With over 124,000 school closures across the US, teachers are reaching for tools to keep their students reading. Understanding the risk that many American students could lose 25% to 30% of this year’s educational progress due to school closures, OverDrive Education is now offering the Sora Sweet Reads program. This program is designed to help educators and students preemptively beat the “summer slide” with popular digital reading materials through the award-winning Sora student reading app.
To check whether your school is offering Sora Sweet Reads, visit https://soraapp.com. If not, schools can sign up here with a no-cost book bundle including Sora Sweet Reads titles (up to June 15).
Previously known as OverDrive Summer Read, Sora Sweet Reads provide access to these digital books during the next 100 days to encourage student reading during the rest of the school year and summer break. From April 15–July 31, students of nearly 25,000 participating schools worldwide can enjoy free, 24/7 access to juvenile and young adult ebooks (and select audiobooks) from their school through Sora.
"Having access to a set of quality simultaneous use titles via the program last year provided an incredible opportunity for equitable access and independent reading across so many students at one time," said Lisa Nash, Digital Learning and Library Services Officer for the Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta in Australia. "The 230,000 plus students in the consortium of 14 dioceses embraced the program so well that we had the most checkouts of any consortium in the world. We are very much looking forward to the quality titles this year during this time of remote learning online.”
Students from all 50 states and eight Canadian provinces can enjoy 30 popular juvenile and young adult ebooks (including select well-known audiobook and Read-Along options) while schools in other countries will have up to 20 of these titles available. The digital book collection is divided into elementary, middle and high school sections. Ebook titles include Black Panther (available through June 15), Ms. Marvel (available June 15-July 31) and Big Nate From the Top. Audiobook titles include Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus and Akata Witch. The full list is available here.
The ebooks and audiobooks in the Sora Sweet Reads program are provided by 11 publishers and enabled by OverDrive Education’s industry-leading platform. Students of participating schools can download Sora for free from any app store or use in web browsers at https://soraapp.com. Students can then borrow the program’s digital books with unlimited access and read on all major eReading devices, computers, tablets and smartphones with a valid student ID.
For more information on the Sora Sweet Reads program, click here.
Educators can learn more about Sora through https://meet.soraapp.com/ and register for a Discover Sora free trial.
About OverDrive Education – a division of OverDrive
OverDrive Education is the leading digital reading platform for K-12 schools, offering the industry’s largest catalog of ebooks, audiobooks and streaming video. As a 100% digital company serving 23,000 schools worldwide, OverDrive combines technology with content to support learning and reading in the K-12 classroom, library and home on all major devices. Sora, the student reading app, was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2019. Founded in 1986, OverDrive – the leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools worldwide – and OverDrive Education are based in Cleveland, Ohio USA. overdrive.com/schools
