Not to worry. As educators, we look out for each other – so we won’t leave you in the lurch. We’ve curated a list of our favorite resources you can tap into in the coming year!

Meet Your Read To Lead Substitutes

1.Literacy Skill development: Provide opportunities for students to practice targeted literacy skills aligned to Common Core Standards

ReadTheory 

Improve your students’ reading comprehension once and for all. ReadTheory’s adaptive technology adjusts to assign passages at each student’s “just-right” level. With thousands of standards-aligned formative assessments and real-time reporting, students get routine practice, and teachers know exactly what to teach next. The best part? Teachers can sign up for free!

Read&Write 

Finding support solutions for struggling learners is always a challenge, but Read&Write could be the answer. With useful features that help with everyday tasks like reading text out loud, understanding unfamiliar words, researching assignments, and proofing written work, Read&Write is an excellent tool for students at all levels. An additional plus point – it’s free for educators!

ReadWorks

If you are looking for access to thousands of high-quality, free K-12 articles, ReadWorks may have the answer. Content, curriculum, and tools that give educators the flexibility to create digital classes, distribute printed materials, and even fuel classroom instruction – ReadWorks has it all.

2. Engagement through Literacy: Help students understand the value of reading

iCivics 

Looking for high-quality resources to engage students in meaningful civic learning? iCivics offers well-written and inventive games, lesson plans, and more that help teachers nurture the next generation of civic-minded students and build the foundation of democracy.

BrainPOP

Boost achievement for grades K-8 in math, language arts, science, social studies, and more with BrainPOP. Featuring everything from lesson planning resources to scaffolded lessons that train grammar and vocabulary skills, BrainPOP promotes curiosity-driven learning through educational tools that challenge students.

PBS Learning Media 

Well-known among educators, PBS Learning Media, is a treasure trove of free, standards-aligned videos, interactive resources, lesson plans, and more. Look no further than PBS Learning Media for timely, topical collections designed around learning objectives and tailored to students’ needs!

Newsela

Media literacy is an important skill for students to have in the 21st century. With Newsela, teachers can access real-world content that is adapted to their students’ levels to bring context and relevance to any ELA classroom. Drive engagement through literacy with amazing instructional content and support tools on Newsela.

3. SEL Skills: Nurture students’ SEL skills aligned to the CASEL framework

Emozi 

Created to address the unique challenges and teaching needs of middle and high school students, Emozi focuses on Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum. It helps educators with middle school classroom management, behavior problems, emotional regulation, peer pressure, bullying, and more – setting students up for success both academically and socially.

Peekapak

Support your students in their Social Emotional Learning (SEL) with Peekapak. With a wealth of CASEL-aligned stories, lessons and learning games to choose from, you can easily integrate SEL objectives into any ELA lesson and equip your students with the tools they need to navigate the real world, middle school and beyond!

4. Real World Learning: Expose students to career exploration opportunities and engaging PBL curricula.

Beable 

Close the gap and accelerate literacy and learning with Beable. Offering a multi-dimensional approach, Beable incorporates differentiation, individualization, and personalization to meet the multiple needs of different students and strengthen the literacy-to-career connection.

Educurious 

Project-based learning is fast becoming a staple in educators’ toolboxes and Educurious makes it that much easier to implement in your classroom. By connecting students to the world through a global network of subject matter experts and mentors, this project-based learning curriculum empowers youth to take charge of their learning. Featuring customizable tools and resources, immersive professional development opportunities, and a vibrant learning community, Educurious is sure to be a hit among teachers and students alike.

5. Marketplace: Search for programs that can be a better fit for your classroom needs

Clever 

An integrated digital learning platform for K12 schools, Clever boasts one friendly interface for single sign-on, messaging, analytics, and more. Keep track of student progress, organize your classroom, and share updates with parents – all within the same platform.

Edcuration  

With so many products, resources, and tools available for educators these days, making decisions about which to purchase can be challenging! Edcuration is a marketplace for PreK-12 educators to discover, compare, evaluate and purchase from a variety of high-quality, cutting-edge offers.

