Experience Raz-Plus: Part 2

In our Experience Raz-Plus series, we show you what it’s like to use Raz-Plus as a teacher and a student to demonstrate the many different ways that Raz-Plus can strengthen the connection between what is being taught and what students practice. In Part 2, you follow a student who uses Raz-Plus for independent reading practice.

Adam Reads On His Own

When Adam returns home from school, he logs into his Kids A-Z dashboard and clicks on the Reading planet. From there he clicks on My Assignments and begins the activities for the day:

• Reading a book, Animal Discoveries,
• Interacting with the book using eTools,
• Sending a recorded version of himself reading the book to his teacher, and
• Completing a comprehension quiz.

This assignment is specifically designed for his reading level (O), so Adam feels confident about reading on his own.

Adam puts on his headphones and listens to an audio version of Animal Discoveries. Each word of the text is highlighted as the audio plays, so Adam can follow along with how particular words sound as he sees them on the page. Listening to the audio version helps Adam hear proper examples of reading fluency.

Then, Adam reads the book again, this time on his own without the audio, while using eTools to practice active reading skills. On each page, Adam uses the highlighting tool to identify a main idea, and he uses the marking tool and stamping tool to underline supporting facts and important points. He also uses the Word Journal to write notes about a few unfamiliar words and looks them up to learn their meanings.

After getting a good understanding of the text and learning a few new vocabulary words, Adam opens up the Record feature to record himself reading the book out loud. Although he stumbles through some of the words, he corrects himself and re-records the passage, and sends the final version to his teacher.

Adam Tests and Reflects

Listening to the story and recording himself reading gives Adam a more thorough understanding of the main idea, details, and author purpose. The final activity for the day is taking a comprehension quiz, where he is able to return to the book to think about his answers before submitting them.

Adam feels like he has a good understanding of the text, but wonders if he missed a few questions, which is confirmed when he gets his results: 7/10. The quiz questions are tagged with a specific skill, so his teacher can see what skill each question relates to and the skills that Adam needs to work on. Adam has one more chance to review the three questions he missed, and refers back to the book to find the right answer. After two tries, he scores a 10/10 and collects 150 stars to use later in the Star Zone to build his Robot or add to his Raz-Rocket.