by Gigi Swenson

Are you struggling to find books in your language to read to your students? The website Children’s Books forever.com offers free picture ebooks in many languages that you can print out on card stock, creating an easy-to-read book. There are numerous topics, and I’ve been able to find some that correlate, at least in some part, to some of our units. If they are too long or complicated for your age group you can read an abbreviated version of the text on each page. The illustrations are cute and quite descriptive themselves, even if kids don’t know all the words. For most kids it will be pretty clear what’s going on.

Of course you can also use any English book in your language classes by “reading” them a version that you’ve translated ahead of time. I like to translate the text and print it out small, then tape it to the back of the book so I can just read the back while showing the pages of the book to the students, and noting on the back when to turn the page.