I’m excited to report that students who are part of the Kindle Classroom Project outperformed their peers who don’t use Kindles on a recent online reading assessment.
Right before Winter Break, students took a mid-year reading assessment to track their growth since September. In the three months since the beginning of school, Kindlers have raised their reading skills by an average of 0.7 of a grade level. Non-Kindlers went up 0.4 of a grade level.
This doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but it’s 75 percent better! At this rate, Kindlers will go up a total of 1.5 to 2.0 grade levels by the end of the school year, similar to last year’s gain of 1.9 grade levels.
Getting better at reading gets harder and harder in high school. According to research and my experience, it takes four ingredients: (1) a positive whole-school reading culture, (2) strong instruction, (3) voluminous independent reading, (4) effective reading intervention for struggling students.
The Kindle Classroom Project contributes to Ingredients #1, #3, and #4, and that’s precisely why I think the program is working!