Starfall presents a nonthreatening and supportive environment for students who are learning to read. Starfall reinforces high-frequency words in sentences, rather than in isolation. This helps children make meaningful associations with these words and more easily commit them to memory. The talking stories model the qualities of fluent reading such as intonation, expression, inflection and rate. The I’m reading section of the website develops comprehension and reading fluency in beginning and advancing readers.

Learn English Kids

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories

Learn English Kids is the British Council’s website for children around the world who are learning English as a second or foreign language. However its animated talking stories are an ideal resource for supporting reading particularly with younger pupils or those who struggle with reading.
This site has almost 60 talking books to use at school or home, either independently or with class peers, family members or friends. It is also a useful resource to recommend to parents.

Speekaboos

http://www.speakaboos.com/stories

Speakaboos brings classic children’s entertainment into a digital world. Beloved characters and treasured stories are given new life through amazing celebrity performances, beautiful illustrations, and original music. At Speakaboos, children develop literacy skills in a fun and interactive way. Many of the resources on this site require a subscription but there are currently over 30 free animated talking stories on offer for teachers and children to use. The full text is also available for each story. Speakaboos’ resources fall into six genres: Fables, Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Nursery Rhymes and Songs. Each story comes to life with educational worksheets, activities, and games.

Meegenius

http://www.meegenius.com/store/books/free/

MeeGenius is a reading application for the iPhone, iPad, iTouch, Google TV, Google Chrome Web Store, and the Web. Launched in April 2010 after 16 months of research and development, MeeGenius digitizes children’s stories, classic and new, and adds features such as word highlighting and audio playback for easy read-along. Also available on certain platforms are text and audio personalization tools, which further engage young readers.

There are currently 6 free books on the site and many in the catalogue that are available for a small fee typically $0.99 or $1.99. MeeGenius offers a collection of childhood favourites, such as “The Three Little Pigs,” “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and “Jack and the Beanstalk,” in addition to new and exciting titles. Additional titles from well-known authors and publishers are being added on an on-going basis.

Storynory

http://www.storynory.com

Storynory is an online treasure trove of audio stories. Here you will find a mixture of new stories, fairy tales, and specially adapted myths and histories. This site has published an audio story every week since November 2005. Storynory has grown and grown in popularity, and now around a quarter of a million mp3 files are downloaded every month from their servers.

The stories are read by Natasha Gostwick and her clear story-telling voice has won a place in the hearts of children and adults all over the world.

Kids Audio Books

http://www.kidsaudiobooks.co.uk/complete_list.htm

This site offers a range of free audio stories that can be listened to online. It also offers some stories in text format as well a range of colouring activities.

Storyline Online

http://www.storylineonline.net/

You could use story line online to model good voice inflection and to model good fluent reading. Children really enjoy having the stories read by real screen actors. There are currently 13 stories available online.

Goodnight Stories

http://www.goodnightstories.com/hear.htm

Eleven well known audio stories for you to listen to. It requires real player to be installed on your computer. This is a free download and is available at http://europe.real.com/realplayer/

Ziggity Zoom

http://www.ziggityzoom.com/stories.php

A collection of online interactive stories, which are perfect for the younger child to read and enjoy.

Mighty Book

http://www.mightybook.com/story_books.html

Lots of free interactive reading material here. You have to pay a small annual subscription to access all material.

Raz Kids

http://www.raz-kids.com/main/ViewPage
/name/sample

This is a subscription site that gives you hundreds of interactive, levelled books spanning 27 levels of difficulty, covering a wide range of subjects You can access some free samples from the link above. In addition to engaging kids at their reading level and in their area of interest, this award-winning student-centric site gives kids 24/7 Web access to the practice they need to become better, more confident readers. At the same time, teachers can customize assignments, view reports, and track student progress every step of the way.

Literactive

http://literactive.com/Download/stories.asp

This site assists beginning readers by providing screen sized, illustrated stories with limited rhyming vocabulary. You are required to go through a free registration which will then give you access to the online talking stories.

Online Story Texts

The number of websites available for literacy instruction is increasing on a daily basis and teachers are realising how the text based materials on these sites can be used in a positive way for the teaching and development of reading.

