Teachers can decide to assign students to either the Phonics Adventures or Reading Adventures tracks based on their needs.
Phonics Adventures may be the most appropriate for students who would benefit from independent practice on specific phonic elements along the phonics continuum. Phonics Adventures provides targeted practice with decoding and encoding in isolation and decoding in continuous, decodable text. See the Phonics Adventures Overview for more information.
Reading Adventures may be the most appropriate for students who would benefit from applying decoding skills in less controlled texts and a cumulative review of phonics skills through word-building activities. See the Reading Adventures Overview for more information.
Both independent tracks give students the opportunity to orthographically map high-frequency words and answer comprehension questions. Both tracks also give teachers the progress monitoring data they need to make informed instructional decisions.
Students can be assigned to an Independent Track using the following steps:
- From the teacher dashboard, go to the Students tab.
- Add a student or edit an existing student. Set their Independent Track to Phonics Adventures or Reading Adventures.
Note: Changing a student’s independent track will reset their progress. - For Phonics Adventures: Select the phonics focus that is most appropriate for the student to practice independently. Teachers should select the category of skills that have already been explicitly taught. See the Phonics Adventures Booklist for more information about the specific skills that will be practiced in each category.
- For Reading Adventures: By default, each student starts off in Reading Adventures at their independent level. Students' independent reading level should always be only one or two levels below the level you are using with the student during small group instruction.
Since students will be reading new books without your support, it is best if they are able to read the book with a high degree of accuracy (95-100%) and without any assistance. For more proficient readers you may decide that the video book introduction and word study are enough to provide them with support. In this case, you may want to assign them the same level you are using for small group instruction.