Announcing new educator preview features in the AI-powered Reading Coach

<today's post was written by Emma Gray, Product Manager on the Microsoft Education team>

We are thrilled to announce the preview release of new educator features in Reading Coach, including sharing custom passages with learners, setting time goals for learner-led practice, and monitoring practice data over time. While these features will be generally available in the coming weeks, you can find detailed instructions for unlocking early access and creating your first practices here. Complete, detailed instructions for unlocking preview and creating your first practices can be found here. Read on for an overview!

As a reminder, Reading Coach is a FREE reading fluency application that provides personalized, engaging practice with safeguarded one-of-a-kind AI generated stories that keeps even the most reluctant readers coming back. 

One-time preview unlock

1. As an educator, sign into Reading Coach with your School (Entra ID) account.
2. Right-click the Coach (Sunny, the sun, by default). If you’re on a touch-enabled device, long-pressing on Sunny will work too.
3. You will see a new box appear that encourages you to "Find out more." 
4. Selecting that will bring you to a preview consent page, and selecting “Accept” from there will enable preview!
5. Once you’ve created your first practice, your learners can enable preview by clicking a valid practice join link or entering a valid join code themselves by right-clicking or long-pressing the Coach.

Create and share practices

Whether you want to set a time goal for independent, learner-led reading (they can choose to read anything in the app, including AI-generated stories), share a custom passage, or select an existing one from the built-in ReadWorks library, Reading Coach makes it easy to tailor practices to your learners’ needs. Learners then join the practice with a simple link or code.

Monitor learner progress

With the new Teacher mode, educators can monitor learner progress per practice and over time. You can track progress toward a time goal or completion status of a shared passage, average correct words per minute, and average reading accuracy. This data helps you understand how your students are progressing and where you might want to support.

Requirements

To access these features, educators and learners must have Microsoft Entra ID (School) accounts and belong to the same Microsoft 365 tenant. While Reading Coach is also available at home with personal Microsoft accounts, these educator features require a school account.

Join the Preview Community

Joining the Reading Coach feedback community in Microsoft Teams is a great way to shape future releases, with direct access to the product team and twice-weekly office hours. To join the community, sign up here!

We are so excited to see how you use these new features to create new and engaging reading practice opportunities for your learners. Stay in touch!

Emma Gray
Product Manager
Microsoft Education