If you’ve been coming to this site for a while, you may be familiar with my Ereading Worksheets. These are interactive online versions of my worksheets. Students complete these online and are instantly graded on their results. At the end, students can print out a score sheet indicating their success. These Ereading Worksheets were pretty popular last year, so I’ve spent some time redesigning and improving them. Here are the ways in which they’ve improved:
Improvements
- Ereading Worksheets are now iPad and iPhone compatible. My old Ereading Worksheets were built using Adobe Flash, which made them incompatible with iPads and iPhones, which do not run Flash. The new Ereading Worksheets were built using HTML5 and JavaScript, which makes them 100% compatible with modern internet browsers.
- Results can now be printed, saved, or emailed. The old Ereading Worksheets could only be printed. The new Ereading Worksheets will allow students to print their results, save their results as a PDF file, or email their results directly to their teacher or caretaker. Because the results are sent directly through the ereadingworksheets.com server and as a PDF file, students will be unable to modify or change the results of their tests, which ensures that the data you receive is accurate.
- Ereading Worksheets scale in size. The old Ereading Worksheets came in one size: 640 x 480 pixels. Because of this these worksheets would not display properly on certain displays. Now, Ereading Worksheets automatically scale in size while maintaining their proportion. Because of this scaling, Ereading Worksheets can be completed on a display as small as a phone’s or as large as a widescreen HDTV.
- More data and testing metrics are available. The results page from an old Ereading Worksheet told teachers how many questions a student got right or wrong out of how many questions the student answered. The new Ereading Worksheets offer this same information as well as new, helpful data: the date that the test was taken, how much time was spent taking the test, and the time that the test taker finished. This new data may assist teachers in analyzing whether students are cheating or otherwise circumventing the assignment. Did a group of struggling readers submit a batch of perfect scores at or on a difficult Shakespearean figurative language assignment within a two minute testing window? They probably cheated.
- Additional content is available. In addition to the old Ereading Worksheets having been converted to the new format, I have also created some new content and will create more. In the meantime I have created some reading comprehension tests in the new format. Check them out:
Submarines | Nonfiction Reading Test 1 Ereading Worksheet
Tigers | Nonfiction Reading Test 2 Ereading Worksheet
Castles | Nonfiction Reading Test 3 Ereading Worksheet
Gutenberg | Nonfiction Reading Comprehension Test 4 Ereading Worksheet
And, if you’d prefer, I have paper versions of those same reading comprehension tests on this page.What’s Next for Ereading Worksheets?
I’m still rolling out the updated versions of these new Ereading Worksheets and should be done by the end of September, but that won’t be the end of the updates. While I think this generation of Ereading Worksheets is a major improvement, the product does not quite meet my vision at this time. Here are some of the changes and improvements that I will institute over the following school year:
- Adding open-ended responses. Many people have praised my worksheets not just for the content that I’ve created, but also for how I’ve left room for students to include their own reasoning on many of the worksheets. I’d like to carry this critical thinking element forward into the digital age by asking students to type how they have thought through their answers for each question on applicable exercises. Their thinking will then be added to the PDF results page and submitted to you as you would like.
- Bundling all of the Ereading Worksheets as an application. As iPads and other tablets and technologies have a continued presence in classrooms across the nation and around the world, I’d like to continue supporting teachers and students by offering all of my Ereading Worksheets as a freely available application for Android, iOS, Windows, and Blackberry devices. In addition to creating more content and leveled content, this will be one of my top priorities this school year.
I appreciate all of the early adopters who have helped me pioneer and develop these technologies, and I look forward to receiving more of your feedback, thoughts, corrections, and criticisms. Have a great school year!
Looking For Something Else?
Old Versions of Ereading Worksheets