My teachers and I are always trying to find ways to "invite" students into reading. Believe me, some of them love to read, they carry a book at all times! And then there are the ones who just would rather do something else. Probably like them I kill a lot of time surfing the web..and lots of times my surfing produces some real "gems"...!
Then, there's Reading Rants Out of the Ordinary Teen Book Lists! This site is celebrating it's 10th birthday and has just updated the site's "look." It's actually the first site I send students to when they have to look for some books to read. The book lists are organized into categories that students "get. "
Talk about volume, this site has tons of books all of which are annotated by someone who knows what will "pull" the kid into a book.
And this site is a gateway to more sites for writing book reviews and seeing them posted in the real world.
Talk about volume, this site has tons of books all of which are annotated by someone who knows what will "pull" the kid into a book.
And this site is a gateway to more sites for writing book reviews and seeing them posted in the real world.
Moving beyond just books, the students I work with have fun with the TWEENTRIBUNE, which offers teachers and students an opportunity to read high interest news stories about everyday people from around the world.Tween Tribune is a free resource that teachers can use to help introduce dialogue about current events in their class. Tween Tribune provides age appropriate versions of current news articles and all comments are moderated before they are posted. It is safe.You can choose to create a customizable page with student log ins.
Since students at the middle school level respond to reading text more when they are motivated to be engaged, The Tribune stories are are a great way to get them to read newspaper articles - and then respond to the text through their comments. 
The best thing about all of these sites is that they motivate the students to get involved in cooperative conversations about reading and text. There is more to do on these sites than just find a book. My students are used to "doing something" at a site...and these sites let them do exactly that! RESPONDING TO TEXT BY REMEMBERING WHEN...!
One way to foster response to informational text is to engage students in journaling and keeping track of the timeline of events in, say, a history chapter. xtimeline is a free web-based timeline where students can easily create and share timelines with pictures and videos.
Timetoast is another great way to share the past, or even the future...creating a timeline on this site takes minutes, it's as simple as can be.
