My students love learning, but they come to me with very different starting points. Some have rich experiences and vocabulary. Others need more support building background knowledge before they can truly engage with text. That gap sometimes feels impossible to close.

When my students do not have the background knowledge, vocabulary or personal experiences that help them learn about new concepts, I love using ReadWorks to close those gaps. 

Let me give you a concrete example. I showed my students a video of baby sea turtles hatching and making their way to the ocean. They were captivated. But here's the thing: watching a video was only the beginning. They needed to read about it, to anchor those images in language and build real vocabulary and comprehension.

Ever since I was 6 years old, art has been my favorite hobby. I love trying different kinds of art, like pencil sketches, acrylic paint markers, fine liners, and markers. Drawing is how I express my ideas, and I enjoy creating everything from nature scenes to abstract art and anime.

When I was 8, my parents told me about an Earth Day art contest. The theme was about how nature helps protect our planet. I was excited to draw, but I realized I didn't know enough about the science behind the topic. That's when my parents introduced me to ReadWorks.

​My name is Colleen Perez, and I have been an educator in Elizabeth, New Jersey, since 2003. Over the years, I have taught kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and fifth grade, and I have also served as a reading specialist. Throughout my career, one thing has remained constant: every student deserves access to meaningful, engaging texts that help them grow as readers and thinkers.

This year, I had the privilege of teaching fifth-grade students with a wide range of academic needs. My classroom included students with varying reading levels, students who needed additional literacy support, and multilingual learners developing their English language skills. One of my biggest goals was helping students become more confident readers while building the background knowledge they needed to understand complex texts.

That challenge is where ReadWorks became an essential part of our classroom.

At the beginning of the year, many of my students struggled with informational text. They had difficulty understanding challenging vocabulary, identifying central ideas, making inferences, and citing evidence from the text. They often approached nonfiction reading with hesitation because they felt that the topics were too difficult or that they did not have enough knowledge to understand what they were reading.

I began incorporating ReadWorks articles into my daily reading instruction, using Article-A-Day and targeted passages connected to our fifth-grade curriculum. The variety of topics allowed my students to explore science, social studies, and historical events while strengthening their literacy skills. During our units on topics such as the Great Depression, Hoovervilles, World War II, and other historical events, ReadWorks provided accessible, high-interest texts that allowed students to build background knowledge before engaging in deeper discussions and writing assignments.

One of the most powerful moments I witnessed was the change in my students’ confidence. At first, many students relied heavily on teacher support to answer questions and explain their thinking. As we continued using ReadWorks, they became more independent in annotating texts, discussing vocabulary, and finding evidence to support their responses.

For my multilingual learners, ReadWorks became an especially valuable tool. The Spanish-English paired texts gave students access to important concepts while allowing them to connect new English vocabulary to their existing knowledge. This helped students participate more confidently in classroom discussions and improved their ability to comprehend grade-level content.

I also appreciated the flexibility that ReadWorks offered. I could differentiate instruction by assigning articles at appropriate levels, providing additional supports, and using question sets to guide student thinking. It became a resource that supported whole-group lessons, small-group instruction, independent practice, and intervention.