Announcing the largest list of product updates since its initial launch more than ten years ago, the easy-to-use, free reading tool created by ReadWorks has expanded at this crucial time for teachers and students. With more than 5,500 texts and accompanying curricular supports as well as strategic and thoughtful technical updates, it is clear that the ReadWorks online application has transformed, with ease of teacher use at the forefront. ReadWorks’ mission to help improve the reading crisis across America is more important than ever, according to recent research on the impact of students’ learning opportunities due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on teacher input, the new features will continue to support teachers’ integration of reading activities across all levels of capability for Kindergarten through 12th grade. As online learning transitions even more from remote learning back to in-person instruction this school year, ReadWorks is excited to announce these new features for the more than one million teachers already logged into the ReadWorks platform and the many new users logging on during this busy back-to-school season.
“We gather feedback from teachers all year long to then focus our back-to-school improvements and tool enhancements on the key ideas that will help them even more easily use ReadWorks to deepen their reading instruction,” said ReadWorks’ Chief Academic Officer Susanne Nobles
Exciting New Content Features:
- Connected with the Clever library
- Teachers can now streamline the use of ReadWorks through the single sign-on Clever platform. This integration and partnership will help teachers simplify and customize their students’ educational experience.
- Book Studies
- Teachers will now find a new series of hand-curated text sets, including reading passages and text-dependent questions, to support the teaching of more than 40 widely used elementary and middle school novels. These resources will save teachers time as they plan rich novel units. The Book Studies can easily be digitally assigned, integrated through Google Classroom, or printed.
- Hundreds of searchable texts with diverse characters
- Thanks to our generous donors, our internal search engine now surfaces ReadWorks’ most recently published and updated texts, including hundreds of nonfiction and fiction texts that feature diverse populations, settings, and characters. These texts and question sets engage students, helping them to both see themselves in their reading and learn more about others.
- Enhanced Scope and Sequences and Reading Mindset Snapshot
- Our two most powerful tools are now easier to access. The Reading Mindset Snapshot offers a simple solution to getting to know students more deeply as individual readers, and with our Scope and Sequences, teachers can assign a year’s worth of impactful supplemental reading in just a few clicks.
Exciting New Help Features:
- A professionalized help center
- ReadWorks’ enhanced help center includes a Frequently Asked Questions section for both old and new features. With a click of a button, educators can contact our customer support team for technical troubleshooting with an expected resolution within one to two business days.
- In-the-moment training
- An interactive How-To section makes it even easier for teachers to find and use our most popular tools and features, from our full-year alignments that connect with different standards and curricula to robust grade reports. This includes significant changes to just about every section of the application in support of teacher discoverability.
- Substantial conformance to the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 standards.
- With every project at ReadWorks, we are constantly working to improve the accessibility of our application, ensuring that it works with the latest assistive technology, and developing a platform that is accessible to every student. Contrast and visual accessibility are stronger, and interactions on the site are navigable without the use of a mouse, through keyboard only or other assistive screen reading technologies.
About ReadWorks
Our mission is to ensure that all children become successful, joyful readers. We work to bridge the gap between research and practice in reading instruction. There are many ways to easily integrate ReadWorks into teacher instruction for Kindergarten through 12th grade — by book, topic, decoding, vocabulary, and core curriculum!
Sign up for your free ReadWorks account to start accessing these new and updated reading instruction resources today.
For more information about ReadWorks
Press Contact: Melissa Calder, Director of Marketing and Engagement, melissa@readworks.org