EdSurge

EdTech (education technology) is a fast growing industry but educators are often not in the know about the best and latest products that will ease their classroom woes. EdSurge aims to bridge the gap between educators and innovators in the education space by providing insightful reports on people, ideas and tools shaping the future of learning.

6. Curriculum: Find complete lesson plans to complement your ELA lessons

ClassHook

Videos are a powerful educational tool kids love but finding appropriate ones that don’t have ads is hard. ClassHook solves this problem by playing videos without ads, and detecting and automatically skipping inappropriate language! With this curated video library, you’ll never have to worry about embarrassing moments in class, and increase student engagement, retention, and relevance!

Brain Waves Instruction

Could do with some free lesson plans and teaching tips to make your daily life easier? Brain Waves Instruction delivers all that and more! With lesson plans organized into categories like Literature & Reading, Poetry, and Writing, you’ll be spoiled for choice for your next ELA lesson.

With so many free and paid resources available, we are sure that you will find the perfect substitute(s) for Read to Lead that will make your classroom experience that much better in the new year!

The post Read To Lead Is Out Sick: Here Are Some Great Substitute Programs appeared first on Read to Lead.

Here are some of our favorite ideas to create a game show type of environment, get students out of their seats, or just make learning fun and enjoyable again!

Craft Review Games

Jeopardy 

Bring the classic game show into your classroom with Test Prep Jeopardy! You may think this game requires lots of pre-class prep work but it can be as simple or intricate as you like. Yes, you’ll need to set up some type of game board using a whiteboard, blackboard, smartboard, GoogleSlides, or Pear Deck but beyond that, it’s up to you. Simply choose categories based on the topics you want to review and have a list of questions and answers for each level of points.

When it’s time to play, divide the class into four teams. Each team member takes a turn to select a category and amount, for example, “Poetry for $400”. If the student answers the question correctly, the team earns points. At the end of the game, tally up the points to determine the winner!

Knockout! 

Bring a Carnival element to your classroom with this fun game board. Getting the game board setup requires some prep and crafting, but you can re-use it for years! Use hot glue to stick plastic cups in a grid format on a piece of foam board. Be sure to leave some space between the rims! While the glue is drying, prepare slips of paper with review questions and small prizes. Once the glue is dry, place one slip of paper and a prize into each cup and cover it with a piece of tissue paper. Secure the tissue paper with rubber bands.

To play, ask students to come up one at a time and select a cup. Have them punch through the tissue paper to retrieve the question and prize. To keep the prize, they will have to answer the question correctly. Otherwise, the first student to raise their hand and give the correct answer claims the prize for themselves! (limit 2 per student).

Credit Composition Classroom

Tap into Apps and Digital Platforms

Quizizz 

Access a customizable content library to quickly create interactive assessments and engaging quizzes to test students’ knowledge. Motivate students while easing the stress of testing with this enjoyable gamified platform that also gives you real-time data about student performance so you can offer support when needed.

Kahoot!

Choose from 100+ million ready-to-play games or create your own on this game-based classroom response system. Kahoot! allows all students to review contents and tests their understanding simultaneously. Project the multiple-choice questions on the screen and have students answer them on their individual devices. With games for every grade in every subject, getting through test prep with your students will be a breeze.

Flip (Formerly Flipgrid)

If your students love sharing videos with each other, they will love Flip! A free app by Microsoft for video discussion and sharing, you can use Flip to get students to review different topics ahead of testing season. By giving them the chance to showcase their creativity, you keep things fun while ensuring students understand the material being reviewed.

Get Students Out of Their Chairs

Pass the Chicken 

Bring a rubber chicken into your classroom for this test-prep game! Arrange your students so they are seated in a circle. Randomly select a student and give them the rubber chicken to pass around the circle. Ask this student a test review question and they will have as long as it takes for the chicken to make its way around the whole circle to answer. If they do not manage to answer in time, they have to sit in the middle of the circle (the chicken coop).

The game continues as you ask different students questions. If they don’t know the answer, they may ask the student(s) in the chicken coop for help. If a student in the chicken coop answers a question correctly, they get to rejoin the circle. Consider creating safety rules with this game, as students can get quite rowdy with the rubber chicken!

