Children have teachers in their classroom that guide lessons on reading, science, math and more. At home, however, another teacher takes over—their parents. When the school day ends, students might have additional learning enrichment at home via tutors, activities or apps and programs.

Some parents might want to accelerate their child’s reading abilities or they might work with children at home to ensure that their child reaches grade-level reading expectations. What is the best guided reading app for teachers at home? Parents have many options, but they should look for these features:

• Tutoring functions

• Interactive features

• Vocabulary enrichment

• High/low books and content

• Progress measurement tools

Why a Guided Reading App Needs Tutoring Capabilities

At-home teachers might use a guided reading app to encourage children to reach a higher reading level or to help them hit applicable grade-level benchmarks (if the child is reading below grade-level). Whether parents want to accelerate the learning of their child or help them read at grade-level, tutoring functions within a guided reading app can be beneficial to the child.

If a child is using a guided reading app, the program probably encourages them (or requires them) to read content aloud. What if a child is struggling with a word? What if they are stumbling?

How effective is a program at boosting a child’s fluency if the child can’t get the help they need when they struggle? Parents should research the resources that the program provides; this means learning about how the program works with a struggling reader.

Even children who are using the program to boost their reading fluency (and accelerate their learning) might struggle with a word. If a child cannot decode the word or mispronounces it, they might lose meaning; this could impact how they interpret a sentence. However, one word also could throw off deeper contextual understanding.

When a child uses Readability, they read books aloud. Readability includes a built-in AI tutor that is designed to learn and understand each child’s voice. The tutor will identify when a child is struggling to decode a word or when they mispronounced a word and can provide help.

At the end of each book, the tutor also asks a series of questions about the story. These questions are designed to measure the child’s comprehension. However, if a child chooses the wrong answer, the tutor provides help.

When a child doesn’t answer the comprehension question accurately, the tutor will show a portion of the story that provides clues to the answer. The tutor also reads the text aloud. Then the child can try to answer the question again.

Readability helps children when they struggle with both decoding and comprehension. The program isn’t designed to punish a child for struggling; it’s designed to help the child who struggles.

Teachers at home (parents, guardians, grandparents, etc.) can research how the programs are designed to ease the struggle.

Interactive Features Help Engage a Child and Hold their Interest

Many children probably don’t want to come home from school only to go home and learn another lesson. When parents need to help their child with reading, these programs shouldn’t feel like another homework assignment to a child.

Children want to have fun, and play is another way to help children to learn. Readability includes interactive features that encourage exploration. All the books and stories offer colorful illustrations that ensure that children aren’t overwhelmed with big blocks of text.

In addition, children can even choose to have the program read a story to them. Readability’s Storytime feature lets children enjoy narrated stories, and they can follow along as they listen. Storytime can be enjoyed in the car or even on the beach.

Words Change the Meaning: The Program Should Offer Vocabulary Enrichment

If a child doesn’t understand the meaning of a word in the sentence, this could change how they understand the sentence, the paragraph or maybe even the story. Words have meaning, and children should be able to learn and understand the meaning of any word they don’t know.

Every book in Readability includes a vocabulary list. Children can learn the meaning of each new word and understand how to pronounce it.

What happens, though, if a child comes upon a word they don’t know and that isn’t on their vocabulary list? Readability lets children tap any word in a story to listen to its definition or hear the word used in a sentence.

Every discovered word is included in a child’s comprehensive vocabulary list; each child can access their full list of vocabulary words at any time. This can help them review meaning and gain mastery of each word.

Look for Programs with High/Low Books

High/low books denote books that are written at a high interest level that correlates with a child’s age or grade-level, but these books also are written at a low reading level. This means that an older child won’t be stuck reading a book for a young child simply because they read at a lower level.

High/low books enable children who struggle with reading to have access to the same types of books as their peers. They can read books about famous sports heroes or other high-interest subjects.

Children who struggle to read could already deal with embarrassment or self-esteem issues. These books help ensure that they are not singled out and can read the same subjects as their friends.

Does the Program Provide Adequate Progress Measurement Tools?

How a program helps a child learn to read or gain reading proficiency is just as important as how it measures the child’s progress. If a parent invests in a program, they want to be able to understand their child’s mastery.

When searching for the best guided reading app, parents might review how the program provides data related to the child’s reading progress. With Readability, parents have access to a private portal that displays their child’s reading data.

In this portal, parents can view their child’s reading level, reading fluency (measured in words read per minute), reading comprehension and even how long their child used the program. The data can even be generated into a report that can be emailed to the child’s teacher; this can help teachers compare the progress on the program to the child’s progress in the classroom.

The AI tutor is responsible for testing the child’s comprehension (the quizzes at the end of the book), but the tutor also measures the child’s reading fluency, too. Since Readability requires a child to read aloud, the tutor is logging and measuring how many words per minute the child successfully reads. All this data is then compiled and recorded in the portal accessible to parents.

Parents can review how their child has progressed over time and understand if the program is helping their child advance to higher reading levels. Reviewing a child’s reading level also helps parents better understand if the child has reached the expected benchmarks of their grade level.

All guided reading programs are designed differently, and parents might not be certain if a program will work for their child. The best way to understand a program is to test it out. For this reason, Readability offers a free seven-day trial period; during this time, parents (and their child) have access to all the features of the program—including the AI tutor. Explore the program and decide if it’s a good fit. Ready to meet the AI tutor? Sign up for a free trial today!