In this review, the Raz-Kids online reading program gets a "thumbs up" in the classroom or homeschool, for its fun, interactive and motivating. Raz-kids allows teachers to easily create homework and an incentive for reading. Linked to Readingatoz.com (they share some of the same books also), Raz-kids allows you and students to see/hear the book read out loud, to record yourself RAZ reading (with vocabulary and pronunciation help), to print some worksheets linked to the book and to take an online quiz. As a teacher, you can see your students' progress charts, quiz scores, etc. When the RAZ students complete all their tasks, they get points which can be used to "buy" things for their "raz rocket".
Assigning the work can be tricky, as there's a lot of clicking around to be done (you choose the sequence, which can be time-consuming if you individualize instruction like we do). And at about $80 a year, this is also expensive but worth it if you want to encourage reading and help RAZ kids learn that RAZ homework can be fun too.
On December 3, Learning A-Z and Wilson K-8 in Oro Valley, AZ formally launched the Wilson "Cool School" RAZ Reading Challenge. But the reading challenge was only part of this pilot partnership. Since then, Wilson RAZ students have already read more than 15,000 books and we've worked closely with their team to train teachers and monitor student progress. "The students benefit because Raz-Kids is so interactive, and this is such an interactive generation," said 1st grade teacher, RuthAnn Smithrud. Two groups of 4th graders even did science fair experiments, testing the positive impact Raz-Kids is having across Wilson's 4th grade. RAZ
