Timed Reader

Mr. Dan’s ESL Timed Reader is a leveled reading-fluency and comprehension activity designed for middle-school English learners. Students enter their name and choose from five proficiency levels, ranging from Beginning to Advanced. The program then randomly selects a reading from the corresponding proficiency band and begins a stopwatch that continues through both the reading and comprehension portions.

Each passage includes topic and genre information and can also be read aloud using built-in text-to-speech, with adjustable playback speeds of 0.75×, 1×, and 1.25×. After reading, students answer four randomly selected comprehension questions from the passage’s larger question bank; answer positions are shuffled to reduce memorization. Immediate feedback identifies the comprehension skill being assessed, such as main idea, inference, vocabulary in context, evidence, sequence, or author’s purpose.

At completion, students receive their score, total reading-and-question time, and a review of missed questions with correct answers. Results are also submitted to a connected Google Form, providing the teacher with the student’s name, level, missed-question numbers, and total completion time. This makes the tool useful for independent reading practice, fluency monitoring, differentiated comprehension work, learning stations, and repeated progress checks.