Free Literacy Sites We Actually Use (and Love)

Looking for free, practical literacy tools that really work? In this episode, the hosts of Literacy Talks share their favorite go-to websites for everything from decodables and syntax support to articulation videos and classroom-ready texts. It’s an honest, unsponsored round-up of resources we use, trust, and recommend.

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Episode Transcript

Narrator (00:03):
Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy
leaders and championseverywhere, brought to you by
Reading Horizons. Literacy talksis the place to discover new
ideas, trends, insights andpractical strategies for helping
all learners reach readingproficiency. Our hosts are Stacy
Hurst, a professor at SouthernUtah University and Chief

(00:27):
Academic Advisor for ReadingHorizons. Donell Pons, a
recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.

Stacy Hurst (00:48):
Welcome to this episode of literacy talks. I'm
Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined byDonell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny,
where each week, we choose atopic related to the science of
reading, and we discuss it. Sotoday, we thought we would do
something a littlecasual and hopefully very
resourceful for our listeners.

(01:10):
We are just going to talk aboutwebsites that are available to
everyone, and how thosewebsites, the resources they
provide the audience they'regood for. This is a part of the
structure of our podcast, isthat we're all in different
spaces in the literacylandscape. So I think we'll,

(01:33):
hopefully we'll share a lot ofresources for you with you today
that maybe some you have heardabout, maybe some you haven't.
So I think we'll just kind ofdive right in. Lindsay Donell,
anything to say overall aboutthis topic before we No, it's
fun. Hopefully it'll be helpfulfor everyone. So yeah, well, as

(01:53):
I we started saying, oh, we'lleach talk about two or three,
maybe four, and then list. Thelist got really long, so
hopefully we'll leave you with agood list. Donell, how about we
start with you? What websites doyou want to share?

Donell Pons (02:09):
Great. So I will.
I'll start off with Cascadereader. I've talked about it
many times before, and I use itwith all of my students. It what
it is, is it adapts the text,and instead of a horizontal,
it's in a vertical but it alsohas indentations on the left
margin. Those indentations tellstudents, or are markers for
students, about the syntax ofthe sentence, and it's to help

(02:30):
with comprehension, supportcomprehension. And so the
lessons I highly recommend. Icould tell you a lot about it,
but then I think what theproblem would be is, because
it's pretty intuitive. You'dsay, Oh, great, yeah, I can just
pop in. I'll take a look at it.
But I highly recommend thelessons that are provided on the
website, and they did a reallygood job with these lessons. I
do them with my student. Weactually, because we're in a one

(02:51):
on one setting, we'll sit witheach other, and we went through
the lessons together. It wasactually really enjoyable and
interesting, because we hadconversation about our
experience as we were doing ittogether. And so it'll take your
student, you and your studentthrough what it is that you're
doing with Cascade reader, andthen it will provide examples,
so the student is given anopportunity to practice with

(03:12):
some text and that I highlyrecommend. And the indentations
on that left margin are going toindicate to the student the part
of speech or syntax for thoseparticular lines of a sentence,
and that indicates to them andalso draws their attention to
the comprehension pieces. Whatare the relationships between

(03:34):
these parts of the sentence andwhat it does? I think it does
many things. And I think for mystudents who have difficulty
with reading text anyway, it'san opportunity to slow down
because many of them are readingtoo fast. That's one of the
challenges that we have, isbecause you have this mistaken
idea, because you were always somuch slower than everybody else
in the class, you just have tospeed up and be faster, and

(03:55):
you're not spending a lot oftime paying attention to commas,
to periods, and to that prosodyof a sentence, that pacing of
the sentence, the phrasing of asentence, all those things that
really give meaning to asentence, and those are pretty
much lost on my students a lot.
What this does is gives us anopportunity to slow that all
down, and now they're reallypaying attention, and it's
chunking really well for astudent, because we have to
teach that principle of chunkingoftentimes to our students, that

(04:17):
we don't really speak word byword. We chunk things together
that starts to take on realmeaning by being in this
vertical sort of context orsetting. So that's one aspect,
and then you're also yourstudent. Can have it in their
browser, so that when they're ontheir own with text, they can
pop it into the browser and haveit put into a vertical format.
So they can use it as well, andthey can use it for class. They

(04:39):
can use it when they're doingsome online work, if they have
found it useful. And mystudents, I have found request
it. So I do kind of a little bitbetween each I have text that's
in cascade, text that's not incascade, and my students prefer
it, particularly if it's textthat they were going to have
some comprehension questions.
Link.

(05:00):
And I it's kind of might bedense. It might be a subject I'm
not used to. Can I have that incascade? The students will often
say, Can we put that in cascade?
Absolutely, let's put it incascade. And so you'll find that
it takes a little getting usedto for your students. But if
it's explained, and I say thoselessons are really good, if you
give them a good base or ofunderstanding, it really is
helpful. And then there are someckla passages that are already

(05:20):
provided in there, that are inthat already framed up in
cascade reader to kind of, Iguess, get used to and show you.
They also have some grade levelpassages. It looks like it goes
down to second grade and up toeighth grade. And what's
interesting is sometimes, for myreaders who have had reading
difficulty, it's interesting toshow them. Let's look at that
third grade passage and see thedifference between the third

(05:42):
grade passage and an eighthgrade passage. What are some
things that you're noticingabout the sentences? And my
students have a lot to say.
There are a lot of thingsthey've noticed. Oh, my
goodness, the sentences are alot shorter in that third grade
passage. See how they combinethe first two sentences. Oh, and
some of the words thatvocabulary that's that's a lot
more challenging vocabulary inthe eighth grade passage. You I

(06:05):
really love having my studentsanalyze the text and what might
change in a text that isconsidered a higher level. So it
just provides a lot ofopportunities for your student
to look at the text. Mind you,all of this is obviously to get
to comprehension. So I said alot about all the things that
are going on. In the end, what Ihave found is that, because my
students have slowed down, theyknow what they're looking for.