Snowball Fight

Recreate a snowball fight inside the classroom! For this game, each student writes three review sentences or questions on individual pieces of paper and then balls up the pieces of paper to create snowballs. Divide students up into smaller groups or teams and have them stand together. 

For the snowball fight, students take turns throwing their snowballs at members of opposing teams. The student who is hit by the snowball has to answer that question correctly to remain in the game. If they answer wrongly, they are out. The game continues until all the snowballs are used up and/or there is only one team left standing. 

Around the World 

Travel the world with test prep with this game! The aim of the game is for a student to travel around the room and arrive back at their seat. Start by having one student stand up next to a seated student. Ask the pair of them a test review question and the one who answers correctly first gets to move up to the next “point on the map” while the other sits down. Continue in this manner until the timer runs out or you complete the list of review questions. The winner is the student who has moved the farthest from their original seat!

Consider incorporating “mandatory layovers” for students who have answered a set number of questions correctly (3-5) in a row by making them sit down to give other students a chance to move.

Test prep time can be a fun and engaging experience for your students with these interactive activities! Looking for more test prep ideas for your middle school students? Check out these resources:

• 3 Review Games to Help Your Middle School Students Prepare for Testing 

• 5 Popular Test Review Games For Middle Schoolers

• December ELA Activities to Keep Students Engaged

The post Review Games To Make Test Prep Fun appeared first on Read to Lead.

With so many tools available, deciding which one to implement can be overwhelming. To make your decision a little bit easier, here are four of our top choices!

Stay on Track with a Learning Management System

Depending on what your school uses, you likely already have a subscription to a learning management system (LMS). Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom are popular choices that many school districts have adopted. If you don’t already use an LMS, you can easily get a Google Classroom subscription for free!

Using an LMS allows you to create, assign and grade assignments, and share information, materials, and resources with students virtually. It makes it easy to keep track of students’ progress and you’ll never have to worry about losing a paper assignment again! Certain platforms even have tools to communicate with parents and for students to interact socially within the platform – excellent for keeping parents in the loop and kids engaged!

Provide Differentiated Instruction with Formative Assessments

Research shows that using formative assessments in the classroom positively impacts student achievement – more so than almost any other educational intervention. Additionally, keeping track of students’ progress is critical to being able to provide differentiated instruction and additional support where needed.

If you’re not using formative assessment in your classroom – it’s not too late to start! Use tools like Pear Deck or Nearpod to infuse formative assessments seamlessly into each lesson. These tools also provide you with real-time insight into student understanding, allowing you to respond and adapt. Interested in integrating these formative assessment tools into your classroom? Check both options out for free to see which works best for your classroom!

Deeply Engage Students with Immersive Learning Games

Gone are the days of teachers standing at the front of the classroom and lecturing for an hour while students take copious notes. Interactive lessons that engage the whole child are the way to go! Check out Read to Lead learning games – the perfect fit for the ELA classroom.

Tap into the power of game-based learning and start building your students’ literacy, leadership, and life skills with Read to Lead. In this interactive platform, students take on the role of boss in a virtual workplace and have to navigate complex scenarios modeled after real-world situations. All content is aligned to Reading Standards and the CASEL framework so you can be sure students are mastering essential ELA skills as they work through each game. For the busy teacher, each game also comes with discussion questions and other ready-to-teach wrap-around materials!

As a bonus, Read to Lead integrates with Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom, making it a breeze to implement as a part of any ELA curriculum. The best part? Read to Lead is always free for educators! Find out more and sign up here!

Build Community with Collaborative Tools 

After two years of isolation and social distancing, students are craving community – something that is crucial to a healthy learning environment. Flip, previously known as FlipGrid is a unique classroom management tool educators can harness to build community. 

A video discussion app designed for small group connections, Flip offers students a creative outlet to express their ideas and learn from each other. Students can participate in class discussions via video clips on Flip and build deeper relationships with each other, even outside the classroom.

