Literacy

Once on the CommonLit website, teachers are prompted to first choose a theme such as “America or “identity” to narrow down their choices. Next, teachers can select a discussion question related to their chosen theme and then to specify a reading grade level, ranging from 4th to 12th grade. At this point, CommonLit provides teachers with poems, news articles, short stories and more, all of which can be directly downloaded from their website without signing up. In addition to the text itself, each downloaded document comes with discussion questions and follow up reading suggestions.

CommonLit’s reading collection consists of reading materials that teachers have marked as particularly loved and discussed by students. After teachers identify texts of this type, CommonLit works to obtain the necessary copyrights and then offers the texts for free.

At their own pace, students learn grammar concepts via instructional video lessons from home or at school followed by a series of self-assessing practice exercises. Color-coded progress reports signal to teachers how individual students performed so that when students are ready to apply the grammar concepts to their writing, the teacher is prepared to assist those students with immediate needs. Real-time writing portals allow teachers to provide 1-click feedback or more detailed comments to assist student writers.

There is a free trial but then there is a cost for membership.

Quill's suite of three writing apps (Quill Grammar, Quill Proofreader and Quill Writer) currently focuses on English grammar and writing fundamentals. Students learn the grammatical concepts by writing out complete sentences that incorporate the intended word or device. They are also asked to proofread passages filled with grammatical mistakes. Quill then highlights the student’s mistakes and provides a follow-up lesson on those particular subject areas. Students receive immediate feedback and can then repeat assignments until they achieve proficiency. Finally, students can participate in collaborative writing challenges in which they are given a prompt and a set of vocabulary words, and as a group they must turn them into an essay.

Teachers can track which students are struggling with certain concepts and provide individualized instruction to suit their needs. Over time, teachers can track student progress throughout the course.

Vocabulary.com is an online vocabulary aquisition game for teachers and students. Students answer vocabulary definition questions, advancing through more challenging words the more they get correct. Teachers can assign students vocabulary words and monitor their performance.

The multiple choice-style questions feature a challenging vocabulary from a notable passage of literature. Students select the correct answer and advance to the next question. A record of points accumulated, correct answers, leaderboards, and friends appears next to the question for student view. For correct answers, students accumulate virtual points and positions on the leaderboard. Vocabulary.com increases the difficulty of the vocabulary words as students advance through the questions correctly.

There is a free version and paid options which unlock more functionality

Storybird lets anyone make visual stories in seconds. They curate artwork from illustrators and animators around the world and inspire writers of any age to turn those images into fresh stories.

It's a simple idea that has attracted millions of writers, readers, and artists to the platform. Families and friends, teachers and students, and amateurs and professionals have created more than 5 million stories—making Storybird one of the world's largest storytelling communities.