Students bring a ghostly cliffhanger to life in our national illustration contest - see our winner!12/14/2023 Each fall, ReadWorks hosts a contest to engage and spark creativity among grade school educators and students while celebrating our ever-growing fiction library! This year, students read and created illustrations for Our Family Ghost.  Read the first installment, “A Shadow at the Celebration,” on ReadWorks now. In this six-part series, Manuel's family has gathered to celebrate the anniversary of his great-great-great-great grandfather, José, arriving in the United States. However, Manuel soon learns that his family seems to be cursed! When a ghostly José visits Manuel in his dreams, he tries his best to lift the curse, while discovering more about his family's history. “The shadow kept coming closer, forcing Manuel to back up, close to the edge. A few more steps and he would fall off….”  Eliza's illustration with minor alterations
In addition to the winning entry, our judges selected five runners-up, one for each grade level that participated in the contest. See their outstanding entries below: 2023 Runners-Up
Don’t forget - anytime is the perfect time to get creative as a class! Use any of our exciting fiction series to host your own illustration or alternate-ending contest as a classroom or school-wide. Then, share your contest with ReadWorks on social media using #ReadWorksContest or share your contest stories with our team at [email protected].
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In the dynamic landscape of education technology, understanding the needs and preferences of our community of educators allows us to better meet the needs of educators and students. Every two years, we conduct a comprehensive survey to gain valuable insights into the thoughts of our teachers, reading specialists, administrators, and parent users. The results are in, and we're excited to share them with you!
The survey is a pulse on trends and highlights from our educator community. The response was overwhelming, with 11,925 participants providing feedback to help move us forward. User Satisfaction: A whopping 95% of respondents expressed satisfaction with our services and would recommend ReadWorks to a colleague. 94% of all respondents said that FREE reading comprehension resources are important to their community. We are thrilled to know that our efforts at continual improvement and our commitment to ensuring access for all, always, align with what our users need.
National Survey Results by Melissa Calder
Areas for Improvement: While the overall satisfaction is high, the survey also highlighted a continuous area of need for our users: time. Teachers are still short on time to learn about additional tools to supplement their curricula. This constructive feedback is invaluable for improving the simplicity of our communications and ease of onboarding for new users.
Actionable Insights: These valuable insights from our community have already led to updates and enhancements that you can watch for in the new year!
Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey. Your input is invaluable, and we look forward to evolving together based on the insights gained. Stay tuned for even more exciting developments in 2024!
Written by: Melissa Calder, Director of Marketing and Engagement
With planning, teaching, grading, one-on-one and small group interventions, plus administrative duties, it’s no wonder the most commonly cited reason for not using ReadWorks more is not having enough time. This consistent feedback has helped our team prioritize routines designed to give you back critical time in the classroom. Here are three ways ReadWorks can save you time: 1. Build background knowledge and grow vocabularies in only 10 minutes a day Article-A-Day is a 10-minute routine designed to be done every day to build background knowledge, vocabulary, and reading stamina, complementing a broad range of curricula for kindergarteners to eighth-graders.  To make planning even easier, teachers can introduce students to a new topic every week of the school year with our Scope & Sequences, grouped topically or systematically to build vocabulary. Sets gradually become more challenging as the school year progresses and are coordinated by topics across grade levels. 2. Integrate ReadWorks’ Book Studies with your novel units Enrich your curriculum with ReadWorks Book Studies: hand-curated text sets to support commonly taught books in ELA curricula, like The Lightning Thief, Esperanza Rising, Wonder, Sarah, Plain and Tall, and many more!  The three types of Book Studies are: (1) Knowledge Book Studies that build deep knowledge around key content, (2) Theme Book Studies to inspire thematic reflection and discussions, and (3) Deeper Dive Book Studies that excite students with engaging topics related to the books. Each passage includes a text-dependent question set to support integrated reading practice.  3. Use ReadWorks’ alignments and connections to integrate research-based reading routines into your curricula
There are many ways to easily integrate ReadWorks into your instruction with our FREE alignment offerings -- by book, by topic, by decoding, by vocabulary, and by your core curriculum!
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