Reading is always something that has been a struggle in our family so we were very excited to get a chance to use the MaxScholar program. Our family was able to test out the program with our six month subcription to the MaxScholar Orton-Gillingham Software. This was an awesome program, the fact that they are able to incorporate older trusted teaching methods using new technologies that children love is great. I think that the lessons are set up really well and hit on all of the learning types.
The program has multiple parts all designed to help children become fluent readers that are able to understand what they are reading. There are some activities that focus solely on phonetics and others that focus on reading comprehension. I like that with each part of the program they are using different methods to make sure that the child really understands what they are learning.
Parent / Teacher Portal
In the parent section, you are able to see all kinds of reports to check up on your child’s progress or to use during reporting if that is mandatory in your province or state. You can see things such as how long children are spending on each part of the app and what they are scoring. You can also see the things that they are struggling on so you are able to provide extra assistance.
They also provide a section where you can find printable lesson plans on everything that the student will be learning. This is great because you are able to teach the lesson offline and then the child can use the MaxScholar program as a review of what they learned with you. I know that my daughter especially likes it when I am with her while she’s learning new topics.
Child Learning Area
After the children complete the assessment to assure that they are at the correct level they are given multiple different options of activities. They have options to practice their reading, phonics, play games, and more. I personally think that the MaxReading and the MaxPhonics are their best features.
The reading breaks learning to read into multiple different sections. First, the children go over the vocabulary words. Then the read the section of text that the rest of the questions will be about. The following activities all revolve around that text. Things like highlighting the key topic and writing an outline for what you read.
The phonics also breaks the learning into different parts. It’s broken into visual, tactical, and auditory. The children work through several different activities to really learn different sounds. I truly believe that having a firm foundation on phonics will help them for the rest of their learning when it comes to reading. The way that the program sets it up helps the student fully learn concepts.
There are also games that the students can play that are related to the content that they are learning. Here is an example of one of the games, the students play hangman with their vocabulary words. This is great because it also helps them with spelling and memory.
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