In an educational environment where students have been conditioned to expect multiple-choice assessments, educators are increasingly looking for new ways to gauge student learning. Are you looking for ways to help your students “think outside of the bubbles”? Whooo’s Reading is a program designed to help students improve both their reading comprehension and writing skills while creating a fun alternative to traditional assessments. With each successful completion of a task within the program, students earn coins that can be used to purchase items for their owl avatars. Hence the name, Whooo’s Reading!
How Whooo’s Reading Benefits Students and Teachers
1. Whooo’s Reading Question Types
With the Whooo’s Reading program, students can read a book or text resource and take a quiz to determine their comprehension. Quiz questions are tailored to the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) and are a mixture of short answer, fill-in-the-blank, and constructed response questions.
2. Student Guidance for Constructed Responses
Open-ended response questions allow students to more thoroughly express the details they remember from their reading experience. At the bottom of the screen, users can track their writing progress by watching as the line changes from red to yellow to green. By encouraging students to work toward the green, they gradually learn the importance of including enough information to adequately answer the question at hand.
3. Immediate Feedback on Student Writing
The program gives feedback on typed responses that allows users the opportunity for self-correction as they work to complete the quizzes. In an effort to encourage students to correct potential mistakes in their writing, they are provided with feedback and the ability to earn additional coins if they make adjustments to their work before continuing with the quiz. At the end of each quiz, students are provided with feedback on the things that they did well and information on areas where they could improve. They are also given examples highlighted from their quiz responses.
4. Use Any Text Resource
Unlike similar reading programs, the Whooo’s Reading program can be used with virtually any text resource. By expanding the potential reading resources, students are not limited to specific titles or books. Teachers can also assign online reading resources for students, where they can access the online link and complete a quiz on the material.
5. Track Student Progress and Vary Assessment Tasks
In addition, Whooo’s Reading offers educators the ability to assign various other assessment tasks to students such as writing essays or completing practice questions/exercises designed to help address specific skills. Both students and teachers also have the ability to construct their own practice questions related to titles that they have read. Educators also have the option of asking students to keep reading logs to gauge their reading progress and students can create book reviews that are visible to their classmates, providing additional encouragement to read new books.
6. Adjust Reading and Grade Levels as Needed
One of the most beneficial parts of the Whooo’s Reading program is the ability to differentiate the experience for each student. Teachers have the ability to set the reading level and grade level for each individual. By making adjustments to each of these settings, the experience for each student can be more adequately tailored to their specific reading ability. Changing the levels for individuals means that the quiz questions for students will be more in line with their reading ability and thus provide them with an increased chance of successfully completing the quiz.
7. Customize Assessments and Provide Sentence Stems
Teachers also have the option to choose the types and number of questions that appear in the reading quizzes, as well as provide students with sentence stems or sentence starters to assist them in successfully answering the constructed response questions. Quiz passing rates can be set by the teacher at a range from 2 to 4. This means that passing standards can be better adjusted based on student needs, with teachers also having the ability to provide student feedback on quiz responses and add credit points to quiz scores if needed.
8. Accessibility Features
In addition to these features, Whooo’s Reading also provides text-to-speech and speech-to-text capabilities. Within the program, settings can be adjusted so that students can click on the speaker icon to have information on the screen read to them. If they have access to a microphone, they can click on the microphone icon, speak their answers, and see their words transcribed on the screen. With these options to tailor the Whooo’s Reading experience for each user, students of all levels have an increased chance for success.
9. Prep for the STAAR Test
Not only does Whooo’s Reading help students to practice expressing their thoughts by engaging them in more challenging questions than traditional multiple-choice assessments, but it can also help them enhance their writing skills as well. With recent changes to the STAAR (The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) tests, students are being tasked with answering more constructed response-type questions. This format within the Whooo’s Reading quizzes provides important practice that can help prepare students to have increased success on the state assessments. In addition, teachers have the ability to access and print out students’ quiz information that showcases each question and the student’s responses. This not only gives increased data on student progress but also provides educators with examples of students’ writing for targeted instruction.
Free Premium Features
For the 2023-2024 school year, Whooo’s Reading has offered interested teachers/schools the opportunity to try out all of the premium features of their program for free. I’ve been told by representatives that they will be doing the same for the 2024-2025 school year! During this time, Whooo’s Reading will be working to collect data and make important improvements to the program. Take advantage of this wonderful opportunity and discover the many ways that this program can benefit your learners!