Teacher Materials
Free teaching materials for Ponte Aperto English readers
Every Ponte Aperto novel comes with a complete set of free teacher materials. They are designed to make the novels easy to use in the classroom, with activities that help students prepare for each chapter, understand the text, and use the language they encounter in the story. You don't need to buy anything to use the materials. Simply choose a novel, download the PDF, and start teaching.
What you'll find in the materials
The teaching materials are designed to support a simple reading cycle:
Prepare → Read → Work with the text → Prepare for the next chapter
Depending on the novel, the materials include:
- Pre-reading activities
- Vocabulary and glossary work
- Reading comprehension exercises
- Language and grammar activities
- Discussion questions
- Follow-up activities
- Chapter-by-chapter teaching suggestions
The materials are flexible: choose the activities that work best for your students and your lesson time.
Choose a novel
Ame
Level: B2
Format: PDF
Ame leaves Matsuyama for Rome to pursue her dream of becoming a professional flutist. As she builds a new life abroad, unexpected barriers and news from home force her to reconsider what she has left behind. A story about ambition, belonging, and the difficult choices between the life we build and the life we leave.
Download Teacher Materials — PDF
Learn more about Ame
Casa Felice
Level: B2
Format: PDF
When Italian PhD student Claudio Mazzanti moves into a strange apartment building on the outskirts of Kyoto, his unusual neighbours gradually become part of his life. A quiet, slightly mysterious story about belonging, friendship and learning to live with things you don't quite understand.
Download Teacher Materials — PDF
Learn more about Casa Felice
Inaka
Level: B2
Format: PDF
When Charlie arrives in a remote mountain town in Yamagata as a JET Programme teacher, she expects to spend a year waiting to leave. But as the seasons pass, the people around her and the quiet beauty of rural Japan begin to change her idea of what home can mean. A story about belonging, connection, and finding something you never expected to look for.
Download Teacher Materials — PDF
Learn more about Inaka
Missing Home
Level: B1
Format: PDF
Fifteen-year-old Alessandro leaves Japan to attend high school in the small Tuscan town his family left when he was a child. As friendships grow and everyday life begins to feel familiar, he discovers that belonging isn't about choosing between two homes — it's something you build, piece by piece, wherever you are.
Download Teacher Materials — PDF
Learn more about Missing Home
My Time in Tottori
Level: B2
Format: PDF
Eighteen-year-old Leonardo leaves Florence for a year in Tottori, where everyday life, new friendships and a neighbour named Yuzuka gradually change the way he sees himself and the world around him. A coming-of-age story about language, distance, and the things we sometimes struggle to say.
Download Teacher Materials — PDF
Learn more about My Time in Tottori
Villa Bardini
Level: B1
Format: PDF
After four years cooking Italian food at a restaurant in Tokyo, Ichirō travels to Florence to discover what Italian cooking really means. What he learns from an old trattoria stays with him when he returns to Japan and opens his own restaurant in Yonago, where he finds that bringing something from one place to another means more than simply following a recipe.
Download Teacher Materials — PDF
Learn more about Villa Bardini
More books coming soon
Ponte Aperto is building a growing library of English readers for learners from B1 to C1. New novels and their accompanying teacher materials will be added here as they become available.
Prefer printed teaching materials?
The teacher materials are free to download as PDFs. If you prefer working from a physical book, printed editions of the teacher materials are also available on Amazon. The printed editions are optional. The PDF materials are free.
Looking for a book for your students?
The teacher materials are designed to accompany the Ponte Aperto novels. If you are looking for a reader to assign to your students, start by browsing the books and choose one by CEFR level, length and subject matter.
Made for teachers. Built around reading.
Ponte Aperto readers are written to give English learners something they actually want to read: a real story, at the right level, with enough support to make reading in English achievable. The teaching materials are there to make your job easier.
The books are the reason to read. The materials are here to help you teach them.