What a time to be a language teacher! Our classroom novels have come a loooong way since the earliest “easy readers” I read in my high school Spanish class! So many choices and levels now makes Free Reading with my Little Darlings an absolute delight. Read on for some fantastic easy readers in Spanish AND Japanese that I am very excited about!

Spanish Easy Readers:

A few weeks ago author Adam Giedd reached out to me about his new Confidence Readers series, books written to be comprehensible to students in the first week of Spanish class!! FIRST WEEK OF SPANISH CLASS?! ¿En serio? That sounded like a a pretty big claim to me. He graciously sent me a few books to test drive with my Little Darlings and I was eager to try them out. They didn’t arrive in time to read during our first week of class, but we just read the first in the series, Benito quiere an amigo, 3 weeks in, and it was a homerun!

I introduced the book by telling them, “Can you believe you’ve acquired enough Spanish in just three weeks to actually read a real book?!” They met me with disbelief an a few exclamations of “bet”. Then we jumped in. I read it aloud to them, Kindergarten style: showing the pictures, doing the voices, asking lots of questions, all the things that our favorite elementary teacher did back in the day.

The hilarious full color illustrations, surprising plot twists and super simple Spanish engaged one and all:

In fact, Adam’s Confidence Readers series is so easy, I’ve added a new category to my library levels, to assist students in picking out books for Free Reading. Previously the easiest level was A, but I’m classifying these books as AA and I’ll be sorting through the rest of my A books to see what else should be moved into AA territory. These books will 100% be accessible for my most hesitant readers to read independently when we begin Free Reading a bit later in the year.

The other cool thing about the Confidence Reader series: You can buy the books for Free Reading or you can subscribe to get printable books and a whole lot of other goodies including worksheets, audio recordings, slideshows at https://www.confidentpigeon.com/ Look how neat this is:

Next week we’ll be reading the next in the series ¿Somos amigos? Chicle and I’m looking forward to digging into the extra resources for upcoming sub plans. (In October my department is going to see the One and Only La Maestra Loca in Chico, CA and we’re so excited!) Everyone knows writing sub plans stinks, and it’s especially tough at the beginning of the year for level 1 when they need you for everything. This will be a great help! Thanks, Adam!

And now they’re available in French, too!!

Japanese Easy Readers:

On a reading related note, I have been doing a language exchange with Kathryn Tominaga, my new and amazing CI Japanese teacher in Australia. Every week, we do a zoom lesson in Spanish followed by a lesson in Japanese, taking turns teaching each other. It is truly one of the highlights of my week! Recently she introduced me to a series of easy Japanese readers that I just have to share!

Japan Easy Reads, written by Monique Francis, has a handful of level 0 and level 1 books, focusing on the Super Seven Verbs with lots of repetition. (Which I need in Japanese, let me tell you!) Each book comes in 2 editions: Scaffolded Readers (with proper nouns written in English) and Extension Readers, written entirely in Hiragana and Kanji. Just look at how adorable they are:

As a language student, learning to read an entirely new system, I am reminded that developing reading stamina takes real work. Even though I can “sound out” hiragana and katakana characters, it takes a lot of exhausting brain power! When I am faced with too much Japanese text, I find myself giving up before I even get started. Monique’s books achieve the perfect balance. They give me just the right amount of language per page: enough to challenge without overwhelming me! For that, I am so grateful! ありがとう Monique さん!

Both Adam and Monique’s book do a great job of building confidence in novice students. Dear Susie Gross was fond of saying, “Nothing motivates like success” and I witnessed this motivation-building-reading-success in my classroom this week and experienced it myself in Japanese. Who doesn’t need a confidence boost on the path to proficiency?! Easy readers for the win!

If you don’t teach Spanish or Japanese, and you read this far, wow! Share the wealth and please comment and link the best resources for easy readers in your target language! What are the Mandarin students reading? German students? Latin Little Darlings?!

📕❤️️📗❤️️📘❤️️📙❤️️,

AnneMarie