In Raz-Kids, the students are allowed to listen, read and take a quiz based on the passage that they have read at a certain level. The stage of learning in Raz-kids ideally takes three steps until students know their reading progress in each level including listening to a story, reading a story that has been listened to and last taking a quiz.
But sometimes, you want your students only watching or reading without listening to the story or reading materials eBooks in Raz-Kids. However, you do it as you want to know how far the student’s reading ability is, if there’s only a video, not audio. You may want to ask your students to only read the story, though the story can be listened to too.
Well, what you should do here is to turn off the audio on Raz-Kids ‘Listening’ section. So, is it possible for you to turn off the audio? So, let’s find out the answer in our post below!
Turning Off the Audio for Listening Section in Raz-Kids
If you really want your student to not listen to the story or passage on Raz-Kids eBooks, you can only choose the ‘Reading’ section so that your students do only read, without listening to the eBooks.
However, the ‘Listening’ section here is such a first stage where the students can listen to readings and how a word is read. So, by listening to a reading repeatedly, we think that your students will easily imitate how to read it. The point is, ‘Listening’ a reading and the story first is very important for students’ reading progress.
Therefore, you can turn off the audio when the students access the Raz-Kids ‘Listening’ section. Let’s see how to turn off the audio on Raz-Kids!
- When you are at the Raz-Kids page, you can click on the ‘lock’ icon in the address bar.
- Choose ‘Site Settings’ in the drop-down menu.
- Find the ‘Sound’ option.
- Once you find it, you should set the ‘Sound’ option to ‘Mute’.
- By choosing the ‘Mute’ option, it will prevent your site from sounding.
When the students access the Raz-Kids ‘Listening’ section, well, the audio will automatically mute. It’s important to note, if you clear the cache, it will reset those settings.
Additionally, you can skip the ‘Listening’ section and go directly to the ‘Reading’ section and finally the ‘Taking Quiz’ section. So, you will not listen to audio without choosing the ‘Listening’ section.
Customizing the Student Access in Raz-Kids
You may want to customize your classroom or individual student’s experience in Raz-Kids to meet their unique needs. Sure, to customize the student access, you can do it by changing the Raz-Kids settings in your classroom. Here’s how!
- First, log into your Raz-Kids account here.
- Then, navigate to the Roster page from the Manage Student action button.
For class-wide settings
- You have to click on the ‘Customize’ from the ‘All students’ row in the Book Room column.
- Then, you need to slide the silver bards to choose a level or range of levels, your classroom will have access to in the Raz-Kids Book Room. If your students are using Spanish level books, you can repeat this process for Spanish Book Room settings.
- The next step, you can turn on or off the additional book categories by selecting or deselecting the radio boxes next to each option.
- Once completing your choice, you can choose the orange ‘Save & Close’ button to apply settings.
For individual student settings
- You can choose a student’s hyperlinked name from the roster homepage.
- Choose ‘Edit’ beside the student’s name.
- Choose ‘Book Room’ settings.
- You can then follow the same steps which you followed for class-wide changes and once completing your options, choose the orange ‘Save & Close’ button to apply the settings.
Customizing the Reading Room for the Students
Aside from customizing the Student Access, as a teacher, you can also customize the Reading Room by choosing which reading levels and content categories students can view. In default, the students will have access to books three levels below and two levels above their assigned Learning A-Z reading level.
They also have access to English and Spanish books by default. So, if you want to customize the Reading Room for your students, please follow the multiple steps below!
- First, you need to access your Classroom Roster by choosing Manage Students and choosing Roster.
- Choose the Raz-Plus or Raz-Kids tab.
- Choose the individual student, group of the students or the whole class.
- Choose the ‘Edit’ icon under the Reading Room column and then choose ‘Customize’.
- You can also use the pop-up window to customize the Reading Room experience for your students.
- Choose ‘Save & Close’ to save your settings.
As you know, the Reading Room is providing a digital library of resources for the students to read for fun and practice. Its dynamic homepage makes it easy for the students to find relevant, high-interest content which excites them quickly.
The students can also favorite books and see popular texts as their reading level based on what other students favorite. In this case, the additional content is organized into categories and presented at each student’s level. It means that the students can see the resources most relevant to them first.
Getting Started to Use the Raz-Kids
To start learning with Raz-Kids in Learning A-Z site, at least there are three easy steps to perform, here are they:
- Add the Students to Your Roster
As a teacher, make sure to add the students to your Roster first. The Roster here will make it easy to create logins, manage the students activity and send messages.
- Determine Student Reading Level
Once you add the student into a roster, the next step, you should determine student reading level based on the three criterias including Qualitative Measures, Quantitative Measures and Reader and Task Consideration.
- Communicate Kids A-Z Login Instructions
The last step that you should do is to communicate the Kids A-Z Login Instruction to students and parents. From this step, make sure that the students understand how to log into the Kids A-Z Student Portal by using their username and password either in class or at home.
