Becoming Readers: Reading A-Z and Raz-Kids

First grade is a huge year for becoming a reader. Most students come in barely able to sound out words and some without knowing all their letters and sounds and leave as readers-at least that's the goal! This year I am excited to try new ways to help my students become readers. This post is all about an on-line reading resources I recently fell in love with, I do NOT work for this company, I am not marketing for them,  I am just an extremely excited teacher who gets to use their resources this year. Here's my story about how I came across the resources and how I plan to use them.

At the end of last year I did a good old Google search to find a test to assess my student's reading level. I came across the website ReadingA-Z.com. I was excited that I was able to sign up for a free trail and download some running records for each reading level. After that I wanted to see what other resources were on there but my trail ran out and the school year ended.

Then in July, I was incredibly fortunate to attend SDE's "I Teach 1st" training in Las Vegas with many of my co-workers because we work at the best school ever! (Yes, our school paid for the entire week long conference and all related expenses and yes, we are usually hiring *wink*). Anyway, the conference had booths from many educational vendors and I was so excited to talk to the LearningA-Z representative. The rep gave me an even better free trail. After the training, I spent my many hours of down time during my short summer break exploring their websites.

I decided to send my administration a convincing e-mail on why it would benefit our students to purchase just two portions of LearningA-Z and they said yes (my school is awesome). After months of waiting for the necessary paperwork to pass through many desks, the first grade team finally received log in access to ReadingA-Z.com  and Raz-Kids.com. ReadingA-Z has a bunch of teaching resources and Raz-Kids gives each student a log in to read leveled readers on a computer or tablet.We have had these resources for exactly two weeks and they are awesome. I predict they are really going to help our students become readers!

Raz-Kids.com is an on-line reading program for students. Each student has their own account. As the teacher I set their starting reading level and the students work on reading books and passing comprehension tests in their level in order to "level up". I love how the books are set up because the first time the book is read out loud to the student-more like a listening center. Then the second time, students read the book on their own and are able to click on words they do not know and hear the word read to them. Finally, students take a comprehension test on the book they just read and it's really easy for them to click back into the book to look for the answers and go back to the quiz. I have been trying to give my students at least 15 minutes of class time a day on this website because I think it will really help them become readers. We are lucky enough to have a class set of Chromebooks for students to access the website on. I've also sent the log in information home for students to use the program at home.

I am so excited about Raz-Kids and my other co-workers and all of our students are as well. It was $109 per class for a year long subscription for up to 36 students, that divides to only $3-5 per student. If this programs helps my students as I predict it will, I think it will be hard to me to ever teach without it. If my school can't purchase it every year, I plan to ask parents for the small donation to help their child read.

ReadingA-Z was the other portion I wanted my school to purchase for us. It has teacher resources that we can display on our Smartboards or print out and use in the classroom.

I am currently most excited about ReadingA-Z's leveled reading books, even though they have so many more awesome resources like Reader's Theatre, comprehension skill packs and much more.

Last year was my first year teaching first grade, after three years teaching kinders and it was also our school's first year with a new curriculum. We use National Geographic's Reach for Reading and honestly, I do not love it but I've never been much of a fan of curriculum, I think, in general curriculum gets in the way, is too complicated and distracts from simple goals. Nat Geo has some amazing resources, I love the leveled library it came with and some other pieces but other than that it's not really set up to help our almost 100% ELL population. It has very few "meaty" read aloud texts, the grammar is in a strange order, and the tests don't test what students really need to know, sometimes us teachers can't figure out the correct answer. I am actually spending many hours of my free time trying to rearrange our resources and create new assessment to better help our students. This can be a challenge getting all eight first grade teachers on the same page but we are slowly but surely getting there using resources from TeachersPayTeachers and ReadingA-Z.  Anyway, enough about curriculum developed by non-teachers.

I started talking about curriculum because my first grade team had used the blackline decodable readers each week in the previous curriculum and sent them home each student to practice and become fluent in. With our new curriculum we started using the ones Nat Geo provided. I know decodables are hard to write, phonetic words make stories sound choppy and are often difficult for ELL's to understand. I'm personally noticing this problem while trying to create my spelling stories to go along with Nat Geo spelling words. The idea of using these decodable is a wonderful idea to make sure each student can read the sight words and the spelling pattern of the week but the books are just not good quality and helpful for my population of students.

Long story, long, this is why I am most excited about ReadingA-Z leveled reading books. I decided I am going to use their leveled reading books and decodables to send home with students instead of the Nat Geo decobables. Students will keep these paper books in their BEE binders until they can read them fluently. Yes, I will assess them on each book I send, yes it takes time but my amazing neighbor teacher of the year teacher does this and her whole class ends the year as awesome readers. These routines and exceptions are the kinds of things that create readers. I have decided that instead of listening to my high students sour through all the decodables I sent home last year and see my low students consistently struggling with them I am going to differentiate by using the ReadingA-Z leveled books as well as some decodable readers with important phonics sounds.

ReadingA-Z has so many books that I get lost in there but this morning I was able to become decisive and choose 1-2 books from levels A-L and I can't wait to use them on Monday! The books I choose are leveled readers created from classic stories such as; The Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy who Cried Wolf, The Little Red Hen, Chicken Little and many more. These stories are classic for a good reason, they are "meaty" and fun-so much more fun to read than the decodables from our curriculum. I am going to start my lower readers at level A and my higher readers at E or F and work on the books with them in small groups and expect them to master the books by reading them fluently.

I tell my students fluent means....

Normal Pace: read like you speak

Accurate: You can read all the words on sight, without sounding them out (this takes       practice!)

With Expression: With rhythm, like you are telling a story (n o t   l i k e   a   R O B O T)

With Understanding- You comprehend what happened in the story, you can retell it or answer questions about it.  

I am adding this goal sheet to their BEE binder.
Reading Goal Tracker

One of my student's leveled book to work on at home. The book is made by ReadingA-Z and printed from their website.  The sticker on the zipper pouch gives directions.

Her reading goal tracking sheet-the pink is almost too bright but it works!

At first I was going to type the titles of all the books I choose but with this general Title/I can read it! table it's a differentiated goal sheet. This is a good time for this famous Einstein quote that I try to keep in mind as a classroom teacher. I hated waiting around to slower students to finish so the whole class could continue as a student and I try to prevent that for my students. I also try to keep it positive with my lower students by giving them resources to meet realistic goals. At one training I attended I heard the trainer say this and I have tried to live by it ever since. She said something along the lines of the Common Core Standards being the floor of the expectations, not the ceiling. There is no ceiling, as long as everyone gets the base, there is no ceiling. Your lows should be at grade level and everyone else can be above it!




I will update this post after a full school year of using these two of many LearningA-Z's resources but after only two weeks of having the full program my excitement is high. Is it Monday yet? Hah! Speaking of Monday, this post is courtesy of Hurricane Matthew. Until the conference was canceled due to the Hurricane, I was going to be in Orlando, Florida this weekend at a Daily 5/CAFE training by the Two Sisters. I luckily get to go to the rescheduled training in May. I truly hope everyone in Florida is safe and well, it looks like a scary one.