ABRACADABRA is an interactive, early literacy tool that supports beginning readers through 33 activitites linked to 20 stories of different kinds.
Boreal Tales s is a world-building digital platform that provides learners with the opportunity to create and share their writing. It includes various themes, lush environments, characters, and objects that are sure to spark the imagination of learners. This is a supplementary resource for grades 4-6. Click here for more information.
Epic! offers books for grade 6 and under.
International Children’s Digital Library holds a digital library of outstanding children’s books from all over the world. The materials are presented in their original languages.
Knowledgehook is a digital teaching and learning platform for grades 3-10. It provides curriculum-aligned formative assessment tools and resources to identify and address common gaps, errors, and misconceptions in mathematics learning. For more information on how this platform can be used to support mathematics instruction and assessment, please reach out to your mathematics Regional contact.
PBS Learning Media holds pre-k through grade 12 resources, including bilingual resources eg. English and Spanish
Raz-Plus is an online resource that provides printable, projectable, and electronic books at 29 levels of complexity. This digital literacy resource is available to grades primary to 3 teachers and literacy-based support educators. To access Raz-Plus, please follow up with your Literacy Lead or EAL Consultant. Click here for more information.
Reading Rockets includes webcasts and articles for parents and teachers on instructional approaches and family activities.
Squiggle Park helps children master their early reading skills (aligned with the primary to grade 2 curriculum), including phonemes, phonemic awareness, word work, spelling vocabulary and more.
Storybooks Canada is an educational resource that promotes literacy and language learning in homes, schools, and communities. Part of the Global Storybooks project, it makes 40 stories from the African Storybook available with text and audio in English, French, and the most widely spoken immigrant and refugee languages in Canada.
Story Online includes read-aloud by well-known people, along with a family and teacher guide. StoryWeaver allows you to read along to stories, including in other languages.
StoryWeaver allows you to read along to stories, including in other languages.
Troubadour is the new, completely online, educational resource developed by Nanomonx and is basedon the app-based platform Boreal Tales. Similar to Boreal Tales, Troubadour will motivate students to write and improve their writing skills. However, Troubadour differs from Boreal Tales in that it requires no installation as it is an online platform that can be accessed anywhere, from any device. Troubadour offers content which can easily be aligned with Nova Scotia curricula. Troubadour also allows teachers to give feedback directly on the platform to provide students multiple opportunities to revise and edit their work. Please see following FAQs on Troubadour and Video Chat Troubadour: English French (accessed through the FAQ link)
Unite For Literacy offers free texts for primary students to read. It includes the option for students to click on the words and have the text read to them. Text is also available in other languages.
UNICEF has released a publication, My Hero is You. This is a book written for children around the world affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not recommended that children read this book independently, without the support of a parent, caregiver, or teacher. The book is available in 11 other languages. The story is also available as a short film on the webpage above.
Best of the Reader is a series of e-books for adult literacy and English as an additional language learners. This site has 15 e-books and a teachers’ guide. There are 16 e-books on a variety of topics, several of them specifically about Canada. Each e-book has 8 to 10 stories, and each story has exercises and activities to go with it. There is also an answer key in each e-book.
Bilingual glossaries for English language arts, math, science, and social studies. There are also glossaries of cognates, a guide to literacy terms, and devices for language arts. Resources were developed by the University of the State of New York.
BITS - English language Learning - Listen & Read provides audiobooks, news stories, short stories, songs, and radio dramas. Choose between faster or slower listening speeds and read along with the texts of the stories and songs. For intermediate and advanced learners.
Bow Valley College - School of Global Access provides ESL Literacy Readers, a collection of forty theme-based readers, along with an instructor guide.
British Council website for beginner to pre-intermediate learners offers activities to help them master meaning, pronunciation, and the spelling of new words.
Conversation Questions for the ESL/EFL Classroom provides EAL students something to talk about with this compilation of discussion questions you can use in class.
Department of Imaginary Affairs has an English as a Second Language (ESL) Library containing stories written by newcomers for newcomers, though they can be enjoyed by everyone, entitled, The Stories of Us. These stories are a collection of the newcomer experience in Canada told in a first-person voice. Each storybook in the library is written in the author’s home language with the English translation on the same page.
ERGO is the ESL/ELD Resource Group of Ontario. This website provides access to books, guided reading lessons and math lessons. There is also a series of bilingual (English/Arabic) simple readers by Waterloo Region District School Board.
Desmos offers a free suite of math software tools, including the Desmos Graphing Calculator and Scientific Calculator, as well as free digital classroom activities. Click on the globe in the tool bar to access the site in other languages. Though there is a login, it is not required to access the tools and activities. For grades 7-12.
EAP (English for Academic Purposes) Foundation: This site is divided into main areas like reading, writing, speaking, listening, vocabulary and study skills. Each area is divided into clear components and the skills required for each are stated and supported in very simple, clear language. Under Speaking, for example, there are components on presentation skills, discussion skills, and taking speaking exams. Under Writing, there are components on the writing process, reports, essays, other genres, cohesion, style, paraphrasing, referencing, critical writing and exams.
EF English Grammar Guide is an easy-to-use website featuring tips about usage, as well as, explanations with examples.
EnglishGrammar provides activities on all aspects of written English.
