At School
Shelley Hale Lee
Meet the Park family. Their two daughters are starting school in the US. Their teacher is very nice, but she wants to give Min Jee an English name. And Min Jee doesn’t want an English name... Her mom is taking a Zoom class to help her English. But nobody can hear her! What can she do?
In the Kasongo family, Helene doesn’t understand how to do her math homework. Her parents can do math, but the teacher wants it done a special way… Joseph is working hard at university. Then one day he has a chance to help another student learn a language he knows.
At School helps English language learners practice reading in several ways. The stories help reading fluency. Sentences include useful vocabulary and many common words in English. Some stories have conversations that model spoken English. At School features short and long vowel sounds and common sight words. The stories feature common situations in elementary school, high school, and university.
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In Town
Shelley Hale Lee
Meet the Mendez family: Vera, Ricardo, David, and Carmen. The kids need new jackets, so they go shopping. At the store, Carmen meets a good friend. The Mendez family enjoys lunch at Kate’s Diner. Then, Ricardo starts to think about a new job as a food truck server. Will he take the new job?
Meet the Yousef family: Dina, Abdul, Zara, Hassan, and Fariba. Fariba is happy to meet her friend Carmen at the store. On the way home, Dina needs to get medicine at the pharmacy for Hassan. Hassan is sick, and he has a big soccer game in two days. Will he get better in time for the game?
The families meet at the soccer park for the big game. David and Hassan play on the same team. Will they win?
In Town helps English language learners practice reading in several ways. The stories help reading fluency. Sentences include useful vocabulary and many common words in English. Some stories have conversations that model spoken English. In Town features short and long vowel sounds and common sight words.
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At Work
Shelley Hale Lee
Ricardo wants a new job. Kate needs help with her new food truck. Ricardo is good at serving food, but lunch time is very busy. A customer says, “This is fish. I don’t want fish. I don’t like fish! I asked for chicken.” Help!
Zara is a high school student. She wants to buy a guitar. But guitars cost a lot of money. What kind of job can Zara do?
At Work tells stories of ordinary people solving problems in their jobs. Pam doesn’t want a new computer. Abdul needs new tools, but he doesn’t have much money. Bob is too busy, and he needs help at work.
At Work helps English language learners practice reading in several ways. The stories help reading fluency. Sentences include useful vocabulary and many common words in English. Some stories have conversations that model spoken English. At Work features short and long vowel sounds and common sight words.
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Downloads
Click the links below for your free teacher’s guide and audio files to At the Lake, filled with detailed instructions and extra ideas.
At the Lake and Other Stories for Adult Emergent Readers
Shelley Hale Lee
At the Lake integrates interactive reading instructional techniques and sound ESL methodology to help beginners acquire literacy skills in English. Focusing on phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension,
At the Lake reinforces and extends the basic literacy instruction found in At the River.
Short stories and multiple exercises offer scaffolded practice in the most commonly used sound-spelling patterns of long vowels in English. R-controlled vowels and other vowel variations are also taught directly. Students review short vowels, consonant blends, and consonant digraphs in each unit. At the Lake helps students build reading fluency and decoding skills, which foster vocabulary acquisition and comprehension skills.
At the Lake enables ESL teachers of any experience level to teach reading in English to students with limited or interrupted formal education, or to any student who needs to improve spelling, decoding, pronunciation, and reading in English.
A detailed teacher’s guide and audio files are available free of charge on the Wayzgoose Press website.
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Downloads
Click the link below for your free teacher’s guide to At the River, filled with detailed instructions and extra ideas.
At the River and Other Stories for Adult Emergent Readers
Shelley Hale Lee
At the River presents a combination of interactive reading instructional techniques and sound ESL methodology to give low literate students a bridge to mainstream ESL textbooks. Each unit provides structured, scaffolded practice in writing and reading letters, letter combinations, words, sentences, and paragraphs. Clear illustrations reinforce both phonics and vocabulary for everyday situations. This effective, class-tested phonics and reading system enables even ESL teachers with no reading development training to teach nonliterate and semiliterate students how to read in English. A detailed teacher’s guide is available free of charge.
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As a Level 1 Adult ESL teacher, I have found “At the River” to be exactly what my students needed! Its clear, systematic approach guides both literacy and literate students through the shapes and sounds of the English language, culminating in a series of decodable stories that are fresh, interesting, and relevant to students’ lives. Although the book is geared towards emergent readers, even literate English language learners can benefit from explicit instruction in English phonics and sentence structure. I would recommend this book for teachers of adults (or children!) who are learning to decode.
~ Jaimie L. Foster, Amazon reviewer
I love that this book, though intended for adult emergent readers, can also be used to teach beginning level ESL kids. I have three 1st grade newcomers with zero English proficiency and this book just works wonders for them!
~ Emily Chavez, Amazon reviewer

Shelley Hale Lee
Shelley Hale Lee has been teaching for almost 20 years. Her ESL experience includes public schools and colleges in Budapest, Southern California, and North Carolina. She currently teaches intermediate and advanced ESL and an Academic Literacy course for beginners at Enloe Magnet High School in Raleigh, N.C. Shelley is a teacher trainer at the local and state levels specializing in literacy approaches for ESL emergent readers.
Visit Shelley's website for teachers of adult literacy at www.emergentreaders.org.
Sign up for her newsletter, with articles and activities for teaching literacy and beginning reading skills, by clicking here: http://eepurl.com/ccnHuD.