5 Ways to Build Your FVR Library for FREE

This is the year of new routines for me. I changed up my first day plans, started Persona Especial off with extra special people, included Weekend Chat right from our very first Monday, and a whole bunch of stuff I’ve only had time to share about on Instagram (there are just NOT enough hours in the day, people!).

One of the routines I am most excited about is Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) in class every Tuesday. We’re starting off with spending just five minutes reading in Spanish, once a week.  There are a TON of great readers out there to hook your students of all different levels, but sometimes funds are tight. I get it! I wanted to share five different ways I added to my FVR library using free resources I either found or created. Here we go!

See more on readers in your classroom:

• Free Voluntary Reading
• Classroom Library List
• Books Your Novice Students Will Love
• Author Spotlight series – check out books from my favorite authors!
• Recommendations for Readers in Spanish Class Levels 1-AP
• How to Read a Novel with your Spanish Class

Watch the Video

5 Ways to Build Your FVR Library for FREE

1. Revista Literal

My students literally “ooohed” when I introduced this to them! Revista Literal is an online resource for beginning Spanish language learners written by Spanish language learners,  organized and published by The Comprehensible Classroom. Open, download, and print and you have a SOLID stack to get you started!

2. CI Non-Fiction Library

This resource is beautifully curated in a spreadsheet that you can sort by language, level, and other information! Profe Elote also accepts submissions so the more people aware of this resource the better. Add away, friends!

3. Noticias from Maris Hawkins

The title of this post is “46 pages to add to your FVR library for free!” and if that doesn’t tell you it’s something you should click on I’m not sure what will! BOOM. Beautiful, amazing resources for news around the world for your students to read about!

4. TeachersPayTeachers

I went to TpT, hit the “FREE” filter under the Prices menu on the left and searched “reading.” There are a ton of options, and here’s one from me! I’d love it if you added it to your library and let me know what your students think!

Miss Maestra has also linked a ton of freebies in one orderly post here if you don’t feel like sifting through the filter. Thanks, Cassie!

5. Class Stories

This has been one of the best things I’ve added to my library, and it is so simple! My students and I have been creating stories together in class. As we go through them, I type them, with the details established in each class, and post them in Google Classroom for absent students, or for students to read to their families. When we finish a story, I move it to a Google Slide file of our class stories, add some clip art and a footnote or two, and print! Voila! This option has been very reassuring to some of my students, and they like to read what other classes have come up with. They also get excited to see their own stories in print!

An EXTRA bonus to this – my teammate and I share this doc. Double the stories, double the fun, half the work! Goooooo team!

This post from Martina Bex has also been super helpful to keep in mind as we write up stories!

Organizing Your FVR Library Freebies!

Whew! If you sat down and hit print on all of those, you probably have a pretty big stack of files! When I did that, I really wanted things to be organized and presented neatly to the students. Ideally, I’ll eventually move them into binders, but I didn’t have any on hand and I’m waiting to snatch some up from the “For Grabs” pile at my school! For now, this is my fix:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Ashley ?Srta Spanish (@srta_spanish) on Aug 28, 2018 at 2:07pm PDT

You can see in the picture all of those stacks of paper have been neatly organized into packets by theme! I created some printable covers and used those to divide up the resources into more manageable chunks, and named them so the students could remember what they had already read.

If you would like, here is the presentation to print “covers” of your own!

Free FVR Library Resources

Are there any other library resources I’ve overlooked? What would you add to the list?

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