Awesome resource for certain topics or skills
Community Review for Reading A-Z
My Take
I think Reading A to Z it is an excellent tool for comparing and contrasting paired texts, which aren't always easy to find on the same grade level. Also, it is engaging to have a "book" up on the Smartboard to do a whole group activity,with shared reading, highlighting, and discussing.
One thing that would make it better is if students could have an account to access the material themselves. Perhaps they already do, but, to my knowledge, not at my school.
How I Use It
I use this product when we are studying certain topics in social studies or science. I think finding paired texts with common themes, such as extinction, for example, contributes to higher level thinking. After analyzing each text through text-dependent questions and discussion in small groups, the students compare the two texts and draw conclusions about the unifying theme or idea. Also, I like to use this as a resource for special occasions. For instance, I will look for a passage on the history of Halloween with comprehension questions in October for quick skills practice.
The only thing that hasn't worked that well is having to print copies for kids to work on in groups or take home. These texts are actually short books, which uses a lot of paper and ink.