(06:26):
They're looking at relationshipsin those sentences as we're
stopping and going, boy, what?
What was that? What was going onin that first you know, you do
some of that sometimes with yourstudents to get them to kind of
tell you what's happening andthey're on it. You know, a lot
of times I've had to get someprompting. Oh, maybe go back and
look at that first boy, oncethey get into this, it's right
there, and it's oh no, it wasright here. We did this, and
then it went here. It did that.

(06:48):
Did you notice that it saidthis? And they're a lot more
engaged with the text, which forthem, I know, is a new
experience not to have to goback and look at something and
have to be reminded.
Okay, I have a couple questionsfor you. Donell, sorry, Stacy,
okay, well, so first, this is,like, this is Julie van dykes
project, right? And so I'veheard her talk about it, and

(07:10):
she's all about syntax. So forour listeners, they'll remember
when we talked about, you know,that our Big Sky kind of wrap
up. We were talking about whatshe was sharing about syntax. So
Donell, what it's doing, right?
You put the text in and it'sbreaking apart into meaningful
phrases. So it's kind of, it'slooking at the syntax, so it
will kind of tell you, like thesubject, right? And then it

(07:32):
doesn't tell you that. So whatit will do? But, I mean, it
shows you, right? Yeah, systemof indentation. So it's a system
of indentation takes the textand aligns it so it's more in a
vertical than horizontal, and onthat vertical arrangement, it is
indenting, and the indentationshave meaning. They're
meaningful. They give a clue tothe reader about pay attention
to this line of text for thisreason, either subject verb, one

(07:55):
of the many clauses that canprovide additional information,
all of that's provided in thelessons, which I say are really
important, because you might betempted to jump on thinking, Oh,
I get this. I get it. You indebt. Couple lines, you in debt.
I caution against doing that.
Highly recommend the lesson foryou and for your student. It's
really the best way to go aboutit. And apologies to Julie Van

(08:17):
Dyke. I don't know what I wasthinking with my little memory
lapse there is to her name.
Because not only do I thinkthis, this piece is phenomenal,
but her presentations are thatI've been able to see at
conferences have also beenphenomenal. And then she's had
two issues in the perspectivewhich I'm holding up that are on
syntax of part one and two,which I highly recommend if you
haven't looked at that, andthat's going to be another one

(08:38):
of my website recommendation, sonobody take it, because I'm
going to say this one too.
Anyway, great information. Sowhat do the lessons look like
when you said there's lessons?
Are there little like videos?
Because you said the teachersshould do the lessons too. So
are there videos of lessons, orwhat is it? It takes you through
the text, and the text hasexactly what you and your

(08:59):
students should talk about. Youcan do it together, and then
provides examples of what to do.
So here's a piece of text. It'sgoing to go into cascade reader,
and then have your student pullthe subject, pull the predicate
or verb, and eventually you'llwork your way up to a more
complicated sentence. But itjust starts with simple first,
and then, do you think so? Theck, the provided ck, la passages

(09:21):
start at fourth grade, but theyhave them graded on a grade
level. I'm gonna check that. Ibelieve it was first. I'm just
gonna jump right on because I'malways on cascade reader.

Stacy Hurst (09:38):
And you know what?
I have heard you talk about thisover the years, Donell, and what
you're saying totally tracks,because when you first mentioned
it, I pulled up the websiterecently. We mentioned it again
on our recap podcast, so Ipulled it up again, and this
time, it's a little morerelevant to me, because I am
tutoring in my world older kids.

(09:59):
One's in 50.

Unknown (10:00):
Grade. And so I pulled it up again, and I I remember
thinking, wow, this has evolved.
And you're right, you can getit, take a quick look at it, and
intuitively be like, Okay, I seethe idea here, but I didn't take
the time to do the training, andnow I'm going to do that. Yeah,
those lessons, and it's great todo it with your student. Like I
said, it's kind of, especiallyif you're in a one on one

(10:21):
situation, it's nice to walkthrough it together. My student,
I had a good time doing ittogether. Yeah, cool. But this,
I can see how this would behelpful. Like your your adult
readers, Donell, because, youknow, it's doing these
indentations, which, at firstyou're kind of like, Wait, why?
Why is this sentence now? Like,you know, look like that, but
it's helping the studentsunderstand the meaning of the

(10:42):
sentence, because it's kind ofwhere, you know, your
comprehension can break down ifyou don't understand, like Julie
van dykes point is the syntax,right? So you kind of have,
like, your subject and your verbare like one underneath each
other. She doesn't use those shedoesn't put those terms. So it's
not like all, you know, but likethey have an example cascade
readers. On one line is a toolis right under it, right?

(11:06):
Because that's kind of oursubject. And then is a tool, and
then it indents under that andsays, designed indents to
enhance comprehension, you know.
So I can see how that's kind ofhelping them, you know, because
some sentences get reallycomplex. So by indenting, and
then they probably learn, Iimagine, you know, as you're

(11:27):
going Donell kind of what those,what those different
indentations mean, right? Well,yeah, as you take them through
the lesson, you build rightthrough, yeah, you're building
on that, yeah. So it becomes youmight think, like you said,
visually, you're looking atthis, you're thinking, oh my
goodness, that's different.
That's quite different to lookat. But if you build it for your
students, actually they get towhere it's this is really

(11:47):
interesting. I'm gonna, I'm justgonna say it for a couple of my
students, what it did is they,they refocused. I guess that's a
word I'm going to use todescribe what it is I've seen
with a couple of my students inparticular, they've refocused
when they're reading

Donell Pons (12:05):
what they're paying attention to. They also have
slowed down, because that can bean issue oftentimes with
students who have difficultybecoming readers that oftentimes
those road signs that we talkabout, the periods, the you
know, the commas and such, theyblow past them because they have
this idea in their heads thatI'm so slow. I've always been so
slow. Everyone's just waitingfor me to pick up my speed, and

