top of page
Top of Page

Totally Literate

Totally Literate is an English Literacy Program, designed for students worldwide. The younger the student, the more guidance he or she will require. Over time, however, students will require far less guidance. For older or more advanced students, who are already literate in another language, our numerous products may be self-taught.

Beyond teaching reading comprehension, Totally Literate develops literary appreciation and a full spectrum of literacy skills.

Totally Literate is designed for a wide range of students:  preschoolers and even toddlers, schoolchildren in early elementary school, remedial students in middle school and high school, students with learning disabilities, fast and not-so-fast learners, mature adults who desire to become more than merely functionally literate, foreign speakers who want to learn English so well as to discourse in it easily, and finally, high school and college students who, regardless of their mother tongue, want to excel in one or more additional languages.

Edge Browser

Having a seamless audiovisual interface, Edge is the one and only browser we recommend for our students and visitors.

 

Classical music is provided to facilitate reading and enhance enjoyment. The five media players in the header play continuously as you surf from page to page. However, the media players found on the various pages stop playing when you leave one page to go to another.

An "A" Student

The Red Well-Read Reader

TRWRR cover

The Red Well-Read Reader (TRWRR) is the nexus of our Totally Literate Program. Its main part is comprised of 361 short stories, each story typically containing just a single rhyme. All together, the stories systematically cover the entire phonetic makeup of the English language. These pithy stories, besides being inherently humorous, are in part decidedly highbrow, if you will. This keeps the brightest students from ever getting bored and spares adults from being talked down to. Moreover, owing to the stories' unvarying simplicity of decoding (that is, reading irrespective of comprehension), they never overwhelm slow learners and make them become dejected and quit trying to read altogether!

Lullabies & Rhymes/Phonics
Printing & Cursive/Vocab
Decoding
PP & CC/Lit. Appreciation
Ant-illiteracy War Games
2B Banner

"Smiles and/or laughs guaranteed on every page."

A tiger on the prowl

1. Not only do lullabies and nursery rhymes develop rhythmic speech patterns, but they are also delightful to everyone, from babies in cribs to centenarians in rocking chairs! 

Nursery Rhymes

The world is a jungle to the unread!

Slides

Anti-Illiteracy War College

Cartoon Drawing of Anti-illiteracy War College Buildings
Anti-illiteracy War College

Especially for:

Special Needs Students

Diligent Students of Any Age

Foreign Speakers

and above all

Bright Kids Who Are
Destined to Become Independent, Critical Thinkers

Woman cartoon character welcoming Totally Literate visitors.
Brendon & Brighid McGann
Woman caricature waving

Developing Perspicacious Minds
for
All-Out Guerilla Warfare on Illiteracy

Phonics

Lullabies/Nursery Rhymes

Learning to pronounce any word
Developing a love for language

Printing and Cursive Exercises

Also developing spelling and reading abilities simultaneously

Rhyming Stories

Classic Fables

Covering entire phonemic makeup of Eng. lang.
Selected choices appealing to various ages

Vocabulary

Literacy Games

Becoming a veritable wordsmith
Ten fun, Anti-illiteracy War Games

Modes

10 ways to learn on desktops as well as smartphones

Languages

Translations

Over 100 Languages
Translating rhyming stories into scores of languages

OUR FOCUS and INTENT:

To Help Young Scholars from 5 to 105 Years of Age Become Totally Literate.

To Nurture Very Young Students to Become Tomorrow's Leaders.

Monkey with hands held as if looking through binoculars
Our Focus & Intent

To Help Special Needs Students Overcome Their Handicaps or Handle Them More Effectively.

To Help Foreign Speakers Comprehend English and Be Readily Understood Speaking it.

To Teach Students the Subtleties of the Written & Spoken Word.

To Help Students Develop Diverse Literacy Skills & Acquire Literary Appreciation.

To Have Everyone Smile and/or Laugh with Every Turn of the Page.

To Help Students Learn with Their Heart 'n' Mind Entwined!

Cartoon character with finger pointing to his brain.

International Student Body

Inter. Nat. Student Body
A Diverse group of multicultural happy smiling cartoon characters

1. Home Schoolers

  • First and foremost, Totally Literate is designed for children of dedicated parents who expect their little ones to rise to stellar heights.

​​

  • To maximize parental involvement, all Totally Literate products, particularly TRWRR, have been designed to be as much fun for parents as they are for children. Even Lullabies and Nursery Rhymes will delight parents. Parents may sing along while their babies and toddlers are lulled to sleep. 

 

2. Rank Beginning Readers

  • Totally Literate has several products that youngsters can use for months on end without formally being taught. Phonics Drills & Exercises will teach them to decode words. Printing and Cursive Exercises expressly develop manual dexterity while subtly developing emergent reading skill. And Play Onwards, which further increases phonics awareness, also expands vocabulary greatly as well as develops basic spelling skill.

 

3. First Graders & Above 

     Fast Learners

  • Because The Red Well-Read Reader stories are typically rather sophisticated in part―young students, even older ones―will not understand them implicitly. Yet, students will not fail to sense the ever-present, intrinsic humor. Thus, they should never get bored, even a bit.

 

Typical Learners

  • Being that TRWRR stories normally have just one rhyme, the level of difficulty remains constant throughout the book. Thus, even slow learners will not feel overwhelmed and quit trying to learn to read altogether. Likewise, a mentally challenged student should have little difficulty proceeding from one story to the next.

