Bring Stories to Life with These FREE Read Aloud Websites!

Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast, where each week we talk about a free piece or two of technology that you can use in your classroom. I'm your host, Shanna Martin. I'm a middle school teacher, technology and instructional coach for my district.

And I'm her producer and husband, Fuzz Martin. And I can't wait because I think this is going to be a grape episode.

Wow. Clever. But we have nothing to do with.

Well, berries.

I understand that.

Grape is a berry. And we're talking about

Is it though?

I think so. Let's see. Hey, Google, is a grape A berry. So. Uh, yes. Grapes are berries. According to botany, a berry is a fleshy fruit without a stone that comes from a single flower with one ovary. Grapes have soft skin, juicy flesh, and many tiny seeds.

Thank you for reading us the definition.

Yes. So, uh, grapes are berries, and my pun

works well, awesomely. Hi everyone. Um, we're at episode 181. And one of the websites today is called StoryBerries. Yeah. If you needed the connection with grapes,

I don't know if I'm gonna talk a lot. My voice is kind of raspy.

Oh wow. Oh my goodness.

Okay.

So lately. I have actually had a lot of my, lot of different elementary teachers asking for different ways to have their students read independently, and we use a lot of sites like Epic and things like that, that they build into their curriculum, but they're also looking for ways and choice boards that they can have some of our younger students be able to pick stories. Or teach them some more independence since we're getting towards the end of the school year. And they just wanted a different selection of things that they have seen often. So I was digging around and I found two very cool sites that are helpful for, our elementary teachers and they do have choices all the way through middle school. So elementary, middle, there's definitely a lot of options. For, having audio books online, along with videos that go with them or, stories posted online. So the first site we're going to talk about today is called,

yes, what is it?

Storyberries. This site is S T O R Y B E R R I E S dot com. So Story Berries offers all kinds of stories for students, and it is great because parents can use this at home as well, especially now that some people might be starting to think about summer.

Yeah, we're getting there.

It feels summery today here in Wisconsin, but it won't, later on this week because we go from like 70s to 40 because that's how this is our weather works. and so Story Berries offers Audio and, stories for students that parents can use at home too. So if you think about that during the summer, or you want to have some read alouds where kids can like listen while they're doing cleaning chores or just playing, I know sometimes that's, that's a good thing to do. So, and on storyberries. com, so you've got the home, you've got stories, you have audio, you can even buy their books if you want to, but under the stories category, it gives you, so you can choose your age. Your time limit. So how long do you want kids listening? Like maybe you want a super quick story. That's like five minutes. They have like five minute bedtime stories. Or maybe I want a 10 minute bedtime story or a 20 minute bedtime story. Which is cool because I definitely want to share some of these with our. There's a story called the Dragon of the North, which I'm sure she will be super excited about. So, and then you can pick type of story. So there's lots of options. If you're looking for like learning stories or fairy tales or chapter books, they have all those options as well. And then they have like different parenting topics. So if you are looking to choose a topic because you want to support your student, your student, or your child in some way, they have like communication stories and courage and diligence and curiosity and empathy, which is awesome. So they can be sorted many different ways, which I appreciate not just one. So I'm just going to go into the age category to kind of pick things through. They have books from like zero to three all the way up. And I'm going to look at seven to 12 years old. It seems like a great choice. There's lots of options. So click the read all. Cause there's more choices than just like the first six books that you'd see. And I'm choosing carrot shenanigans with pirate PD. Oh, because one of my favorites and one, and these are stories that you normally wouldn't hear all of the time. And they're going to be, you know, a new mix, which is kind of nice. I will note that there are ads. Everywhere. Yeah. So just be aware that they're, they're, everything I've run across, it's been completely family appropriate and child friendly, but just be aware that there are ads when you're going through.

And also when you play the video, sorry, when you play the, like animated books, if they have them, a lot of times they have an ad, like a YouTube type ad that starts before that. So you're gonna play it in class.

Set it up first before you just, I mean, unless you just hit mute, which sometimes you get that too. And so you can read along with the animated book. They have like the video again, like you said, the ad kind of pops up. That'll play through. And once that does the videos there. Or if you want students to kind of read on their own, and so you can just keep on scrolling through the page and it will give you the images and the text and image and texts and things like that. So you could also use these for like students if they're learning how to like analyze a piece of text and writing. Or if they're able to add to a story or things like that, there is a different ways that you can set these stories up. So not just reading independently or listening independently or watching independently, but also you could use these in your writing classes where you're having students pick out. Um, like different types of punctuation, or if you're having them pick out main characters or those types of things, so you can use these stories in all kinds of ways in your classroom, not just necessarily for independent reading, and listening. Speaking of listening, which I appreciate, they have an audio section, so if you click on audio, you'll see that they have a list, and you just kind of scroll within the list, and it will give you all of their stories in audio version, which I appreciate, because sometimes, Just listening to the story is fine, and you don't have to go to a playlist or anything like that. You can just go right to this website, and you're able to go to story barriers, and then find audio stories for your kids. And they are going to match the books that you have as well. So that is pretty cool. You can also sort through them by collection under the audio section as well.

