INFOhio's digital resources are an excellent source for informational text, whether narrative, expository, or persuasive. Using ISearch is one way to find this text, but using individual resources such as those below will help you discover the specific text you need for reader and task. Biographies, personal essays, encyclopedia, and current event texts are included in the resources listed.
World Book Suite
World Book Kids, World Book Student, and World Book Advanced are online encyclopedias featuring digital content about hundreds of subjects from art to zoology. They also include videos, primary sources, and printable activities. Text features a read-aloud option and Lexile levels.
World Book Kids text is appropriate for grades K-5. Use the Tools menu to share the text or have it read aloud. The Pictures, Videos, and More tab includes additional media for text sets.
World Book Student text supports readers in grades 5-10. Videos are short and a caption provides key ideas and vocabulary.
Use World Book Advanced text with 9-12. Click Educator Tools on the homepage menu to access Teaching with Documents where you will find primary sources, a good choice for target texts.
Take the World Book Kids or World Book Student and World Book Advanced classes to learn more about how to use these resources.
PebbleGo Next
For upper-elementary students, PebbleGo Next offers engaging articles, videos, and graphics that provide a wealth of content knowledge and vocabulary for science and social studies.
A tabbed interface makes it easy to share the right information for the reader and task. Each article includes an activity to help students focus on the necessary content and retain knowledge.
Biographies of relevant and noteworthy people are a popular topic. Take the PebbleGo next class in the K-5 Digital Content Learning Pathway to learn more about how to use this resource.
Capstone Connect allows educators to search by Ohio's Learning Standards. To find text to suppor the standard you are covering, choose the English Language Arts, Science, or Social Studies content area. Then choose the grade level (INFOhio subscribes to content for grades 3-5).
INFOhio's resources are great sources of current and relevant science informational text. Check out these three resources to find the best text to meet your readers and tasks.
ScienceFlix
ScienceFlix has more than 80 units on topics including earth, space, and life science; and technology, engineering, and math. Each unit features text with a corresponding video as well as prompts for reflection and a quiz for knowledge gained. Middle school students will easily engage and navigate the resource.
Note the buttons in the upper right corner, 1-3. Users can change the Lexile level by clicking on these buttons. Lexile levels for the text in ScienceFlix range from 600-1200. Use this feature to challenge readers or scaffold complex text.
Science Online
With quality text, diagrams, biographies, and videos, Science Online is a one-stop shop for middle and high school science, technology, and math classes. The topic centers are a great place to start when looking for text, but videos and animations will also be a valuable asset to any text set to build knowledge and vocabulary. Text can be read aloud, shared, and printed.
The full-color diagrams are high-quality and printable. These visuals will scaffold learners as they build their content knowledge on a topic to tackle a challenging text.
Today's Science
With quality text, videos, conversations with scientists, and special features such as crossword puzzles and editorial cartoons, Today's Science provides excellent content to include in text sets. This resource for grades 6-12 is the go-to spot for current science events.
Content is downloadable for offline use or printing. Text includes a read-aloud feature, and videos have transcripts. A Glossary Links toggle button controls whether readers view key words for vocabulary development. Learn more about this resource in the Teach With INFOhio blog post Quality Instructional Materials from INFOhio: Today's Science.
A range of text types is an important part of developing strong readers with quality text. Using the resources from this lesson, educators can build robust text sets to support all readers. Biographies, news articles and comprehensive encyclopedia content along with videos, images, and graphs, offer a wide range of media for scaffolding.
INFOhio developed the Fourth Grade Text Set: Interactions with American Indians, including Tecumseh, featuring text from PebbleGo Next. As a scaffold for the target text, the Shawnee article's timeline feature provides readers with a graphic representation of the Shawnee people's history.
Grades 9-12 Biology Text Set: Cellular Genetics uses a video from Science Online and an article from Today's Science as scaffold texts. The video on how cellular genetics is used in forensic science is a great hook to engage students while providing background knowledge. The article from Today's Science includes graphics and quality text to give students scaffolding support to tackle the target text.
Check out the blog What Link Do I Use? and find the resources you plan to use in your text sets. Directions are included for using the correct link to share or save texts.
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