 

4. Third and Fourth Graders & Above

  • TL has three products for students who already know how to read well but want to develop their ability in other literacy arts. One, Work on Words, a vocabulary builder designed particularly for youngsters, can actually help anyone―even professional writers, college professors, and mom and dad―hone his or her vocabulary skill. Two, some of Anti-Illiteracy War Games can help older elementary-school-age students build such literacy skills as writing and speech. And three, Classic Stories will nurture their literary appreciation. 

 

5. Special Needs Students

     Children with Dyslexia

  • Nearly every product in TL’s Anti-Illiteracy War arsenal that is designed for the general population is also helpful to students with dyslexia. In fact, virtually all of TL’s products are designed precisely as the Orton–Gillingham Method propounds.

 

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

  • TL’s many colored-charts, TRWRR’s stories, and a number of classic ones are helpful to special needs students. Perhaps the biggest help to ASD students is the Immersive Reader, whereon their interface they can see practically every noun and verb of any TRWRR story in picture form. 

 

6. Older Children & Adults in Literacy Programs 

  • Because TRWRR stories are well-suited for classroom settings having students of various ages and aptitudes, and because none of TL’s products ever talks down to students, middle school students to seniors will not feel embarrassed, belittled, or ashamed. Hence, TL and TRWRR can easily be incorporated into the curriculum of the following educational entities: Private & Public Schools, Literacy Councils, Jails and Prisons.

7. Spanish Speakers

  • TL has three products that are particularly helpful to Spanish speakers. Phonics Charts and Drills will aid them greatly with pronunciation and spelling. The Spanish-English Flipbook allows them to easily compare the structure of the two languages as well as to grasp the humor of the English narrations. And three, each Spanish-English PDF allows them to listen to either language in a choice of several TTS voices.

8. Other Foreign Speakers

  • As with Hispanics and Spaniards, all other foreign speakers will benefit hugely from Phonics Charts and Drills, mainly with pronunciation. Moreover, Multilinguals (i.e., 361 TRWRR stories converted to myriad languages) help all students learn English, as well as any other language. In other words, besides helping foreign speakers learn English, ipso facto, they can help English speakers learn foreign languages. ​

Cartoon Character with Pen, Caption saying Pen is Mightier than the Sword
A.I.O. & A.

Anti-Illiteracy Ordnance
and Armaments

Chartoon Character, holding his chest out and beaming with pride
  • PDFs: Text is read word by word, line by line, or paragraph by paragraph depending on context. Great for learning to read, decode, and pronounce words correctly.

  • English-Spanish Flipbook: All 361 TRWRR rhyming stories narrated in English. Stories and Transcriptions seen side by side.  A comprehension aid systematic covering of the entire phonemic makeup of the English language.

  • TRWRR Mini-Flipbooks: Highly Interactive Comprehension aids.

 

  • Multilinguals: TRWRR rhyming stories can be heard in over 40 languages, developing reading comprehension and building a prodigious vocabulary. 

  • Immersive Reader - Standard Version: It is available to Turquoise members and above. Words are highlighted as they are read aloud. IR is especially helpful to very young beginning readers and special-needs students.

  • Immersive Reader - Word Version: It is accessible to all Totally Literate regular members who are also Microsoft 365 subscribers. IR toggles on Word. Color-coded rhyming stories of TRWRR stand out distinctively.

  • Word: It has multiple applications. It is ideal to compare languages, practice pronunciation, write compositions, and to study foreign languages in depth.

  • Google Translate: Translates English text into 108 languages, and the audio on roughly 60% of them. Text copied then pasted on GT may in turn be copied and pasted onto a Word document or selected and opened on the Standard IR platform.

  • Edge: Dictionary/Sidebar: Provides access to the Web where unabridged dictionaries provide audible definitions, pronunciation aids, and give access to informative and entertaining complementary YouTube videos.

  • Smartphones: They have multiple usages. They enable an English teacher and a foreign student to dialog in two languages. In a snap, English text and speech can be translated into numerous languages. Smartphones allow for comparison of English with other languages. They give students a platform to self-check and practice their own pronunciation. And they allow students who have Adobe Acrobat Pro to listen to all of Totally Literate's downloadable files even without an internet connection.

Website Audible in 66 Languages, Readable in an additional 8 more

Large Selection of TTS Speakers and Dialects

Selected Text Readable in 109 Languages

Stories Translatable on Immersive Reader Platform

Simultaneous Interactive Printing, Cursive, and Reading Exercises

Hundreds of Documents

Approximately 100 Web Pages in English Alone

361 Color-Coded Rhyming Stories

10 Platforms

40 Interactive PDFs

12 Audible Flipbooks

20 Lullabies and Nursery Rhymes

14 Classics (Stories and Fables)

> 25,000 TRWRR Translations 

Bottom of Page
Cartoon character with one finger pointing to his head and another finger, straight up, as though saying Totally Literate expands the mind

Totally Literate, aka 2B Totally Literate and Celestial Bound, is an English reading/literacy program designed for native and foreign speakers alike. Most significant, it can help future scholars with dedicated parents learn to think with their Heart & Mind Entwined, thus maturing into Totally Literate Independent, Critical Thinkers. 

Home School Seal of Approval Award 2017
2022 Best of Greenville Award
bottom of page