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Taken from Classtechtips.com

By: Monica

If you’ve ever searched online for close reading passages, you know it can be hard to find high-quality short texts to share with students. You might try a website like Learnzillion or ReadWorks to grab short passage, but what if you want an excerpt from a longer book? There is an iPad teacher hack that will help you locate a few pages of favorite texts to use with your students.

Anytime you search for a book in the iBook Store (on iPads or Mac computers) you’re able to click on the title for more information. In addition to accessing reviews or related content, you can also download a sample of the book. When you download the sample of a book you are given access to a handful of pages – an excerpt – that will be automatically added to your iBooks library.

With this sample your students not only get a taste for a book they might want to explore in more depth, they also have a short passage to access for a close reading lesson. By using the samples of books this way students (and families) can be exposed to high-quality text that is easily accessible on their device. It also lets you quickly put a copy of a reading passage in front of the eyes of all of your students.

Grab a sample passage from one of these books:

• Charlotte’s Web (iBook Store | Paperback)
• The House on Mango Street (iBook Store | Paperback)
• Because of Winn-Dixie (iBook Store | Paperback)

Obviously, if you love the books I mentioned above and want to introduce the full text to students you can purchase the book in the iBook Store or on Amazon. The three on the list above are perfect for literature circles and independent reading as well as a close read of different excerpts from the text – they are also three of my personal favorites.

Link to originally article

I'd also add that in iBooks students can look up a word, highlight the text, and jot down a note!

Amazon: $4.47 for 20 inch x 10 feet.

Or a cute alternative would be to add these whiteboard dots on a horseshoe table.

Amazon: $6.37 or Target: $6.39

Check it out here: SolveMe Mobiles

• Parents can see what their child wrote that day (if you have it set this way, or approve it).
• Teachers can then see all their students' writing without having to collect it.
• Teachers can pull up the student's writing to highlight something in a Teaching Point.
• Teachers can quickly glance through the writing to see what students need to be pulled for a strategy group.
• Data, data, data.