HOME > FCAT EXPLORER PROGRAMS > 6th GRADE READING > GENERAL INFORMATION: READING ISLAND

Reading Island: 6th Grade Benchmarks is a program that helps students prepare for the FCAT. The program provides FCAT-like reading passages and practice questions that students can use to practice the reading skills tested on the 6th-grade FCAT.

Guided Learning to Strengthen Skills

Reading Island features guided learning to reinforce and improve students' skills. After every practice question, students receive immediate instructional feedback. The feedback lets students know right away whether and why an answer choice was right or wrong. In addition, students can review explanations of the skills being practiced.

Types of Practice Questions with Guided Learning

The program has several types of practice questions that feature guided learning: multiple choice, short response, extended response, and open response.

Multiple Choice (MC)

• Multiple-choice questions allow a student to choose from four possible answers.
• If a student selects the correct answer, the student receives instructional feedback telling the student why the selected answer is correct. The feedback helps the student recognize and answer similar questions in the future.
• If a student responds incorrectly, the student receives a hint that guides the student toward the correct answer. The student then has the opportunity to try the question again.
• If the student responds incorrectly a second time, the program fully explains the solution.

Short Response (SR)

• Short-response questions allow a student to compare two model responses that represent the work of typical students. The student must decide which response should receive the higher score.
• Instructional feedback explains why the high-score response is a strong response.

Extended Response (ER)

• Extended-response questions allow a student to be the teacher and assign a score to a model response that represents the work of a typical student.
• Instructional feedback explains why the model response receives a high or partial score.

Open Response (OR)

• Open-response questions allow a student to prepare a written response to a question.
• After writing and submitting a short or extended response, the student can compare the response to a model high-score response and read an explanation of why the model response receives a high score.

Special Features

• A built-in glossary helps students increase their vocabulary by learning new words from the reading passages. To access the glossary, students can click any of the bold-type glossary words in the reading passages. Students can see a definition of the selected word, hear the word pronounced, and review Spanish and Haitian-Creole translations of the word.
• High-interest topics make the reading passages fun for students to read. The topics support subject matter from all areas of the Sunshine State Standards, such as social studies, science, and the arts.
• Animated illustrations appear every few pages in each passage. These frames of "moving art" emphasize key points in the passage and help keep students' interest.
• Educational games offer students an entertaining way to further practice their reading skills. In addition, the games provide an incentive for students to complete FCAT Explorer materials because students can only earn game tokens by correctly answering practice problems.
• The Explorer's Report allows students to see their performance on the practice questions. The report may be sorted by performance for the current day, week, or year.
• The Challenge List provides each student with a list of links to the practice problems that the student has answered incorrectly. Each student can use the Challenge List to further practice the skills that are more difficult for the student.