Encyclopedia.com for free short articles in simple English

http://www.encyclopedia.com/
Encyclopedia.com is a good alternative to wikipedia for quick fact lookups, explanations of concepts, and dictionary definitions.

 

Although some articles are for purchase ( through High Beam), a lot of general information is available for free.

Good for younger teens, and for historic and geographic topics.


CLASS ACTIVITY IDEAS

DICTOGLOSS -
Dictogloss is a classroom dictation activity where learners are required to reconstruct a short text by listening and noting down key words, which are then used as a base for reconstruction.
Example :
Learners discuss the sea. The teacher then explains the task, and reads a short text on the sea to the class, who just listen. The teacher reads the text again, and the learners take notes. In groups, the learners then reconstruct the text.
 Source:
 http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/knowledge-database/dictogloss

ASK QUESTIONS TO FILL IN THE BLANKS IN YOUR COPY
Pairwork
 Make a reading assignment into an interactive activity by making 2 copies of a passage, and blacking out some words in one of the copies and different words in the other copy.

TIP: Make sure to write out the questions that would need to be asked to recover the missing information to make sure that the activity is pitched to the correct level for your students. It´s surprising how difficult it can be for the students to manufacture the correct question to get the information they are missing, and how easy it is to accidentally create a situation where the question you would need to ask is very complicated.

Then make enough copies of both sheets to be able to give one of each to person in this pairwork activity.