Classroom management is a fundamental aspect of a thriving classroom. With the right tools in place, you can cultivate a positive classroom environment that allows all students to reach their potential and excel. Why not get started today by introducing interactive lessons with Read to Lead into your ELA classroom? It’s easy – simply click here to sign up!

The post Top ELA Classroom Management Tools appeared first on Read to Lead.

1. This or That?

Help students find common ground with each other in this easy activity that gets students on their feet and mingling with each other. Prepare some statements that encourage students to take a stand or voice an opinion on a casual topic like “pizza is better than pasta.” Students then have to pick a side and physically move to the side of the room that represents their position. As a team, they take turns presenting their position to the class. This activity not only builds students’ confidence as they share their perspectives with their new classmates but also lets students see what they have in common with each other.

Here are some examples of this or that statements:

• I would rather vacation in the mountains than at the beach.
• Living in space is better than living underwater.
• Attending a concert is better than going to the movies/theater.
• One month without electronics is better than one month without junk food.
• I would rather have no money than no time.

Credit: Cult of Pedagogy

2. Get-to-know-you Bingo

What better way to get to know each other than by asking each other questions? In get-to-know-you Bingo, each student receives a 5×5 Bingo card. Each square has a specific characteristic like “is left-handed”, “plays the piano”, or “has an elder sibling”, “has the same birth month as you”. You can create your own, or use an online tool like this to create them.

Students ask each other questions to find a classmate who fits the criteria for each box. The first student to get BINGO wins, but the game can be extended to ensure all students complete the entire card. This game is sure to get students chattering as they discover interesting tidbits about their new classmates!

3. Class Playlist

“Where words fail, music speaks.” – Hans Christian Andersen

For middle school students going through physical, mental, and emotional changes, music is a way to express themselves. Creating a class playlist can be a great way for students to showcase their personalities, even the shy ones who hesitate to speak up. Ask students to contribute a song of their choice to a class playlist and let them bond through shared tastes in music. This playlist could also come in handy throughout the school year for an impromptu dance party!

Credit: We Are Teachers

4. Sweet Secrets

If you want to get to know your students better and win brownie points for being the sweetest teacher (pun intended!), you’ll love this activity. Bring a bag of colored candy (Skittles are a good option!) to class and announce that everyone can take as many as they want from the bag. After each student has collected their candy, reveal that each color corresponds to a category (e.g. yellow for sports, red for food). For every piece of candy, they have to share a fact about themselves related to that category. For example, if a student has two yellow candies and one red candy, they might say – I broke my leg rollerblading last year, I hate swimming, and I’m allergic to peanuts.

For a more intimate sharing session, put students in small groups to encourage discussion and deeper connections. Allowing students to get to know each other in a smaller group setting also nurtures SEL skills and fosters more authentic relationships among new classmates. And of course, everyone gets to enjoy their candy at the end of the session!

Credit: SignUpGenius

5. Summer Pen pals

The first day of middle school can be downright scary for some students – new teachers, new classmates, possibly even a new school! Help ease your students’ first-day jitters by setting them up with summer pen pals. Students will have their summer vacation to exchange emails and get to know each other better – and a friendly face to navigate the first days of school!

Randomly put students in your class in pairs or groups and start them off with some questions that encourage them to share more about themselves. You could even model the activity for them by sharing a fun introduction of yourself! Not only will it put students at ease knowing who their teacher and some of their classmates are going into the school year, but it is also a great way to learn more about your students and their writing abilities before the year starts. An extension of this activity could be to ask them to bring a hand-written letter to give to their pen pals on the first day of school!

Credit: Time Out For Teachers

In the midst of setting up your classrooms and planning your lessons, don’t forget to sign up for your free Read to Lead account this year! Keep students engaged in literacy, life, and career skills through engaging learning games, enrichment activities, and more. Get started today!

The post 5 Get-to-Know-Me Activities for Middle School appeared first on Read to Lead.

Keep reading to find out why teachers are assigning Read to Lead over the summer instead of a book list! 

