The primary focus of Pathway to Literacy, a comprehensive curriculum project for ESL literacy learners, is a set of free and modifiable theme-based lessons. Each theme includes teaching tips, lesson plans, stories, vocabulary practise and phonics practise.
Although these reading passages were originally developed for ESL literacy learners, most can work as well with adults whose first or primary language is English.
This is a comprehensive collection (121 pages) of reading passages, instructional activities and teaching guidance developed for ESL literacy learners. Stories are grouped by themes to support newcomer settlement such as housing, transportation and health. Phonics are taught using rhyming word families.
Developers state the resource can be shared and modified.
Level - Pre-beginner
CrowdEd Learning has re-presented and enhanced the stories and activities on Wakelet for online learning. Pre-Beginning Wakelet collections include
the story in numbered sentence + paragraph form
Jamboard activities to practice sentence building, phonics, word families, and vocabulary using the Color Vowel® chart*
Flippity typing practice
This is a slightly more difficult collection of reading passages, instructional activities and teaching guidance developed for ESL literacy learners (43 pages) with a focus on more challenging word families and vocabulary.
Developers state the resource can be shared and modified.
Level - Beginner
CrowdEd Learning has re-presented and enhanced the stories and activities on Wakelet for online learning. Beginning Wakelet collections include
the story in paragraph form
Jamboard activities to practice sentence building and vocabulary using the Color Vowel® chart*
Flippity typing practice
* Color Vowel® resources with a CC license appear on the Phonics and spelling page. These resources can be used to help you use the Jamboard activities with students.
The Literacy Centre of Expertise "a hub for English literacy resources" has a variety of resources including some produced by the organization.
Reading Skills Stories were developed for adult learners. There are three different sets of stories available on their site. All resources can be downloaded from the site.
Phonics Stories are available in PDF and online interactive formats.
Interactive Foundational Stories are available in PDF.
The Kasi and Dami series has both teacher and student books.
Copyrighted. PDF files are available.
Level - Beginner
In addition to the above resources, The Literacy Centre of Expertise has also produced Five online interactive modules that can be accessed on their website.
Copyrighted. Online modules.
Level - Beginner
40 ESL literacy readers can be accessed on the The School of Global Access at Bow Valley College website. Each reader is available as a PDF and online audio book. The PDF readers can be downloaded and printed. A clean and uncluttered learner page can be used to access the online versions with audio. An instructional guide with pre-reading and follow-up activities is also available. Also available is an overview of the books at each level of difficulty.
Copyrighted. PDF and online versions available.
Levels - Levels A to G relate to Canadian ESL literacy benchmarks foundation to CLB 4.
NOTE: Unfortunately, these links no longer work. The ESL literacy readers are no longer available through Bow Valley College. However, another organization has provided access to some of the readers here.