Excellent free literacy tools at Tar Heel Reader
April 22, 2010
This particular item comes from a teacher in my daughter’s elementary school and it’s an excellent resource for reading comprehension and literacy. Tar Heel Reader is a free online repository of downloadable books. File formats vary somewhat but they’re all mainstream file types so there shouldn’t be any compatibility issues.
These books are also fully compatible with augmentative communication devices so this resource is much more valuable if you are working with mobility-impaired students, as reading tools are often hard to come by or there is a great lack of variety.
One minor caveat about the site — it focuses on providing reading tools to teach readers of all ages. A teenager or adult isn’t going to want to read about seeing Spot run, so you’ll also find several books with more mature content. However, the site clearly explains how to set up a favorites page so you can navigate to a location and let students pick from a preselected list of titles.
Related stuff:
Actors read books to kids at Storyline Online
60 Second Recap summarizes classic literature
Students create their own summer reading lists at The Book Seer
Readability makes the web more readable
Photo credit: Jeremy Burgin on Flickr.
