The school has just recently launched a new and exciting program to incentivize and motivate students to read. There are several students who love to read and often spend hours on end reading, however, there are those students who prefer spending time engaged in doing other things. RAZ-kids.com provides reading electronic materials for students at their level of ability. RAZ-kids incorporates high interest topics in both nonfiction and fiction texts. The books are in vibrant color including moving graphics, sound effects, and highlighted vocabulary words which can be decoded for the students.
Students have the opportunity to listen to the book, read the book, read the book out loud and have their voice recorded and then listen to themselves read the text. They then can take a quiz to monitor comprehension. As students complete the activities they can earn stars. Star are collected and then used to create a personalized rocket. Student then progress through the ranks beginning with Ensign, moving to commander and then to general. Rank advancements seem to be extremely motivating for the students as well as the creation of their own rocket.
The school has enough funds to purchase licenses for all Kindergarten through third grade students. Luckily, I too have a login where I can grant access to select students in grades 4-7. If you think your child could benefit from RAZ-kids, feel free to contact me and I can set your child up with an account where he or she can begin reading leveled texts and enjoy the same features our younger students have come to appreciate. To learn more about it, follow this
Link to RAZ-kids
This program sounds like a great program for kids that don't like to read. I teach 7th and 8th grade and we have a lot of kids that come to us that don't read on grade level. Some just hate reading. I think that any program we can find to help kids read is worth looking at. I like that this program will read to kids and that you can record your own voice. I think kids would enjoy playing and learning with this program.
ReplyDeleteCheri Sagers