Links to Websites for Families

Links to websites for families

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Free Books in Different Languages

Library Resources for Multilingual Families

School Resources for Multilingual Families

Websites for Multilingual Families

 

Free Books in Different Languages

African Storybook— This site allows you to read digital stories in English or various languages of Africa and surrounding countries.

BITS–English Language Learners: Listen and Read — This site shows many digital books, stories, and articles with human narrators reading them aloud in English.  The books included are for upper elementary and secondary readers and are meant to support multilingual children through read-alouds.

Bloom Library — This website contains free books you can click on to read (with some available in audiobook form) for different levels of readers in various languages.  Choose your language and a book by level, then click on the READ button to go to click through the pages of the book.

Book Dash— This site has books for young readers created in South Africa.  They are written in English and many have translations you can choose for different African languages.  You can read these books online or print them out to get a hard copy.

Global Digital Library— This site allows you to choose your target language then presents books arranged by reading levels for you to see.  There are also math practice topics where children can check their progress on various sorts of beginning math problems.

Global Storybooks — This link to the site contains many books for young readers in a variety of languages.  The text are displayed page-by-page and include a sound button for a native language narrator to read the text aloud.

International Children’s Digital Library — This site contains full books in digital form written in various languages.

Let’s Read–Digital Library of Children’s Books — This site is created by The Asia Foundation and contains over 10,000 digital books.  Books are sorted by categories  and many contain a translate button to show the text in English or in one or many Asian country translations.

Spanish and English Bilingual Books with Dr. G — This is a playlist that contains 8 short books online read by the author, Dr. Gilda Martinez-Alba from Towson University.  She reads the fun, short early reader books in English and Spanish with photos she’s included about the adventures of her 2 adorable dogs and other family adventures meant to engage young children.  They could inspire your family or class to create their own online books with their own photos!

Storyweaver — This site allows you to set up an account to enjoy thousands of children’s stories online, in several languages and formats: Read, Download, Translate and Create your own stories.

Unite for Literacy— This site holds picture books on various topics to click on and hear translations of the English text read in over 50 languages.

 

 

Library Resources for Multilingual Families

Check out free library programs in the Baltimore Metro area:

School Resources for Multilingual Families

Check out links to various area school system parent/guardian resources, some targeted for multilingual families:

Websites for Multilingual Families

Arlington Public Schools created “La Sopa de la Abuela: Special Education Telenovela,”— a resource in Spanish and English for understanding special education processes and resources.

Colorin Colorado — a website with lots of ideas for families about books across cultures and home learning ideas.  A button at the top switches the website from English to Spanish.  Here is a 90-second video for show families how to use the App to locate the Family Toolkit in various languages.

CCBC Family Literacy ESOL Program — See the schedule of programs this coming semester for English language learning classes.  This program is designed for parents whose first language is not English.

Duolingo — Duolingo is a free app for learning 40+ languages through quick lessons. The lessons lead you through speaking, reading, listening, and writing exercises to build your vocabulary and grammar skills. With each practice session, you earn points to unlock new levels. The app uses research-based teaching methods and fun features to encourage daily practice at your personalized level and pace. For added motivation, you can invite friends using the app to compete for the longest streak of daily practice!

English Learner Family Tookit (in English, Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish)–a 9-page report for families is produced by the U.S. Department of Education and has sections on enrolling, attending school, getting services for your child, keeping your child safe, and helping with homework.

Family Activity Handout–This resource in English and in Spanish from the Regional Education Laboratory Mid-Atlantic give tips to parents about reading at home, questions for parent conferences with teachers, and more.

Family Engagement Resources for Education — This site from the U.S. Department of Education has links to many other resources for education at all levels for children and adolescents.  Many of the resources are translated in up to 7 different languages.

National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities — This website has links in various languages to federal health agencies and information.

Understood.org — This is a website for Spanish-speaking (or English-speaking) families with ideas to help their children at home with attention and focus, behavior supports, and learning tips for the home. 

Waterford Upstart — This non-profit educational organization provides free computer-based learning readiness activities for young children to be ready for school.  You can register at the website to access the programs for free.

WIDA Resources for Families — WIDA includes English proficiency standards that most of the United States uses to measure and create instructional plans for multilingual students.  This is the link from WIDA for many resources that can help families understand and make progress with their children on their English proficiency.