Teacher Picks: Our Reviewer Tests FLRT – a fluent reading trainer by MindPlay
Our teacher-reviewer Diana Lawsky of Lincoln School in North Bergen, NJ, gives us her review of MindPlay’s FLRT. See more teacher picks on our Instructor website.
Description: An online program designed to help students in grades K-12 read more fluently.
Pros: The word match looks very useful. The student hears a word spoken and has to click on that word on a screen with a bunch of different words. This is great practice for word recognition, using sight and sound. The eye tracking feature is excellent. It asks a student to follow a shape and tell how many times she sees it. It reinforces the proper way to read--left-to-right, top-to-bottom. The single line activity had the student watch a story line by line. But each word in the line was only visible for a few seconds. This forces the student to read quickly. The multi-line feature uses the same idea, but a few paragraphs are put up on the screen and each word, from the top down, disappears after a few seconds. After these last 2 activities the student has to answer comprehension questions about the stories. All the activities build fluency. Cons: None. How would you use this in the classroom? This would be a great product for reading reinforcement. I would use it during a guided reading session. I’d have the students who are not working with me practice with the fluent reader on the computer.
