Many of us were dismayed to learn that the Bow Valley readers were suddenly no longer available. Fortunately, we have three other beginning level reading materials that are free and available online. (Save them as PDFs just in case!)
First up is the Carringbush Reading Series, from Australia, which includes five stories featuring language from everyday life. They are “designed to be used as reading resources and as tools in the classroom to accompany lessons on themes such as daily routines… employment pathways and other topics.” The images are rich and the text clear, so have a look! One thing to keep in mind, as they are Australian, there are a few terms and spellings that we can let our U.S. learners know are different here. (e.g. tram, counsellor, centre).
(From Kim Volunteers.)
From our own continent comes the seven- book series, Changing Lanes: English as a Second Language Reading Series | Copian Library out of Canada. From the website, “Each book deals with one or more life skills. For example, in A Day at Razia’s Home, the title character has a problem with the fridge in her rented townhouse and must ask the building superintendent to fix it.” They can be read individually or as part of the series. Each book has an introduction with some ideas for teachers, a story of about 25 pages, and follow-up activities to practice vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. Programs with limited color printing options will appreciate that the illustrations are black and white!
From Liberia to Nova Scotia is about the clothes that a family wears in each of their new country’s seasons:
Below, the family is eating dinner after the superintendent fixes the fridge in A Day in Razia’s Home. Little details like this seating arrangement make the books more interesting, and food for discussion (no pun intended).
Lastly, from Oakland Unified School District we have several leveled texts as part of a fantastic comprehensive Curriculum for SIFE Equity. (SIFE = Students with Interrupted Formal Education. The curriculum overview also uses the term SLIFE, for Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education.) The texts are housed in a Google Drive. Each story is told by a teenager from a different country. We learn about their native countries, as well as their families, interests and jobs here in the U.S. You can choose the book versions, which include vivid photos, and/or the text versions. The latter have small illustrations above some words to support comprehension.
The Book Versions of each story come in four different levels. The Text Versions come in two different levels. Below are pages from the different versions and levels of A Girl from Guinea, by Ayele Rose Bethel Dounou.
Book version, Level 1:
Book version, Level 2:
Book version, Level 3:
Book version, Level 4:
Text version, level 1:
Text version, level 2:
Leah, so interested to see this list! I just found the Scottish (NATECLA) version of Bow Valley Readers online, and was wondering how they would work here in Australia. Perhaps not ‘We live in Glasgow’. But I love the concept. Also love the cultural sharing in the readers you’ve featured. And the text with small icons is fascinating. I’m part of a little group of indie teacher-authors in Australia and am currently trying to update our ESL-SPIN.com website to share all the reading and language resources that we produce. Of course we are focussed on Aussie resources, but I’d love to include a link to this site. Thanks! Clare Harris
Thank you, Clare, for sharing about the Scottish readers! For those reading this: https://nateclascotland.wordpress.com/esol-literacies-readers/ And for sharing your website.
After this post, we also found that Indianapolis included many of the Bow Valley readers in Google Slides and pdfs, along with other stories, as part of this resource: https://www.pathwaytoliteracy.org/theme-based-stories
And I’m happy that your colleagues in Australia will find our site useful!