INTO THE BOOK
http://reading.ecb.org/
This is a website designed to help students in grades kindergarten to four improve their reading comprehension. It focuses on eight strategies: Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing. It is broken up into two main areas -- students and teachers.
In the student area, you can complete interactive online activities, watch videos, and/or listen to purposeful music to help develop your reading comprehension. The lessons are very extensive and incorporate a wide variety of hands-on activities. You can choose to focus on one strategy at a time or all of them. Depending on abilities, you can read the text or have the text read to you. The activities are applicable and relevant. I tried a number of different activities and I was very impressed.
The teacher area features lesson plans, teacher guide, discussion forum, posters, videos, real-world application, etc. It has many resources to help teachers support students with context and/or meaning processing difficulties.
I really enjoyed this website and could see how it could be incorporated in the classroom. Although it states it is for students in kindergarten to grade 4, I could see how upper elementary/junior high students would benefit from this as well. These reading strategies are also discussed in grades 5 to 9. Some of the content and activities could support these students as well. Into the Book could also be used to support students on individual programs (IPPs) in higher grades. The reading strategies are thinking strategies that support academics across the subjects, not just during ELA class.
The difficulty with this website is that it requires the use of the mouse which could pose a problem for students with fine motor difficulties. I really feel this website is very extensive and very much supports the individual student, whatever his/her abilities are.
UDL TECH TOOLKIT
http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/Home
This website is designed to be a "Free Technology Toolkit for UDL in All Classrooms." It is a wonderful resource for teachers to gain access to many different types of assistive technology -- text to speech, graphic organizers, study skills tools, literacy tools, writing tools, math tools, etc. -- that benefit ALL learners, regardless of ability or disability. The resources compiled on this website are FREE or can be easily downloaded from the Internet. They promote the UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR EDUCATION which gives all students an equal opportunity to learn. The site is divided into categories based on the area of difficulty (ex. text to speech, literacy tools). Once that individual page is opened, there are numerous links to various online resources.
This site is EXTENSIVE and covers a WIDE variety of needs. It is designed for educators and is not "user friendly" for most students. It uses "teacher-centered" vocabulary and reasoning; therefore, students may find it difficult to navigate on their own. It could also be used by parents to help their child if he/she experiences difficulties at home. It would be a wonderful addition at home to support what the child is doing in the classroom and because they are free, parents (with Internet access) can support the technology at home.
IXL - MATH RESOURCE
http://ca.ixl.com/
IXL is a math website that links practice questions to the provincial curriculum outcomes. It covers a wide range of topics through visual representation, word problems, interactive activities, left and right brain awareness, etc. Students navigate various topics within a particular grade level and answer questions online. If a student does not know the correct answer, this website provides comprehensive reinforcement of the concept. IXL's goal is "to help students gain true understanding of a concept, thus ensuring long-term skill retention." Students start with basic arthimetic skills in order to gain fluency. They progress to more difficult concepts/questions as the learning builds on prior knowledge so that mastery is achieved.
I LOVE this website for MANY reasons -- two of which I will elaborate on. The first reason I love this website is the direct link to curriculum outcomes! This is a wonderful tool to help support teachers in the classroom. It can also be used by parents to help assist their child at home with reinforcement of concepts taught. The second reason why I love this website is that there are NO multiple choice questions! I am not a big fan of multiple choice as students can convince themselves that they understand a concept just by purely guessing the correct answer. Students are required to INPUT their answers. This helps support real learning and understanding. I also LOVE that you can set up your individual classroom rosters, track students, use different grade levels (P to 9) to assist with IPP outcome planning and instruction, use the numerous online resource help supports on the site, etc.
A few disadvantages to this website is that it costs money to sign up. You do have access to a variety of practice problems, etc. without signing up, but the tracking systems for parents and teachers, as well as many other options, are not available without signing up. The website also only includes outcomes up to grade 9 (although expansion to include grade 10 and above is coming soon). A final disadvantage is that the student would be required to read and comprehension the information from the website (i.e. the questions as well as the elaborations). I did not see a link for a text to speech option (perhaps this is present once purchased).
