One thing about being a special education teacher is you get used to juggling. And while I’ve learned to love the challenge of modifying instruction, the part that never gets easier is all the documenting. Progress monitoring. Data collection. Writing PLAAFPs. Although necessary, it’s often tedious, not to mention mentally draining.
When you’re supporting multiple grades, whether in co-taught or Resource settings, and each student is on a different path, you start to appreciate tools that quietly do what they say they’ll do. That’s what ReadTheory has been for me.
It’s not flashy. It doesn’t try to be everything, but it has made my life easier, especially when it comes to collecting usable data.
How I Use ReadTheory to Support IEPs
I’ve been using ReadTheory for nearly 10 years now, long before “EdTech tools” and “AI in Education” became a talking point in every PD.
What started as a tool to help students read at their level has become one of my most reliable tools for documenting progress toward IEP goals such as identifying the main idea, making inferences, or citing text evidence, especially when I don’t have time to create individualized probes.
The adaptive reading passages and real-time data allow me to:
- Align instruction with IEP reading comprehension goals
- Track growth without building a spreadsheet from scratch
- Give students independent practice at their level
- Print consolidated data for IEP meetings, PLC Data talks, or quick parent conferences.
It’s flexible, simple, and efficient, which is exactly what I need when managing over a dozen students with varying needs and goal deadlines.
How It Looks Day to Day
Resource/Co-taught classrooms
I use it on Fridays for quick checks, usually one or two passages tied to whatever genre we’re covering. If you have Premium, you can assign or print specific articles (informational or literary) aligned to standards. This comes in handy when the General Ed pacing is moving fast, and you need to pull a small group to slow things down and check for understanding.
For planning:
The Common Core Standards view gives you a snapshot of what standards are showing up strong and which ones need remediation. I use it to triangulate data against unit assessments or classroom formatives to look for patterns. It’s also a great source of data when I’m updating PLAAFPs. I can pull trends from their standards report and writing samples to describe where the student is functioning academically.
During testing season:
Every year around March, everything becomes about test prep. I start using ReadTheory as a rotation station so that students get exposure to the language and format of assessments without drowning in packets. Premium lets me push a little above their level for practice, which helps stretch their thinking in a way that still feels manageable.
Why the Writing Feature Matters
Every ReadTheory passage ends with an optional short writing response. Now, if you teach students who struggle with writing (and many of us do), you know how helpful this is.
- Students can type their answers and use their own adaptive tools like word prediction software to assist with spelling.
- The prompts are simple and help reduce writing burnout.
- The rubric is already there. You just score and go.
For my students working on foundational grammar (capitalization, punctuation, sentence structure), I’m not always aiming for a five-paragraph essay. And because the responses are short and scored using a rubric aligned to Common Core, they give me real writing data I can use for progress reports or work samples without grading an entire essay.
They also allow students to engage with text in a different way, especially if they didn’t perform well on the multiple-choice questions. You get a clearer picture of what they do know, even if the scores don’t show it yet.
Why It’s Worth the Time
As SPED teachers, we’re often asked to speak on district assessment data that doesn’t always reflect the level of planning, scaffolding, and modifications we put into instruction. And too often, the data feels disconnected from what’s actually happening in the classroom.
With ReadTheory, the data and the instruction work together. I’m not adding “one more thing.” I’m building in practice that has a purpose for both of us. Students stay engaged, I get consistent documentation, and I spend less time trying to track growth from memory or sticky notes.
This isn’t a tool that solves everything. No tool does. But if you’re a teacher juggling multiple reading levels and looking for ways to monitor comprehension that don’t involve constant 1:1 sessions, ReadTheory is worth exploring.