Cool

Yeah, so it's just a large collection of stories where you can read them. You can listen to them You can watch the videos to go with them and kids can pick and choose and there's stories that you wouldn't see all of the Time either and they're pretty fun. They've got some cute pictures audio And you look like you're going to do something right now, so I'm just gonna wait.

I was just gonna say that this site's pretty cherry. Though I don't think cherry's actually a berry. I think cherry's a stone fruit.

It's got a pit.

Yeah.

So that would not fit the definition.

Is a cherry a berry? No, no.

It's got a pit. It's not a berry.

Berries are, oh my goodness. Fleshy fruits with multiple seeds.

So there's that. So cherry berry berries are known as droop. Oh my goodness. Is category

with a thick, hard, endo carp, thick skin, and an outer fleshy layer. Okay.

Uh, we all feel so much brighter learning about fruit today.

Other examples of droop, uh, by the way, story apricots, mangoes, berries, olives, avocados, dates. And most nuts. Thank you. Carry on.

Story berries,

story berries.

So check it out with your kids. There's fun audio, visual listening stories, built them in digitally and they're free, which is great. I have one more free story website. I would like to share.

Okay.

To add to the list. So as you're like collecting free stories for, again, independent work or whatever you want to do, you build them into your classroom. I feel like once you have a collection of written stories and then you can have audio stories, like there's just different ways you can build these into your classroom and have kids practice or listen or read along or all of the things that you can do. So it's called free children's stories. com. F R E E children's stories. com. so free children's stories. We love a freebie. Again, there's some ads on this one. But here you can browse by age or browse by story style. So it has those options as well. And then, so I'm going to pick four kids ages eight to 10 because this one, again, you can pick and choose and there's fewer choices on this site, but again, like why a cricket chirps, I feel like you might appreciate this because we might learn something while we read the story. But when you come across this site, it's a little bit different. It will be the video right at the top. So like the YouTube video with the story being read to you is across the top. And then as you scroll down, the story text is below it. So you don't have picture and text, it's just text below it. But what I would like to note, and I thought was interesting about this site is that you have the option, you hide, you hide the ad that comes across the bottom. You'll see, you can select your language. So I was curious about that. Like if I'm going to choose to put something in Dutch, I can choose that. It doesn't change the YouTube video. It will still read in the YouTube video is still obviously going to be what it is. It's going to be what it is. Yeah. But if you scroll down the story, then is written in the other language. So like this one, now it's written in Dutch, which I thought was really great because If you have bilingual students, or if you have students learning a language, or if you are like practicing different language skills, you could have the video playing in, it'll be in English, but then it will be in print below it in whatever language that you choose. So it could be a great way for students to practice different world languages. It would be a great way to apply vocabulary. But it would be also great for kids maybe who read in a different language but are learning English that they could then hear and see. in both. So I thought that was a great teaching tool with these stories is that you could change out the language. Again, it doesn't change the video with the story, but it does change the print text of the story below it into whatever language you want to pick from. And there's a list of quite a few languages that you can pick and choose from.

Sure.

So I thought that that was a cool option, to swap out for free children's stories. So you'll have your stories. Again, with all of you can pick. Age topic. They even have middle grade novels. They have a couple of those, which is kind of nice. And you have these different options for languages that you could also choose like rhyming stories for kids, which could be good practice in both listening and different languages, non rhyming stories. So again, there's fewer choices in this one, but there is the swap for being able to switch into a different language and print below it. So I thought that was a cool extra that would be helpful for, for Teaching students, and also you could use these in other classes.

Very good. Freechildrenstories. com.

Yeah. There's no fruit in this one, though. So.

No.

There you go. That's,

that's the pits.

So funny. But anyway, so if you're looking for some different audiobooks or visual stories or some online free textbooks or online free storybooks for your students, I think both of these are great options for. Just adding some different choice to your students and then you can apply them in a variety of ways. So storyberries. com and freechildrenstories. com. Check both of those out, especially elementary teachers. I would definitely say K 5 for sure. There's just some options in there. It would be fun to try out and work on some independent skills with your kiddos.

Groovy!

Well, there you go.

There you go.

Thanks for tuning in. This has been the tech tools for teachers podcast. If you ever have any questions, you can find me on the app formally known as Twitter at Spartan W X or on thread. And if you want to get more information on the links to the technology discussed in this episode, you can visit smart and WI tech. If you'd like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or two. Visit BuyMeACoffee. com smartinwi or visit smartinwi.com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep the show going. New episodes each week. Thanks for listening. Go educate and innovate.

The ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the smartininwi.com website are those of the author, Shanna Martin, and not of her employer. Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast, please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as described. We'll be sure hope they do. And we can all agree that I was berry, berry funny in this episode.