Turn up the juice! Hi-tech literacy ideas: six ways to transform your reading and writing lessons and turn those lightbulbs on.

When I was in my third year as a second grade teacher in Los Angeles, I had seven(!) nonreaders in my class. And let's face it, I was scared. I knew that I would have to tap every resource available to help them grow as readers. But do you think I even looked at the two computers at the back of my classroom? Nope. They pretty much stayed off throughout the year. My mistake.

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Five years later, I'm a researcher who studies kids and technology, and I know I could have used those dusty old desktops to help my students learn to read.

I now know that technology helps students to build vocabulary, improve comprehension, gain phonemic awareness, and achieve fluency. That's right, all those NCLB keywords covered--plus flicking on those computer stations can end up making your job easier, too.

All it takes are some simple tweaks to what's already in your plan book. Here are some of my favorite time-saving, cost-cutting technology twists (since I know that my classroom budget usually ran out by, oh, September).

Juiced-Up Sight Words

Send kids to the Web and have them hunt for images to make their own sight-word flashcards. They'll get lots more practice spotting those crucial words, and you won't have to stay up until the wee hours making cards for everyone.

Go to www.enchantedlearning.com or www.pics4learning.com, both of which offer hundreds of images that can be downloaded, printed, and pasted onto index cards. Ask students to write the words on the back so they can quiz one another. Use different colored cards to represent parts of speech (yellow cards are verbs, pink ones are adjectives), or to distinguish between themes (animal cards are green and sports are blue).

If your sight-word scavengers are on a roll, invite them to find images to make themed bingo cards and vocab charts (think "Food Bingo" or "Family Words").

Got the no-printer blues? Students can still surf these sites to track down words they don't know, and then create study sheets to practice their new vocabulary.

Juiced-Up Story Starters

Grab your digital camera or borrow one from a friend and snap a few shots of your classroom, school, students, and staff. Say cheese! You've just created a real-world context for writing and a fun way for kids to practice narrative skills.

Print out the photos and place them at a center, where kids can arrange them to tell a tale ("The Day the Principal Substituted" or "Our Turtle Goes on a Trip"). Students can then share their stories in writing or with the class.

If you're feeling brave, teach students how to use the camera (or a disposable cheapie), and send them home with specific, no-fail instructions, such as, "Take five pictures that you will use to tell a story about yourself or your family."

The camera-less can still take advantage of technology's inspiration for young writers. Hop on a computer and type a quick story starter the whole class can work on together. Leave a few high-interest lines ("It was a dark and stormy night") in an open document on a desktop in your classroom. Kids can then go to the computer, one at a time or in pairs, and build a story by adding a few sentences at a time.

Have a list of spelling words to review? Give students extra points or a sticker for using the words in their collaborative tale. Build poems too by asking students to write lines that rhyme.

Juiced-Up Spelling

Long gone are the days of making mimeographed worksheets (thank goodness!), but students still need to practice their spelling words. How to bring the review into the 21st century? Try the "Puzzlemaker" on the Discovery Educator Network (http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com).

At this site you can generate customized word searches, crossword puzzles, cryptograms, and letter tiles. By simply keying in a list of words, within seconds you have a worksheet that all of your students can complete.

Assist nonreaders in completing the word search by teaching them to locate beginning letters. Or build vocabulary by creating crosswords that ask kids to know the words' meanings.

Why not challenge kids to visit Puzzlemaker themselves and create puzzles to stump their classmates? The site also offers numerous options for practicing math, like math squares and number blocks. All make excellent homework assignments or extra work for early finishers or those students who are in need of additional support!

Juiced-Up Differentiation

To differentiate instruction for every student in your classroom, you'd need about ten teaching assistants (or eyes in the back of your head!). Luckily, with technology you don't have to go the mutation route. The reading and writing intervention programs available at www.donjohnston.com support kids at every level and only cost around 50 dollars per program. (Earmark funds from next year's budget now or add the program to a class wish list.)

I would also recommend a program like Lexia Early Reading (www.lexialearning.com), which helps students gain phonological awareness by providing exposure to the alphabet, initial and final sounds, segmenting and blending. Set up students who are in need of additional support at a computer during center time and ask them to keep track of the amount of time that they spend there and how far they progress.

Juiced-Up Assessment

Running records be gone! By using a handheld computer, like those offered by Wireless Generation (www.wireless generation.com), you can assess a child's literacy skills one-on-one and then view the results immediately thereafter.

These easy-to-use computers house an array of early literacy assessments including the popular DIBELS screening, along with the ability to view data in a variety of different ways--no confusing graphs or number-crunching required.

Because you get results so quickly after administering the test, you can quickly diagnose that Alyssa's having trouble with silent E, and give her the appropriate practice. Most assessment software also features a progress monitoring function to stay on top of strugglers' skills over time. To top it off, kids love seeing their scores, calculated as words per minute, and they, too, take ownership of their proficiency.

Handhelds are generally sold on a district level, so if this sounds like something of interest (bye-bye, clipboard and red pen), give a heads up to a technology coordinator or administrator.

Juiced-Up Standards

If there's one thing to remember about using technology with early readers, it's the multimedia principle: Kids learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. Using video clips, for example, can offer students, particularly English Language Learners, access to content that they may not have had previously by relying on just text. (Check out www.unitedstreaming.com for a cool online video library). While pen-and-paper methods also work (my students did make progress that year in L.A.), you owe it to your kids to plug in, too.

JULIETTE HEINZE IS A RESEARCH ASSOCIATE AT THE CENTER FOR CHILDREN AND TECHNOLOGY (WWW.EDC.ORG/CCT).

RELATED ARTICLE: Low-tech literacy ideas we still love

Not all of your lessons have to be plugged in. These tried-and-true activities work!

* CARPET BOARD A-Z: Write letters on carpet samples. Invite kids to arrange them in order on the sample board.

* COOKIE SHEET CENTER: Put magnetic letters on a cookie sheet. Challenge students to spell sight words.

* CEREAL BOX SEARCH: Pass out empty cereal and food boxes. Ask kids to hunt for all words beginning with B or Sh.

* BEACH BALL TOSS: Write must-know blends on a beach ball. Toss and have kids say the blend closest to their thumb.

FROM PHONICS GAMES KIDS CANT RESIST, BY MICHELLE K. RAMSEY. TO ORDER, CALL 1-800-SCHOLASTIC.