June 20, 2024
Help your students learn to read with Read Along in Classroom
What’s changing
In 2019, we launched Read Along as an Android reading app to help young readers have fun while learning to read. Read Along has an in-app reading buddy who guides readers along as they read aloud, offering assistance when they struggle, and rewarding them with stars when they’re successful.
Today, we are excited to introduce Read Along in Google Classroom, a new feature that helps students build their independent reading skills by enabling teachers to assign differentiated reading activities, based on Lexile® measure, grade level, or phonics skills. With this feature, a digital reading buddy, Diya, gives students real-time assistance and pronunciation support, with the help of AI. Read Along offers engaging and inspiring reading assignments, while providing educators with insights on students' reading progress over time, including their accuracy, speed, and comprehension.
Educators can also:
- Access 800+ fiction and non-fiction books in the Read Along library within Classroom, including texts from publishers like Heggerty and ReadWorks. Each book is categorized by Lexile® level, grade level, or phonics skills and some have comprehension questions.
- Personalize the experience for each learner by assigning books with the right difficulty level based on a student’s reading abilities.
- Check for understanding by assigning books with comprehension questions.
- Read Along in Classroom will be available globally, so students around the world can practice their reading skills in English.
Who’s impacted
Admins and end users
Why you’d use it
Read Along in Classroom provides fun and engaging reading assignments for students, while also enabling educators to track performance and more easily identify students who need extra support. Some key highlights include the ability to:
- Help boost reading skills with activities for each student based on their reading level or phonics skills.
- Provide instant help for students, with the help of AI-powered reading buddy, Diya to give students in-the-moment assistance on correct pronunciation and more.
- Get important insights about your students’ progress including their accuracy, speed, and comprehension.
- Support English language learners in building their reading skills, with additional support in Spanish
Additional details
Read Along is now a Workspace Service for Google Workspace for Education customers. Admins will now find this service listed under Workspace Services in Admin Console. Read Along in Classroom will be available to all Google Workspace for Education users with their school issued account and will be governed by the Workspace for Education Terms of Service, with data collection and use being governed by the Google Workspace for Education Privacy Notice.
Getting started
- Admins:
- Existing Workspace Customers (those who signed up for Workspace for Education before July 7, 2024): Read Along in Classroom will be available to all Google Workspace for Education customers as a service that will be covered under the Workspace for Education Terms of Service. You can enable Read Along in the Admin Console for users in your domain to access this service. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning Read Along on or off for users.
- For new Workspace Customers (those who sign up for Workspace for Education on or after July 7, 2024): Read Along will be automatically enabled in the console, and all eligible users will have direct access to it. Visit the Help Center to learn how to turn Google Read Along on or off for users.
- End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about Read Along in Google Classroom.
Rollout pace
- This feature is available now.
Availability
Available for Google Workspace:
- Education Plus and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade