Explore a variety of free literacy resources on Everybody Wins! Iowa’s web page dedicated to improving children’s literacy skills!
Scholastic Learn at Home – Scholastic Learn From Home provides active learning journeys designed to reinforce and sustain educational opportunities for students.
Unite for Literacy – Free access to over 400 books. Titles that celebrate languages, cultures and cultivate a lifelong love of reading. More than 30 languages; includes Special Education and ELL.
Storyline Online – The SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s award-winning children’s literacy website, Storyline Online, streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations.
Three Ways to Prevent Summer Slide (Scholastic) – Research indicates that elementary students can lose almost 20% of their school year gains in reading over the summer. “Summer Slide” is real for many of our Power Read students as the resources slow to a trickle during June, July, and August, especially for our disadvantaged students. Scholastic shares tips and ideas to help prevent the summer slide.
The Benefits of Reading for Fun – An article from Edutopia which discusses research into the academic impact when students are voracious, voluntary readers.
14 Ways to Encourage Your Grade-Schooler to Read – This list of tips can help parents and teachers support children in their reading development.
How to Raise a Reader – The New York Times published this comprehensive guide, filled with ideas for raising children who love to read.
Between the Lions – PBS offers a reading website designed for kindergarteners and first-graders, featuring kid-friendly stories and song videos to teach letter sounds.
Funbrain – This website offers a range of kids’ books for free online reading, catering to different reading levels.
Dogo News – Building reading habits from an early age is crucial for developing lifelong literacy. Dogo News provides news stories on sports, current events, and scientific developments that are sorted by grade level for age-appropriate reading.
Khan Academy ELA – Khan Academy provides online reading and vocabulary courses for grades 2 through 9.
Free Kids Books – This website is well-organized and helps parents find appropriate books for their children.
StoryPlace – This website offers virtual story times, sing-alongs, and other fun reading-based activities for preschoolers and early elementary-aged students.
Story Time From Space – This unique archive of virtual story times features books read aloud by astronauts on active space missions, including Ada Lace, Take Me to Your Leader.
100+ Free Video Read-Alouds – The Indianapolis Public Library has an extensive archive of filmed story times for children to enjoy.
Story Time at NYPL – Librarians from the New York Public Library offer fun, engaging virtual story times for children watching from home.
Sir Readalot – Kids can practice drawing conclusions from context clues in this fun, free game.
Letter Recognition Games – These games are designed to help kids differentiate between uppercase and lowercase letters and understand their meanings, crucial skills for early literacy.
Suzy Sloth’s Sentences – This game, featuring Suzy Sloth, helps kids with capitalization and punctuation.
Literature Games – Older kids can enjoy these games that focus on different books.
The Reading Machine: Reading Games – The Reading Machine is a helpful resource for keeping children engaged in reading. It offers links to 36 online games that teach and reinforce important reading skills, making them a fun way for students to practice and enhance their abilities. Additionally, these games can serve as fun reward activities.
Educaplay – Educaplay is an online platform that provides a variety of educational games and activities for teachers and students. The site offers a wide range of content, including quizzes, puzzles, crosswords, and more, which are designed to make learning fun and engaging.
Starfall – An educational website that offers fun and interactive games, songs, and stories to help children learn how to read, write, and do basic math.
“Write. Right. Rite.” Series – Hosted by the Library of Congress and led by young adult novelist Jason Reynolds, this program helps students learn how to tell their own stories.
Five-Step Writing Process for Kids – This website clearly explains the five steps involved in the writing process beyond just getting words down on paper.
Hemingway Editor – This tool assesses writing, checks for plagiarism, assigns a grade-level score, and helps writers identify hard-to-read passages.
LitPick – Middle- and high-school students can benefit from the book reviews on LitPick, which also allows them to contribute their own reviews.
The Story Starter – The Story Starter generates a range of writing prompts based on different genres, themes, and specific words to help writers overcome writer’s block and get inspired. It’s an excellent resource for writers of all levels.
Project Gutenberg – This website offers a wealth of classic works in the public domain that are free to download, including books that may be on school reading lists.
WorldCat – Teaching kids how to use the library is crucial for improving their literacy skills, and WorldCat allows users to search for books and see which libraries around the world have them available for loan.
Open Library – Another great resource for digital copies of kids’ books is Open Library, hosted by the Internet Archive.