Ipad Apps: Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress

Some of our iPad Apps

Teachers and students at Newbridge Academy have access to iPads for a variety of learning areas. One of the programs that we use is called Reading Eggs. Reading Eggs is a web-based, comprehensive phonics and reading program for children age 3 to 12 designed to lead kids through the learning-to-read journey from pre-literacy through elementary school. When students log in, they can either choose to complete activities and games at their current level, or work on activities the teacher has assigned them (or the class). There are songs to sing, books to read, and games to play. Students will enjoy watching themselves grow and level up as they learn phonics skills and reading comprehension.

Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress

The reading program is divided into three areas: pre-readers, beginning readers, and continuing readers. Reading Eggs Junior has pre-literacy material, Reading Eggs features content for beginning and emerging readers, and Reading Eggspress is for continuing reading fluency. Whereas Reading Eggs is a learning to read program, Reading Eggspress is a reading to learn program. This program is not intended to replace traditional classroom instruction, but instead as a supplemental program that can aid in comprehension skill building.

Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress on iPad

Teachers choose an appropriate level or assign students a placement test to see where to start. In all levels, books, games, songs, videos, and more take kids through all things reading from letter sounds and phonics to grammar, reading comprehension, and creative writing.

Finding the next lesson or activity

There is a wealth of information and resources on Reading Eggs. Whether you want to read a "big book" to the class, have students work on individualized lessons tailored to their needs, or do a class lesson on grammar and phonics, Reading Eggs has an option. Teachers can use the site as part of their reading program, exploring the available resources to support their current instruction. Teachers can also direct struggling readers to use Reading Eggs as an at-home practice. There's a teacher dashboard to let teachers keep track of student progress and create assignments.

Students can use this as a part of reading centres. Students log into their reading account on the iPad. Students can be expected to spend about 20 minutes engaged in the program. Some students may enjoy receiving golden eggs as their incentive. In the "Library" students are able to choose the genre of book they wanted to read from. This gives each of the students freedom and choice in what they wanted to read.

teacher dashboard

Reading Eggs is a useful program, but it doesn't replace teacher instruction -- nor is it intended to. Many of the activities, especially for very early readers, are designed to be completed with parent or teacher assistance, making them best suited to whole-classroom activities rather than individual learning. There are, however, many activities students are able to complete on their own, reinforcing those skills learned in the classroom. Many of the best practices teachers already use for teaching phonics and literacy are available here in a nice, compact package. All in all, for help in supporting students in learning to read, no matter where they are on the reading spectrum, Reading Eggs is definitely useful.

awards and badges

Reading Eggspress

Reading Eggspress was designed to actively engage students in fun, interactive activities that build their vocabulary knowledge, comprehension skills, and overall reading level. The components found in Reading Eggspress include a wide range of lessons, learning resources, games designed to motivate, and e-books.

There are 240 interactive comprehension lessons in 24 levels of Reading Eggspress. Each unique lesson includes five pre-reading activities that build and teach comprehension strategies. At the end of each lesson is a passage from a story. Students are required to read the passage and answer a set of sixteen comprehension questions to assess a student’s understanding of that passage. Students must score a 75% or better on the quiz to move on to the next level.

building sentences

Reading Eggspress is instructional with diagnostic components. It provides teachers and parents with the opportunity to assign specific levels to students and differentiate instruction. For example if a third grade teacher has two students who are advanced they can automatically place them in a higher grade level. Reading Eggspress also provides teachers and parents with the option of giving each student a diagnostic placement test and enables teachers and parents to reset a student’s progress at any time in the program.

Reading Eggspress is Comprehensive. It has several other learning activities and games aside from those in the standard 240 comprehension lessons. There is also a daily game that changes each day and focuses on a variety of reading skills. Students can compete against other users for the daily high score.

Reading Eggs Library

The Library consists of over 600 e-books in both fiction and non-fiction. The library is searchable by title or topic. Students who found a particular passage in the comprehension gym to be interesting can go to the library to read the entire book. Students can click on a single book in the library to find out information, including the author, number of pages, how many eggs they can earn from reading it, and how many other users have read it. At the end of the book students will be given a comprehension quiz and they will also be able to rate the book. They can also save books that they especially enjoyed on their favourite’s shelf. Students can competitively build individual skills in the areas of spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure.

Reading for All Ages

Overall Reading Eggspress is a good program to help build a student’s reading comprehension skills. Reading comprehension is so much more than just passing a quiz and this program presents it to students through a method that is engaging, fun, and interactive. Overall, It does what it is expected to do and keeps the users attention at the same time.

references

https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/reading-eggs

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews/reading-eggs-learn-to-read

https://www.thoughtco.com/review-of-reading-eggspress-3194769