GeoGebra is a free mathematics software for all levels of education that brings together geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphing, statistics, and calculus in one easy-to-use package. Click on the globe on the lower left-hand side to access the site in other languages. Tools and activities can be accessed without login. For grades 7-12.
Jeopardylabs includes free Jeopardy Games.
Loveyourpencil includes videos and downloadable documents on grammar, reading and writing.
Many Things is a website that helps with reading and vocabulary. There are also listening activities.
National Geographic Learning – Interactive Reading Practice: Rewritten texts based on articles from National Geographic Magazine. The reading texts are followed by interactive reading comprehension activities, a recording of the text to listen to online, a supplementary grammar and vocabulary practice worksheet based on the text, and links to National Geographic images and videos for users to explore the topics further. Each Interactive Reading Practice is provided in three different versions: Beginner/Elementary, Pre-intermediate/Intermediate, and Upper Intermediate/Advanced.
New Internationalist provides free lessons to help learners develop speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary and their understanding of grammar.
Rewordify converts difficult text into more accessible versions. Parts of speech can be also be examined.
World Newspapers provides access to newspapers from around the world.
Text compactor is a free online automatic text-summarization tool.
Activities for ESL Students offers grammar and vocabulary practice for all levels, including many bilingual quizzes. This project of The Internet TESL Journal (iteslj.org) includes thousands of contributions by many teachers.
BBC – Learning English has a wide variety of materials and resources for all levels of language learners. It includes videos, podcasts, quizzes, and written text.
Bilingual Subtitles offers YouTube videos in English and other languages.
BITS - English language Learning - Listen & Read provides audiobooks, news stories, short stories, songs, and radio dramas. Choose between faster or slower listening speeds and read along with the texts of the stories and songs. For intermediate and advanced learners.
British Council offers a wide range of resources, including for children and teens. There is also LearnEnglishKids and LearnEnglishTeen.
CBC Kids News offers news for children and youth.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Education Place offers free graphic organizers.
Lingro is a website for translating words from English to other languages.
One Stop English provides information and resources for English-language teachers.
ReadWriteThink provides educators access to the highest quality practices in reading and language-arts instruction by offering the very best in free materials.
Teaching English includes primary and secondary resources (lesson plans, activities, stories, poems, and teaching tools).
TextHelp Resources includes Read & Write, OrbitNote, and EquatiO. Read & Write provides text-to-speech to hear words, passages, or whole documents read aloud with easy-to-follow dual color highlighting, text and picture dictionaries to see the meaning of words explained, along with speech-to-text. OrbitNote allows you to transform and interact with documents in a completely different way. Create an accessible, dynamic, and collaborative space that works for everyone. EquatiO allow you to create equations, formulas, and more, digitally. Helping to make math and STEM classes more accessible and engaging.
The Math Learning Center includes free math resources.
Skills Workshop offers free functional skills and skills for life resources. Includes free adult literacy, numeracy and functional skills resources.
Stories Audible is the world's largest collection of audiobooks. Audiobooks are available in six different languages.
5 Minute English has been designed to provide short, easy explanations and exercises.
University of Victoria’s English Language Centre includes English-language lessons and practice exercises.
Wikipedia – Simple English is available in many languages. Languages are listed on the left side of the page.
Wonderopolis provides 2000+ Wonders of the Day, covering a vast range of topics. There are word challenges as well.
Dr. Carol Salva, author of Boosting Achievement – Reaching Students with Interrupted or Minimal Education has a helpful blog and padlet.
Colorin Colorado website has lots of information for all things related to EAL.
Empowering ELLs is a resource centre for EAL educators who want to empower their English learners to achieve English proficiency, develop thinking skills, and acquire effective social skills.
Erick Herrmann is an educational consultant specializing in teaching English learners, who provides multibriefs, as well as short and practical articles.
Esther Parks, Instructional Designer/Educational Consultant and Coach, has a website with EAL resources, tech tips and blog.
Larry Ferlazzo's Best of Series: This site contains “best-of” website lists for many subjects. If you scroll down below Art and Classroom practice, you will find ELL/ESL – and below those lists, in each of the other subject areas listed below that (math, science, etc.) the top listing will be sites for ELLs in that subject area.
Tutela is online community for ESL/FSL professionals. The site includes collections and resources that may be helpful for high school students. There are also groups, events, webinars, and forums.
Valentina Gonzalez, an educational consultant and content creator for Seidlitz Education and co-author of Reading & Writing with English Learners: A Framework for K-5, has a website full of practical tips,
Mental Health
Kids Help Phone is providing phone counselling service in multiple languages, with the help of trained interpreters. It’s all free, private, and available 24/7 in Canada. No ID required. This service is available to all youth in Canada (regardless of legal status). This includes refugees, newcomers, temporary and permanent residents, and other young people across Canada who would like to get support in Ukrainian, Russian, Pashto, Dari, Mandarin, and Arabic (please see attached documents). This is in addition to English and French. The number to call is: 1-800-668-6868. For more information, please see following link: https://kidshelpphone.ca/wellness-support-in-multiple-languages/
Mental Health Needs of Refugees in Canada: Hillnotes from Library of Parliament.
Multicultural Mental Health Resource Centre has resources available in multiple languages.