International Reading Association (IRA) Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #1

IRA Newsletter Project: Effective Literacy Website #1

Whooo’s Reading (https://www.whooosreading.org) is a free literacy website that teachers for students grades 4-8 can use to monitor student progress, quiz scores, and writing from a more critical perspective. There are many features of this website that are appealing to both students and teachers. On the surface, students read a book, log minutes, take quizzes and get coins for it. They can use their coins to customize their avatar and see each others progress and avatars on their classroom dashboard. Students are also encourages to read books that interest them as opposed to books assigned to them. All of these features are designed to help incentives students to participate.

One of the more teacher-focused features is that the quizzes utilize opened ended questions instead of multiple choice ones which is how teachers are able to assess student comprehension. A great feature of the website is that while they are typing their answers, a character might pop up and give them tips about how to improve what they're writing before they submit their answers. This will help them become more expressive and more efficient writers which is a goal that all teachers hope to help their students achieve.

Teachers can have up to 6 classes for free. The quizzes are already made and automatically scored. However, teachers and students may find that, because the quizzes must apply to so many books, that sometimes they are quite general in nature. This could be fun for extra credit, advanced or struggling readers, or just to encourage and promote literacy in your classroom. There are some extra features available for an annual fee. Attached is a student tutorial from youtube: