ReadWorks is one of the best educational sites out there – I’ve been posting constantly about it for years, and it’s on several “Best” lists.

It has zillions of texts, audio support for many of them, annotation tools, and lots more.

It’a always had one major drawback, however: in order for students to read their texts, teachers have had to “assign” them – they’ve never had the ability for students to pick any text they want and read them.

Until today.

They just announced the “Student Library”:

In their individual libraries, students can choose from 1000s of nonfiction and fiction reading passages.

Access to all reading passages below their grade level and passages two grades higher than their grade level
No questions or assessments—just reading for the joy of reading and learning
See how much your students have read in Student Progress

It’s great though, I have to say, it’s perplexing to me why they didn’t make the comprehension questions they have for those texts available if students or teachers wanted to use them.

Nevertheless, it will certainly make ReadWorks much more useful to teachers who want to incorporate it more as a “student choice” opportunity.