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- Bow Valley Readers – An Update!
June 23, 2025
Bow Valley Readers – An Update!
Many Beginning English educators are asking, “Where have the Bow Valley Readers gone?” Unfortunately, Bow Valley College in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, sunsetted their readers collection in late 2024. After some exploration, the ATLAS team has pooled existing resources to ensure educators can still access a portion of the cherished Bow Valley collection.
1) Our new resource, ESL Literacy Readers, can be found in the Beginning ESL Library on the ATLAS website. This resource is a quick-click to fifteen of the original Bow Valley Readers.
2) Our colleagues at the Immigrant Welcome Center in Indianapolis, Indiana, have a number of the Bow Valley readers posted (with permission) on their Adult ELL Pathway to Literacy website. This new resource lists all the available readers as well as a direct link to a google slideshow of the book, which can easily be converted to a printable booklet, if you like!
3) We also recommend you check out the large library of ESL Literacy Readers posted by Pathway to Literacy, as there are many more beyond the Bow Valley ones listed here! All these readers feature adult ESL learners engaging in everyday work and life activities.
These readers, along with an instructor’s guide, were developed to help ESL teachers create comprehensive, theme-based lessons for adult ESL learners. The themes were carefully chosen and are both of high interest to learners, and more importantly, relevant to their lives. Every effort was made to ensure the stories would authentically represent learners themselves as well as events and issues that a typical learner may experience.
See the ESL Literacy Readers in our library collection and share it with your colleagues. Continually check back to pursue the Beginning ESL Library; it is live and growing! Finally, let us know if you have a favorite Beginning ESL Literacy resource you think should be added to the library.