· Text that is available in electronic format assists in accommodating people with disabilities who use screen or text readers

· Story text found on the Internet is already in digital format and can be easily manipulated by software programs. It can be displayed on screen to the whole class using the data projector which allows the teacher the opportunity to use the material for instruction, vocabulary work and teaching key reading strategies. There is little difference between using a big book on an easel or using text projected onto a screen. Teachers now have access to enormous amounts of curriculum materials and can use these to amplify the learning situation and to provide additional resources for classroom instruction

· Teachers can use these sites to locate material and choose reading materials based on the interest of the children. They can also easily locate non-fiction passages for whole class or group work

· These sites allow children to experience a wide variety of reading material and text genres and can greatly improve reader confidence and motivation

Magic Keys

http://www.magickeys.com/books/

This site offers illustrated children’s stories for children of all ages.

StoryBook Castle

http://www.storybookcastle.com/

This site has both well-known classic fables (including a special section for Aesops Fables) as well as ones that you might not know yet. There are also online picture books, educational activities, and printable colouring pages.

Stories To Grow By

http://www.storiestogrowby.com/choose.php

Find stories from around the world. You can search by age or by story type

Storynory

http://www.storynory.com

We have already looked at this site under the Talking Books/Audio Books section. The text for all their audio stories is also available on the site and can be used for whole class/group/individualised instruction, or used by the teacher for creating comprehension activities.

Mighty Book

http://www.mightybook.com/free_to_read.html

This page has the text version of many well-known children’s stories. It also grades the texts by reading age.

Bed Time Stories

http://the-office.com/bedtime-story/indexmain.htm#stories

Lots of great stories for children to read, or have read to them. Many of the stories are illustrated and are subdivided into categories. Some are a little long, like Alice in Wonderland, but most are nice and short.

Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes

http://bygosh.com/mothergoose/index.htm

All children’s favourite nursery rhymes are here with illustrations.

Popular Children’s Stories

The goal of this site is to bring a world of excitement and fantasy to children and parents alike through some of most popular stories ever created.
Many stories have been modified from the original version to make them more suitable for younger audiences.

Short Stories For Kids

http://www.bygosh.com/kidsstories.htm

This is small collection of short stories for children to read. You can find Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Country Mouse and the City Mouse, The Little Red Hen plus short stories and rhymes by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Read Print

http://www.readprint.com/

ReadPrint is a free online library where you can find literally thousands of books to read for free, from classics to science fiction to Shakespeare.
All ReadPrint books are full-length, and divided by chapter. You can read these books right inside your browser. If you are searching for a specific section of a book, each book page offers you the option of searching within the book’s content.

How to find books at ReadPrint:
Searching for books at ReadPrint is simple. There are three ways you can find what you’re looking for:

· By title (try entering it in the ReadPrint search box)

· By author (they are all alphabetically ordered)

· By checking out the Most Recently Added books on the ReadPrint front page.

ReadPrint is one of the best resources you could use to find free online books. There are new books added on a regular basis, and books and author information are extremely easy to find and read.

Gutenberg

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 33,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device. These books have expired copyright and so can be made freely available on the net. Similar to the Read Print site the availability of these ebooks can have many benefits for the teacher and student.

Biblomania

http://www.bibliomania.com/0/-/frameset.html

Bibliomania has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays all of which are absolutely free. You can read the world’s greatest fiction by authors such as Dickens and Joyce, Sherlock Holmes mysteries, all Shakespeare’s plays, or just dip into some short stories by writers such as Mark Twain, Anton Chekov and Edgar Allan Poe.
Many new books are added every month.

The Online Book Page

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/search.html

The Online Books Page is a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet. It also aims to encourage the development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of all. It acts as a search engine for copyright free texts that are available online
Major parts of the site include:

· An index of hundreds of thousands of online books freely readable on the Internet

· Pointers to significant directories and archives of online texts

· Information on how readers can help support the growth of online books

Scoilnet

http://www.scoilnet.ie/

Reading non-fiction material can significantly help with the development of the child’s reading ability. Lots of children struggle with actually enjoying reading, but non-fiction reading can boost the interest of even the most reluctant reader.

It can often be non-fiction material about subjects such as sports and science that motivate reluctant readers to begin picking up books without being asked. Moreover, it is suggested by research that students at primary level lack exposure to and experience with a variety of text, especially nonfiction, which results in insufficient access skills and comprehension of the nonfiction genre.It has become clear that students need to be exposed to a wide variety of text to achieve proficient literacy levels. Teachers need to provide students with explicit reading instruction with the use of nonfiction, as well as multiple experiences with rich nonfiction texts in various settings and situations.

