Reading + Vocabulary = Fun Sites!

Broadening a Student's Vocabulary helps in so many ways: with speech, reading and association.  I've been asked by our Teachers for tools that will help our Students broaden their vocabulary and provide for a fun reading experience.  Other criteria? These sites, these tools, should be fun for them to use, interesting enough to intrigue the Student to want to use them, and... a source that doesn't feel like it's for learning (this gets a wink to my 5th Grade Friends!)

So, here it goes:

One of my top picks (yet again)....Wonderopolis (http://wonderopolis.org/).  Not only are each day's wonders interesting, but the Students love seeing what will be that day's 'wonder'!  Each day you can count on not only an interesting article, but videos, key terms and more.  Throughout the article, key vocabulary is highlighted.  When you hover over the word, it gives a clear definition of that term.  Then, at the end, each key term is again emphasized and expanded for further learning. There are also challenges and a "Test Your Knowledge" section for comprehension at the end of each article.  Huge fan of this sight!

Smithsonian's Tween Tribune (http://tweentribune.com/) is clearly another favorite of mine.  I like how the reader can select their Level, either by Grade or Lexile, have the article read aloud, and search for other articles by similar 'tags'.  Not only that, but the articles are very interesting and very current.

Lingro.com (http://lingro.com/) is perhaps one of the cooler sites I've seen in awhile and I can't wait to show this off to Teachers, particularly our ESL Folks!  Essentially, you can copy & paste a URL from any site into lingo.com and it will translate it into a variety of languages, as well as when you hover over any word in the article, the program will define the word, as well in any language.  The user can create 'Word Lists', "Sentence Lists", keeps track of history lists and has a section for games.  This is looking to be a pretty interesting source for our Students.

Word Hippo (http://www.wordhippo.com) gets a nod here. I like how simple it is to navigate the site and find word definitions, synonyms, rhyming words, example sentences, translations and so much more quite helpful.  Just about anything you can do with words, you can do it on Word Hippo! Simple...clean....nice results!

New to me, Newsela (https://newsela.com), is turning out to be a very cool member of this list.  It has catchy news articles that can be leveled for reading levels mostly in the upper Elementary and beyond.  I like the graphics and the very current topics of their articles.  These articles can be defined further into "Text Sets" for Language Translation, Literature, Social Studies, around the World & USA, etc..  The Reader can also select articles from a whole host of subjects. Signup is easy and I can see where having an account would give more personalized "whistles and bells". I'm quite happy with this site overall.

Check out these sites too: