Middle School Reading Success | Bristow, OK

Bristow Middle School started using Reading Plus at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year. We initially used it with about 100 of our lowest remedial seventh- and eighth-grade readers . We started using it because we had tried other programs that did not work, yet we recognized that unless significant intervention was found, the low reading levels of these students would jeopardize not only their chances in high school but eventually their chances for success in life.

Before Reading Plus, we had used Study Island and CCC English programs to try to reinforce English and reading skills. We also had used in-house reading groups with printed literature books. It was a dismal failure because by middle school, these young adults need more. They want the autonomy of selecting their own stories and working at their own rates. Reading Plus provides all of this and more. My students love to check their own progress and discuss stories with each other. They love the competition between classes and are proud to see their names hanging in the hallway for successes. No other program we’ve tried has the variety of activities that meet the needs of the struggling reader like Reading Plus does. One very valuable tool in the program is the iBalance which helps train students’ eyes to track better as they scan the words in a story. This segment alone is worth the price of the program when you see a student finally able to understand the story because his eyes are working correctly.

During our first year of Reading Plus  we set three goals for our students: improve at least one grade level in comprehension, show improvement on our SRI score which is our standard Lexile gauge, and show improvement on the state test. 99% of our students met these goals in the first year! This year we are even more excited about the outcomes  because our eighth graders are using the program for the second year, and we are seeing the paradigm shift we had hoped for. No longer are they walking into class hating to read. Now they can’t wait to log in and read, compete, and succeed. Discipline problems are almost non-existent and their grades in other classes are coming up as they realize that this success crosses all disciplines. Our growth rate for this school year, at this point, is 2.6 years improvement with some of the classes showing growth of 3.3 and 3.5 years!  After 21 years of teaching reading classes, I can promise that I’ve never found a program that comes close to Reading Plus. Students who aren’t even in my class are asking how they can enroll! I highly recommend Reading Plus for any age reader — from third grade up — who wants to have fun yet be challenged, who wants to improve on vocabulary, comprehension, and eye scanning skills. You will see student’s lives changed when reading becomes fun!

Linda Trigalet
Bristow Middle School