(12:27):
that becomes an issue of havingto put on the brake a little bit
and tell your student, we're notreading that fast. Nobody's
needs to be read that fast. SoI'm losing meaning if you're
reading that fast, and then youdo all the prosody exercises and
whatnot. But I find this reallylends itself to the student
slowing down, because they aregetting more meaning out of it,
because they're realizing what'sgoing on in the sentence and the

(12:49):
importance of those phrases, howthey relate to each other. And I
have found that they just selfmonitor. They after spending
some time with it, theythemselves slow down. I don't
have to keep mentioning and I'llpause. We'll do a pause, and
I'll say, Boy, that was reallyinteresting. What happened with
that? Did that come and mystudents are right on it? Boom,
with the answer, well, yeah,that was here, and that was

(13:09):
because of this. And that'spretty unusual for them to be
that responsive without anyprompting. Yeah, it's pretty
interesting. And then you saidthey can add an extension to
like their browser browser, andwhat does that look like? So
when they go on any websitelike, they can have it go into
Cain like. So they go to checkthe news, and they could have

(13:30):
the news articles go into thecascade reader. Yes, it's just
one of those browsers. You canput up. It has an icon, and they
can use it themselves, andthere's plenty of text online
that lends itself to beingplaced into a situation like
that. Yeah, wow. That soundsreally great. I can't wait to

(13:51):
check it out even more.

Lindsay Kemeny (13:54):
Okay. Lindsay, what would you like to share
first? The first thing that Iwill share is the you fly
website, and this is like, evenif you don't use because they
have a phonics program, even ifyou don't use their phonics
program, this can still bevaluable tool. Of course, you've

(14:15):
always got to consider the scopeand sequence. But so if you just
go to UF literacy.org, and thenthere's a little button there
called toolbox, and you canclick the toolbox, and there's
all different kinds of thingsthat I can use in my classroom.
So you can kind of see on thiswell, if you scroll down after

(14:38):
you click on toolbox and scrolldown, you can get this general
overview of their phonics scopeand sequence. And then you can
go in. So for example, my classright now, we're working all
about digraphs. We're learningall about digraphs. And so even
though, like my district, has adifferent program, we have.

(15:00):
Adopted. So we're not using youfly right now, but I can still
go in. I click on, oh, look, youfly has lessons. 42 to 43 are
diagraphs, and I can click onthat, and then they have
decodable passages that arefree. So I like those decodable
passages. You just have toconsider, like me, I have to

(15:20):
consider that the scope andsequence is a little different.
For example, I couldn't use liketheir ch one because we taught
ch first, whereas I think theirch one might include th and sh,
whereas, like, I hadn't taughtthose before, right? So there's
the Decodable passages, there'sthe roll in reads, which I use

(15:41):
regularly. So when I have aparent come and help with
centers, I have them run like alittle phonics game. So I'll
have them do the roll in reads,and I can just print those off.
So it's great. I don't have tobe using their program. I can go
and just do sh and it's like,all sh words, and it's perfect.
And they have these little homepractice sheets. And again, for

(16:05):
me, like I can't, I'm notsending those home because they
also have high frequency wordson them, which are different.
But I can print that little halfsheet out, and then when I have,
like, an inner aparaprofessional or someone
coming in my room, I can say,you know, I can just cross out
the high frequency words on it,but just say, Okay, do this

(16:27):
little word chain and, do, youknow, and have them spell these
words. And then I give them aword list with this age and, you
know, a Decodable and they have,it's like a little lesson kind
of for them to do right away. SoI think that's really nice. Then
there's also, if you look over,they have other things. There's
printable resources. So if youdon't have, like, a little

(16:48):
graphing deck where you can holdup a spelling for students to,
you know, say the sounds, youcan print those off. If you're
running small group, or if youdo intervention, you could. It's
really nice to have differentdecks for each group, because
different groups are working ondifferent things, and then that
kind of saves you time, like, asan interventionist or tutor to
be, like, I don't have to, like,take out all the digraphs,

(17:10):
because these kindergartners areonly what working on. You know,
they're single letters rightnow. Like, you could just have
different decks so you can printit out. So I think that's really
nice. They also have underdigital resources. They have
this. It's called their you flyfoundations, game generator, and
again, you can go in and likethis is very custom. So you can

(17:35):
go in and put the words you knowthat you want your students to
review, like certain phonicsskills, you can type them in,
and then it's going to generatea game board. So I just did this
this morning because I had itgenerate

Unknown (17:53):
a like a bingo game board that my parent can do
tomorrow in class. She's goingto do bingo instead of the roll
and read. So it's, it's reallynice. Now, the games aren't
like, as cutesy as what you'regonna get off of, like TPT or
something, but it doesn'tmatter. The kids don't care, and
you can tailor it more to whatyou need. So sometimes we're

(18:16):
using, like, other people'sresources, but it might not
follow our phonics scope verywell, or what your kids
particularly need. And so thenice thing about the game
generator is you can actuallyput in what words you want on
the boards, and then it willrandomize them and give you,
like six different ones orwhatever. So anyway, yeah, I

(18:36):
just think, I think it's a it'sa great it's great help, and
it's all free. So I love that Iknow. I love that I do use those
games with my student, my kids,that I tutor, and I love that
you can customize them, becauselike the roll and reads, I can
actually do my own spiralreview, right? Or I can,
sometimes, if we're going to doroll and read before the story

(19:00):
we're focusing on. I can putwords from the story that follow
the phonics pattern, and you canprint out cards, like, there are
a lot of really good things onthere. And they also have, you
know, I kind of told you whereyou first can get decodables.
And if you haven't been on thewebsite recently, they did,
like, a whole new set of otherfree decodable, cool decodables.

(19:21):
So there's like the one in thelesson, and then I'm kind of
forgetting where the other oneis housed. I think it's probably
in the principal resources. Theyhave a whole nother set of
decodables, which is kind ofnice, because you always need a
range, right? Nice, yeah. And acouple years ago, I just
downloaded them all into onefile, and I used them with my
student, my college students,they're really easy to use. And

(19:44):
if you're not familiar with theU fly decodable passages, they
also have a space on the pagefor students to draw illustrate
the passage, which is acomprehension check too. So I
really like that if there's timefor.

