MindPlay®.  We teach reading.

Reading is the key to learning. An inability to read leads to academic frustration in all subjects, impeding success in both educational and career endeavours. MindPlay® programs are designed to make learning to read fun, effective and efficient.

MindPlay® is an online adaptive literacy program that teaches students to read well. The program addresses the essential Big 5 literacy modules for reading success:

• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics
• Fluency
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension
• with an additional module – Grammar for Meaning.

MindPlay® is a unique tool to automatically assess students’ reading skills from Grades K-12 and adult students with diverse reading skills and instructional needs. MindPlay® utilises technology and Synthetic Intelligence™ (SI) to:

• Map details of each student’s reading skills
• Identify gaps, and builds an individualised prescriptive plan
• Uses student data to make learning more efficient
• Assigns instruction only as needed to increase skills and reading level

For Australian Students

Developed in the USA by experts in language, literacy and assessment, MindPlay’s® content has been extensively revised and adapted for use by Australian students by PAA using experts in speech pathology, reading and learning. Speech sounds taught in the phonics modules reflect Australian usage. The virtual teachers all speak in Australian accents. Spelling and vocabulary are also Australian.

MindPlay Virtual Reading Coach™ (MVRC) is a comprehensive language curriculum for average and below average students with skills gaps. MindPlay Universal Screener™ and MindPlay Reading Fluency™ programs are also included in the MVRC program (however they are also available for purchase as separate teaching tools).

MindPlay’s® online courses have minimal computer requirements for full implementation. All courses are available in computer and tablet-compatible formats.

Minimal teacher input is required, allowing teachers to do more with their teaching time and resources. The program supports students by addressing students’ individual learning needs.

My Virtual Reading Coach™ (MVRC)

MindPlay Virtual Reading Coach™ (MVRC) is an educational software that includes MindPlay’s Universal Screener and Reading Fluency programs.

My Virtual Reading Coach assesses student reading abilities with MindPlay’s Universal Screener and automatically develops a unique, differentiated syllabus of instruction and mastery-based activities for every student, thus improving their reading fluency.

It enables students with diverse skills and instructional needs to read accurately and fluently.

Each student begins with a reading screening that identifies individual strengths and weaknesses. MVRC then builds an individualised curriculum, customised to improve specific skills. Students experience a virtual one-on-one session with a reading specialist each time they log in. MVRC assesses student reading abilities with MindPlay Universal Screener™ and automatically develops a unique, differentiated syllabus of instruction and mastery-based activities for every student. Diagnostic assessments, progress monitoring results and student performance determine lesson assignments.

The program first develops proficiency in phonological awareness and phonics skills, as needed. Students are then also assigned lessons in vocabulary, grammar, silent reading fluency and comprehension. Improvement in comprehension and fluency are simultaneous goals.

Interactive activities help students stay focused and accelerate progress, while working at their own pace to achieve 100% mastery.

MVRC utilises targeted instructional feedback to address every error and provides consistent positive reinforcement to build student confidence.

MVRC has been proven to benefit students with a wide range of proficiency levels. It may serve as a core reading program for Tier 1 students and as an intervention for students in Tier 2 and Tier 3. It is appropriate for students of all ages, and in disparate categories including special education, exam preparation, English language learners, bilingual education and adult literacy programs.

The all inclusive reporting module offers the opportunity for students to self-monitor results, with real-time reports and student data available for teachers and automated progress monitoring at individual, class, school and district levels.

Features

• Content created by experts in speech-language and reading instruction
• Content aligned with standards-based instructions
• Phonemic Awareness and Phonics instruction delivered by certified speech and language instructors
• Uses Synthetic Intelligence (SI) to map details of each student’s reading skills, identify gaps and build individualised prescriptive programs to assign instruction only as needed to increase skills and reading level.

MVRC Lessons Modules

Phonemic Awareness – teaches students to identify individual sounds within a word which is the first foundational step in learning to read, write and spell. For many beginner readers, Phonemic Awareness is not natural and must be taught. Each lesson in MVRC is mastery-based, focusing on one sound or concept at a time, with 100% mastery required. Students acquire an understanding of how each sound is made. This module provides 44 sound-based systematic PA lessons and delivers up to 14 levels of instruction, with specific remedial instruction for each lesson. Students learn and practice these skills with the following 8 activities: sound production; articulation; recognition; segmenting; blending; counting; sound substitution; and rhyming.

Vocabulary – provides challenging and enjoyable activities to help students learn new words, expand their knowledge of existing words and teaches students how to derive word meanings from context and structural analysis. These lessons address the most important aspects of vocabulary – associating words and pictures, recognising synonyms, matching antonyms, identifying words within lexical clusters, using structural analysis to derive the meaning of unfamiliar words and words with multiple meanings. There are 20,000+ words included in the Vocabulary program.

Phonics – provides the educational means to breaking the language code. The Phonics curriculum teaches the correspondence between the phonemes, which is the sounds of English language, to the graphemes, which are the letters that represent them. MVRC teaches students the alphabetic principles that enable them to decode and read words, so they may read with automaticity, fluency, expression and comprehension. They learn sound-symbol relationships, long and short vowels, consonant digraphs, diphthongs, blends, syllable types, Latin roots, and Greek roots. The phonics instruction is guaranteed to be systematic and explicit – a requirement for a successful reading program. When phonics is taught with software, key concepts may be represented as frequently as necessary until each child grasps the concept. The instruction helps students learn and practice these skills: letter recognition; keyboard positions; sound-spelling correspondences; articulation; spelling patterns; alternative spelling patterns; spelling rules; syllabication; multi-syllable decoding and irregular word recognition. The Phonics curriculum provides 66 direct, explicit and systematic lessons. There are 21 alternative instructional presentations and additional remedial instruction for each objective. Lessons are reinforced through 12 different, interactive practice activities.