Deeply Engage and Combat Learning Loss

The long break from school is refreshing for students and teachers no doubt, but along with this comes the dreaded summer slide. Going weeks without picking up a book or doing anything more stimulating than watching YouTube videos can be detrimental, but motivating students to continue their learning through their vacations can be a challenge. That’s why educators love Read to Lead learning games as a way to combat summer learning loss!

Fun – check!

Engaging – check!

Educational – check!

Builds literacy and leadership skills – check!

Choose from a library of immersive learning games depending on the skills your students need to polish up or assign summer reading playlists based on Lexile range, grade level, or career paths. The interactive platform engages students’ hearts and minds and working through different storylines captures their imagination – they won’t even notice they’re reading 5,000 words in the course of each game! Trust us, this will be one summer vacation homework that your students will be begging for!

Know Where Each Student Stands

What if there was a way to know where each of your new students stand before the school year even started? Read to Lead’s data reports lets you keep track of students’ progress even when you’re not physically in the classroom with them!

Use the Class Progress Report to track which episodes students have completed and the specific reading standard associated with it. For more in-depth information on individual student performance within the class, tap into the Performance Report. This feature can also be used to group students of different capabilities and offer tailored support and guidance on specific tasks or reading standards. Get a laser-focused look at each student’s progress and performance with the Student Activity Report. Check out the time they spent on each task, how well they performed on each task, and even review their written responses from this dashboard. With such detailed student performance reports that show exactly how each student is performing, you’ll know how best to support them in the new school year! Way to start the year off on the right foot!

Build Social-Emotional Learning & Encourage Career Exploration

Summer is not just a time for students to close learning gaps and play catch up with schoolwork – it is also a great opportunity to nurture the whole child. Build students’ social emotional-learning (SEL) while giving them a taste of what it’s like to be “the boss” in an interactive virtual workplace with Read to Lead.

How do you decide how to allocate finances within a tight budget?What’s the best way to mobilize volunteers and distribute resources in a crisis?When there is a conflict between staff members, how can you resolve the situation fairly and keep the peace?

Students tackle difficult questions like these and navigate complex challenges within different workplaces as they get a better understanding of some career options and the skills necessary to thrive in the modern workplace. Read to Lead offers students a safe space to make mistakes and learn from them as they cultivate essential life skills through summer reading.

There’s no reason reading in summer needs to be a chore for students. Fun, engaging, and enriching – Read to Lead is the quintessential summer reading companion for your students! Sign up today for a free educator account and get started building your students’ literacy, life, and career skills!

The post Summer Reading with Read to Lead appeared first on Read to Lead.

We need to ensure that every generation knows the historical legacy of Juneteenth and how it informs the ongoing movement for racial justice and equality. Awareness and knowledge all begin with a simple first step: READING!

Check out our newest Choice Board filled with activities and lessons you can use with your class to teach about the significance of Juneteenth. Pick one or do them all. The choice is yours! 

Download the Choice Board!

Activity 1: Search for your vocabulary word of the day

Use this word search game to introduce and pre-teach vocabulary terms for Juneteenth. Pro tip: The first word your students see can be the vocabulary word for the day!

Activity 2: Read about the history of Juneteenth

Give students this reading comprehension lesson that uses informative and historical texts. 

Activity 3: Discuss and debate current events 

Spark deep discussion and reflection with your students with a current events debate question.

Activity 4: Create a Public Service Announcement 

Inspire action within your students. Allow students to create a public service announcement to educate others about the significance of Juneteenth.

Activity 5: Lead a diverse team in a Read to Lead game

Sign up for free or log in, and assign your class learning game, Unconcious Bias. As the boss, students will learn how to identify and address when a person, whether a friend or colleague, mistreats others based on an unconscious bias.

Activity 6: Watch diverse leaders in the spotlight

Pull up a chair, grab some popcorn, and listen to the journey of any of our guests on Read to Lead: Live! our student-friendly webinar series that gives students a front-row seat into career exploration. 

Activity 7:  Celebrate Juneteenth with your community

Hold class presentations, and give your students a platform to share what they learned with the community.

What are you waiting for? Sign up for a free Read to Lead account, and use the Choice Board to teach Juneteenth this year!

