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Skills Coach is a series of animated online lessons that address the nine major reading comprehension Anchor Skills and their component subskills. All Skills Coach lessons consist of three parts:

1. The animated Overview offers students a description of the comprehension Anchor Skills and subskills.2. The Tutorial provides explicit instruction on how to use the skills by helping students analyze the types

of comprehension questions and answer choices they encounter in SeeReader. 3. The Practice exercises further strengthen comprehension skills by allowing students to apply what they

learned in the Overview and Tutorial.Skills Coach is designed as a tool for teacher-led instruction in the classroom to help those students who struggle with the reading comprehension tasks that follow each SeeReader reading selection. Teachers may also choose to use Skills Coach when providing larger groups of students with direct instruction in various comprehension skills and strategies. Skills Coach is designed for students of all ages working on lower readability levels in SeeReader.

Note that Reading Plus identifies students who are struggling with specific subskills and reports that information to teachers on the Class Skill Group Report. The program also reports all students’ competence with all nine Anchor Skills on the Class Skills Summary Report.

Two Ways to Access Skills Coach

Skills Coach Quick-Start Guide

Accessing and Using Skills Coach

1. The preferred way is to access Skills Coach directly:

• Go to skillscoach.readingplus.com.

• Consider bookmarking the Skills Coach Web address in your browser for easy future use.

2. Teachers can also access Skills Coach via the Learn Site (learn.readingplus.com):

• Click Teaching Tools.

• Click Skills Coach.

• Click any Skills Coach link.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you use Skills Coach with individual students, please access Skills Coach via skillscoach.readingplus.com. This will prevent students from having access to Learn Site materials that are meant for educators rather than students.

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From the Skills Coach Main Menu:

• Choose either the Basic or Intermediate curriculum level.

• Click the Anchor Skill.

• Click the play button and view the Anchor Skill Overview video.

• After the Overview concludes, click the subskill of your choice.

• Click the play button and view the subskill Overview.

• When the subskill Overview concludes, you will automatically advance to the Tutorial.

Guide Students Through Skills Coach

Each complete Skills Coach lesson covers one Anchor Skill and all associated subskills. The complete Anchor Skill lessons, including all associated subskill lessons, vary in length from approximately 8-35 minutes. Each complete Anchor Skill lesson may be broken down into its component skills and used as mini-lessons.

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• Click the play button to hear the introduction, have the excerpt read aloud, and experience the Tutorial.

Note that having the excerpt read aloud can reduce the cognitive load for some students, allowing them to process comprehension lessons more effectively. If you wish to have students read the excerpt independently, you can press the pause button. When student(s) finish reading, click the mouse-over arrow to advance directly to the Tutorial.

• After the Tutorial concludes, you will automatically advance to the independent Practice exercise. Click the play button to hear the introduction and have the excerpt read aloud.

• Note that mouse-over arrows on the right and left of the screen allow you to navigate forward and backward within a Skills Coach lesson.

Note that tabs labeled Overview, Tutorial, and Practice allow you to move between the three parts of a Skills Coach lesson.

• Click the Reading Plus logo to access the complete Skills Coach menu, listing all Anchor Skills 1-9, and all associated subskills.

www.readingplus.com • 800-READ-PLUSCopyright © 2016 Taylor Associates/Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved