that reading is important in the classroom.  We've all seen the research, the charts, the lovely graphs that support this.  We know that it needs to happen across the curriculum BUT we're not all trained reading specialists ... this can help!

I was recently reminded of a site that we've talked about in the past and I believe it merits another visit.  ReadWorks.org has a vast library of reading passage that are sorted by grade level, lexile, topic and even by text type (literary, informational or poetry)!

I'm going to throw in their informational video but it is outdated a bit - mainly because it implies that this resource is only valid for K-8 - and from the image above you can see it has grown since the video was made.

More good news?  This is "teacher priced" ... FREE!  Take some time and wander through this next time you are looking to support reading in your classroom ...