tar heel reader – Jane Farrall Consulting

Goodbye Tar Heel Reader….. and hello Monarch Reader

Sep 4, 20246 Comments

Today was a day with a sad ending – for me and many others. It also has a new beginning – but I will get to that later on…. The sad ending that happened today is that Tar Heel Reader, an incredible resource for many of us who work with beginning readers of all ages,

Self-Selected Reading in Our Classrooms

May 21, 20154 Comments

Self-selected reading is often seen as the easiest literacy block. However, to develop a student’s love of reading requires careful resource curation and an awareness of their interests and preferences. Below is a checklist I use with teachers in working through the self-selected reading block in their classroom. The two main guiding rules are: It

Picture Books for Older Readers

Aug 3, 201416 Comments

I often get asked for suggestions of picture books for older readers. Books, written at a simple level, that have content to appeal to teenagers or adults. Tar Heel Reader is the best source I’ve found for books like this – but there are also many commercially available books that meet this need. The fabulous

Favourites and Collections – Creating bookshelves in Tar Heel Reader

Apr 16, 20133 Comments

This is my third blog post about the new look Tar Heel Reader. I am finding these new features so useful – and I hope you are too. In this post I’m going to focus on Favourites and Collections – both of which are great ways to store and share groups of books in Tar

Using Tar Heel Reader in app mode on your iPad

Mar 17, 20138 Comments

This is my second post in a short while about Tar Heel Reader – but I just wanted to take a look at some of the great new (and old) features while Tar Heel Reader’s new look is still fresh! The second of these features is full screen or app mode – which is a

Self-selected Reading for Early Readers of All Ages

Mar 7, 2013

Today’s post is brought to you by the two guiding rules of self-selected reading. It isn’t self-selected if you don’t choose it yourself. You can’t get better at it if it’s too hard. One of the literacy activities that we want students to engage in is self-selected reading. Self-selected reading has many purposes: it gives

Putting Tar Heel Reader books into iBooks – with Speech!

Mar 4, 201324 Comments

I am a HUGE fan of Tar Heel Reader – and have blogged about it before. However, Tar Heel Reader has had a big upgrade and has some great changes that I am going to write about over a few blog posts. Today, I’m going to focus specifically on the ability to put your Tar

Letter of the Week: Resources for Older Students

Aug 26, 20128 Comments

This year, I’m working with quite a few teachers who have older students in their class who need to improve their recognition of the letters of the alphabet. They need to be able to instantly and quickly identify letters so that they can move further along their journey of becoming readers and writers. This means

Tar Heel Reader: Making Favorite Bookshelves

Jun 14, 20125 Comments

I know I’ve blogged a little bit about Tar Heel Reader in the past – but I think it’s time for a new blog post about one of the most useful features of this wonderful resource. Tar Heel Reader is one of my very favourite literacy resources – currently it contains over 24,000 easy to