Easy Readers Only

Originals Only

Originals and Sparx Easy Readers

Originals only:

Originals and Sparx Easy Readers:

We’ve written Sparx Easy Readers for a number of the texts.

These are faithful adaptations that support all students to access the story.

Most sentences have been greatly simplified, but key quotations are kept in and highlighted in bold:

Our Macbeth adaptation includes clarifications on stage directions and is largely written in iambic pentameter, so it feels close to the original while being more accessible to more students.

It’s up to you which texts students read: you might choose to set certain classes the original and others the Easy Reader, or even decide on a per-student basis.

To assign a text to students:

To assign texts to a year group:

If you need to remove a text, you can click ‘Text options’ in the top right and then select ‘Manage chapters and students’. Expand the choose students list, and deselect the students who you wish to unassign the book for. Use ‘Deselect all’ to remove it from all students. Click Save changes. The student's progress through the text will be saved, and if you later re-assign it, they'll pick up where they left off.

If students have been assigned the book before, you’ll see the progress they’ve made, and be able to assign them a further read. To assign a new read through, select ‘Text options’ in the top right, and then ‘Start a new read-through’. Select the students on the left hand checkboxes that you wish to start a new read-through.

Clicking Set Texts in the menu provides an overview of Set Text reading across your school, year group or class. Click on the book to expand the detail so that you can compare progress, how many reads have been completed, and accuracy.

In the Student Progress page, you can view Set Text by class or year group using the class and year group dropdown.

Click ‘Accuracy heat map in the top right to see accuracy by chapter which can be useful to see patterns of struggle on certain chapters or on average.

Yes, there’s no limit to how many different texts you can assign. Just assign the first text, then follow the same process to assign the next text.

As well as reading their set texts, students can choose to read e-books on Sparx Reader in the usual way, by choosing a book from the homepage or Library page. Set texts do not 'take up' any slots in a students' library. They can easily switch between their set text and e-book by clicking "choose a different book" on their homepage.

No, our questions are the same as always: basic fact-retrieval questions designed to test whether students have read that section attentively.

Yes this is something you can now do, simply assign a text and choose which chapters you’d like to have available

No, this one is more complicated as it’s not out of copyright. We know it’s very popular so we’re actively exploring how we could add it.

Yes - you can read Set Texts in Reader through the Student Demo (accessed through the More menu). The Set Texts will appear in the Library when selecting a new book.

If this is your first time using the student demo, you'll start by reading a short training book and choosing your first book. This helps you see how Reader works from a student’s perspective. You can then return to the student homepage and click 'Library' on the left menu, to see all our Set Texts.

As set texts can be read in different situations (in class, at home, alongside paper based work) a student's reading behaviour during a set text does not affect their normal e-book reading data.

Yes, students will be shown in their current class, and all Set text reading that they’ve done will be shown, including from previous academic years.

Based on teacher feedback, we're working hard to allow you flexibility in assigning specific chapters or scenes of a Set Text to your class. As part of this, which will be coming in a few weeks time, we're moving from showing Acts to Scenes for our Shakespeare texts, to give you sufficient granularity. Apologies that this is a little tricky to use, to see this more clearly please head to the Insights tab. Rest assured, this won't be the case for long and we will soon be in touch with updates.