Looking for some great texts for the classroom for your students to enjoy as get back into the swing of things this school year? Here are eight sites that provide a good selection of text that your students might enjoy reading this school year. Several also provide lesson plans, text sets, activities, and lesson plans that teachers can use with the materials provided on their websites. While this list is by no means comprehensive, here are a few of the sites you will want to explore to see what they offer you and your students.
Common Lit for Elementary and Secondary Classrooms
The Common Lit Website and Blog have a wide array of interesting materials for students to use in both elementary as well as secondary classrooms. You can find more information on the Elementary Classroom tab for elementary students. Secondary teachers will find many excellent resources to support literacy and reading comprehension for middle and high school students on the Secondary Classroom tab.
The TextProject Free Student Texts
The TextProject has some online free student texts for students to read from grades K-1 to High School. The project uses texts based on the science of reading with supporting lessons written by researcher and educator Pat Cunningham. You can find their materials on their website TextProject.
Newsela
Newsela is a wealth of informational text for students of all ages. There is a paid version as well as a free version that teachers can use in the classroom. Teachers can adjust the reading level to accommodate student needs for students who need more support in their reading. Newsela also has curated sets of texts that can be read as small units.
Smithsonian Digital Content
The Smithsonian has two sources of digital content that teachers may find helpful for use in the classroom. The first is the Smithsonian Learning Lab where students may “discover, create, share, and learn” using interactive learning experiences curated by the Smithsonian. On this site, you will find images, audio, video, learning resources, and texts provided by model collections on different topics. The Smithsonian also provides the Smithsonian History Explorer Website which as the name implies, provides excellent information to support the study of United States history. The Smithsonian also offers the Tween Tribune which provides news articles written specifically for teens. Articles include adjustable lexile levels and have comprehension and vocabulary quizzes. The site also includes tech-related stories and articles in Spanish.
The National Archives
The National Archives provides primary source documents that teachers can use as well as lesson plans and activities.
PBS Learning Media
On the PBS LearningMedia Website, teachers will find curated articles, videos, interactive lessons, and lesson plans to use in the classroom from K-12. There are also collections tied to current news and events for teachers to use with their students. The materials can be integrated into Google Classroom and align with state standards. PBS also provides a US History Collection on its Learning Media website.
The Library of Congress
The Library of Congress provides a wealth of reliable classroom materials and primary source documents for teachers to use in the classroom.
Research shows that writing reinforces and builds reading skills, so the more students write, the more improvements they make in their reading. Publishing their works online is a great way to get students excited about writing.
One writing resource you will definitely want to check out is the Exquisite Corpse Adventure serial saga from the Library of Congress website. Students will love the episodes of the Exquisite Corpse Adventure!
ReadWorks
ReadWorks provides a large amount of high-quality K-12 articles including text passages, vocabulary activities, paired text sets, ebooks, and book study materials on their website.
Buzz Aldrin’s Portal to Science and Space Exploration
For students who love reading about science and space exploration, the Buzz Aldrin App for phones and iPads is an outstanding resource that will keep space enthusiasts busy reading and exploring the information on this app for many hours.
If you enjoyed this article, you may be interested in: How Public Domain Literature Can Benefit Classroom Reading or Using Non-Fiction Text to Increase Reading Comprehension.
