Raz-Kids: Interactive eBooks for K-6 Students (2024)

Raz-Kids: Interactive eBooks for K-6 Students

4/23/2015

11 Comments

Raz-Kids is a service that is operated under the Learning A-Z umbrella. For those unfamiliar, Learning A-Z offers an enormous number of K-6 learning resources to help save teachers time and support student achievement. Raz-Kids in particular, offers a collection of e-books that students can read and engage with online.It's an excellent learning resource so let's check it out.

Before we begin, let's start with the price. For those interested, the base subscription cost is $99.95 for a one year subscription, which can be used for up to 36 students, which is a very reasonablepricefor allthat they offer. Let's take a quick look at an overview video from the team, before we move forward:

From a big picture perspective, Raz-Kids offers e-books that students can read (and record themselves reading) online. Teachers can assign and track which books students have been reading, see quiz scores, align progress to the Common Core Standards, listen to recordings of students reading, and assess which skills students are achieving or struggling with. And, as shown below, it's incredibly simple process to get started.

On the student side, kids have access to not only the book room, where they can see and read the material the teacher has assigned, but also a few fun areas where they can spend the "stars" they earn from doing readings and completing other tasks.

Raz-Kids also has a large number of their eBooks and quizzes translated into Spanish, so for students who are either learning, or whose primary language is Spanish, resources are available for them as well.

Before beginning, students are either assigned a reading level by their teacher, or asked to take an assessment which will determine which level is most appropriate. As the progress through the eBooks and assigned tasks, they can move up through the reading levels.

Teachers assigns a student a reading level (based 27 levels of difficulty). In order to determine the appropriate reading level the teacher can assign a benchmark book or passage to read and record. After the student completes the three part assessment (read, retell, and quiz) it is sent to the teachers in basket where he/she can review, using an online running record and rubric (for the retelling). The information from the running record, retelling, and quiz can then be used to assign the student the correct reading level.

From there, the teacher can either assign out all reading materials at a particular level, or ask students to read specific books from the Raz-Kids collection.

There are two choices for assignments - self-paced (the student is placed on a level and must complete each task (listen, read, and pass the quiz at 80% or above) in order to be automatically promoted to the next level. The other option is a custom assignment – the teacher can choose books and tasks for the student to complete from the entire collection.

Students can listen to books being read, or they can read them for themselves, and, as mentioned earlier, they can even record themselves reading a book and the recording will be automatically sent to the teacher. When the teacher receives the recording, they can leave comments, easily mark which words students left out, inserted, or mispronounced, and then offer immediate feedback to the student.

For practice recordings the teacher canoffer immediatefeedbackto the student by using the message area or create notes to access at a later time.

Students can also take quizzes over the material, which are designed to assess a wide array of indicators. Students are only allowed to take each quiz twice, before they'll need to go back and reread the material. That being said, the students can access the material from inside the quiz, if they need to go back and look something up while they are taking the assessment.

On the teacher side, a wide variety of reports are available which will give you access to any type of data you may need to collect. You can look at class specific data, individual data, stats linked to particular standards, and so on.

Parents can also log in and track their students progress, plus they're given free access to the Raz-Kids mobile app as well. Plus, if the teacher is subscribed to Reading A-Z (an additional service offered from Learning A-Z) the students will have access to even more reading materials.

My final recommendation would be to give Raz-Kids a 14-day free trial over the upcoming summer break (woo!) and see if it's right for your classroom. If you have the technology resources, then the service is absolutely worth checking out. They have created an impressive collection of learning resources that make it easy for teachers to create and manage assignments, while promoting student reading growth. With all that in mind...

The opinions expressed in this review are my own.
I was not compensated for writing this review.

11 Comments

Ashley link

2/16/2016 05:06:26 pm

I really I want to use raz kids to learn to read better

Coco

2/17/2016 09:41:32 pm

My 7-year-old cousin's classroom uses this, and she uses my laptop to do some of her assignments sometimes. Although I've never experienced the issue of older Kindle Fires not being compatible with the app(personally, I didn't realize that so many kids used Fires), I have noticed some other huge issues. First off, my cousin is extremely bored with all of the literature. She skips every reading and reaps all of the points. While I personally don't like any of the literature either, it's too easy to speed through everything. I was able to advance her to her next reading level in 10 minutes, speeding through it all. Second, it's too easy to cheat on the quizzes. You can literally have another tab open with the book and just switch back and forth to get all of the answers. While this may not work in the classroom, and doesn't work with tablets, when at home with a computer, you can cheat. Third, the quizzes themselves are too easy. Most of the time, I don't even have to read the book. I can just get 100 by using common sense. And I think they're a bit odd with the quizzes. Missing 3 answers equals failing. That equals to a 70. I'm not sure about other schools, but the minimum for passing tests in my school, and my cousin's school, is 65. I don't quite understand. Lastly, and the most shocking issue of all, is at least on the PC version, you can access every student's account, and even the teacher's. You can't see the documents from the teachers, but you can still look at their account. My cousin actually goes on her classmate's accounts, and spends their Stars on "ugly" robot parts for the robots, and "ugly" items for the rockets. Kids with 2-3000+ Stars have lost all of their Stars to my cousin. She even did it with the teacher's. And if you really want to, you can make a parent account for any of the students and be able to track their progress. Isn't that illegal to look at another student's grades?
Although I sound very harsh, the program is actually a pretty good one. Even though my cousin thinks the books are boring and spends everyone's Stars, she still loves the program. It's good for learning, but it isn't perfect for every student.
Based on your grading system, I would give RazKids 3 apples, or "Has Potential".