The post 7 Ideas for Teaching Juneteenth appeared first on Read to Lead.

Get Back To Classroom Routines

Regular classroom routines may have taken a backseat in light of testing season, but now is the perfect time to bring them back. Classroom routines have many benefits, such as giving students a roadmap for their daily activities and helping them stay focused by reducing uncertainty. Routines also help foster community among students and encourage them to see themselves as part of the group, rather than just as individual students. 

If you need some quick ideas to infuse life into your classroom routines, we’ve got you covered. Try assigning a Read to Lead Playlist! Perfect for morning work before lessons start for the day, early finisher activities, or even extra credit. Read to Lead’s learning games promote literacy and leadership skills within an immersive, game-based platform. The best part? Once students try Read to Lead’s games once, they’ll be eager to play again and again, making it the ideal tool to reinstate routine in your middle school classroom!

Set Short-Term Classroom Goals

What better way to rebuild classroom culture than by giving students a common goal to work towards? Even though there are just a few short weeks left before school is out for summer, setting short-term classroom goals for students to work towards collectively can give them a real boost of motivation! 

One easy way to bring the class together and rebuild community is by setting a “Words Read” goal for Read to Lead. As students complete each learning game, their “words read” count gets added to a running tally for the class which shows how many words they have read altogether. Another option is to make it a challenge for students to play at least one Read to Lead learning game each week before summer. Set up a chart in your classroom for students to track their progress and reward them when they hit their goals. Or, if your class has been participating in the Million Words Reach Challenge, use the leaderboard to inspire confidence and healthy competition in your class. Whatever you and your students decide, Read to Lead’s games are sure to add some excitement to the classroom!

Build Students’ Social Emotional Skills

For students, wrapping up the school year can bring with it some big emotions. Relief at having “done their job” the entire school year, stress about their results from their standardized tests, excitement at having time off to relax, sadness at not seeing their friends over summer holidays, and even a worry of food scarcity as school is their one, daily “hot meal”for some students. 

Help your students learn healthy ways to manage stress, and give them an opportunity to practice self-management and awareness skills with CASEL-aligned learning games on the Read to Lead platform. By building SEL skills like social and self-awareness, self-management, relationship and communication skills, and responsible decision-making, Read to Lead games help our middle schoolers thrive both in and out of school. 

Wondering just how well your students are grasping SEL skills? Check out the inbuilt SEL dashboard! It provides actionable, real-time data to help you understand your students’ SEL skill development and differentiate instruction and support accordingly.

In a student’s academic experience, the end of the school year is just as important as the start. Incorporating Read to Lead’s games into your classroom can help end the year off on a high by helping students regain a sense of community and camaraderie with their classmates. What’s more, Read to Lead is FREE for educators! Sign up today to get started!

The post Re-Building Classroom Community at the End of the School Year  appeared first on Read to Lead.

According to the NCCP, nearly one in five children in the United States show symptoms of a mental health disorder, yet 80% of them will not receive treatment. 

While not a subject that is tested in school, giving students the social-emotional skills and tactics to help them better understand themselves and those around them can positively impact long-term learning and achievement.

To help educators teach Mental Health Awareness Month, we’ve bundled our favorite immersive learning games, activities, and resources that help students develop, recognize, and practice good mental health. 

Click here to download the free bundle!

Week 1: Support students in finding anxiety relief 

Finding outlets for anxiety and stress relief is becoming more and more important in our everyday life, and how we all manage this is different. This week, play learning game Vital Signs: High Anxiety with your students. When students take on the role of the boss in this immersive workday, students are challenged with diagnosing a patient who might be suffering from Anxiety. See the Answer Key here!

Later in the week, spark a discussion with your students to help them identify their feelings, explore strategies to manage anxiety, and make space to uplift each other with our Mental Health Awareness Supplemental lesson Anxiety Relief.

Week 2: Help students identify how to look for helpers

Knowing you’re never alone in life is key to managing mental health. This week play learning game Vital Signs: Diagnosis Unknown! As the director, students will need to work with their team to figure out the mysterious symptoms a patient is experiencing.  Answer Key.

