[Reading Eggs Feature Focus] Placement Tests & Individualized Lessons

If you’ve spent some time in Reading Eggs, Reading Eggspress, or Fast Phonics, you probably already know just how easy it is to get started. Students kick off their learning adventure in our three-in-one pre-K to 6th grade online literacy program with an optional placement test that helps them begin on an instructionally appropriate level. Then, learning officially commences when students click on their first animated lesson on the interactive map of sequential literacy skills. But, instruction goes a lot deeper than that! Today, we’ll take a look at the functionality that’s in place to ensure that your students acquire learning incrementally at a pace that’s just right for them.

Placement Tests

Before the first lesson is ever launched, students are presented with a placement test in Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress. They can opt to bypass the test and begin at lesson 1 in Reading Eggs, Reading Eggspress, or Fast Phonics, or take the placement test and advance to a lesson that is more instructionally in tune with their current learning abilities.

During the placement test in Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress, students are presented with a series of questions that increase in difficulty as the test goes on. Every set of five questions is aligned to the skills covered in each successive map of the program. When a student misses three questions, the test will end, and students will be placed on the correct map to begin working.

The placement test in Fast Phonics is designed to gauge a student’s level of phonemic awareness. It will prompt learners to complete a series of audio-based questions and then place them at the appropriate level (or Peak) to develop their phonics skills. Students will need access to a microphone to hear each question and then verbally respond via recording.

Aside from leveraging this test at the beginning of each school year, are you aware of some of the other placement capabilities that Reading Eggs offers?

Before we dig in, teachers using Fast Phonics should note that a written placement test is available via the Teacher Guides under Quick Links > Fast Phonics. Stay tuned for in-program placement test updates to come!

Manually override a placement

Did those little hands get click happy when taking their placement test? We recognize that this is bound to happen, so Reading Eggs includes a simple feature to help you adjust your students’ placements in the program. If you notice that students are getting bored and seem unchallenged or, conversely, seem frustrated by their current material and need remediation, they’re probably working at the wrong level—and this feature will also help get them back on track.

When logged in as a teacher, you can manually override students’ current lesson placement (or Peak placement for Fast Phonics). Navigate to the Management area from your left navigation, then select Manage Progress. From there, you can select one student or multiple students and then Edit Progress. A friendly guide helps indicate which lessons align to specific grade levels. 

Reset a placement test

Did the summer break result in some learning loss for your students? Or, did time get away from you, and it’s just been a little while since they’ve logged in to the program? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then it might be a good time to reset your students’ placement tests in Reading Eggs, Reading Eggspress, or Fast Phonics.

This process includes similar steps to how you would access the manual lesson placement override. From the Manage Progress area within the Management tab, select your students and Edit Progress. This time, however, instead of editing the lesson, select Placement Test from the appropriate dropdown menu. The next time your students log in, they will be prompted to retake the placement test for a more accurate placement into the curriculum.

Individualized Lessons

Depending on which part of the program your students are working in—Reading Eggs, Reading Eggspress, or Fast Phonics—the sequenced set of Stepping Stone lessons, Comprehension lessons, or lesson Peaks represents the core of your students’ online literacy experience. Do you know the ins and outs of how they’re spending their instructional time?

Reading Eggs instruction

Through 120 Reading Eggs Stepping Stones lessons, pre-K through 2nd grade students build foundational phonemic awareness and phonics skills, learn sight words and vocabulary, and begin reading simple sentences. Every lesson represents a specific Lexile® reading measure and includes a series of 8 to 12 short activities that gradually build literacy skills through ongoing practice and repetition. Each step of the way, previous topics are spiraled in to encourage better long-term memory and skill retrieval.

When a lesson is launched, students begin with a short, interactive tutorial that introduces a new letter or spelling pattern. From there, students practice initial identification within different contexts and then move into activities that challenge them to classify words or pictures that include that the same sound or spelling pattern. Every lesson ends with an auto-narrated story that spotlights the new skill.

After each set of 10 lessons is completed, students are given an end-of-map quiz to test their comprehensive skill mastery. The quiz includes 15 questions and requires students to get 11 or more correct before moving on. At any point, students can revisit previous map lessons to reinforce learning.

Reading Eggspress instruction

In 220 Reading Eggspress Comprehension lessons, 3rd through 6th grade students will continue to build on their literacy knowledge by developing comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary skills to improve their Lexile® reader measure. Within each lesson, students explore up to 10 activities to make predictions, learn new vocabulary, and practice different comprehension strategies using authentic passages to help prepare them for the focus story that will appear at the end of the lesson.

Comprehension skills such as comparing and contrasting, determining author’s purpose, and making inferences, to name a few, are spiraled throughout the 220 Comprehension lessons to foster deeper, more conceptual learning. Each map of five lessons also incorporates a featured fiction or nonfiction text that is served up one chapter at a time. At the completion of the final chapter, students are asked to demonstrate learning by completing a 10-question map assessment on assorted skills.

Fast Phonics instruction

Fast Phonics takes the phonemic awareness and phonics components found in Reading Eggs and goes even deeper by offering approximately 400 fast-paced, sequenced lessons focused specifically on phonics for early pre-K through 2nd grade students. Arranged across a series of 20 Peaks, lessons are comprised of tutorials and interactive activities that use a systematic, synthetic phonics learning approach for emergent readers, as well as older students requiring more literacy support. Decodable books available in each Peak reinforce and help students apply new concepts along the way. At the end of each Peak, students are prompted to demonstrate learning by completing a 10-question end-of-Peak quiz.

No matter where your students are practicing, they’ll receive a scaffolded series of tutorials, activities, and quizzes to help them evolve their literacy skills and become proficient readers. Interested in learning more about how you can make the most of your Reading Eggs subscription? Check out our Reading Eggs Back-to-School Planning Guide for tips and tricks to help you kick off a successful school year using the program.

This blog was originally written by Madison Michell and has been updated.