r a d d l e s t o r e personalised stories and poems for young readers, their parents and teachers | Read Adapt Display Discuss Listen Extend |
Raddlestore is a resource for reading, listening, thinking, discussing and exploring in the primary sector.
Stories and poems come in Word, pdf and audio files. They can be personalised, printed, played, projected and read individually or in groups.
They cater for a variety of reading ages and levels of sophistication, are illustrated for younger readers and include questions to check comprehension and encourage a variety of extension exercises.
Each text is analysed for you in terms of reading age, word count, readability score, topics, themes and potential extension activities. The Word versions have questions for comprehension, discussion and exploration. Ability and interest levels range from entry to high achieving year 5 (or less experienced young secondary students).
Here are three samples in Word and a sample sound file:
Table Manners (reading age 6) sound file for Table Manners | 8 upwards |
9 upwards |
As of February 2008, the site includes:
| title | poem or story? | reading age | readability score (%)
| word count | illustrated? | audio recording (mp3) | topic/themes | activities encouraged in addition to reading or listening; potential extensions |
Quentin's Big Adventure | s | 7 (9 max if unassisted) | 87.7 | 2091 | colour drawings every page, can download separately to make calendars | male female | adventure,
curiosity, feeling unappreciated, poor memory, perspective | using
maps, using IT and graphics packages, making calendars, colouring in. |
Seamus the Kitten
| p | 7 | 93.3 | 1066 | pencil
drawings | male female | misbehaved
animal, searching, concern | imaginative
description, literary language, use of reference sources, animal welfare, human
development, reflection on experience |
The Ballad of Dirty Martin | p | 5 | 100% | 453 | no | male | getting
dirty, ironies and bad luck | ascribing
blame, awarding or witholding sympathy; imagining nasty mucky stuff |
Table Manners
| p | 6.3 | 98.4 | 115 | no | male | messy
eating and criticising adults | enunciation
(b/p/s/sh/t/m/), sounds and letters (spelling sounds), the technicalities of eating
difficult foods, how and when to criticise adults |
Pieter van Snugjumper | p | 8 | 84.2 | 174 | b/w
drawings | male | food,
greed | using
a dictionary, using an atlas, history of barges, healthy eating, literary terminology |
Poem with sound effects | p | 6 | 93.1 | 129 | no | n/a | sounds | tolerance
levels for sounds, sounds as atmosphere, recording and editing, linguistic differences |
The Chairtoad's Dance | p | 6-7 | 94.5 | 2328 | line
drawings | male | dancing,
rekindled enthusiasm | using
reference material, local festivals |
Colours | p | 7 | 92.9% | 60 | no | male | colours
(associations, metaphors, uses) | research
use of colour in the environment; explore metaphors in language |
Why mice are good at maths | s | 8-9 | 86.2 | 2883 | photos
and b/w drawings | male | maths
being hard, doing homework, gaining confidence | measuring,
dividing, estimating, using reference sources |
Toolbag and the Pirates | s | 8 | 90.2 | 10,698 in five chapters, each subdivided |
pencil drawings | male | agricultural
crisis, piracy, separation and restoration, ownership and exploitation, cracking
codes, healthy eating. | use
of maps, trade routes, calculation, navigation, alpha-numeric codes, research
healthy eating |
Zoe and the Why Witch | s | 9-10 | 83.8 | 12,497 in five chapters, each subdivided | some
pencil drawings | male | red
hair, bullying, sulking, being different, self-analysis, reading between the lines
and drawing inferences | use
of reference material, development of building materials, development of different
languages, questioning game, |
To order, you can just email your name and job title to info(at)bpfe.org.uk or, if you prefer, send one of your school's order forms by post to FET&C, 50 St. Thomas's Rd., Worthing, West Sussex, BN14 7JN. We will send you a password for access which you can share with colleagues within your school.
The initial price of £50 (no VAT) provides for registration and a licence that allows you download, print, project or broadcast as many copies as you wish within your own school for educational purposes. You have legal permission to edit text and images for local use.
Each year, new texts are added as the site grows. All new material added during your licensed year will be included in the single price. Thereafter, the annual re-licensing fee is only £10 for unlimited copies
For the really technophobic, we can also provide all sound files on a single cd, for an extra £5 (which includes postage and packing). A new cd can be sent with the new material when re-licensed each year. We can also print out our user guide and post it in paper form if you wish.
