Teaching English Toolbox

Storybooks and Graded Readers

From DeepAI: a cute cat reading a story to a classroom full of kittens

Using authentic stories in your classroom is extremely useful at almost every level as many picture books carry deep messages and can be enjoyed by adults as well! Graded Readers may be useful, but there is debate as to whether working with them is as beneficial as working with the original versions.

  • Below is a text on many different techniques to use while telling a story with a picture book.  (Buechel, L. (2021). The Power of the Picturebook. ELT Forum. US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs)
  • Below are some Idea Cards for working with graded readers (Isler, P.)
  • Below are some reading role cards (Isler, P.)
  • The section on Songs contains student blogs which also contain story ideas!
  • Sherlock Holmes is now in the Public Domain. You can find examples on how to work with it including a Cereal Box Book Report on the Babylonia website.
  • e.g. see Long, M. (2020) Optimal input for language learning: Genuine, simplified, elaborated, or modified elaborated? Language Teaching, 53, 169–182 for ideas on text adaptation.

Useful online tools and publishers

  • Nowadays, there are so many online stories! Do you know any good tools?  Go back to the first page of this "Lernobjekt" and check out the resources listed on the Padlet - there are many tools you might like and many publishers listed which also offer placement tests (e.g. Penguin Readers).
  • Project Gutenberg is older but has books you can print out (e.g. class set), audio books, and more. 
  • Ransom and Barrington Stoke have graded readers aimed at native speaking children which are useful in Swiss classrooms;
  • Oxford has an app that has books and activities for learners;
  • Epic books has everything from books on crafting with duct tape to stories about the middle ages.
  • The ELT Forum website has tons of short classics with wonderful worksheets that can be used in the classroom. Here is an example of "The Gift of the Magi" which can be used in a fifth or sixth grade class, and you can use the search filter for more. 
  • Many companies such as Macmillan or Penguin readers have graded readers. Macmillan has a practical book [could not resolve link target: il_0_dfile_4013238] with myriad ideas for using them.
  • You can find books related to UNESCO's Sustainable Development goals here or by searching as many teachers are embracing these aims to guide their teaching!

Erasmus Story Projects

  • What language development activities can you do with storybooks?
  • How can you use easy/graded readers in the classroom? Why might you use them? Why might you not use them? If you use original text, how will you scaffold instruction?
  • How does working with a picture book or a graded reader in English vary from working with one in the local language?
  • How can you keep your learners involved and active whilst reading a story?
  • What are some different ways of working with Easy Readers (all the learners have the same book or all the kids have different books) in class?
  • Can you name a few story-based projects that you could do and describe how you might assess and organize them?