The scoilnet website gives every teacher access to a fantastic resource for non-fiction reading. Primary Britannica which is accessible through scoilnet is part of Britannica Online School Edition and it offers separate homepages for three different grade levels. Primary Britannica is designed specifically for primary school students. You find information quickly and easily by searching Primary Britannica Encyclopaedia, Current Journal & Magazines, The Web’s Best Sites, and various Multimedia. Simply type in a word or phrase and click “Go”.
There is a link on the encyclopaedia homepage to Children’s BBC News which is updated daily and written specifically for young people about the world’s current events.

With Primary Britannica Encyclopaedia articles are written with young students in mind and have large fonts, easy comprehension and paragraph headings.
The articles in the encyclopaedia also have access to an audio tool which gives access to a built in text to speech facility.

All the above features means that it is another great free online source of reading material, especially non-fiction, for the class teacher. It can be used in a variety of ways and lends itself to whole class work using the data projector or interactive whiteboard. Articles and news reports can also be printed for individual reading activity. The resource can be used to locate material that is of interest to individuals or groups and so helps the teacher to identify reading material that will motivate reluctant individuals to read.

A good user guide is available at http://corporate.britannica.com/k12_uk_primary_tour.pdf

Encyclopaedia Britannica can be accessed through the home page of Scoilnet (www.scoilnet.ie) from any school on the School Broadband Network. Teachers can also log in to the service from home by registering for a free Scoilnet Account via the teacher login from home link on the Scoilnet home page.

Online Instructional Reading Programmes

The first step in planning effective instruction is finding texts that match the reading level and conceptual levels of the students you will be teaching.

Allington (2005)

Differentiated reading instruction can no longer be seen as an intervention or as a remedial

measure; it’s the way to teach all students.

Ivey (2000)

The population of students in our schools has grown increasingly diverse over the past decade, making the goal of meeting each child’s instructional reading needs more and more challenging. The lack of developmentally appropriate reading material and resources can hinder the teachers efforts to improve reading performance for each child in their class.

When students are spread over a range of developmental levels, a one-size-fits-all class reader approach to reading instruction cannot meet the needs of the children.

An online collection of reading resources targeting the key skills and strategies needed by pupils to become good readers and that could be delivered 24/7 over a high-speed Internet connection would provide any English language teacher in the world with instant access to a virtual toolbox of developmentally appropriate resources. These resources could be just a mouse click away. Teachers could download what they want and make as many copies as they need. The Reading a-z site provides all of the above.

With instant online access to a vast array of reading resources written for various developmental reading levels, teachers who use a resource like reading a-z.com are better equipped to target the specific needs of each child in their class.

Reading A-Z

http://www.readinga-z.com

The Reading a-z program takes an established and scientifically proven method of teaching reading using Guided Reading and delivers it to you in a unique and up-to-date way online.

Reading a-z provides teachers with more than 2,200 books to facilitate the teaching of reading, including a collection of about 700 levelled readers written for 27 levels of reading difficulty. These levels are cross correlated with Reading Recovery and so can complement this programme if it is operating in your school. Both fiction and non-fiction books with a range of genres and a variety of text types are offered. Teachers simply download, print, fold and staple any of the books they need and can make as many copies as they need 24/7.

All the books are also projectable which means that they can be displayed on the IWB or data projector screen in large format for whole class/group instruction. The website also provides lessons and worksheets with each book, as well as a complete phonics program, high-frequency word books, poetry resources, fluency passages, reader’s theatre scripts, alphabet resources, assessments, and much more. This website is dynamic with new resources added monthly and existing resources updated as appropriate.

The educational award-winning reading a-z website is used by more than 130,000 teachers in classrooms around the world. The website enables educators to instantly download and print reading resources needed to meet the instructional needs of all children, whether in a mainstream classroom or a special education/learning support setting.

ReadingA-Z.com is the perfect site for teachers to get all the books and classroom resources they need to serve every student’s individual reading needs in their classroom.
Reading A to Z is a subscription program, which means that you are able to have access to all the material on their Web site for one low annual payment. At the time of writing (May 2011), the cost of an annual subscription for an individual teacher is $84.95 .