Program Description
My Reading Academy is an adaptive game-based curriculum designed to help students in pre-k-2nd grade develop strong foundational reading skills. It aims to build essential skills in reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Grounded in the science of reading and cognitive development research, the program delivers explicit and systematic phonemic awareness and phonics instruction, paired with rich reading and language experiences. My Reading Academy uses initial diagnostic assessments to measure each child’s prior knowledge and determine where they are placed within the program, based on what they know and are ready to learn next. The program emphasizes phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. With playful characters, songs, rhythms, movement, and repetition, children learn to attend to small changes in sound and the games encourage engagement and motivation by providing interactivity, adaptive challenges, and ongoing feedback. Each learner is presented with a sequence of problems, and they receive just-in-time feedback that corresponds to their level, which promotes perseverance and cultivates long-term engagement.
Program Outcomes
The impact of My Reading Academy was examined in a quasi-experimental study that took place in prekindergarten and kindergarten classrooms across 4 districts; two in Virginia and two in Texas. In total, there were 30 treatment classrooms and 52 comparison classrooms across the two grades. The initial sample included 1,181 students across 82 classrooms, with 431 students who used My Reading Academy and 750 students from the same districts who used other reading programs in the comparison group. To ensure comparability, propensity score weighting was used and the final analytic sample included a total of 1,097 students, 33% white, 33% African American, 29% Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 2% Other. My Reading Academy teachers were asked to use the program for at least 60 minutes per week, and each teacher received access to the teacher portal with information about their students’ usage and progress in the program. Kindergarten students used the program on average for 40 minutes per active week over 21 active weeks and outperformed the comparison group on the state-administered end-of-year literacy assessments (effect size =+ 0.17), with significantly greater gains on the Alphabetic Knowledge strand (effect size = +0.32). These results qualify My Reading Academy for a moderate rating. It should be noted that results among prekindergarten students were not positive, resulting in an average effect size = +0.04 across grades, but the impact of My Reading Academy was greater for those students who started with lower level of literacy skills and for those who used the program more.
Staffing Requirements
No extra staffing is required from the school / district side to use the program. If desired, Age of Learning will build an implementation plan in partnership with the school district based on historical frameworks of success for districts of similar size and scope. The plan will be adjusted to fit the timeline set forth by the District. Key milestones of this plan include:
Discovery meeting to understand the District’s specific needs, challenges and requirements
Development of a comprehensive implementation plan
Dedicated integration meetings to ensure successful technical readiness
Launch meetings with key groups to increase buy-in and raise awareness
Regularly scheduled cadence of communication with various subsets of stakeholders to monitor and evaluate effectiveness data, discuss feedback, and continuously measure progress to the goals set out by the implementation plan.
Regularly scheduled impact reports with robust data, including aggregate and individualized data by district, school, grade, teacher, and class.
Access to multiple engagement opportunities with Age of Learning’s internal team and national user network for peer-to-peer collaboration, best practice sharing, and thought leadership.
Professional Development/Training
Age of Learning has a dedicated professional development team of employees with expertise in adult learning theory, curriculum, and instruction who will work with the district to customize unique training plans for all end-users/stakeholders of the product including:
-Initial live, in-person, or virtual trainings, and on-demand, self-paced professional learning modules to support educators with initial setup and a turnkey and effective implementation.
-Targeted ongoing professional development and regular coaching for Administrators and Teachers to support effective utilization of student data to make instructional decisions.
-Regular engagement opportunities and open office hours with a dedicated Customer Success team to troubleshoot issues, track enhancement requests and report on usage and achievement data.
-Access to a growing library of Professional Development courses built in partnership with Age of Learning’s Data & Efficacy departments, designed to help teachers maximize the benefits of My Math Academy as an educational resource.
Technology
Users can use the link below on any device to determine whether that device is compatible with My Reading Academy: https://www.ageoflearning.com/schools/systemcheck/
Additionally, the minimum technical requirements for My Reading Academy can be found here
Implementation Notes
Drawing from end of year surveys and interviews with 33 teachers across four school districts, researchers (Bang & Siebert-Evenstone, 2023) found highly positive responses to the program overall, with teachers largely agreeing that the program improved student phonological awareness, that they wanted to continue using the program, and that it was easy to use. Interviews highlighted perceptions of program effectiveness, engaging and empowering qualities, and equitability.