I am always looking for nonfiction texts for my students. We have a nice book room at school, but it still seems like there are never enough nonfiction texts. At times, I may not have a large amount of time to start a leveled reader, so a nonfiction reading passage is perfect! Reading shorter articles helps students to increase their fluency, gain confidence, and keep their interest.
I have found three wonderful websites that are FREE and loaded with nonfiction texts.
My absolute favorite website for this is Read Works. It has reading comprehension lessons and texts, which come with questions for Common Core. The best part, (other than being free!) is that you can download the question sets, even editing them if you desire! They have them organized by grade level, a skill/strategy, and a Lexile level. Pick an article, which you can search for by title, subject, level, or skill/strategy, and print away....
Another site that I love is Reading and Writing Project. It comes from Columbia College. Most of these articles are for 5th - 8th grade, however there are ones for younger grades. These are perfect for integrating with social studies and science. Also great for those kids who need to be challenged and those who are self-motivated. :)
The Smithsonian has a wonderful website where you can set up an account for your class and they can read nonfiction information for FREE! It is called the Tween TribuneThe pictures are amazing and will have the students wanting to find out more about the subjects they read. There are twice a day news articles that are Lexile leveled for K-12. Critical thinking questions are self-scoring, weekly lesson plans and a weekly video. Amazing. I want to read to get on this website and explore! It is THAT good!
Enjoy!!
