Resources › Books and Readers
What we actually read here, including the older books that teach better than most of what is sold new. Every one of these is free.
Free
A lending library of scanned books, including school textbooks from the 1980s and 1990s and, crucially, their teacher's editions.
Modern workbooks give you the practice and leave out the teaching. That is not laziness, it is structure: a workbook is half of a two-part system, and the half that explains the concept is a separate textbook and teacher's edition you were never sold. Those older teacher's editions are sitting here, and they carry on every page what to say, why the rule works, and what students get wrong — the exact thing missing from the workbook on your table.
Free account, then borrow like a library: one-hour loans that renew while you are reading, or fourteen days. A scanned book sometimes has pages missing; the item page says so before you borrow. You have to make the account yourself — without signing in you see a few pages and then the back cover.
Free to borrow
A grade 7 English course from the era when a textbook still taught: student book, workbook, resource book, and both teacher's editions.
This is the single most useful thing on this page if you are teaching from a modern workbook and cannot work out what you are supposed to say. The teacher's edition carries, on every page, the explanation of the rule, the common student errors, and the wording to use. That is precisely the layer that was removed when workbooks were unbundled from the courses they belonged to.
⚠️ The five-volume scan is missing pages 3, 4, 15, 16, 19 and 20 — damage in the physical book, not the loan. The Rueda edition below is the fallback. Borrowing is free but needs an account.
Free to borrow
Middle school life science courses, several of them with the annotated teacher's edition included.
Science is the subject where a workbook alone fails hardest, because the questions assume a chapter you were never given. These carry the chapter: cells, ecosystems, heredity, and the scientific method, in the order a course actually teaches them. Borrow one and you have a sequence to follow instead of a pile of unrelated activities.
Pick one and stay with it rather than mixing four. The order a course puts its chapters in is most of what you are borrowing.
Free · public domain
A graded reading series from 1836, still one of the best sequences ever written for teaching a child to read.
McGuffey teaches phonics and reading in the same book instead of splitting them into two subjects, and it builds strictly: nothing appears that the reader has not been taught to decode. That is why the spelling list on this site is phonics-only with no sight words. The sight-word approach is the newer idea, not the older one — Dolch is 1936, Fry is 1957.
Public domain, so it is yours to download and keep, with no loan window. Start at the Primer or First Reader and move up when the reading is comfortable, not when the age says so.
Free · public domain
A complete handwriting system from 1915, not a book of tracing sheets.
It teaches handwriting as a MOVEMENT rather than a shape to copy. The drills train the arm and shoulder instead of the fingers, which is why Palmer handwriting stays legible at speed and finger-drawn handwriting falls apart the moment a student has to write quickly. If handwriting is the thing you are trying to fix, this is a method, and it costs nothing.
Written for business clerks, so the tone is dated and the loops are more ornate than anyone needs now. Take the movement drills and ignore the flourishes.