Providing challenging and engaging learning activities for gifted students can be difficult with limited time and resources. The Reader's Treasure is intended to be an easy-to-use, ready made resource for teachers to enrich or extend the language arts curriculum. Teachers may use it in a number of ways to differentiate instruction for their gifted students.
The Reader’s Treasure is a literacy website like you have never seen before. This online environment is designed to develop certain literacy skills (vocabulary, characterization, tone/mood, and literature responses via Web 2.0 tools) for gifted 3rd graders through appropriately differentiated activities. This password-protected, self-paced learning space will guide students through an exploration of the complexities of literacy in a fun and engaging way. After reading a quality, award-winning book, students will log on to explore literature and language on a different level, creating unique connections to text, self, and the world, as well as to connect and collaborate with their like-minded peers in response to literature.
In this website, students complete the instructional games at their own pace in the order they prefer. Then they will complete a Lightning Learner module on digital citizenship, Internet Safety and Netiquette. Students will be required to demonstrate mastery of and agree to the digital citizenship rules during the module. Then they will gain access to like-minded peers through a discussion board. Here, they can apply understanding of reading and writing using Web 2.0 tools as they participate in book chats with other gifted students like them. As an added safety precaution, no student posts will be visible until either you or an administrator have previewed and approved the entry.
Suggestions and tutorials are available on our Teacher Tips page.