Resources

 QUILL

QUILL has a collection of tools that help learners become better writers. The tools integrate with Google Classroom and Clever. The tools have been designed for elementary, middle school and high school levels and are definitely adaptable for the LBS classroom. 

The activities focus on writing skills and grammar skills. The tools can be used individually by a student or in groups with several students sharing and discussing their answers.

Learning Tools include:

• Quill lessons
• Quill proofreader
• Quill grammar
• Quill Connect

 Readwritethink.org

Readwritethink is a website that provides educators, parents, and afterschool professionals with access to the highest quality practices in reading and language arts instruction for K - 12 learners. All resources on the website are free.

Readwritethink has the following sections of resources:

Classroom Resources

• Lesson Plans
• Student Interactives
• Mobile Apps
• Calendar Activities
• Printables

Professional Development

• Strategy Guides
• Professional Library
• Meetings & Events
• Online Professional Development

Videos

• Literacy in Action
• Presentations
• Using RWT
• Just for Fun

Parent & After School Resources

Grouped by grade level, K - 12

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 Skillswise

 The Skillswise online resource focuses on helping adults develop their skills, including adult literacy and basic skills and job readiness. Each topic includes free videos and downloadable resources like factsheets and worksheets to help adult learners improve their reading, writing and numeracy skills. 

Topics currently available on the Skillswise website are:

• English and Math for Adults
• Essential Skills for Jobs

The BBC Teach website also contains Secondary School Teaching resources as well as Primary School Teaching resources. Diverse resources are included on these sites, including English, math, media, science, geography, computers and more.

 Skills Workshop

Skills Workshop is a website with more than 2000 Functional Skills and Skills for Life resources. All resources on this site are accessible without registration and can be used freely for teaching purposes. This site was created by Maggie Harnew who has used the site as a resource in her literacy, numeracy, ESOL, study / language / dyslexia support, and Functional Skills classes.

The website has various categories of resources, including English, math, ESL and more.

 Soft Schools

SoftSchools.com is a website with free math worksheets, math games, grammar quizzes, free phonics worksheets, and games. Worksheets and games are organized by grade level as well as by subject or topic. Resources are available for grades Pre-K - 12.

Topics and subjects include:

• Math
• Language Arts
• Science
• Social Studies
• Teacher Resources

 TLG Learner Resources

TLG Learner Resources is a webpage built by the staff at The Literacy Group of Waterloo Region. The website was created to support learners from a distance during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic while staff were not able to meet with learners in person.

This excellent website houses various categories of resources for adult learners, such as job seeking, digital technology, reading, writing and math, web quests, games and more.

The Literacy Group has set up a place to access resources related to COVID=19, as part of this website: https://sites.google.com/view/tlglearnerresources/covid-19-resources

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 Typing.com

Typing.com is a collection of resources that aims to help learners build fundamental digital skills. The various courses offer extensive keyboard lessons and digital literacy content to provide your learners with career and life skills. There is a free version and a paid version. The free version is supported by ads but has nearly the same functionality as the paid version.

Contents

• Typing Lessons
• Typing Tests
• Typing Games
• Digital Literacy
• Coding Curriculum

 Visual Thesaurus

The Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates word maps that blossom with meanings and branch to related words. Its innovative display encourages exploration and learning. This allows learners to understand language in a powerful new way. Thinkmap, is software that uses visualization to facilitate communication, learning, and discovery and is the technology that underlies the Visual Thesaurus.

The Visual Thesaurus works like your brain, not a paper-bound book. Learners will want to explore just to see what might happen. Learners will discover and learn naturally and intuitively. The goal is to help learners find the right word, write more descriptively, free associate, and gain a more precise understanding of the English language.

Special features include:

• Spell check
• Audio pronunciations
• Email word maps to save for later
• Five languages: Spanish, German, Italian French and Dutch, English
• Colour-coded to indicate parts of speech

 Vocabulary.com

Vocabulary.com teaches new words by systematically exposing the learner to a wide array of question types and activities that will help the learner understand all the meanings and nuances of every word they’re learning. Vocabulary.com has over 15,000 words and over 220,000 questions. Vocabulary.com has both free and paid membership levels. Teacher accounts can be free or paid. Student accounts are free.

Student level accounts are free and have the following functionality:

• Play Vocabulary.com, master words
• View their progress
• View and learn lists created by other users
• Create lists

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 Westcoast Reader

The Westcoast Reader (The WCR) is a newspaper and online resource for adult learners. Its purpose is to help learners develop reading and language skills through newsworthy articles about living in British Columbia and Canada. It also serves as an introduction to Canadian daily newspapers.

On the Westcoast Reader website, educators and learners can find articles based on reading level (1, 2, and 3) as well as by topic.

The articles cover diverse topics; recent articles include:

• Concern Over Hand Sanitizers
• #DifferentTogether
• Virtual Canada Day
• Wanuskewin’s Baby Bison
• Hearts in Windows
• Mental Health Week
• Nunavut’s New Greenhouse