2022 - START BRIGHTLY & READ BRIGHTLY: Reading Resources & YouTube

Let's start the 2022 school year hopefully & "brightly" with this link to some free resources...

Whatever happens, pandemics or anything else - let's start by being positive for the future!

READ BRIGHTLY is a wonderful website that has resources, book lists and also links to read alouds for books on YouTube! These books and guides are not formally levelled with any specific reading formula for text complexity. It’s more for what the website says its goal is to “raise kids who love to read”! So, perfect for teachers, parents and even grandparents to access and use!

Yes, it’s American, and the voices don’t have a broad American accent, so would be quite acceptable to most parents and teachers here in Australia!

Books and book lists are organized by age groups, Baby & Toddler, Pre-K (3-5 years), Growing Reader (6-8), Tween (9-12) and Teen (13+).

There are various lists of books – most exciting, most anticipated, so some are books that are about to be published and others might be books available – including some older Golden Books! There are narrative stories as well as some factual texts – scroll way down to find “3 Tips to get your kids interested in STEAM”. Lists may also be season specific, so there are some Christmas books and links still there in January!

The website also includes quotes from authors, and some videos about books and illustrations.

You might want to subscribe to the Brightly Storytime YouTube channel – this includes some other kid-friendly channels for a small number of publishers.

There are many playlists to choose from and also under the community tab – there are some links for specific topics, and yes, these might be more American – for examples about Martin Luther King? However, I don’t see this as a negative – as we can always learn something from these read alouds – often their messages are universal!

The Home Tab has some past livestreams that you can play – including Brightly Storytime LIVE: Ready for school! This is 37 minutes long, so you could select what’s best for your class? You need to ignore the chat information, as that was for the ZOOM…

Maybe some of the questions are those that you or your students might ask? You could also pause the video, and have some chats with your class!

There are stories read aloud by different teachers, so you might have to position the start at the book you would prefer? If you do this, keep a record of it, and you’ll have the start and the grade level you used it with! These are great resources for both teachers and parents!  Email me and let me know if this is useful?