Readtopia supports students in middle and high school, as well as students in transitional programs. We have seen success with fourth and fifth grade students, but the content should be reviewed to ensure it is appropriate for your students.

Each lesson requires about 30 minutes, so the suggested three daily lessons can be delivered at various times throughout the day (e.g. English/Language Arts, Social Studies/Science, etc.). Its flexibility supports a busy daily schedule!

Readtopia was built for a 90 minute literacy period, but if that is not feasible in your specific circumstances, fewer lessons can be taught each day without compromising the effectiveness of the curriculum. Most teachers, however, have found creative strategies for maintaining the 90 minute schedule.

Instructional components deliver standards with integrity to the widest range of learners.

• Clear and comprehensive instructions help ensure teachers have the resources they need to engage students and deliver the content for each lesson. Tip sheets offer guidance to classroom aides and paras on subjects such as how to support students using AAC devices, and using effective instructional strategies to support students at various ability levels.
• Authentic literature is used as the anchor reading book for each Readtopia unit.
• Graphic novels at six levels match each student’s instructional level. They feature age respectful images that support the text and allow students to move up to the next level at any time.
• Videos are used to build background knowledge, introduce new vocabulary and build a mental model for new concepts and content. This experiential learning approach brings students right into the action! (There are 4-5 videos included with each unit.)
• Leveled informational text cover ten different text types which cover basic core science and social studies concepts.
• Phonics, word study and sight words are built through book-specific and general phonics lessons.
• Classroom Support Tools include content specific assessments and tools that monitor progress. These allow teachers to easily adjust their instruction on the fly. The Adult Tip Sheets provides support for all of the adults within the classroom.

We have a simple online tool that guides teachers toward the most appropriate beginning reading level for their students. This is based on the student’s communication skills, individual word reading, and text reading skills. Students often finish each unit at a higher level than they could access successfully at the beginning of the unit. When it comes to leveling the text, we started with the specific authoring criteria that was developed by Start-to-Finish. Then, we extended the criteria in order to reach the transitional and emergent levels in Readtopia. When creating the various levels, authors and editors looked at: (a) percentage of words that come from the 100 highest frequency words in written English; (b) percentage of words that come from the 330 highest frequency words in written English; (c) the type-token ratio – a measure of the number of different words in the text; (d) percentage of words that can be decoded using based phoneme-by-phoneme blending; (e) percentage of words that can be decoded using onset-rime strategies; (f) total number of words; (g) total number of syllables; (h) sentence & t-unit length; (i) syntactic complexity; (j) use of pronouns; (k) inference demands.

The literature books include modified MAZE assessments after every third chapter. The modified MAZE assessment provides important insight into each student’s literature comprehension. MAZE, a well-accepted approach to progress monitoring, is particularly important in Readtopia because it is accessible to a wide range of students, including those who cannot read orally or whose speech is difficult to understand.

Vocabulary quizzes allow teachers to assess whether or not students are learning the content vocabulary taught in each unit.

Reading comprehension and close reading lessons include tasks that give teachers a daily snapshot of student performance and the gains they are making.