Lindsay Kemeny (20:00):
It. Yeah, they're good. Just remember that
if you are in the lower gradesand you follow a very careful
scope and sequence, and youchoose a decodable from someone
else's scope and sequence, it'snot going to line up perfectly,
even when, like, you know, theyhave like, Oh, this is how we're
aligned to you fly or whatever,and they have this document even

(20:20):
then it's not exactly aligned,because, like I said, they might
have, you know, CH might alsohave th and sh, and maybe your
first thing is CH. So you go tochoose a CH, you know, passage,
and it's still hard, or the highfrequency words, so you just
need to be prepared for that.
And some students totally canhandle that, and it's no
problem. And other studentsneed, you know, a lot more help

(20:42):
to read them. So yeah, then youreally do need to customize at
that point for

Unknown (20:51):
sure.

Narrator (20:52):
Interested in diving deeper into today's episode and
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But that's just the beginning.

(21:13):
When you join the science ofreading collective, you're
stepping into a vibrant, dynamiccommunity explicitly designed
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(21:34):
collective dot readinghorizons.com,
join the science of readingcollective today and be part of
a movement that's eradicatingilliteracy, that's collective
dot reading horizons.com,

Stacy Hurst (21:47):
cool. Okay, the next, the one I have to share,
the first one is Cox campus, andI found this a few years ago. It
is for early childhoodeducators, k3 teachers,
families, community health careprofessionals, district leaders
like they keep adding to theirresources. And so I think they
keep adding to their audience aswell. It is free. Somebody funds

(22:12):
that. So everything on thiswebsite is free. There's some
really good, self paced, videobased
courses, and they're all aroundstructured literacy, and you can
I think they go from birth tograde three. I also assign my
students sometimes to go on andcomplete one of those courses.

(22:33):
They have a lot of printable,downloadable resources. Also, of
course, free lesson templates,assessment guides,
implementation guides. They havea lot of things, lot of
professional learningcommunities, webinars. They have
Q and A that you can ask, andthey have coaching support as
well. They have Spanish content,and then they're also accredited

(22:59):
by Ida.
And so that is, you know thatyou're getting quality stuff.
It is really good for that earlyliteracy and structured literacy
space. And again, it has areally good resources. There are
all kinds ofI'm trying to think, early on, I
used when you talk aboutassessment guides, they'll say,

(23:21):
you know, like, give a screener,what happens if your student is
low on this, then get test this,diagnose this, teach this. Their
phonics course is really good,too. I don't know, have you guys
been on there? I haven't letWell, I've been on there, but I
haven't taken any of theircourses, so I've kind of

(23:41):
explored the website, and I'malways really impressed with
everything Cox campus does likeso I feel always confident like
recommending their courses, butI haven't actually taken any of
their courses. They're all free,right? So yeah, they're really
great. I actually went throughthem myself because I wanted to
see what they were like before Iassigned them to my students.

(24:02):
For those of you who areteaching in higher ed or just
want to learn about structuredliteracy, it's a great place to
do that, because they do haveevery possible topic, vocabulary
comprehension and great videosto go along with the learning.
The modules I'll call them arestructured really well too. So

(24:23):
just lots of great resources.
Okay, Donell, you're up

Donell Pons (24:30):
great. Just the International Dyslexia
Association website, I thinkit's an unsung hero. Been around
a really long time. Some greatresources. If you have a
membership, you get access tomore publications than just
perspectives. It's one Imentioned before in cascade
reader, but you'll have anonline version of perspectives
available to you and backissues. And there are some other

(24:50):
publications that you also gainaccess to, reading and writing
is another one. So that's initself, really great, but then
you also have a.
A drop down tabs so that hasdyslexia at a glance, and really
good information about that. Ifyou don't know what it is, do I
have dyslexia? You have ascreener definition of dyslexia,
which we know is very importantand is involved in state, many

(25:13):
of our states and in theirlegislative directives about
dyslexia, that definition iswhat they have. That definition
is going to be getting a revamp,kind of an upgrade here at the
end of the month, in aconference in October. And so
it's very important a lot ofpeople are waiting for that. It
also talks about dyslexia aroundthe world, if you don't speak
English, what does it look like?
And then the fact sheets, which,again, are another piece. I

(25:34):
don't think people understandhow good that is on the fact
sheets, it covers a number oftopics on reading and around
reading, and you can rely on thesources for those. They also
have some great infographics.
And then, of course, there's thewhole structured literacy
campaign that they've puttogether. So there are a lot of
pieces that go with that.
There's a way to findprofessionals. Maybe wherever

(25:56):
you live, if you don't havesomebody, you need somebody who
understands dyslexia, you needto be connected. They also have
that beyond the membership. LikeI said, it provides access to
some publications. And thenthere's also conferences, and
those are fantastic. They haveresources for youth webinars, I
tell you, it's prettycomprehensive. And then there's

(26:19):
a bookstore where they also havepublications. And I've purchased
many of those over the years,and I have not been disappointed
in how good they are. So lot ofresources. I was actually just
on the website yesterday, lastnight looking at their phonemic
awareness Fact Sheet. It wasexcellent. So clear. And you
know, we have all this, youknow, you know, all these

(26:41):
different voices, you know,sharing their thoughts on
phonemic awareness. And I justthought they did such a nice job
of kind of explaining andsummarizing everything, and then
this whole list of amazing,really good citations, you know,
for everything at the end. So ifyou're wanting to do a deep dive
on any you know topic. I thinkthose fact sheets can be really

(27:02):
helpful.

Stacy Hurst (27:06):
Yeah, that's a great reminder. I have been on
that website often, too. And ofcourse, when we did our season
on structured literacy and wecentered around the info map
that's also on the website, andI know it's under construction,
but they do have some thingsavailable. If you click on a
certain aspect of structuredliteracy, it'll have some videos

(27:27):
and resources related to that. Ithink the concept is fantastic,
and I can't wait till it's morefully developed. It's really
good resource.

