As an Intervention Specialist, you are constantly trying to find resources to use for progress monitoring. There are some good resources and some that are not so good.
Here are some of my favorite resources that I have utilized during my career.
The first one is easyCBM. They have free probes for reading comprehension. What I like is the fact, you can determine if they are having problems with literal questions, inferential questions, or evaluative questions.
I use the lite version of the website.
Another great site is Newsela. They take current events from newspapers and present the articles in five different lexiles. All of the articles and questions are Common Core based which is great if you are looking for a specific standard.
You need to do a little searching for articles that are on lower grade levels. There is an advance search option which helps you if you need to find lower articles. If you have basic readers, you will not find articles for them because their Lexile levels are low. I believe the lowest Lexile range made the reading level equivalent to second grade.
Pro: High interest stories
Con: Only informational text
Florida Reading Research – If you are looking for graphic organizers or even some ideas to teach reading skills, this could be a jumping point. This site was developed before Common Core so some of the materials may be outdated so be cautious of that situation.
Readworks – I love that you can print out the articles or have the students complete the assignments online. Win! Win!
The one con is that for the lower grade/ Lexile levels, the writing space has primary lines. If you have upper elementary like me that can be disheartening to the students. You don’t want the students to feel as though the work they are completing is babyish.
K12 reader – These are short half page informational text about a variety of topics such as making connections with what you are reading.
Pros – Short passages
Aligned to the Common Core standards
Cons – They are 36 passages for each grade / reading level. However, they are not in sequential order which means if you want to do them in order then you need to search through all of them.
There is no Lexile level for any of the passages. So if it says it’s on second grade reading level, is it truly on that level?
The questions seem to be more literal which is DOK1 maybe DOK2 questions. You might need to supplement with creating some of your own questions.
I hope these help you with your search for resources. I will continue to share some resources for other subject areas.
Happy teaching,
Traci
It Takes a Special Person 