CARS & STARS Online offers unprecedented access to its state-of-the-art reading comprehension system, at prices that won’t break the bank compared to the same amount of content in printed form, and in a weightless digital form that won’t break your back. There’s never been a better time to go digital.
Because reading is never confined to just dusty old books, CARS & STARS Online includes reading passages that reflect the diversity of texts found in the real world. CARS & STARS Online features reading passages in the form of articles, letters, short stories, dialogues, encyclopedia entries, emails, chat logs and many more.
The intention with online learning and digital learning days is to provide a similar instructional experience to what students would receive in the classroom. Having a well-thought-out plan in place is key to ensuring that these days truly support seamless student learning. In this document we provide information on some of the most important elements to consider.
Younger students sometimes need a bit more structure and direction to be productive when they get a surprise day away from the classroom. Keeping their minds engaged and focused on the curriculum when they are can save a lot of time when school resumes, so it’s worthwhile to have some go-to activities and strategies on hand in the event that circumstances result in your school having to close.
School closures due to community emergencies, inclement weather and other unexpected events can’t be helped, but they can quickly put students behind, especially students who are working through a tightly scheduled curriculum. Fortunately, with a little planning and the help of technology, days when school are closed don’t need to bring a halt to learning for school students.
A CARS & STARS Online parent account means parents can keep on top of their child’s reading progress instantly, from any device. It’s just like having full access to their classroom teacher at any time, because parents can look directly at what their child is doing and see constant updates on their results and progress.
CARS & STARS Online offers a student experience that is unparalleled in its ease and scope. Students using the program have nothing to worry about beyond how to get the best out of it and themselves, and this simplicity and ease of use is an important part of how the program helps to make every student’s reading journey extraordinary.
Summarising is the last of the twelve main reading strategies that underpin the CARS & STARS Online reading comprehension program. Demonstrating the ability to summarise an entire text shows that a student has understood it at a high level, but also illustrates that they are not distracted by what is not important within it and can distil their understanding to its most essential parts.
Reading figurative language requires a more developed level of reading comprehension because it involves a student not simply understanding what is directly stated but moving to thinking in a more abstract and complex way. For this reason, the skill of being able to interpret figurative language is a vital one for any advanced reader, and as such it makes up one of the twelve main reading strategies that underpin the CARS & STARS Online reading comprehension program.
Questions about Drawing Conclusions and Making Inferences move students from a direct, lower-order level of thinking about texts read to a more indirect, higher-order level of thinking, where meaning is derived not simply from what is explicitly stated but from critically and imaginatively engaging with a text to think about the story and events beyond those presented in it.