Unknown (27:37):
Okay, Lindsay, okay, so this is one that I just became
aware of this summer. I wentjust to my own school districts
conference that they have everysummer, and I just like I found
this little gem of a class. Youknow, there weren't many of us
in this class, and it was justan SLP, a speech language

(27:58):
pathologist in our schooldistrict. And so this is going
to be great for any listenersout there who have students who
struggle with articulation. Soit's called the website is
called peachy speechy.com

Lindsay Kemeny (28:13):
and she has these, like, it's these free
articulation videos. So even ifyou just Google peachy Speechy,
and that's like with the IEpeachy Speechy articulation
videos, and it should come rightup, and you, you just scroll
down, and she has all thesereally great videos of how she

(28:34):
helps the students she's workingwith with certain sounds. So
this might not be like this.
Probably wouldn't be somethingyou would do whole group, but
just for particular students whoare struggling with
articulation. So I have astudent who I've noticed

Unknown (28:51):
struggles to say the s sounds, and he kept putting his
tongue between his teeth. And I,you know, I he's not in speech
yet, so there's something thatI'm like, Ooh, I might have to
refer him, right? But so becauseI've been trying to practice and
as a teacher, I'm not a speechlanguage pathologist, so I don't

(29:11):
always have the language youknow what to do. So I just
pulled up her little S video,and then I had him do it,
and now he can totally say the ssound, no, I'm just kidding. It

Lindsay Kemeny (29:26):
wasn't like a miracle cure. He still
struggled, but I'm like, but nowI had, you know, I kind of, I
showed him that, and we had somelanguage, you know, common
language to use. And I like howshe described it, and she has
them practice, like, on thevideo, she has some practice,
and it's just gonna help me. Andnow I have to do, like, run

(29:46):
little interventions for him,and then we're gonna see if we
can qualify for speech. But soanyway, you know, we don't
always know. You know, a lot oftimes I do go to my speech
person at school and just say,Okay, how do you how do you
tell.

Stacy Hurst (30:00):
Them to do this.
But this was nice because it wasa little video. She's really
darling, and I could just put iton for the student during, you
know, our small group time. Icould pull him aside and have
him do it. So, yeah, sohopefully that is helpful to
some of you out there. Yeah, Iam so glad I chose this topic,
because you guys both aregetting really great resources.
That one is very timely for me,Lindsay, because my pre service

(30:23):
teachers, right now, I justbarely gave them the assignment
that they have to create avideo, and they're producing
every phoneme, right? So that'sgoing to be a really good
resource for them. I didn't knowthat existed. There are other
ones that I've added, in fact,one from Cox campus, but that
sounds like it'll be reallygreat, and you're right about

(30:43):
the language, even with my preservice teachers, when I'm
introducing the concept, Iliterally have I only use a few
different sounds, and I have itscripted because of how we talk
about the placement and mannerof articulation. So yeah, that's
a great reason. And she has alot of other things on there. I
mean, she like, sells all thisstuff, and I haven't looked at

(31:05):
any of that, but I just thevideos are what's free and so,
and that's what I've usedthere's also, I noticed she has
language skills videos, and Ihaven't checked those out either
to see what that is, but thatcould potentially be something
helpful too. Yeah, that's reallygreat, I think. And Donell, when
you were sharing about cascadereader, I know we're focusing on
print, but I couldn't help butthink about the connection it

(31:28):
would make to language, orallanguage, spoken language, too,
just being able to break upsentences in that way.

Lindsay Kemeny (31:39):
Okay, teachers, if you're like me, you want
things that actually help in theclassroom, right? This is one of
those things. Reading HorizonsDiscovery is offering teachers
free access for the whole year.
It gives you simple, structuredliteracy tools. Saves you time,
and you don't even have to setup student accounts. Head over
to reading horizons.com/free

Unknown (31:59):
and grab your license, you're going to be so glad you
did

Stacy Hurst (32:03):
okay. The next one I am going to share is the aim
Institute. And they have, theyhave a lot of free resources,
but they do have some thingsthat cost money,
and I think that they have aprogram called pathways that you
can sign up for all, like youcan become certified essentially
in science of reading topics.
The audience is k 12 teachers,literacy coaches,

(32:27):
administrators, dyslexiaspecialists. It's a broad
audience, higher ed and preservice teachers. They just
barely added a feature where youcan go and take an assessment on
your teacher knowledge. And it'snot just gathering information
about how much you may or maynot know about the science of
reading, but and structuredliteracy, but then they will

(32:48):
create a pathway, a personalizedpathway for you and where your
professional development, sothat you can be well rounded in
the in the science. I thought itwas a really cool resource. They
do have even things on writingthat we don't see very often.
They have courses on that. Theydo have free library of

(33:11):
webinars, blogs, case studies,teachable moments. I like that
too. And then they have steps toliteracy modules. They have lots
of printable resources as well.
Even I had found one the otherday randomly for coaching

(33:32):
supports. So if you're somebodywho's in a literacy coach
position, they had checklistsand things to look for in
walkthroughs and stuff likethat. I believe that's what I
saw. It's also Ida aligned, andWilson is one of their partners.
So their training, though,especially the stuff you pay
for, is really high quality. AndI did take,

(33:55):
I did, I think it was they weredoing a special, or it was a
free course, or highlydiscounted. I took the Linnea
area course on orthographicmapping, well worth it. I took
so many notes, and it reallyrefined my knowledge of that
whole concept. I also got afree, I think it was free, some

(34:17):
embedded mnemonic cards with thealphabet designed with the input
from Lindsay area as well. So Iam just a big fan of that
website, and I know they do alot of advocacy too, and they've
really made a big difference inthis space. So it's a really
good example of bridgingresearch and practice. I think,

(34:39):
okay, Donell, I think we're backto you.

