Guest post: Larry Ferlazzo

You probably recognize Larry’s blog from a few of our Literacy Voices Roundup posts. He writes a great blog full of useful links for teachers. Since it’s that time of year when folks are heading back to the classroom, I asked Larry to write a guest post for us on his favorite sites. You can check out more of his suggestions on his blog.

Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California, has sponsored a Family Literacy Project for the past three years. The school provides home computers and Internet access to more than 40 immigrant families, and 80 percent of household members use the school’s English-learning website at least one hour each day.

The project was awarded the 2007 International Reading Association’s Presidential Award for Reading and Technology. Students participating in the project have gained between two and four times the English reading improvement than immigrant students who are not in the home computer project.

Our website is used by students throughout the world, and we have a blog that provides updates to new resources, including more than 100 “The Best…” lists sharing the best websites for various learning opportunities.

Here are our choices for the best websites to teach and learn English literacy:

The Best Websites To Help Beginning Readers — The No. 1 website to help beginning readers is Starfall.com. Starfall.com has been helping people learn to read for years, and it’s still the best. Its scaffolding is great, and its stories — both fiction and nonfiction — are engaging.

The Best Websites For Beginning Older Readers — The No. 1 ranked website for beginning older readers is Reading Skills Stories from Marshall Adult Education in Minnesota. They have Reading Skills Stories 1 and Reading Skills Stories 2. There are many leveled, high-interest accessible stories with several follow-up activities for each one. They also have a great Student Lessons section, too.

The Best Websites For Intermediate Readers — The very best website for intermediate readers is Into the Book. This is an absolutely incredible resource designed to help students learn reading strategies — visualize, predict, summarize, etc. For the past couple of years, it had only been partially completed, but now all its exercises are finished. The site leads users through the process of learning each reading strategy with interactive exercises.

— Larry Ferlazzo