Are you looking for balanced literacy apps, tools, and resources that you can use with your students? If so, we have you covered. Check out our list below. Let us know if there are any that we missed.
Spelling Balloons – Spelling Balloons helps students read and learn to spell words in a game environment. With a focus on sight word recognition skills, increasing proficiency and fluency in reading, and practice with auditory processing, this app fits well in a balanced literacy classroom routine or as additional at-home practice for elementary students. Spelling Balloons is customizable with the ability to create individualized word lists and to adjust word pronunciation and spelling based on location; for example, British vs. English pronunciation and spelling. The app has both speed and difficulty settings for further customization.
Study Island– Study Island is an all-in-one practice website for students to work on literacy, math, science, and social studies skills. It is built specifically around state standards, so regardless of your school’s location, you can rest assured that the content and practice provided on the website will align with your classroom teaching. Study Island is a great tool to use for high stakes testing preparation and provides real-time progress monitoring for teachers and parents. Beyond simple practice, Study Island can also be incorporated into classroom lessons for formative assessment and differentiation. It even allows teachers to import NWEA MAP assessment information for individual students and calculates a targeted learning path to fill in knowledge gaps!
IXL Learning– IXL Learning has been proven to be effective in providing comprehensive, curriculum-based math and English language arts content for kindergarten to grade 12. It also provides an immersive learning experience in science, math, language arts, and social studies for K-12. It produces
ReadingIQ – is a literacy platform that brings a personalized reading experience to each child based on his or her needs. With ReadingIQ’s exclusive Reading Level Assessments, parents and teachers can be confident their child or students will find kid-friendly books that match their reading level. Reading Level Assessments, which take just minutes to complete, dynamically adjust their degree of difficulty in response to each child’s performance. ReadingIQ then recommends books at the appropriate level for the child. As children use ReadingIQ and improve their reading skills, the platform periodically prompts them to retake Reading Level Assessments to adjust their recommended level.
Lalilo – Lalilo is a web-based app that assists early childhood educators in imparting literacy skills using customized and comprehensive guidelines. Students’ progress through the game and meet fun cartoon characters, read books, and complete quests in a structured system. The AI intuitively assesses student progress to prescribe lessons for children.
LightSail Education – Teachers can use LightSail Education to monitor their students’ reading in real-time and in detail. Teachers and students can monitor students’ per-page progress through books in addition to their performance on Common Core-aligned assessment tasks. This tool also provides students with access to books in the school’s digital library, which can be downloaded for later use. Teachers can also make use of testing results to track student progress over time.
