Reading Progress and Reading Coach, two Learning Accelerators available in Microsoft Teams for Education, are designed to enhance your students' reading fluency. With Reading Progress, students read a passage out loud while recording video and audio, then turn in their recordings to you. When added to Reading Progress assignments, Reading Coach identifies the five words that were most challenging for each individual student and gives them a supported opportunity to practice the words again.
Integrated seamlessly into Teams, these reading assessment tools can simplify the process of creating, reviewing, and analyzing reading assignments, freeing up more time for active instruction. With features like assignment review and Education Insights dashboards, you can collect valuable data and visualize both class and individual performance and growth.
Learn how to use Reading Progress and Reading Coach together to enhance your students’ reading fluency.
Customize assignment options for your students' unique literacy needs
Get started by creating a practice assignment with Reading Progress through assignments in Teams. You can use your own Word or PDF file from your computer, OneDrive, Teams, or Class Notebook. You also have the option to select a passage from the embedded ReadWorks library. Reading Progress practice assignments can be assigned to specific students or the whole class.
Customize passages with the following options.
- Reading level: Record the Lexile level. It is tracked in Insights for data on growth over time.
- Genre: Select the genre type for your passages. ReadWorks passages are pre-labeled.
- Number of attempts: Select the number of attempts for student practice. Remember, unlimited is an option.
- Time limit: Set a time limit for reading.
- Pronunciation sensitivity: Adjust how sensitive Auto-detect is when listening and estimating errors. You can always manually edit errors for accuracy.
- Reading Coach: Select the tools available to students for practice.
- Require video: Choose whether students record with video or audio only.
Creating a Reading Progress assignment in Teams using your own documents or ReadWorks.
Tip: Use OneDrive to develop a resource library of texts based on your students’ interests, reading level, or curriculum. This library can be developed and shared with your team or across the district. Learn more on how to create a resource library for Reading Progress.
Enhance learning with customized supports
Customize which tools are available to your students from Reading Coach after they complete the practice assignment. Provide as many tools as needed to help support or challenge them as their reading fluency improves.
You can select the following tools and options available to students in Reading Coach for individual practice.
Tools:
- Play word: The word is read aloud to the student.
- Stretch word: The word is broken into syllables.
- Show picture: An image is provided, if available, to help students comprehend the meaning of the word.
Options:
- Show tools: Reveal all selected tools to students as soon as they begin or require an attempt before revealing the tools.
- Choose a voice: Multiple genders and dialects are offered to suit your students' preferences.
- Select prompt style: Choose a more supportive or more direct tone for your students.
Reading Coach tools and options set by the educator in Reading Progress assignments.
Tip: Provide personalized support for students based on their unique needs. For non-native English learners and struggling readers, consider providing access to all the tools. Consider removing tools to challenge your more fluent readers.
Offer distraction-free practice
In Teams, students are notified that they have a Reading Progress practice assignment to complete. When they open the practice assignment and select start, the passage becomes full screen to reduce distractions and help them focus on the task at hand.
Student view opening a Reading Progress assignment and using Reading Coach
Tip: Students can change how the text appears in the practice assignment using built-in Immersive Reader tools. Options like text size, line spacing, font style, and themes can help improve reading fluency for struggling readers or those with dyslexia or low vision.
Empower learning through targeted practice and support tools
Once students submit their practice assignment in Teams, Reading Coach opens automatically, and they are prompted to practice five words they struggled with from the assignment using the support tools you selected.
Student using Reading Coach to practice challenging words.
Tip: Students have the flexibility to access the practice section after recording their assignment if time constraints or their schedule prevents them from using Reading Coach immediately. Remind students that they can return to the assignment later to practice their five challenging words until they are ready to submit the assignment to their teacher.
Enhance accuracy and track growth in Reading Progress assignments
You can review your students’ practice assignments in Reading Progress. Easily jump to words in the video or audio recording and listen to individual students’ pronunciations. Reading Progress also notifies you if the student used Reading Coach to practice their challenging words.
Tools available during your review:
- Change the type of error: Manually change the error type to be precise. Types of errors include mispronunciation, omission, insertion, repetition, or self-correction.
- Text tools: Insert or remove words from the transcript or select multiple words to apply an error type.
- Jump to word: Select this option to take you to a particular moment in the recording so you can listen to the student’s pronunciation.
Reading Progress educator review dashboard.
Tip: Reading Coach in Immersive Reader allows students to practice reading fluency and challenging words across Microsoft tools that they already use, including Word, OneNote, Flip, and Minecraft Education. When students are finished practicing, they receive a high-level report. Learn more about using Reading Coach in Immersive Reader!
Make data-driven instructional decisions with Education Insights in Reading Progress
Analyze data on a single assignment or across the entire school year for individual students, classes, or grade levels. With Education Insights, you can make informed decisions, personalize interventions, and identify areas for improvement in your students.
Insights for Reading Progress
Tip: Insights in Reading Progress offers the ability to quickly and easily create personalized challenge assignments. It uses the words or vocabulary with phonics rules that proved to be most challenging to provide students with extra practice while saving you time!
Download the one-pager guide on Reading Progress and Reading Coach and start using these literacy tools today!