Donell Pons (34:45):
Maybe I'll combine a few this. This is more text.
I'm maybe shifting gears andgoing to text. So if you're like
me,you probably have a need for a
lot of different kind of text,and it's nice if you don't have
to pay a fortune for.
It's nice that there's a varietyof it. So all of those good
things. One of the resourcesI've used over the years a lot

(35:06):
and recommended it to students,is the Gutenberg Project. And I
don't know how many folks arefamiliar with it, so it's
gutenberg.org and it's calledProject Gutenberg, or Gutenberg
Project. Many people refer to iteither way. It began in 1971
which I hadn't realized it hadgone back that far with an
individual named Michael Hart,who is no longer around, but it

(35:29):
was his vision. And essentiallywhat it was is to put as much
material of a as it would beavailable in the hands of people
for free, in the form of ereading or online reading. And
apparently he's considered oneof the fathers of the e reader,
which is interesting, and thatwas the plan. And so at the
time, and I didn't realize this,but the copyright to written

(35:49):
material has changed a fewtimes, and so sometimes it was
less generous. And so he wasable to put more, get more
material, and copy and put itout there. And then, then they
would have a court, some sort ofcourt issue, and then they would
extend the time period so thenhe'd lose the ability to get
some of that text he thought hewas going to get his hands on.
But at any rate, it's a largelibrary, and I highly recommend

(36:11):
all the classics are available.
If you go to the website, itjust is very easy to search.
There's about 75,000 free ebooksthat are available, I tell you
many really good texts. So I'veeven been able to interest my
students by talking about what'sinteresting to you, what's your
subject area? And we could evensearch by subject area. And we

(36:32):
get our hands on some texts.
Maybe they haven't thought ofit's Halloween. So let's look at
some texts that might beHalloween related. Do we have
some that are scary stories tobe told, and you can find a
bunch of them. So I highlyrecommend, whenever somebody
says, Oh, I don't know, I youknow, that is that something I
have to pay money for? I said,let's check this out and see if
it's available. It's a reallynice resource. What I would add

(36:52):
to that is, if you have alibrary card to a public
library, you have access tosomething called overdrive, and
overdrive has a relationshipwith all public libraries. I've
used it for years, and you canrequest an E or audio book of
something, so it can also besomething read to you. And if
it's not available, you can geton a hold and it'll be sent to

(37:14):
you because you have so manycopies that they're allowed as a
library. So if it's popular, youmight have to wait in line a
while. If it's not popular, youcan probably get it today, and
then you listen to it for aperiod of time, and then you
just return it. It's just likeanything else, but it's all done
online, and I highly recommendthat too, even for teachers that
might have a student in theirclassroom who would prefer
having an audio version ofsomething as well, and maybe

(37:35):
they don't have resources oraccess check off that library
card, because that can be areally great one, and then
another one that I used a tonwhen my children were young, but
it's another one of these onlinefree resources to get access to
story. Is something called StoryNori and my kids loved it. Boy.
Has it been around a while, butit has gotten even better, where

(37:57):
they have a weekly serializedstory, so you can wait for the
installment. And if anybodyreally enjoyed, and I'm going to
date myself profusely, but theolden days when you would listen
to the radio, and they actuallytold stories on the radio in the
evenings, it was really fun. Mymom had a station. We'd tune it
in.
It reminds me a lot of that,because it's really good readers

(38:18):
theater. They have sounds in theback, and people have different
voices, and it really brings thestories to life, but they're all
audio, and so oftentimes atnight, when my children were
trying to fall asleep, weren'table to fall asleep. We'd
already done our 30 minutes ofreading, and I would say, how
about a story, Nori? And thenlisten, oh yeah, I'd love a
story Nori, and listen to thatwhile they fall asleep. I
couldn't think of a better thingto do. So there's three, three

(38:40):
things, right there, ways togain access to story, because I
think that's really important,or ways to gain access to text
as well that are free, that Ithink are important, nice. I
have a question on the project.
Gutenberg, so what does it looklike? Do you you download them,
basically, you download thebooks and see all the text, and
can it read to you or no? Yeah.

(39:02):
So they yes audio. We use it foraudio, and it depends on the
text. It'll tell you whether thetext has an audio version
available or not.
And some do, some do not, as Ihave found. And you can get
original texts of things, solike the original Peter Pan. So

(39:22):
a lot of these are things maybeyou haven't seen, because now
you're looking at the 1985 or 90version, but there was a 1934 or
40s version of something, and Ihighly recommend those earlier
versions of things. So there'sjust a variety. It's a real
variety. So I recommend jumpingon and kind of searching around,
because you'll find all kinds ofthings on there. Yeah, cool.

(39:43):
Okay, awesome. It's fun. Yeah,that sounds really, really
great. You're just reminding me,just the the experience of
listening to somebody who'sreally into what they're
reading, and that readerstheater is a lost art, in my
opinion. We went.

Stacy Hurst (40:00):
On a road trip once and listen to the shadow, which
is well before any of our times,but it's so intriguing and
interesting, I can't wait tocheck it out. Thanks for sharing
that.

Unknown (40:11):
Lindsay, okay, um, so I'm gonna I'm like, Donell and I
were like, in sync, and wedidn't even realize so, because
I'm going to share some thingsfor texts as well. But these are
more like print them out. And ifyou need free text in your
classroom, print them out.

Lindsay Kemeny (40:27):
So one we probably are familiar with, read
works. You know you can get allkinds of free passages there.
What I do is, when I go to readworks, you need an account, you
just make an account. It's free,and then I click Explore
content, and then it's theassigned scope and sequence. You
actually don't have to assignthe scope and sequence, but you

(40:50):
click on that button, and thenit gives you, you know, the
default is like, a topical scopeand sequence by month. So you
can say September, drop down,and it's like, week one, there's
a topic, week two, week three,week four. And so you click on
one of those topic like one ofthose, let's say week one is
plant life, and you click it, itdrops down, and it gives you,

(41:12):
you can choose grade level, Ithink, from K to eighth grade
and and so you can, and youclick on that, and it's going to
give you like, six to eightpassages on that topic, on that
quote, unquote grade level,which they're not perfect,
right? But you can kind of lookat the Lexile levels and kind of
see so it's great because it'sall free. I use it all the time.

