IRA Newsletter Project: Effective Literacy Website #2 Into the Book

The website https://reading.ecb.org/teacher/index.html (Into the Book) is designed to improve elementary students’ reading comprehension. It is also geared towards increasing the children’s ability to think and learn across the curriculum. Into the book includes a variety of free resources that teachers can use to increase literacy in their classrooms. The website is easy to navigate and is divided into different research-based strategies.

The strategies are prior knowledge, questioning, making connections, visualizing, inferring, summarizing, evaluating, synthesizing and strategies together.  Each strategy is then divided into its own subtopics. The subtopics include definition, online activity teacher guide, lessons, books, videos, posters, and songs. The resources are almost endless. The website provides a teacher guide so that the teacher knows exactly what to do. Each lesson is tied into a common core standard.

Lessons are also available for each of the strategies. The website provides a variety of lessons to practice the research-based standard. For example, prior knowledge can be practiced using the five senses chart, wondering cube, rivet, pre-reading, list-group-label, anticipation guide, and prior-knowledge bookmark. All the lessons are available in PDF versions making it easy for teachers to download. I like how the website gives not only one but a variety of lessons to choose from.

Another great aspect of the website is that it includes a list of suggested books that can be used for the different strategies. There is a list of suggested books from the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin—Madison that can be used to introduce the different strategies. Their content and format make them particularly suited to making the strategy explicit to children. If the teacher does not want to purchase the books, the website also provides a link to multimedia book resources from TeachingBooks.net.

I think Into the Book is a great learning and teaching resource for the classroom. Teachers can use it to help guide them in lessons. The videos, posters, and songs included make the lessons more enjoyable for children. Students can also access the resources from home which will be a great way to practice literacy when not in the classroom. I recommend this website for all teachers. It is fun, easy, and a very helpful website.