Sunday, February 22, 2009

Into the Book

Into the Book is a reading comprehension resource for K-4 students and teachers. The site focuses on eight research-based strategies: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating, and Synthesizing.

Once students click on the book to get into their section of the site, they are given a login key based on their first name and an assigned number. As students work their way through the different activities their work is saved and they can go back and retreive their work at a later time, or work from home.

To enter an activity students click on the different icons on the entry page and drag them to a book. A short video then explains the strategy and students take part in an activity that supports the use of the strategy. For example, the synthesizing activity first informs students what it means to synthesize information and then has the students use the skill to create a movie poster for Biopics Studio. During the activity, students are walked through each step to create their poster and at the end, have the opportunity to print the poster they created.

This site is colorful, informative and fun. Each activity can easily fit into a class period, or if time runs out, students can save their work and finish it later. There is also a teacher area with lesson plans for each section. This is definitely a site that will help students learn important strategies for learning to read and write.

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