(41:35):
I use it when I do that,fluency, protocol, partner,
reading, paragraph shrinking. Iuse that in the in I'm first
grade now, so I don't do thattill like January or February.
They do have decodables onthere, but I want to give a
warning about those, because Ithink it's a it's a bit of a
stretch to call them decodables.
I've never seen a very clearscope and sequence. So it's kind

(41:57):
of like whatever that authorfelt was decodable is kind of in
there. So, so those can behelpful if you want the student
to have an easier text on plantsor an easier text on you know,
whatever it is you're studying,but just know if they if they

(42:17):
really need a highly decodable,decodable, then those aren't
going to be the best choicefor some students. It will be
fine, right? And I kind of likeI was looking because what's new
on their website is now thatthey say, oh, there's like, you
can do a scope and sequence ofour decodables with you fly,
aligned with you flight andanother one with fundations. But

(42:40):
really, it's not like it hasn'tbeen controlled. So it's like,
oh yes, here's, here's a goodone for you know, short Oh, but
I click on it, and it's like,okay, if, if they haven't been
taught all those high frequencywords and those content words,

(43:01):
then this is only, like, Iactually figured it out, because
I don't know, I had too muchtime last night. I guess I just,
like, went down this rabbithole. I'm like, it said on there
that this was, like, 86%

Unknown (43:14):
decodable, okay, but there's no clear scope and
sequence. So I looked and Isaid, when my student is doing
short o or short i, this is whatthey know. So for my students,
it would be 56% decodable. AndI, like, figured that out,
right? Versus the actual youfly, one would be

Lindsay Kemeny (43:37):
98% decodable.
So, so you just want to takethat into account. It doesn't
mean like, oh my gosh, they'rebad. I'm never going to use
them, but I'm not going to usethem for certain students right
until they can do that readthose high frequency words. So
anyways, that's just like, mywarning with those is they're
not that can be a littleconfusing. And then another
website great for free texts,again, I think the same, like

(44:01):
more if they're ready for beyonddecodables, kind of like read
works is the text project, andthat has a lot of free texts.
And I'll tell you some of theones I love. Like, I would say
grades two to five, this isgreat. So they have FYI for
kids, and I use those a lot withmy son when I was providing

(44:23):
intervention for him.

Unknown (44:27):
So those are great.
They're kind of like littlemagazine articles on different
topics. And they also hada set called talking points for
kids. And I thought those wouldbe really great if, especially
if you wanted to pair them withsome opinion writing, because
they're kind of like these, youknow, exciting topics, and they
can read about this and decidehow they feel about it, and

(44:49):
then, you know that could begreat to pair with your writing
instruction. And they do on thetext project. They have some
that they call decodable.
Decodable read.
It's, again, I would just saycaution with those, because when
I looked at them, they werereally, you know, there's
that percentage would be reallylow, I think so it's if, if your

(45:11):
kids can do that, great. If theyneed, actually need, really
need, a strong, decodable then Iwould go with something else.
But if they're ready totransition, then fine, yeah, and
I am glad you mentioned thatwebsite that was on my list too.
They also have a lot of goodsupport vocabulary wise and
comprehension. So I think, and Iknow their formula for

(45:32):
decodability is different. It'sFreddie Hebert,

Stacy Hurst (45:36):
and everything is free. I love that too. I found
that website, I think, literallydecades ago now, and have
learned so much from it. Anotherone that I will just briefly
mention, and then I'll say anhonorable mention is reading
universe. Everything on thereading universe is free, and it
really is.

(45:57):
There are videos, there areskill explainers. There are
printables.
The thing I think is very cooland unique about this website is
that everything is kind of bitesized. So if you just have a few
minutes go on there like you canget a quick explanation of
something. But they have acourse that is called para

(46:20):
reading. It's a free course forparaprofessionals, and I don't
think you see that anywhere, soit's pretty cool. That was one
thing I would recommend on thatwebsite lots of I like their
printables too. Their design isreally nice on those good
explainers. And then this theone I really wanted to
highlight. And I think maybethis isn't fair, because it is a

(46:45):
I have zero affiliation with it,but it's not they do have some
free resources, but subscriptionis required to get all the
things. But it's called theteachers table, and it's created
by teachers, and it's actuallyclassroom video. I noticed there
is a video on their Molly nest.
They are adding content daily,and I actually use it, I project

(47:06):
it to show my students whatclassroom instruction looks like
based on any topic. They haveeverything on there. I showed
them a lesson with El cone andboxes. I, you know, using that,
that website, but I've beenimpressed with what I've seen so
far. I think it's very new. Andthis is at the teacher's
table.orgI did pay for a subscription,

(47:29):
and if I were really helpful,I'd tell you how much it was,
but I don't remember. I think Ijust tried it maybe for a month
or something, but I willprobably renew it. And you can
have, like, they have an accountwhere you can have bins and
shelves, or what they're called.
You could put anything on there.
You can save videos for to go,for you to refer to later.

