Before you explore our recommendations below, check out seven top tips for supporting reading at home:
Oxford Owl
The Oxford Owl website has plenty of ebooks available for your child to read. It is definitely the best place for you to head if your child is in Early Years or Key Stage 1 and you want them to practise their reading.
However, there are also books on there which are suitable for our junior readers – and some of them have Accelerated Reader quizzes too!
Accelerated Reader
If your child is in the juniors, then they will be used to reading books and then quizzing on them using Accelerated Reader. They can still do this whilst learning at home, but bear in mind that not all books have a quiz on Accelerated Reader.
If you want to check if a book has a quiz, then click on the Accelerated Reader Bookfinder button below, and for your child to access Accelerated Reader, click on the Accelerated Reader button below. However, if your child finds something they would like to read, but which doesn’t have a quiz, it will still be good for them to read it so please encourage them to do so. There are ideas further down this page on where to find books to read online which may have Accelerated Reader quizzes (but do also see Oxford Owl above).
Poetry By Heart
This poetry site is both easy and fun to explore, and the collection has been carefully curated so you know everything on there is quality. There are also videos of poems being read aloud, including by children.
Book Trust
Book Trust is a national children’s reading charity. They have set up a super YouTube channel containing lots of videos of authors reading their own books aloud. Also, their own website contains some lovely interactive books.
Oak National Academy Virtual School Library
You may have heard about Oak National Academy in the news, including their new virtual library. One book is being added each week, so do check back each week to see what they are offering.
The Open University
As part of their work in supporting reading at home, The Open University has put together a page of resources. There’s a lot to look through, but we particularly recommend the PDFs with links to ebooks, magazines and videos. There’s a photo of them below so it’s easy for you to find them when you click onto the main page.
Library of Birmingham
This eLibrary is available all day every day and for free. The button below takes you to their step-by-step guide to accessing their range of eBooks.
Accessing the eBooks does require a library membership, and this looks a bit tricky to organise during lockdown, but hopefully you – or a family member – already has a membership you can use.
Read Theory
Read Theory is a super interactive reading site. It’s all about reading reasonably short texts and answering questions about them. It is responsive to a child’s needs, making things easier or harder depending on how they fare with the questions. It is best suited to children in the juniors, but some younger readers may benefit from it too.
There are both information and fiction texts on the site. The feedback offered and the chance to accumulate points will work really well for lots of children. The sign-up process does look a bit offputting, but it’s not too bad really – and the website is really easy to use once the initial sign-up has been done. You don’t need a class code for it even though it invites you to enter one.