Raz Kids-Teacher Features!

From my previous post, you can probably tell that I LOVE the website RazKids and I use it in my classroom daily. In my last post I showed you a lot of the student aspects. But, as a teacher, I actually use this site a lot to help guide my instruction and see the individual needs for all of my students! I took some screenshots of some of the amazing features that RazKids offers in their teacher section of the site.

This is a screenshot of my log-in. In the top right corner of each teacher's home screen, you will see a place for the teacher to log-in with their given password and access additional information about your class. You can add students to your roster, change reading levels, and check-in to see how your students are doing. Parents can also request access to view reports on their individual child.

One of the features that I use frequently are the class messages. I can send a little message to individual students who are working hard or to the class as a whole. I can also attach extra stars to the message. They students always love seeing the notes I write and it keeps them motivated to check in often to their page to see if they have any new messages or stars from me!

This is a screenshot of the active students in the class. You can access this by logging into the teacher account, but I also have this emailed to my school account weekly. Here I am able to see which students are using RazKids, how long they spend on the site, how many books they have read/listened to/took a quiz on, how many stars they have earned, and even how much time they spent in the Raz Rocket.

One feature that the students really like on the site is the fact that they can record and listen to themselves reading a story. I also have access to all of the recordings that the students make. They are listed in the "assignment" section of the site. This is great because you can listen to the recording and see the book at the same time. They also have an option to take notes on the students as you are listening to the recording. (ex: needs work on blends, rereads often, fluency, expression, etc.) This is wonderful to talk to parents about at conferences so they can see what they need to work on with their child at home.

 

You can also assign running records to students. You can select between fiction and non-fiction texts, and the students must complete the running record before they are able to do anything else on Raz Kids. It's very similar to the recordings, but you also are given a running record sheet and are able to calculate how well they do on a given level text based on the number of errors.

 

The feature I use the most often is the Skill Reports. This is a screenshot of the skills of my class as a whole. It shows you how many questions of each comprehension category has been answered and the percentage the class gets correct. It shows me which comprehension skills I could be focusing on when doing read alouds or in reading group with the students.

You are also able to access the Skill Report for individual students. As you can see this student needs continued work on Fact and Opinion and Phonological Awareness. These are skills that I can hone in on when the students are working in reading group or while I'm conducting individual reading conferences with students during Read to Self of Daily 5.

I also use the quiz summary. This shows me the score each student got on each quiz they took and also the skills that they missed. If a missed skill keeps occurring, like Fact/Opinion or Vocabulary, I can make sure to hone in on that with the student. This is different than the Skill Report because this also gives you the date, which allows me to see if this problem is persistent, new, or seems to be resolved.

All in all, Raz Kids is a great site for students, teachers, and parents alike. It really gives you a comprehensive overview on your individual students as readers.