Books in Sparx Reader are broken into sections. At the end of each section they read, students will see a small number of questions or a 'check' to see how carefully they have read. If a student passes the check, they will earn some SRP.

Please see this article for more information about questions in Sparx Reader: Questions

To pass the check, the student needs to answer the majority of the questions correctly. (Depending on the number of questions they are shown they must get at least 3/4 correct or 4/5 correct.) If a student has read carefully, the questions should be easy to answer correctly.

If a student reads faster than we expect we present them with the image below to check if they are happy to proceed. When they click "Yes, ask me the questions" on the pop-up, they need to get 100% correct to pass the check, 3 out of 4 is not enough in this instance. The same is true if they have one attempt at the questions, get them wrong then try again.

SRP are personalised to each student's reading speed with 10 SRP being roughly equivalent to 1 minute of careful reading. So, if you set a homework task of 300 SRP, this equates to roughly 30 minutes of careful reading for all students in the class.

The amount of SRP a student earns after completing each check is based on:

For example, if a student has a reading speed of 150 wpm and reads a section 300 words long, they will be awarded 20 SRP corresponding to 2 mins of reading (even if the student spent longer reading that particular section).

If a student continues reading after completing their weekly target, this extra SRP will either:

Sparx Reading Levels are a measure of student reading ability, on a 1 to 9 scale.

These Sparx levels can be mapped to reading ages:

Students will be shown a selection of books that are appropriate for their Reading Level. Every time students do some reading or answer a question, we learn a bit more about how they read, and that all feeds into our estimate of their current reading level. The more students read using Sparx Reader, the more information we will have to ensure their level is accurate.

Learn more about our Sparx Reader Library here:

The Sparx Reader library

In addition to reading, students have the option to do daily vocabulary practice in Sparx Reader.

This activity is not compulsory, so students are not required to complete this as part of any homework, but each correct answer will earn 1 SRP.

It is widely accepted that a reader needs to know 95% of the words in a text in order to understand it (Nagy and Scott, 2000). It follows that, if a learner is struggling to recognise even a handful of words in a paragraph, they can very quickly become locked out of being able to make meaning. We've built the experimental student feature called 'contextual definitions' not only as a way for our young readers to stay immersed in the story, but also to help them make the most of all the opportunities for incidental vocabulary acquisition that reading offers. 'Contextual definitions' do the heavy lifting in helping students to understand how that word contributes to the meaning of the sentence

Whilst students are reading an ebook on Sparx Reader, when they click on a word, they'll see a small popup asking if they'd like to receive a definition.

If we have one available, we'll produce the word along with a description within the context of the passage of text they are reading.

There are a few restrictions on this:

Yes, students don't need to complete all their reading in one sitting. They can spread it across multiple sessions during the homework period. When they next open Reader, they will be taken to the position in the book where they last got up to.

Students can complete up to 3 vocabulary questions per day (or 4 questions if the student did not complete 3 questions the day before).

We absolutely understand the significant concerns that teachers and parents rightly have around young people and their exposure to screens. Much has been commented on in this space, and we are in full agreement that limits must be imposed on adolescents’ screen time, especially when that time might be spent engaging with content that is corruptive in nature.

However, reading rates are in crisis, nationally, and there is an urgent need to re-teach the habit of careful, controlled reading. In today’s tech-heavy world, our young people are constantly skimming and scrolling bombardments of content and, despite being screen-based, Sparx Reader in fact encourages pupils to use screen time in a different way: to slow down, to concentrate, and to pay close attention to the narratives they are reading.

It is impossible for a teacher to know exactly how much, if any, reading is taking place in a busy library lesson or when reading is set as homework. If teachers are to support struggling readers and celebrate successful readers, they need to be able to see detailed information about every student’s reading.

The Sparx Reader library necessarily uses ebooks because that way we can:

An additional benefit to ebooks is that they are accessible anywhere, at any time: Sparx Reader works on any device with a browser. Frighteningly few students have books at home; the ease with which students can access books on Sparx Reader overturns this inequality.

A huge upside to ebook reading for young people - reluctant readers especially - is that the exact type of book is concealed from a pupil’s peers. A struggling pupil who is possibly embarrassed by the type of book they are reading in a public setting - a library lesson for example - because it may be overtly aimed at younger readers, may feel disheartened by their obvious weakness, and be unlikely to persevere. Ebooks are wonderfully egalitarian in this regard.

In conclusion, Sparx Reader is a productive and controlled way of harnessing the power of technology for good in this digital age, creating resilient learners who are willing to persevere.

Although 300 SRP will be about 30 minutes of careful reading, it is very important to remember that this doesn't factor in the time taken to read and answer the questions at each check. In addition, if students do not pass their checks the first time and so have to re-read sections, their homework is likely to take longer than expected. For this reason, we would recommend always talking to students about SRP rather than how long they should spend reading.