Blog Archives

ReadWorks December Update

12/16/2025

Giving Tuesday 2025, a global day of giving, was a big success for ReadWorks and the teachers and students who benefit from our free resources.

We are incredibly thankful to more than 200 donors, including many of our users, who participated! Every charitable contribution made to ReadWorks ensures we can continue to offer our free online resources for improving reading comprehension, building vocabulary, and strengthening background knowledge.

This year, thanks to a generous anonymous donor, all donations were matched, creating an even bigger impact for classrooms nationwide! #grateful

Empowering Early Literacy Educators: A Focus on Knowledge and Data
ReadWorks recently conducted a hands-on professional development session for 1st and 2nd-grade teachers at PS 69 in Queens, NY. The workshop focused on effectively combining Article-A-Day and Nonfiction Decodables to strengthen early literacy, build background knowledge, and target phonics skills simultaneously.

Participants left the session more confident in using our free tools and resources. They also learned how to translate student assessment scores into practical classroom strategies and developed personalized action plans and differentiation strategies for their own classrooms.

In line with our commitment to reaching students in under-resourced communities, ReadWorks is dedicated to providing free, high-quality learning sessions to Title 1 schools, ensuring teachers have the support needed to help readers of all levels achieve success. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please visit: https://about.readworks.org/freepd.html

Partnership with Purpose
ReadWorks partners with world-class organizations to improve reading outcomes for students by providing high-quality and essential content in their areas of expertise, and expanding vocabulary, subject knowledge, and understanding.

Our long-term collaboration with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has reached more than 2.8 million students who engaged with dynamic passages on a wide variety of topics about the environment, science, animals, and more. This recent Article-A-Day and corresponding question set discusses the migration of the River Herring.

Read more about ReadWorks’ content partners who help us bring non-fiction topics to life for readers of all ages.

ReadWorks wishes all of our supporters a wonderful holiday season and a happy and healthy new year. We couldn’t provide our free resources to teachers and students without you!

Missed an issue of our newsletter? See an archive of all our updates here. Have ideas for what you would like to see in our updates? Please email [email protected].

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Empowering Early Literacy Teachers at NYC PS 69Q: A Focus on Knowledge and Data

12/4/2025

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A recent professional development session brought together the dedicated first and second grade teachers at PS 69Q in District 30, NYC, for a hands-on collaboration focused on strengthening early literacy instruction.

Participants, representing a wide range of teaching experience and familiarity with the ReadWorks platform, engaged in strategies to meet a singular objective: to seamlessly blend effective, high-quality content tools with data-driven planning for targeted student intervention. This approach ensures that every student receives the precise support they need to build foundational reading comprehension skills.

Professional Development Session: Building Knowledge and Decoding Skills

A key focus was to ensure that the educators felt confident in leveraging the free materials to simultaneously build background knowledge and target phonics skills. Together we explored just two of many ReadWorks tools. It was important to identify the tools that would best meet the educators current goals for their students.

Article-A-Day: Educators were excited about this program that can be easily integrated into daily routines to consistently expose students to a variety of nonfiction topics, building the crucial knowledge base that supports overall comprehension.

ReadWorks Nonfiction Decodables: A powerful dual approach that provides engaging informational texts while systematically reinforcing the specific phonics patterns students are learning. Educators learned how to utilize the decodable texts during whole-group and small-group instruction for more impact on student improvement.

Data-Informed Interventions

Effective teaching relies on timely, accurate student data. Having the professional development time was significant to discuss how to translate assessment results into practical strategies to build literacy skills.

Leveraging Data from ELA Screening Tools: We reviewed how the data gathered from Acadience can clearly identify specific student needs in phonological awareness, fluency, and decoding. This diagnostic information is the foundation for effective intervention planning.
Targeted Planning: Teachers collaborated on how to design small-group sessions where instruction directly addresses the deficits identified in the data.

Hands-On Planning for Literacy Centers

The most dynamic part of the session was the dedicated work and planning time. Teachers were actively engaged in creating plans they could use immediately. They learned how to set up specific activities to build knowledge, vocabulary, and practice decoding.

Phonics Focus: Participants planned for literacy centers using the ReadWorks decodables. The centers focused on activities designed to stamp the target phonics skills from the texts. This ensured that reading practice was directly linked to skill mastery.
Differentiation Strategies: We shared and discussed best tips for differentiation and ensuring the needs of all diverse learners are met, from enrichment activities to scaffolding for students who require more intensive support.

Professional Development with ReadWorks

The PS 69Q first- and second-grade teams brought incredible creativity and commitment to their recent ReadWorks professional development session. ReadWorks is excited to see how these new strategies and resources support meaningful growth and joyful reading for their young learners this year.

Did you know Title I schools can receive free, high-quality professional development from ReadWorks? Send us a quick email at [email protected] to learn more about our free and paid PD options.