If you homeschool, your account can keep your reading lessons and records in one place: a Homeschool section with a weekly plan of short lessons, a reading log, records to print or send, receipts and a guide to what each state asks.
Setting up your school year
- Go to Settings and press "Homeschooling" under "Your family".
- Choose the state you homeschool in, if you want the state guide to open on it.
- Choose the first and last day of your school year.
- If you like, give the number of days of reading you plan for the year.
- Choose four or five lessons a week, and about 15 or 20 minutes a lesson.
- Press "Start my school year".
Once you have a school year, "Homeschool" appears in the menu. You can change any of these later on the same page.
The weekly plan
Under "Weekly plan", each reader has four or five short lessons a week, built from the sounds they are learning. Each lesson is a list of steps, and each step says how long it takes, what to do, the words to say out loud and the letters or words to use:
- a warm-up where you say a word in its sounds and your child puts them together
- a quick review of sounds they already know
- the new sound, with how to say it
- blending words together
- heart words, on two days of the week
- writing words from their sounds
- reading a book together
The last lesson of the week is a quick check: your child reads a few words on their own and you tick the ones they read without help. A word they stop on tells you what to come back to.
The sounds for a week are chosen the first time you open it and stay the same all week. You can do a lesson on any day; the days shown are only a suggestion. When you have done one, choose the day and press "Mark done", and it goes in the reading log. Press "Print this week" to have the week on paper.
The reading log
The log already has everything your child read in the app, day by day, and every lesson you marked done. Under "Add reading done away from the app", add a library book, a read-aloud on the sofa or a lesson at the table: the day, the minutes, what kind of reading it was, and a title or note if you want. An entry you add on a later day than the one it is about says when it was written down. You can take out anything you added.
Printing a record
From the log, press "Print a record". Choose "Whole year", one of the quarters, or any two days, then "Print or save as PDF". The record has the days with reading and the time, the books finished, the sounds your child has learned, the log, and lines for the grade you teach, your notes and your signature. It covers reading and language arts only.
Sending a record to an evaluator
On the record, under "Send this record to whoever reviews your year", choose whether your notes and work samples go with it and press the button to make a link. Copy the link then, because it is shown only once. It opens that record, for those days, without signing in, for 30 days. You can see how many times it has been opened, and press "Stop this link" to stop it sooner.
Work samples
You will be able to add photographs of your child's worksheets and writing to a record, once our privacy notice describes them. Until then the record says so.
Receipts for a savings account program
Under "Receipts", each card payment has a receipt to print for an education savings account or scholarship program. Type the student's full name, the program and its account number on the receipt before printing; what you type there is printed and not sent to us. Some programs pay only for one child's own subscription; for those, use a plan just for one child, described above.
A plan just for one child
Some education savings account programs, including Arizona's, pay only for one child's own subscription, not a family plan. For those, each reader can have a plan of their own: a year at a time, with four new books a month that only that child can use, and an invoice that names them. On the "School year" page, under "A plan just for" your child, press "Pay by card", or "Get an invoice for your program" to have an invoice to send them; the plan starts when it is paid. A child with a plan of their own does not count toward your family plan's readers. To change the card or cancel, go to Plan and books.
The state guide
The state guide says, in a few lines for each state, what it asks homeschooling families to keep and which of our records can help with reading. It is a guide, not legal advice, and it shows the day we last checked it. Please confirm what applies to you with your state's own law, your local education agency or a homeschool legal organization. We never report to a school district or a state for you.
Stopping
At the bottom of the "School year" page, press "Stop homeschooling on this account". Your school year, the lessons, everything you added to the log, your links and your work samples are deleted. Reading your child did in the app stays on their progress page.