My Top 9 Favorite Websites for Simplifying texts

As class sizes grow and the complexity of standards increase, the need for differentiation rises, and the time to be able to do it drops. So, I always try to find resources to help adapt the same materials for different reading levels so that all students can be successful with the same content.

Here are 9 of my favorite websites and tools for simplifying texts. I will highlight some pros and cons of each as I’ve encountered in my own classroom.

Rewordify will simplify complex vocabulary to make a difficult text easily to understand. You can customize the amount that is simplified and the way it looks – As an English teacher, I like the side-by-side text option. There are also various pre-made activities cloze reading etc using the original vocabulary that might help with supporting vocabulary development. Why this is at the top of the list – you choose the text to simplify

Offers a selection of fiction and non-fiction texts at various reading levels that can be sent out to students on any device. Why I like this one – my district went BYOD so there is a lot of technology available, and it includes many of the texts in a secondary ELA curriculum, it is not just elementary.

All of the 4 following are very similar and allow for teachers to access a variety of non-fiction and news articles in a variety of levels. Each has slightly different functionality and I have ranked them in order of my favorites.

3. News in Levels – not only has the different levels but has videos to match the levels and questions after that encourage students to write and speak.
4. Newsela – has the many nice features, like quizzes afterwards, but there is a fee for creating the virtual classrooms and tracking student progress
5. For The Teachers – I used to print these out as anchor activities, for extension and further independent practice with skills.

The next 2 create summaries of text on webpages, or that you can copy and paste.
7. Text Compactor – copy and paste, works pretty well sometimes summaries are not perfect
8. TLDR – works with websites, works pretty well sometimes summaries are not perfect


9. Finally, there is a feature in Read&Write, it increases white space, and reduces the number of sentences. Works pretty well, but as all of these tools, it is not perfect

I've added this to my collection of Technology Tools for English language learners


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