Differentiating With Action

Action offers powerful differentiation tools that will help you reach every learner:

Articles on Three Reading Levels

Our leveled texts allow you to not only meet your students where they are to start, but also to provide them with reach or challenge texts—which will help them grow throughout the year. In addition to our middle-level texts, which appear in the print student edition each month and are typically in the 600-800 Lexile range, you can also access lower-level texts (400-600L) and higher-level texts (800-1000L) at Action Digital.

Audio With Text-to-Speech

Audio with text-to-speech is an indispensable tool, which allows students to follow along while a story is read aloud and each word is highlighted as it is spoken. We offer two audio with text-to-speech options:

  1. Read-Alouds with Text-to-Speech, in which an Action editor or author reads a story aloud to students—ideal for modeling fluency and expression. This tool is available in our presentation view. 
  2. Audio with Text-to-Speech, available for students to use to follow along on our article pages.

Vocabulary Slideshows

In our vocabulary slideshows, an article’s most important words are pronounced, defined, used in a sentence, and accompanied by an image or video that reinforces its meaning. Each In the News, Nonfiction Feature, Readers Theater Play, Read-Aloud Fiction, and Paired Texts article comes with a vocabulary slideshow.

Background Builder Slideshows

Available with our Nonfiction Features, this slideshow is like a starter level for your lowest-level readers, or just a great knowledge-building tool for all students in your classroom. It pairs simple bullets with engaging visuals to introduce the background needed to set up the story and aid in comprehension.

Scaffolded Activities

Many of Action’s Skill Builder activities come on two levels: one with more scaffolding and one with less. Use them to help students progress with skills such as writing, sequencing, and central idea and details.

Multilingual Learner Support

In addition to all of the valuable tools above, we can also help you further specialize instruction for multilingual learners. Every issue contains differentiation tips for this audience (located at the end of each Lesson Plan in the Teacher’s Guide), as well as additional Questions for Multilingual Learners (available to download on your issue page). Find out more about our Multilingual Learners Support here.