I’ve just published the first post in a four-part series on “Ways To Help Our Students Become Better Readers” over at Education Week Teacher.

This column includes contributions from Stephen Krashen and Richard Allington.

It should be an excellent series. And I hope you’ll contribute your own advice, too!

How Can We Help Our Students Become Better Readers? is the new question of the week at my Education Week Teacher column.

Feel free to leave your responses there or here in the comments section.

As regular readers know, I’ve got a “beef” with most of the quotation sites on the Web because they don’t include the source of the quotes. I included a longer discussion on that issue, along with a variety of links, in The Best Places To Find Quotations On The Web.

That said, a new site called QuoteCoil now appears to be just about the largest site on the Web to find quotations. Though the quotes don’t include sources, it still might be worth starting there just because it’s so easy. In the Best list I mentioned I share simple ways to track down if quotations are accurate…

Oxford Owl is designed as a support site for parents to use with their children and help with reading and math. It’s great activities, though, would make it a nice addition to work during the school day, too. It has tons of online ebooks that provide audio support for the text, along with interactive follow-up exercises. It has plenty of math games and even math ebooks.

I’m adding it to The Best Websites To Help Beginning Readers.

I have a ton of “The Best…” lists related to reading, which you can find in the page where all 800 lists are categorized by subject area.

However, there are four popular ones specifically related to online books accessible to ELL’s, and I thought I’d bring them together in one short collection.

Here is A Collection Of “The Best…” Lists For Online Books Accessible To ELL’s:

I hope you find them helpful!

In The Minds Of Others: Reading fiction can strengthen your social ties and even change your personality is the title of a Scientific American article. It discusses the effect that empathy can have on readers. I discuss how I use this idea with my students, as well as share other research on this topic, at The Best Resources On “Becoming What We Read.”

You can only read the beginning of the article for free, and have a pay a few dollars to gain access to the entire piece. I think it’s worth it. Here’s how it sums up the research conclusions:

1. Reading stories can fine-tune your social skills by helping you better understand other human beings.

2. Entering imagined worlds builds empathy and improves your ability to take another person’s point of view.

3. A love affair with narrative may gradually alter your personality—in some cases, making you more open to new experiences and more socially aware.

Because of an increasing number of studies on the topic, I’ve just converted an older post on the impact reading has on empathy into The Best Resources On “Becoming What We Read.”

You might want to check it out and make additional suggestions.

Reading Bear is a new free interactive site for teaching beginning readers through the use of phonics in a relatively engaging way. It doesn’t appear that registration is necessary, and they say it will remain free. It’s from Watch Know Learn, the well-respected and well-known educational video site.

I’m adding it to these “The Best…” lists:

The Best Articles & Sites For Teachers & Students To Learn About Phonics

The Best Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced English Language Learner Sites

The Best Websites To Help Beginning Readers

This is a kind of combination “The Best…” list — it includes sites where beginning English Language Learners and other beginning readers can learn the alphabet, and it also contains some more “higher-level” resources to learn some stories behind the alphabet.

With that said, here are my choices for The Best Sites For Learning About The Alphabet:

LEARNING THE ALPHABET:

My website for students has quite a few links to excellent alphabet-learning online activities.

Spell With Flickr lets you spell out any word with photos from…Flickr.

HISTORY OF THE ALPHABET & OTHER RESOURCES:

The Evolution Of The Alphabet is a a cool animation showing…how our alphabet evolved.

Our Alphabet: An Interactive History

The History Of Visual Communication

The story of how we got our alphabets is an audio slideshow from The BBC.

A Bloody Take On The Alphabet comes from Salon.

Refraction: The Alphabet is a bit of a strange video:

Refraction – The Alphabet from Jesse Zanzinger on Vimeo.

Here’s another pretty intriguing video representation:

The Alphabet 2 from n9ve on Vimeo.

David Deubelbeiss rightly recommends a huge list of alphabet resources at EFL Classroom 2.0.

Alphabetimals is a fun site where the alphabet is shown, and heard, through the names and pictures of animals. Thanks to Michelle Henry for the tip.

Additional contributions are welcome!

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the 750 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

I’ve made these new additions to The Best Sites For Gaining A Basic Understanding Of Adjectives:

Food Adjectives

Adjective Adventure

Several adjective games.