Supporting Students at Home
Supporting Students at home with Read 180
The Read 180/System 44 Log in Credentials
Students can access their software remotely by logging in to their school account.
1. Log in here: https://h100007331.education.scholastic.com
2. Student Username: "first letter of first name followed by full last name. No capitals."
3. Password: "P@5sword"
The Read 180 Library and Independent Readers
Parents are encouraged to become familiar with their student's Read 180 Account by logging on and exploring the lexile levelled library. Throughout the year, students will read many books and be assessed by their teacher with comprehension questions and quizzes. At home, parents can reinforce learning by allowing their student extra oral reading practice with immediate corrective feedback for words that are missed. In class their are hardcopies of many titles. Online there is access to an extensive range of e-books and audio books.
The Read 180 library will automatically suggest books in the library that are at the student's reading level and aligned with their interests. It will offer more complex books as the student improves. It is important to foster a love for reading by selecting books at the right level so that students do not become frustrated.
Your student's lexile level will appear on their account. Any book 50 points below or 100 points above their lexile level will be appropriate.
For students reading between 100-500 lexile, books will contain key vocabulary to preview before reading. Ensure that students can say, and use these words. They appear in bold when encountered in the text and make for natural pauses to check for comprehension. At the end of the book, students can access writing activities and quizzes under the "resources" and "activities" tabs.
Embedded supports such as text size, font, read aloud and more are available under the "resources" tab.
The Read 180 and System 44 App
Students take a Read 180 reading inventory at the start of the year. Those with a score of 600 lexile or higher will work in the Read 180 app to focus their growth on reading strategies, comprehension and fluency. Those below 600 will also take an additional Phonics Inventory to diagnose gaps in their phonological skills that are required to be mastered as part of their early literacy skills that are usually taught in K-3rd Grade.
Students will work in the app in each class to target remediation for the letter-sound relationships they are not firm on. Research says that students should receive instruction in phonics daily in order to maximize gains. Students can log-in to their account and work in the app during their learning center or at home.
Skills Specific Resources
Sight Words
Repeated practice with these high frequency word flashcards to the point where a reader is automatic will improve fluency and comprehension of more complex texts. As words are said on sight, this frees up capacity to focus on reading harder multi-syllabic words and take meaning from the reading. Children that can decode these words effortlessly will go on to become fluent readers.
Sightwords.com has high frequency irregular words in grade level lists.
Phonics
The sounds that are represented by letters and combinations of letters need to be taught in a sequenced and systematic method. Our curriculum does this and it also assesses those letters and sounds that your student already knows in order to focus practice on the unknown sounds. There are 44 different sounds represented in the alphabet though they can be made by many different sequences of letters. For a research based detailed discussion of teaching phonics to help you with your students, this guide from Vanderbilt university is a helpful resource.
Letters-and-sounds.com is a great free resource of phonics skills. There are 6 phases of instruction to work through.
Phonemic Awareness
The ability to hear and split up the sounds in words. Children that can blend and segment words into component sounds become better readers and spellers.
Sightwords.com has some useful resources here.
Elkonin Boxes. This is a great exercise to build awareness of the different letter-sound principles.
Hi-Lo Young Adult Books for reading fluency and comprehension
In addition to the Read 180 classroom library that contains e-books and audio books that can be accessed at home, the EDHS school library has a large number of "Hi-Lo" books that are written at a low lexile level (typically between 200-500 lexile or 2nd to 4th grade level) but are geared towards the teen reader with topics more aligned with their interests. Traditionally, struggling teen readers have had a selection of elementary texts to choose from which are quickly discarded as being too juvenile. If you want to select a "Hi-lo" a book from the library, search the catalog and filter results for "quickreads". These books are predominately from a publisher called "Orca" and their "Hi-Lo" books are contained in a collection known as "Surroundings". Books are typically around 80 pages in length and organized into short chapters to encourage students to finish complete books and foster an appreciation of reading.
Repeated Oral Reading, Immediate Corrective Feedback and Frequent Checks for Understanding
Multiple exposures to text help increase understanding. One method to improve a student's reading is to model a passage to preview new words and to demonstrate the correct tone and attention to punctuation. The Student then reads. When a mistake is made, the student is supplied the word and directed to repeat the sentence without making an error. At the end of each paragraph, a question can be asked. Either literal, to encourage students to pull information from the text, or once mastered, an inference or prediction for students to think outside of the text.