Product Review of Reading Plus
Reading Plus is a personalized, adaptive cloud-based silent reading intervention designed for students in grades 3 and above. Our program is proven successful in hybrid, remote, and traditional learning environments. Reading Plus targets the specific reading pillars of fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. It has decades of research that supports the effectiveness of our pedagogy and approach. Reading Plus meets the needs of students who have developed the learn-to-read foundational skills but need supplemental instruction and practice with reading-to-learn silent reading skills. Reading Plus assesses a student’s silent reading fluency, vocabulary, and motivation to read, and then delivers a personalized, adaptive reading instructional program that is research proven to raise reading scores by 2-2.5 grade levels with 40-60 hours of program use.
Website: www.readingplus.com
What Users Love About the App
“I have been a user of Reading Plus since 2013. I have seen what it can do for high school students that were in my Reading classes and am now seeing what it is doing for my elementary students as an Administrator. On average, our students are gaining 2 levels on their reading comprehension within the program. This, in addition to fluency and vocabulary gains. I also couldn’t ask for a better support staff. Everyone from our rep. Janine, down to the individuals that assist on live chat, email and phone calls, are WONDERFUL. I highly recommend this program.”
“Age-appropriate material to help students master reading standards.”
“A great accommodation for any student who needs reading support, particularly ELL’s.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“This is insulting, there is disinformation and the app doesn’t teach reading in a good way. There is something in it called g-rate (guide rate) where it has a set window of where you can read; this is not complimentary to readers who read a certain way other than theirs, and it isn’t as efficient as most other advanced reading techniques. About propaganda: they would give percentages to data without giving any relevant information on why the data portrays a certain way.”
“My school makes me do this all the time. What is the point of this? Can’t we just do normal comprehension? Also, when a book is really boring (which happens often) you can’t get off it. You are literally forced to read it! That is really dumb. You’re really trying to get people’s money. This app sucks so bad that I’m going to rate it 1/5. I would not recommend.”
“This website doesn’t let me read something I like. Instead, it makes me read some boring things about mosquitoes and stuff like that. Second, the thing called ‘Visual Skills’ is junk. This is for kids, right? Nothing is fun in Reading Plus, and they’re only nice so you can give them more money! Kids won’t like this at ALL.”
“Reading Plus has no place in education. We could be reading real books, written by actual good authors. These “stories” sound like they were written by robots. No real person writes or speaks in the language patterns these books use. They are boring and tedious to read, they’re a great way to ruin an English lesson or make kids hate homework even more. How teachers think this bland drivel is an education I do not know.”
“My school assigns us 6 reading lessons every week. It’s very dreadful for me, it is like a weekly chore. The reading lessons are too long and boring to keep my interest, and overall I just don’t enjoy how much time and irritation I have to put into it. On level L and up I can only get one wrong; if I get another one wrong I have to do it again to get a green. This is bizarre and I want this program to be removed from our school.”
“Honestly, this is the laziest and most boring cash grab of all time. Schools that make children do this are basically dictators. The stories are really boring, even the fiction is boring! How do you mess up fiction? Anyway, the stories are basically “How metal is made” or “Watching cement dry: the novel.” It feels like a robot created these stories, and doing the lessons feel like a chore. If their goal is to make children enjoy reading, they are failing desperately. Do not buy this.”