curric

Curriculet is is a site I’ve sometimes used for advanced ELLs and mainstream students. It provides higher level stories, books, and “units” in English and Social Studies, and ready-made exercises and quizzes. You have to choose which ones you want to add as assignments to a free virtual classroom One very nice advantage to this site is that they provide you a unique url address that students click on in order to register — it makes it very easy.

It’s on The Best Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress list.

They recently added high-interest articles from USA Today, but you have to pay extra for them. However, they just announced a free Summer Reading Challenge that lets students read the USA Today articles for free during the summer, and lets teachers track their progress. They are also offering daily and weekly prizes to students, which I’m obviously not-too-thrilled about, but who am I to judge — after all, even with my deep belief in cultivating student intrinsic motivation, I still offer extra credit to my ELL students who read over the summer. I guess I’ll try just about anything to encourage teenage immigrant students who have so little time left in school, and who have little academic experience in their own country, to read during vacation.

You can read other strategies and sites I’m using over the summer with my students at my latest New York Times post for English Language Learners.