Take it one step deeper and use Look for the Helpers supplemental lesson for students to find reassurance and hope while practicing compassion for the helpers in their communities.

Week 3: Support students in navigating complex decisions

Being able to navigate tough decisions is a muscle that has to be built over time. This week play learning game Community in Crisis: Medical Mystery to help students build that muscle. During this game, the community center team discovers a mold issue at the community housing complex. As the director, students must decide what they should do for the apartment residents while resolving the mold issue. Answer Key.

Later in the week, reinforce the importance of making informed decisions based on multiple forms of information using this supplemental lesson plan, Prioritizing Aid.

Week 4: Develop students’ self-awareness toward a bright future

Knowing your strengths and values is key to making the best decisions for a happy future. This week play learning game Community Pharmacy: Career Crossroads to help students develop their self-awareness. During this game, your student pharmacist is graduating and is torn between two career paths. As the Head Pharmacist, students must decide whether to support their student pharmacist’s decision to follow a new career path or recommend them for the hospital pharmacist job opening. Answer Key.

Later in the week, reinforce the importance of making decisions that will help students explore a future that can bring them happiness and a sense of fulfillment with this discussion and debate guide.

Bonus content: Show students how to manage emergencies

Unfortunately, in life, students will at some point have to manage emergency situations. To help them prepare, play learning game After the Storm: Emergency Management. During this game, the day after a hurricane hits the town, the editor-in-chief needs to decide the best method to get vital news and information out to the community while managing staff who are also dealing with the storm’s effects. Answer Key

Take it one step deeper and reinforce reading comprehension while promoting thoughtful reflection of the decisions made during the immersive work-day with this Discussion Guide. 

Quick tip!

You can now assign the learning games in the Mental Health Awareness Bundle right from the playlist section of your Activities Page Tab on the Read to Lead platform! Assign to your students in one click (yes it really is that easy!) A great activity for morning work, early-finisher activities, or extra credit!

Sign up for a free account to get started

Are you planning on using Read to Lead this month to support mental health awareness and social-emotional learning in your class? Sign up for a free account, and download your free lesson bundle!

The post Teach Mental Health Awareness Month appeared first on Read to Lead.

Amanda Flanagan, 5th grade teacher says it best “My favorite moment in using Read to Lead is when a student came in on a Monday after the weekend and said “Mrs. Flanagan, I moved us from 25th to 24th on the leaderboard when I finished the last game! They were playing over the weekend because they wanted to reach Millionaire Status!” 

So what is Millionaire Status and why are Middle Schoolers talking about it? 

The Million Words Read Challenge is game-based learning challenge that encourages middle school students to read, plus rewards them with prizes and a class party once they read 1 million words together! 

So how does the challenge work?

Every interactive learning game that each student completes on the Read to Lead platform adds to their collective words read count as a class. The more games they play (and words they read), the closer they get to achieving their goal of 1,000,000 words read. Reaching millionaire status as a class not only gives them serious bragging rights but also earns them certificates, student prize packs, and a class pizza party to celebrate the achievement together!

Create Friendly Competition

Nothing motivates kids quite like friendly competition.As students work through the literacy games, they get to see their progress in real-time on the leaderboard that ranks them against other classes in the nation. 

Trust us – when your students see that Mrs. Smith’s class down the hallway is just ahead of them on the leaderboard, they’ll be scrambling to play Read to Lead games during every free moment they get!

“Read to Lead brought the students together for a common goal. They wanted to see who they were competing against on the leaderboard from around the country, and it made them feel connected to something bigger, ” said Crystal Starr, 6th grade teacher. 

Promote Collaboration

The Read to Lead Million Words Read Challenge isn’t just about reading – it’s about accomplishing something together, growing together, reading together. It gives students the opportunity to share in success and help each other get there. 

