Read with me: Accessible stories

Read with me: Accessible stories is a series of new grid sets created to help every child experience the joy of reading, build foundational literacy skills and communicate more independently. Specifically designed for AAC users, these interactive stories provide an accessible and interactive way to read.

Built-in features

Each book:

Uses a clear layout that’s designed for ease of access.
Contains simple, predictable sentence structures to support early reading development.
Presents story text without symbols to focus on word recognition and decoding (symbols can be added if needed).
Contains differentiated resources that move in increasing levels of challenge to grow recall, retelling and story exploration.

Communication partner bar

Across the bottom of every page, you’ll find the communication partner bar. This is designed specifically for communication partners, providing quick, easy access to a table of contents, glossary and quick talk button.

Find the Symoji

Each page includes a small Symoji character hidden somewhere in the illustration, offering an extra challenge to keep readers engaged. See if you can spot the Symoji on each page!

Resources

The Read with me resources are broken into four categories:

• Story explorer for readers and developing communicators, the activities were designed to help the learner connect to the story
• Story builder for learners developing sequencing and narrative skills, with activities focused on understanding the order of events
• Story thinker for learners ready to reflect, compare and comment, these activities promote personal opinions and language development.
• Story detective for learners working at a higher level with reduced language support, with activities that stretch comprehension and early decoding.

More resources are also available, including the Whiteboard and a phonics-friendly keyboard.

Getting started

We’ve created five reading levels to guide learners through progressive reading development. Each level is colour coded with structured changes in text size and length, sentence complexity and vocabulary. These levels are meant to be used as flexible stepping stones throughout a literacy journey.

• Level 1: First experiences with reading. Simple, repetitive sentences.
• Level 2: Beginning decoding. Slightly longer text with predictable patterns. 
• Level 3: Developing fluency. Humour, varied sentence structure, and richer vocabulary. 
• Level 4: Greater complexity. Events and character actions require more inference and understanding
• Level 5: Independent reading. Extended text, multiple events, and greater character depth. 

Reading is more than just a skill, it’s a pathway to independence, confidence and self-expression. And most importantly, it’s something every learner deserves to access. By reading together, you’re not just building literacy skills, you’re building connection, confidence, and independence. We hope you enjoy reading together with these new grid sets!