Raz-Kids Joins Our Learning Adventure

This week in reading we are working on identifying character traits and personalities of our characters.  We have also been working on identifying character traits in ourselves and our teammates.  Along with identifying traits, I have been asking students to come up with evidence as to why they chose that word.  We have been working on this vocabulary (character traits, evidence, and defending your claim.)  You can ask them about characters in their books, television shows, or movies to help them develop these skills.

The kids also logged on to Raz-Kids.com for the first time in the computer lab.  This is a program that the school and the PTO have purchased to encourage reading at home.  It can be accessed through the internet or Android or Apple apps.  When the kids login they need to use my teacher code which is bmontgomeryi.

I talked to them about the data that the Raz-Kids collects.  I can actually see every book that they read, how much time they spent reading, and how they did on every question on each comprehension quiz that they do.  There is a rewards system that I don't mind that they use, but I also let them know that I turned it off for students who were flipping through books just to earn stars for incentives.  I collect this data and use it to plan my extra reading lessons so it is important that when they use Raz-Kids that they are taking it seriously and not trying to manipulate the system.

The books on here are high quality and consumable in one night.  Please enjoy this application, but it is for use by your student only so that I can accurately track data for our classroom.  If you have any questions please shoot me an e-mail or a note.  I look forward to seeing kids use the app and get in some good practice reading at home.

Enjoy reading with your child and model good habits.  Twenty minutes of reading before bed really does help your child get ahead!