Mike

2/18/2016 06:18:29 am

Thank you so much for your feedback and for reading Coco.

I definitely hear your other concerns, and depending on a student's ability level, I agree that the quizzes may not be the most challenging thing.

That being said, your last issue also raises some serious concerns for me as well.

I've contacted the Raz Kids team about this and I'll be waiting to hear what they say.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to leave your feedback, I really appreciate it!

Mike

John Jorgenson link

2/24/2016 07:46:28 am

Hi Coco,

Thanks for bringing your concerns to our attention. We recommend that you connect with your cousin’s teacher. The student’s teacher should apply passwords for each child’s account to prevent other students from seeing each other’s grades – this can be done very easily from the classroom roster page. Regarding the teacher’s account, all accounts must have a password, so unless the teacher shared this password, the student should not be able to access that account. The teacher account you are viewing is likely just the class roster page where students login to their account.

In terms of parent accounts, please see here for our privacy policy (http://help.learninga-z.com/customer/portal/articles/1649236-privacy). A parent must request access to the parent portal to view their child’s account information and reports. This request is sent directly to the teacher and must be approved before the parent can access.

Regarding the issue of quizzes and stars, at every level, the student must read, listen, and pass a quiz at 80% or above to be promoted to the next level. We also allow the student to access the book at anytime while they are taking the quiz in order to more closely read the text and determine the correct answer. All of our comprehension quizzes are tagged with specific comprehension skills (this report is already displayed on the ed tech round up page of RK) and are reported to the teacher in addition to the students scores.

Thanks very much for bringing these concerns to our attention, and we hope your cousin continues to enjoy using Raz-Kids. If you have any additional questions, or want to continue the discussion, please email me directly at any time: jjorgenson@learninga-z.com.

Thanks,

John Jorgenson
SVP, Marketing
Learning A-Z

Tammy Beaudry

4/7/2016 11:02:58 pm

I've used this program in the past for my older kids but normally through the school and at only the grade 3 level. Well I ordered for for my youngest as he enjoys the program and he needs the practice to improve. However I accidentally ordered the learning a-z instead of the raz kids license. I've contacted customer support about this and have found them less than helpful. I just keep getting the run around. Basically I don't think they can switch the license over which would be fine but they should just tell me that to begin with instead of saying they will fix it and then never fix it. So I guess what I am saying is Raz kids is great, online Customer service is Crap!

John Jorgenson link

4/8/2016 08:50:45 am

Thanks Tammy. And many apologies for your experience! I just talked to our Director of Customer Support and she said her team is addressing and will be in touch this morning. Please email me directly if you have any additional problems.

Best,

John Jorgenson
SVP, Marketing
Learning A-Z
jjorgenson@learninga-z.com

Yvonne Harvey

9/21/2016 06:20:07 am

Has any research been done pertaining to children learning to read on screen using an electronic device versus using actual books? My children's school uses Raz Kids as their primary tool for learning to read and having taught my older child to learn to read using paper books, I think a lot is lost in the process when you read online. Snuggling together on the sofa, turning the physical pages of a book, bringing the book home from school and keeping it safe, all of these things promoted a love and respect for books that my son (age 7) is yet to develop.
Other than cost (it's clearly a cheaper option for schools) I'd be interested to know the benefits of using this system over a tried and tested learning to read system such as the Oxford Reading Tree accompanied by a parent teacher reading record comment book.

Mike

9/21/2016 07:08:27 am

Hi Yvonne,

Thanks for reading and great questions! Personally, I absolutely agree - I find reading physical books to be much more meaningful and impactful. As for research, you might be interested in checking out these studies & essays:

"The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens" - Ferris Jabr

And here's a good study from another of Jabr's works:

Studies in the past two decades indicate that people often understand and remember text on paper better than on a screen. Screens may inhibit comprehension by preventing people from intuitively navigating and mentally mapping long texts. In general, screens are also more
cognitively and physically taxing than paper. Scrolling demands constant conscious effort, and LCD screens on tablets and laptops can strain the eyes and cause headaches by shining light directly on people’s faces. Preliminary research suggests that even so-called digital natives are more likely to recall the gist of a story when they read it on paper because enhanced e-books and e-readers themselves are too distracting. Paper’s greatest strength may be its simplicity. (2013)

Although Margolin et al (2013) might disagree in their article, "E-readers, Computer Screens, or Paper: Does Reading Comprehension Change Across Media Platforms?" - They note that reading comprehension can be successful across a variety of platforms, but they were also working with college students.

In short, depending on the study, the population, the design, I think you'll find support for both paper and screens.

Thanks again for reading!

Mike

Jay

1/23/2021 02:42:10 pm

Raz Kids is a great website, I use it to grow a lot and my reading is improving. I also use Beestar as a learning tool as well. Both websites are significantly helpful in reading.

Samer Abd Raboh

3/15/2021 11:53:45 am

hi, I am an English teacher I ask you on behalf of my school principal about the cost of Raz-kids to my school. The school needs about 400 subscriptions to our students. send your quotation to this E-mail - Stragonar7756@gmail.com to see if it is suitable or not
best regards

Mike

3/15/2021 01:12:18 pm

Hi Samer - Unfortunately I'm unable to help there (I just run this review site).

You'll want to contact Raz-Kids directly: https://www.learninga-z.com/site/contact

Mike