“The Million Words Read Challenge showed my students that when we all give our best effort as a collective, we can achieve such a huge goal.” — Holly Crider, Graham Middle School

Celebrate Success

What better way to motivate end-of-year reading among your students than with a little incentive? When your class collectively reads 1 million words, they will receive a special delivery of student prize packs which include Read to Lead backpacks, t-shirts, water bottles, and more! In addition to that, every student gets an official certificate recognizing their hard work and effort to achieve Millionaire status. As a cherry on top, you’ll also receive a celebration gift card to spend on a class celebration party (whether virtual or in-person). 

Ready to Accept the Challenge?

The Million Words Read Challenge runs from the 18th of January to the 30th of June, 2022, so there’s still time to sign up. So far this school year, students have read over 56 million words and counting – will your students join them?

Sign up for free and assign your students their first learning game to put them on the path to becoming millionaires today!

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Literacy is the foundation of all learning. Being able to read, understand what you are reading, and apply background knowledge to new situations is essential to be able to learn any subject, from mathematics to science, from geography to computing, and everything in between. These are fundamental skills that, once acquired, will open up the doors of opportunity.

But what is the best way to teach literacy in the modern-day classroom and who is responsible for teaching literacy? HINT: it’s not just ELA teachers! In this article, we’re exploring what literacy is and how educators can teach literacy across the curriculum, regardless of what subject you’re teaching!

“Literacy is the most basic currency of the knowledge economy.” – Barack Obama

Simply put, literacy is the ability to read, write, listen, and speak in a way that allows us to communicate effectively with others. In our modern world, it is indispensable and vital for navigating even the most basic tasks in daily life. Research has also shown that reading, a key element of literacy, is a strong predictor of success later in life, whether in terms of pursuing higher education, getting high-income jobs, or being better socially adapted.

Here’s a few of our favorite tips to help build students’ literacy skills regardless of the subject you’re teaching: 

#1: Start with Building Background Knowledge 

When you think of a window, do you think of it as a pane of glass with shutters to allow wind and light to flowthrough, or as something that exists as a part of a house? For most people, our minds would immediately jump to the second. Why? Because context is everything.

No matter the subject area that you teach, help students contextualize new information by building on their background knowledge. Consider – What are students already familiar with? How can this new information be connected to the knowledge they already have?

Knowledge and comprehension are closely related – each reinforces the other. Students learn new knowledge which they then use to comprehend or understand information. Understanding something within a new context helps them concretize this information within their existing knowledge paradigm, and adds to it. From this perspective, giving students background knowledge to information they need to learn is key to teaching literacy.

#2: Build Real-World Connections 

If literacy is important in preparing students for the real world, what better way to do that than by demonstrating to them its relevance to the real world? Too often, students get lost in the barrage of information they get at school, particularly when they cannot see how it relates to their daily lives or how they can apply it to their future careers. This makes them disengaged and unmotivated, making it difficult to build their literacy skills.Read to Lead’s learning games addresses this by building real-world connections for students to see exactly how what they learn applies to life. For example, in the series Community in Crisis, students take on the role of Director at their local community center to respond to the effects of a hurricane in the community. Students can draw parallels between their in-game experiences with real-world contexts like Hurricane Harvey (2017) and Superstorm Sandy (2012). By inviting students to be the “boss” in a virtual workplace, we can connect literacy skills to real-life applications.

#3: Check Comprehension Skills As You Go

One way to teach literacy regardless of your subject matter is to check students’ comprehension skills. Getting regular feedback about how students are progressing, where they need a little extra help, and whether they are truly understanding the material is invaluable to building their literacy skills. However, juggling all of that for an entire classroom of students can be challenging.

That’s where Read to Lead comes in. With real-time reporting that shows exactly how each student is faring in each learning game and which areas they struggle with, Read to Lead provides invaluable information that you can use to provide students with more support. Each interactive learning game also comes with wrap-around curricula in the form of post-game debate questions and discussion prompts to deepen students’ understanding and solidify their grasp of the material. These additional resources not only reinforce reading comprehension and boost students’ literacy skills but also promote thoughtful reflection about the material covered.

By using these three tips in your classroom, you’ll be helping cultivate students’ literacy skills and equipping them to be the next generation of readers and leaders! How do you teach literacy across your curriculum? 

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