There is always room for improvement in the area of reading and reading comprehension. We are always looking for the best ways to teach reading skills and improve reading skills and comprehension in our school. We recently had the opportunity to review a great product from MaxScholar – MaxScholar Reading Intervention Programs.
MaxScholar
So what is MaxScholar? MaxScholar is an online reading program developed specifically to help student with dyslexia, learning disabilities, ADHD, and other processing programs that can make reading and learning to read a struggle for the student. Made up of multi-sensory reading exercises and games, MaxScholar is designed to keeping your Pre-K through High School student engaged in learning to improve their reading and reading comprehension skills.
MaxScholar Guru
We received a one year, online subscription to MaxScholar Guru. The MaxScholar Guru subscription gives students (and parents) access to all the products and helpers that MaxScholar has to offer. Different from their Pre-K Phonics program, which is a beginning reading program for Pre-K through 2nd grade students, the MaxScholar Guru program is a very thorough program to help your student, Pre-K through High School, improve his or her reading skills.
The following programs are included in the MaxScholar Guru program:
- MaxPhonics – learn the basics based on the Orton-Gillingham method
- MaxReading – learn effective reading comprehension strategies based on the Lindamood-Bell process
- MaxWords – learn about spelling, prefixes, suffixes, Latin and Greek roots
- MaxVocab – play games on new words you are learning
- MaxBio – improve your reading skills all the while reading biographies
- MaxMusic – learn about song lyrics, and how to play them on the piano
- MaxPlaces – improve your reading while learning about different places around the world
The program begins with an assessment test to help put the student in the right level of MaxScholar to begin with. My 1st grade beginning reader started at the beginning of the Phonics program where my 5th grader worked on reading comprehension at higher level.
Each of the games and areas of MaxScholar help the student learn and understand reading more comprehensively. My oldest really enjoyed MaxBio when she read biographies and worked on reading skills. There are several areas in which she could choose to read biographies and then work through comprehension questions for a score.
My younger son played MaxMusic and MaxPlaces games after working through MaxPhonics lessons. When working through the MaxPhonics lessons, my son was presented with a letter/sound and then worked through learning the letter in how it was formed as well as it how it sounds and words that it makes. There are 3 parts to each area – visual, tactile, and auditory.
What We Thought
Overall, I think MaxScholar Guru is an interesting approach to reading skills and reading comprehension development. I have seen many products and this definitely took on a new approach. The “games” and guru areas that are available are different than other reading programs. The games are hip and current, which is attractive to many. I could have done without “hip hop” artist options but that may be appealing to some and we just skipped those. Also, for instance, in the MaxMusic section, the lyrics to famous music pieces was included. In this case, there were some that I thought were a little “progressive” for young students but, again, this may be appealing to some.
My 11 year old daughter liked MaxScholar more than my struggling reader son. He didn’t care for the tempo of the exercises, saying they were slow, which is probably good for beginners, but he wanted something faster paced. He thought it was boring. But my daughter liked the variety of reading comprehension subjects and enjoyed playing around with all the various section of MaxScholar.
I liked that the MyMax homepage allowed the student to see where they left off as well as giving recommended activities to begin something else. I liked that there was positive reinforcement and a unique selection of articles.
Overall, I think the MaxScholar approach would be very appealing to some students and help some improve their reading skills and comprehension. The great variety of games and exercises can be a wonderful to reach many students with learning disabilities, ADHD, or are just struggling with reading and comprehension.
Be sure to see what the rest of the TOS Review Crew had to say about MaxScholar products by clicking the banner below and visit them online on social media.
Social Media Links:
Facebook: MaxScholar, https://www.facebook.com/MaxScholarLLC/?fref=nf
Twitter: @MaxScholarLLC, https://twitter.com/MaxScholarLLC
Pintrest: MaxScholar LLC, https://www.pinterest.com/MaxScholarLLC/
Google+: MaxScholar, https://plus.google.com/+Maxscholar/posts
LinkedIn: MaxScholar, https://www.linkedin.com/company/2884620
YouTube: MaxScholar LLC, https://www.youtube.com/user/MaxScholarLLC
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