Early literacy typically begins in a child’s first three years. According to this source from OISE, Toronto, literacy development follows several stages (https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedliteracydiet/Stages_of_Literacy_Development.html):
- Foundations for Literacy
- Beginning Literacy
- Consolidation/Fluency
- Literacy for Growth
Below are a few online resources to support early literacy:
Unite for Literacy is a free open educational, multilingual non-fiction ebook website. Students can select a story and a language they wish to read. The story text is in English and the story can be listened to as a read aloud in one of many different languages (including: Arabic, Russian, German, Italian, French, Cherokee, Tagalog). The story can also be read aloud using the English audio player. The stories are read aloud by ‘real people’ rather than being computer generated text to speech narrations giving a fluent language model in both English and the selected language. Many stories are fairly “primary” in nature but there are some higher interest low vocab stories that might appeal to older language learners. The site creators utilized research to map “book scarcity” and develop stories that met needs and included diverse models and images.
- free, no registration required
- cloud based
- cross-platform (mac/pc computer, mobile, ipad/tablet)
PebbleGo was shared by one of our school advisors. It is a fee based site (with free trial and district/site based licenses available) that touts itself as an “emergent reader research solution”. Basically, it is a ‘flash based’ database of leveled ebooks on various topics. Many topics appear ‘Amerocentric’ but they do vary widely in interest and reading level. All are narrated in English and Spanish, allow the reader to ‘highlight’ text and many have audio visual elements. Students are provided with logins and teachers can track usage.
- fee-based (registration needed to access free trial)
- cloud based
- requires flash player 10 (additional requirements)