Comprehension – teaches students to read, process and understand text. Strategies focus on teaching students to understand what they read rather than building skills on how to read or decode. MVRC presents students with both expository and narrative texts that are selected randomly. The Comprehension library contains content-rich stories (levels K-12) designed to be read in six minutes or less. Students read the stories and then answer questions to demonstrate their comprehension of the material. The comprehension component provides more than 1,000 authentic literature stories that are decodable and high-interest, which are grade appropriate and reinforce each skill being taught. Comprehension question types include the following areas, which are key to understanding texts: characters; comparing and contrasting; detecting author’s purpose; drawing conclusions; fact and opinion; following sequence of ideas; main idea; making inferences; mood; plot; predicting outcome; real or fantasy; recalling information and details; recognising cause and effect; recognising emotional reactions; setting and visualising.

Fluency – increases reading speed while improving comprehension. Students will systematically increase silent reading speed while ensuring proficient comprehension. Prerequisite skills of eye tracking and word match are completed before a student begins reading connected text, so the muscle coordination required for reading success is present. Most students complete this module reading in excess of 300 words per minute. Students develop efficient left-to-right eye tracking skills and improve silent reading skills and reading fluency.

Grammar For Meaning – improves students reading and writing skills by learning the parts of speech and English grammar structure. This instruction provides simple definitions, explanations and examples. Lessons are cumulative and build systematically. Adaptive activities ask students to identify, sort and manipulate parts of speech. Students will also read and organise sentences and paragraphs. This module includes self-paced activities to master patterns in spoken and written language. There are a total of 62 lessons and a mix of six different types of activities. Areas covered by Grammar for Meaning include the following: sentence structure; paragraph construction; visualisation, parts of speech; abstract nouns; abbreviations and acronyms; syntax and capitalisation and punctuation.

MindPlay Universal Screener™

MindPlay Universal Screener™ is for every student, in every school. The Universal Screener is a fully computerised, comprehensive diagnostic reading assessment program. It automatically tests and diagnoses basic reading skills and weaknesses for a single student, a classroom or the entire school.

In just 5 to 30 minutes, MindPlay Universal Screener™ pinpoints strengths and weaknesses in each student’s reading skills, then creates an electronic individualised learning plan.

The Universal Screener is included in the MVRC program, or is available as a separate teaching tool. There are many optional features including frequency of monitoring student progress through automatic testing.

MindPlay Universal Screener™ assesses critical reading skills and concepts and identifies at-risk readers with benchmark and progress monitoring assessments. It helps teachers group students with similar instructional needs and enables administrators to evaluate effectiveness of reading instruction.

Features

• Uses cost effective web-based technology
• Eliminates time consuming data entry and retrieval
• Provides detailed reports
• Testing adapts based on student grade level requirements and student performance
  

MindPlay Reading Fluency™

MindPlay Reading Fluency™ is an online training program that makes reading more enjoyable by systematically improving reading speed and comprehension. Designed for average and above average students with good basic skills (with Comprehension).

MindPlay Reading Fluency™ is included in the MVRC program, or is available as a separate teaching tool.

MindPlay Reading Fluency™ enables students to progress at their own pace and reading level, providing reading practice with narrative and expository texts. Includes a library of over 1,000 passages, levels K-12. Adapts speed and practice to meet the needs of each student. Comprehension questions follow each passage. They focus on a variety of specific reading strategies, such as finding the main idea, drawing inferences and identifying elements of a plot. Preview questions and text clues provide additional support for comprehension.

MindPlay Reading Fluency™ increases silent reading fluency and text comprehension and accelerates reading rate as skills improve.

Features

• Uses shapes and numbers to improve visual scanning efficiency
• Improves attention
• Develops automaticity for high frequency and sight words
• Facilitates left to right orientation and phrasing skills
• Provides guided practice in silent reading fluency
• Builds from single line to connected text reading
• Is easy to use, automated and adaptive
  

FREE WEBINAR – AN INTRODUCTION TO MINDPLAY®

We invite you to view a free introductory 30-minute webinar on MindPlay Virtual Reading Coach™ (MVRC).

This is a pre-recorded webinar presentation to provide you with an overview on MindPlay Virtual Reading Coach™ (MVRC). You will require 30 minutes to view this presentation. You may watch this presentation at any time convenient to you.

To get started, you will need to first register your name and email address by clicking on the link below (or you can copy, paste and open the link in your web browser). Once you have registered, the presentation will open and commence automatically.

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/8707310034012589314

If you have any queries or would like further information following this webinar, please do not hesitate to contact PAA.

FREE TRIAL FOR AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS

Australian Schools can try MindPlay’s Virtual Reading Coach™ (MVRC) for free for 4 weeks for 10 students.

Here is what is required:

1. Check the school’s internet band width and speed to make sure MindPlay® may be delivered to your school satisfactorily. (PAA will provide you with details how to do this.)
2. Obtain a commitment from your school to implement MindPlay’s Virtual Reading Coach™ (MVRC) with a high level of fidelity. This means that students will use MVRC for 30 minutes per day for at least 4 days per week.
3. Appoint someone at your school to manage the trial. This person will need to undertake a minimum of one hour’s training via webinar.
4. Choose 10 students to participate in the trial and provide them with around 20 minutes of training on how MVRC works.
5. Give permission for PAA to access your student data so the trial may be monitored.

If interested in a school free trial, please contact PAA for details by email or call +61 2 9589 0011.

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