Product Overview: ReadWriteThink
ReadWriteThink is a comprehensive online resource center dedicated to enhancing literacy learning for students from kindergarten through grade 12. Developed and maintained by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA), this platform offers a vast array of free educational materials, tools, and activities designed to support reading and language arts instruction.
What ReadWriteThink Does
ReadWriteThink provides educators, parents, and afterschool professionals with access to high-quality practices in reading and language arts instruction. The platform is designed to help teachers plan and deliver effective literacy lessons, while also offering students interactive tools and activities to improve their reading and writing skills.
Key Features and Functionality
Lesson Plans and Resources
- ReadWriteThink offers hundreds of lesson plans, each aligned with IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts, Common Core State Standards, and individual state standards. These plans are comprehensive, editable, and can be filtered by grade, topic, type, and learning objectives to meet specific classroom needs.
Interactive Tools
- The platform includes a range of interactive tools, such as the Notetaker, which is a hierarchical outlining tool that allows students to organize up to five levels of information for reading and writing activities. This tool supports various formats (bullets, Roman numerals, letters) and includes a tutorial and a Notes area for tracking additional information.
Professional Development
- ReadWriteThink provides extensive resources for teacher professional development, including strategy guides, online events, and opportunities to connect with other literacy professionals. The site focuses on helping educators learn new techniques, recharge their teaching practices, and stay updated with the latest in literacy education.
Write-Alouds and Modeled Writing
- The platform includes strategy guides like Write-Alouds, which involve teachers verbalizing their thinking processes while writing to demonstrate metacognitive strategies to students. This approach helps students understand the writing process more effectively and improve their own writing skills.
Calendar and Organizational Tools
- ReadWriteThink features a calendar resource that helps teachers organize lessons around significant dates, such as famous figures’ birthdays, making it easier to plan engaging and relevant lessons.
Digital and Printable Resources
- The site offers both digital and printable materials, allowing teachers to choose the format that best suits their teaching style and classroom environment. Resources include graphic organizers, rubrics, and other teaching aids that are readily available for download or print.
Accessibility and Compatibility
- While some tools were initially flash-based and not compatible with all devices, ReadWriteThink is working to make its resources platform-agnostic, ensuring they can be used on various devices including laptops, desktops, tablets, and more.
Benefits
- Free Access: ReadWriteThink is completely free to use, with no requirement for an account or exposure to ads.
- Comprehensive Resources: The platform provides a wide range of resources, from lesson plans to interactive tools, all designed to support literacy learning.
- Customization: Teachers can filter and edit resources to tailor them to specific classroom needs.
- Professional Support: The site offers significant support for teacher professional development and community engagement.
In summary, ReadWriteThink is an invaluable resource for educators seeking to enhance literacy education. Its extensive collection of lesson plans, interactive tools, and professional development resources make it a go-to platform for teaching reading and language arts effectively.