Free-reading: an open soure reading program

Oddly enough, I came across this via a Slashdot post:

Main Page - Free-reading: "Free-Reading is an “open source” instructional program that helps teachers teach early reading. Because it's open source, it represents the collective wisdom of a wide community of teachers and researchers. It's designed to contain a scope and sequence of activities that can support and supplement a typical “core” or “basal” program."

A while back I'd thought of developing a library of short stories that could be used in reading programs; including more boy oriented stories. They're doing something like this.

There's some content in place and it has a real advisory board:

Catherine Snow

Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Michael Kamil

Consulting Professor of Education; Psychological Studies in Education; Learning, Design, and Technology

Stanford University School of Education

Barbara Taylor

Guy Bond Chair in Reading

University of Minnesota

Director of the Minnesota Center for Reading Research

Barbara Kapinus

Senior Policy Analyst

National Education Association

Fred Carrigg

Director of Humanities K-12, Middletown Public Schools

Former Special Assistant to the Commissioner for Literacy, NJDOE (2002-2007)

I think most of the contributors are teachers. They claim to have an evidence-based philosophy, that would mean a much stronger phonics orientation than is common in Minnesota.