Unknown (47:55):
Yeah, I just think it's pretty cool. It's newer. So
again, and it is it you do needto pay to get to really get the
full experience of it. I want tojust go back on reading
universe, because it's, it'sfunny, you mentioned that, and I
actually have an open tab rightnow because I started watching a
video on reading universe, and Idid, I want to go back, but

(48:17):
reading universe has a lot ofteacher videos too. So, yeah,
videos teachers in theclassroom. And I'm just watching
this oneon conjunctions, and I'm like,
Oh my gosh, this teacher is justknocking it out of the park. She
she's doing a really good job,really clear. They're doing,
like, a sentence combining. Andit's just so nice. Like, as

(48:37):
teachers, like, if you can, youknow, I just love, like, when I
see a model or see someone else,just explain it so clearly, you
know, for me, I'm like, Oh mygosh, I could do that more
clearly. Okay, I appreciatethat, and then it just helps me.
So I just like, I'm like, it'sthe video is paused, because I
was actually watching it rightbefore we came to record, and I

(48:59):
want to finish it. So I thinkI'm kind of excited for what
else you know I can find on thereading universe, because it had
been a while since I've been onthere, and they keep putting all
these things on, and it's like,free. Everything is free. So
yeah, yeah, it's really great.
And I love that you can see inmany of these websites, actual

(49:20):
classroom instruction. And thatis like it like you say,
Lindsay, I always recommend itas a literacy coach to go
observe somebody else teachingyou always refine your
knowledge. And at a minimum, youcan walk away saying, Oh, hey, I
think I do a pretty decent jobat this, you know, or or I like
that wording, or this resourcesI'm going to add it. It's going

(49:43):
to make my instruction that muchbetter. So I love the teacher.
Okay, the teacher next door tome, so I will hear her like,
when my class is like, at theirspecials, and it's like, prep,
and I hear her teaching inthere. And I'll just like, so
many times I'm like, oh, like, Iwish.
I wish she taught that lessonbefore I did, because I love how
she just explained that ever andso, you know, even just that,

(50:07):
it's just, I don't know. I justthink we can learn like
teachers. We can learn so muchfrom each other as well. I just,
I love, like, listening to her.

Stacy Hurst (50:16):
I get, I totally get that. That's one of my
favorite things about being inschools now I do get to just pop
into classrooms and observe, andit's really a lot of fun. The
other thing I want to mentionabout these resources is that
most of them are free utilizethem, right? I know we don't all
have a ton of time, but I feellike they can be very

(50:38):
beneficial, no matter how oldyour students are like, we've
talked a lot today. I'm excitedto look up some of the ones you
guys mentioned that I didn'tknow about, and I think we're
just getting more and more ofthem. So any honorable mentions?

Donell Pons (50:53):
Yeah, I've got one The New York Times, so I enjoy
it as a publication for news.
But also they've always they'vehad for a long time, probably 20
years, maybe more resources forteachers, and I've been
surprised at how many teachersdon't realize that. And they're
free, so they have a wholesection called Lessons in
teaching, and a whole thing onhow to teach writing, and they

(51:16):
have eight modules. They do anew curriculum every year. So
you can look at the newcurriculum for writing. Much of
it's geared towards teens thatthey do have opportunities for
you to see what the ages are.
The resources are so many thatyou could even Google in their
New York Times. 100 freeresources for teachers. So
they've labeled it underdifferent things. But I highly

(51:37):
recommend browsing through thereas an educator, because they
have some really great things.
They have AI and students andwhat they think about it and how
they're using it. They have teamtopics, and we have a reporter
that reports on that topic, andthe students can send in
questions, and then they get tosee the reporter respond to the
questions from teens. So it'sreally interactive. And I just
think it's a great resource. I'msurprised I don't see it more
often. Yeah, I know how cool isthat we heard that they had

(52:01):
teacher things. So when I wouldjust went to New York Times, I
didn't see anything. But if IGoogle, I just put in New York
Times teachers. You think thatwould okay? And then lessons in
teaching, writing lessons. Itsays, So, huh? Wow, okay, and
it's mostly writing lessons.

(52:22):
Yeah, as a publication that theyare, it's mainly writing
lessons, but they also have somemath, they have some science,
and they also have taking apartwhat we read. Oh, here we go to
make sure the sourcing of it.
How well did I understand that?
Am I being led in what's beingsaid? So it's a way to have some
some savvy about what it isyou're reading online. It's

(52:44):
really okay, so it's called, soif you look for learning
network, so that's what it'scalled, The Learning Network. So
it's learning network, it's alsolessons in teaching. And there's
a bunch of terminology, okay,yeah,

Stacy Hurst (52:56):
I found like, a one big heading where it's like the
Learning Network, and thenthere's all this stuff, and it
tells you how to use the siteand lesson plans, writing
prompts, just like you said,quizzes. Oh my gosh. Okay,
awesome, guys. I have a to dolist, but I really want, I want
to block out time go here.
Lindsay, you were gonna mentionanother honorable mention? Yeah.
Honorable mention. Devinkerns.com, forward slash finder

(53:17):
with a pH. I use that all thetime to find certain words with
certain spellings, right? Soyou're like, when does Oh, you
spell the sound Oh, okay, I'mgonna search up and see and then
you can look for one syllable,two, symbol, three, syllable,
whatever you need. Yeah. Andthen to go more from the
orthographic patterns to themorphological patterns, or
history, etymology, etym online,great dictionary. I love it. I

(53:41):
use it daily, probably actually,so lots of good resources out
there. What I also love aboutall of these resources is the
the com the way it enhancesteacher knowledge, and that
gives us the opportunity to useour knowledge to distinguish,
like Lindsay, the examples yougave of percentage of

(54:04):
decodability, that is a perfectexample using our teacher
knowledge to make sure thesetools work for the students that
we're working with. And then,because it is the time of year
that it is reading, Horizons isalso offering free access to
their online curriculum rightnow. And I know we you've

(54:24):
probably heard about it becausethey've been promoting it, but
if you go to readinghorizons.com/free
then you can access it theretoo. And that really is their
whole program. So good stuff.
Thank you guys for thisconversation. I am like, I'm a
little bit energized andmotivated to go look these up

(54:46):
now, and I'm excited for thepossibilities. So thank you.
Wow. Thanks. And those of youwho are listening, if you have
any other suggestions, we areopen. I think we all.
Three learned that there are waytoo many resources to cover in
one episode, so feel free tosend us what online resources

(55:08):
you utilize and are helpful foryou, and we hope that you'll
join us on the next episode ofliteracy talks.

Narrator (55:19):
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to
you from Reading Horizons, whereliteracy momentum begins. Visit
reading horizons.com/literacy.
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