Reading A-Z: A Quick and Easy Way to Ensure that all Students are Reading at their Own Level
Community Review for Reading A-Z
My Take
All in all, this product does save so much time because everything is ready to go for the teacher, including detailed lesson plans and worksheets that target important skills. It is a wonderful resource, especially since I teach more than one subject and find myself with limited time for finding and modifying resources for students. The drawbacks to this program lie in the limited availability of texts. Many of my students read far below grade level, so the subject areas available are more suitable for a much younger audience than my students.
How I Use It
I used this product in an ELA class I teach that contains readers of varying levels. I was looking for a way for the whole class to read a story, but everyone is reading at such different grade levels, I found it difficult to find texts. Reading A-Z was a great solution because it has a variety of texts and some of them are written at a range of levels. This way, we can all be reading the same story and it is written at a level appropriate for each individual student.
I did try to split my students into groups and have them read and complete the activities, but I found that the students needed more support than I could give them by jumping from one group to the next throughout the class period. That is why I started using the books that were available in a range of reading levels, so we could all be working on the same thing. This way I can introduce themes and overarching ideas as a class and they can do some work in small groups.
I have found that the texts available in multiple levels are limited. I am trying to choose high interest stories for my students, so it is difficult when there are limited topics available. I find myself just picking the texts that can support the reading levels of the students instead of focusing on topic interest.