Active Classroom for Classrooms, Anywhere

Active Classroom for Classrooms, Anywhere

With CARS & STARS Online, teachers can view and monitor the activities of each student logged into the program from their own device. We call this Active Classroom, and it’s a standard part of the CARS & STARS Online program that’s available with CARS & STARS subscriptions.

Reading Different Types of Writing

Reading Different Types of Writing

Being able to understand formal, professional, academic, technical and casual writing can provide individuals with valuable knowledge, insights and skills that can help them in various aspects of their personal and professional lives. Students using CARS & STARS Online will be exposed to different text types as standard throughout the program, beginning at the lowest levels.

Reading Comprehension is Important in Science Learning, Too

Reading Comprehension is Important in Science Learning, Too

Reading comprehension is a critical component of science learning because it enables students to understand scientific concepts, interpret data, evaluate scientific arguments, write scientific reports and understand scientific research. CARS & STARS Online works to create not just better readers, but students who are better positioned to take on all subjects – be they in science or anything else they put their minds to.

Putting the Pieces Together

Putting the Pieces Together

Good reading comprehension skills can help individuals to make sense of fragmented texts and information presented in pieces, and put it into a meaningful context by enabling them to identify key information, make connections, infer meaning, evaluate credibility and synthesise information from multiple sources.

Reading Comprehension for the Real World

Reading Comprehension for the Real World

Reading comprehension can impact a person's career success, personal growth, social interactions, decision-making abilities and civic engagement. With this in mind, shouldn’t you give your students the best possible grounding in reading comprehension? This is where the CARS & STARS Online digital reading comprehension program can help.

The Importance of Reading Comprehension in Higher Education

 The Importance of Reading Comprehension in Higher Education

Reading comprehension is a foundational skill that is essential for success in higher education. You can give your students the best possible head start for higher education with the CARS & STARS Online digital reading comprehension program.

CARS & STARS Online Complements the Australian Curriculum 9.0 – or any English Curricula or Reading Subject Plan

CARS & STARS Online Complements the Australian Curriculum 9.0 – or any English Curricula or Reading Subject Plan

The Australian National Curriculum: English (ACARA, 2022) is presented in year levels from Foundation to Year 10. Content is organised into 3 interrelated strands: Language; Literature; and Literacy. CARS & STARS Online engages with elements of all three of these main strands but is not tied directly to any single curriculum – rather it’s designed to be able to complement any existing literacy program or English subject plan.

The Strategies Revisited: Summarising

The Strategies Revisited: Summarising

Demonstrating the ability to summarise an entire text accurately illustrates 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.

The Strategies Revisited: Interpreting Figurative Language

The Strategies Revisited: Interpreting Figurative Language

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.

The Strategies Revisited: Identifying Author’s Purpose

The Strategies Revisited: Identifying Author’s Purpose

Questions about Identifying Author’s Purpose ask a student to consider why the author wrote the passage, which involves thinking about a text as an artefact created for a specific reason and with a specific agenda.

The Strategies Revisited: Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion

The Strategies Revisited: Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion

Being able to look at information and think about the reasoning that led to its creation – and whether it is a verifiable fact, or something slanted by the agenda of those providing it – is an important life skill, and so one of the twelve reading strategies that make up CARS & STARS Online.

The Strategies Revisited: Drawing Conclusions and Making Inferences

The Strategies Revisited: Drawing Conclusions and Making Inferences

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.

The Strategies Revisited: Finding Word Meaning in Context

The Strategies Revisited: Finding Word Meaning in Context

Finding Word Meaning in Context is a crucial skill that develops as students move from lower-order to higher-order thinking about the texts that they read and illustrates the development of comprehension from rote learning to critically and creatively engaging with text.

Prepare for a Successful School Year With Our Ultimate Back-to-school Guide for Principals and Administrators

Prepare for a Successful School Year With Our Ultimate Back-to-school Guide for Principals and Administrators

As you gear up for the new school year, make sure to implement proven techniques and lessons from the previous year that boost and prioritise student achievement in reading comprehension. To support you in this endeavour, we've curated a collection of our most valuable resources and recommended solutions for you to use. Don't miss out on the opportunity to give your students the tools they need to excel in reading comprehension.

The Strategies Revisited: Making Predictions

The Strategies Revisited: Making Predictions

In correctly answering questions about predictions in CARS & STARS Online a student can plausibly and realistically suggest what might happen next given the events depicted.

The Strategies Revisited: Comparing and Contrasting

The Strategies Revisited: Comparing and Contrasting

The ability to compare and contrast is a fundamental aspect of reading comprehension and so an important one of the twelve central reading strategies that make up CARS & STARS Online.

The Strategies Revisited: Recognising Cause and Effect

The Strategies Revisited: Recognising Cause and Effect

In order to truly understand what is happening in a story it is absolutely integral to be able to understand why something is happening. For this reason, Recognising Cause and Effect is one of the bedrock strategies featured in CARS & STARS Online, and recurs throughout every level of the program.

The Strategies Revisited: Understanding Sequence

The Strategies Revisited: Understanding Sequence

The sequence in which ideas are presented in a text is one of the first things students must be able to ascertain to be able to fully derive meaning from it, and so the notion of Understanding Sequence is a crucial factor in reading comprehension and one of the 12 central reading strategies in CARS & STARS Online.

The Strategies Revisited: Recalling Facts and Details

The Strategies Revisited: Recalling Facts and Details

The ability to recall facts and details in a reading passage illustrates that the student has been paying attention, but also that they have gone some way to understanding what they have read before they have been asked to reflect on it further.

The Strategies Revisited: Finding the Main Idea

The Strategies Revisited: Finding the Main Idea

The main idea of a reading passage is a sentence that tells what the passage is mostly about. Finding the Main Idea is therefore a vitally important skill, and thus it is quite rightly one of the 12 Reading Strategies that underpin CARS & STARS Online.