Explore these teacher-friendly resources to support literacy instruction, intervention, and student practice. 

Ready to find an activity? Choose a resource below to get started.

① Find your skill above → ② Note the recommended resource → ③ Click the resource link below

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UFLI •  FCRR •  Reading Rockets •  ReadWriteThink •  TextProject •  Heinemann

Foundational Skills

Build strong foundations for reading.
Find resources for phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, high-frequency words, word recognition, and early reading instruction.

Build strong foundations for reading. Find activities for phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, high-frequency words, word recognition, and spelling.

My first stop: UFLI Foundations Toolbox
⭐ Best for: “I'm teaching this phonics pattern. What can we do to practice it?”
Teachers can find lesson slides, decodable passages, homework sheets, games, and additional practice organized by UFLI skill/lesson. 

FCRR Student Center Activities
⭐ Best for: “I need a small-group, partner, or center activity.”
This is a gold mine. Teachers can choose phonological awareness or phonics and then drill down into specific subskills. Activities include things like phoneme manipulation, word building, word sorts, and decoding practice. FCRR specifically designed these as practice and extension after explicit teaching.

Really Great Reading — Heart Word Magic
⭐ Best for: “I'm teaching an irregular high-frequency word.”
Free Heart Word animations plus spelling, scaffolded spelling, and word-analysis activities. 

Reading Rockets — Phonics Strategies
⭐ Best for: “I need another way to teach or practice this skill.”
Includes activities such as Elkonin boxes, dictation, alphabet matching, word walls, and matching books to phonics features. 

Reading Rockets — Phonological Awareness Strategies
⭐ Best for: “My students need practice hearing and manipulating sounds.”
Easy access to blending/segmenting games, rhyming, syllables, onset-rime, and Elkonin boxes.

Fluency

Help students become accurate, automatic, and expressive readers.
Explore resources for repeated reading, phrasing, accuracy, automaticity, and reading with expression.

⭐ Reading Rockets — Fluency Strategies

Best for: “I want a fluency activity that isn't simply timing a passage.”

Find strategies including choral reading, paired reading, audio-assisted reading, and other ways to build fluent reading. The strategy pages include directions and often provide classroom videos, templates, examples, and differentiation ideas. 

⭐ FCRR Student Center Activities

Best for: “I need fluency practice students can do independently or with a partner.”

Select Fluency to find activities that reinforce fluent word and connected-text reading. FCRR is particularly useful for literacy centers and differentiated practice. 

⭐ TextProject

Best for: “I need free texts for students to actually practice reading.”

Offers free downloadable student texts and teacher resources across grade levels, including materials for developing readers. 

Vocabulary & Comprehension

Support students in understanding what they read.
Find tools for building vocabulary and background knowledge, making meaning from text, inferencing, summarizing, questioning, and understanding text structure.

⭐ Reading Rockets — Vocabulary Strategies

Best for: “I'm teaching vocabulary and want students to do more than define words.”

Find evidence-based vocabulary activities and instructional strategies that can be used in whole-group, small-group, and independent settings. Reading Rockets

⭐ Reading Rockets — Classroom Strategy Library

Best for: “I'm teaching inferencing, summarizing, questioning, text structure, or another comprehension skill.”

This is one I'd feature prominently. Teachers can search for the skill they're teaching and find an instructional strategy with directions, examples, downloadable materials, differentiation suggestions, and often a classroom video. 

⭐ FCRR Student Center Activities

Best for: “I've taught the comprehension or vocabulary skill—now I need an activity for students to practice it.”

Choose Vocabulary or Comprehension and then select the specific subskill. Activities include directions, materials, examples, and extensions. 

⭐ TextProject

Best for: “I want to build vocabulary and knowledge through actual reading.”

Includes free texts and vocabulary resources, with student materials for primary through secondary grades. 

Writing

Connect reading and writing instruction.
Explore resources for sentence development, written response, planning and organizing ideas, vocabulary, and supporting students through the writing process.

⭐ Reading Rockets — Writing Strategies

Best for: “I'm teaching writing and need an instructional routine or activity.”

Teachers can find evidence-based classroom strategies for writing, including descriptive writing, dictation, framed paragraphs, and other approaches. 

⭐ Reading Rockets — Classroom Strategy Library

Best for: “I want to connect reading comprehension and writing.”

Many of the strategies bridge reading, vocabulary, comprehension, and written response, making this especially useful for integrating literacy instruction. 

Intervention & Differentiation

Meet students where they are and help them move forward.
Find targeted activities, instructional routines, and practice materials that can be used for small-group instruction, intervention, reteaching, and differentiated practice.

⭐ FCRR Student Center Activities

Best for: “My data show this student needs practice with a specific skill. What can I use?”

Teachers can identify the area of need and find activities in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, or comprehension. FCRR emphasizes using student performance data to select appropriate activities. 

⭐ UFLI Foundations Toolbox

Best for: “This student needs additional explicit phonics instruction and practice.”

UFLI Foundations is designed for primary core instruction but can also be used for intervention with struggling readers in any grade. 

⭐ Reading Rockets Classroom Strategy Library

Best for: “I need a strategy I can adapt for different learners.”

Strategies include differentiation suggestions for students with varying reading abilities, younger learners, and multilingual learners.

Texts & Student Practice

Find engaging texts and opportunities for students to practice their growing skills.
Explore decodable texts, passages, articles, digital reading materials, and other resources for independent, partner, small-group, and whole-class reading.

⭐ UFLI Foundations Toolbox

Best for: “I need a decodable passage that matches the phonics concept we're learning.”

UFLI provides decodable passages aligned with specific lessons and phonics concepts, along with additional practice activities. 

⭐ TextProject — Free Student Texts

Best for: “I need free texts my students can read.”

Includes DecodableReads, BeginningReads, FYI for Kids, SummerReads, Talking Points for Kids, vocabulary materials, and other free student texts across grade levels. 

Not Sure Where to Start?

Think about the specific skill you're teaching or the skill your students need to practice. Choose the section above that matches your instructional goal, then look for the “Best for…” statement that sounds most like what you need.

Looking to deepen your professional knowledge about literacy instruction and research? Visit the Professional Resources page.

Lesson & Activity Idea Banks

Need a fresh idea for an upcoming lesson?
Explore these collections of ready-to-use lessons, activities, printables, and instructional strategies. Search by skill, topic, or grade level to find something you can adapt and use with your students.

💡 Teacher Tip: Start with the skill or concept you’re teaching, rather than browsing for an activity first. Search terms such as inferencing, main idea, vowel teams, vocabulary, summarizing, or persuasive writing can help you quickly find an activity that matches your instructional goal.

⭐ Heinemann Free Teaching Resources

Best for: “I’m looking for a new lesson, activity, or teaching idea to try with my students.”

Browse free lessons, classroom activities, videos, and other resources from Heinemann authors and educators. Search by content area or grade level to find ideas for reading, writing, vocabulary, conferring, and more. Heinemann Blog

⭐ ReadWriteThink Classroom Resources

Best for: “I’m teaching a particular literacy concept and want a ready-to-use lesson or activity.”

Teachers can search thousands of literacy resources by grade level and find lesson plans, printables, student interactives, and activities. There are resources for K–12, including phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, writing, poetry, text analysis, and more. Read Write Think

⭐ Reading Rockets Classroom Strategy Library

Best for: “I know the skill I’m teaching, but I need an effective way to teach it.”

Search evidence-based classroom strategies by literacy skill, including phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, spelling, and writing. Many strategies include step-by-step directions, classroom videos, downloadable templates, differentiation ideas, and suggested books.