Occasionally, you may find you need to generate individualized material to help students build confidence in understanding info-text. You want to highlight certain vocabulary words, certain parts of speech or areas of comprehension. You'd even like to be able to embed a graphic organizer or two to help them take notes or focus on what's important. This can be a big job, but every once and a while, there's web tool that just seems made to order. Take a look at
Lessonwriter. This site (free login required to use the features) allows the teacher to paste in a chunk of text and then proceed to tailor activities and questions to his/her class. You can even use the same article and generate 2 or 3 different leveled assignments. While it shouldn't replace all other reading activities, it will be welcomed by many teachers. It's cool, and it's free!
