Success Story: Baker Elementary School

As a Title I school that only serves students up to second grade, Baker Elementary School in Wayland, MI realized they needed to start teaching fundamental reading skills as early as possible in order to affect learning gains.

“We wanted a supplemental reading solution that was easy to use so we could train parents on the system and the students could use it at home as well as in the classroom,” said Larinda Olds, Title I Teacher Consultant at Baker Elementary School.  Larinda tells us about their success with Reading Eggs and how the program is used at Baker Elementary.

Edmentum: What are the strengths of your online learning solution?

Olds:  The program is used as a supplement in the classroom as well as in the home, effectively doubling a student’s practice at a crucial time for reading skill building. As the program focuses on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, students begin reading in their kindergarten or young-five class with a greater aptitude in foundational skills.

Edmentum: Describe who you’re serving and what unique needs they have that this solution addresses?

Olds: As a Title I school, Baker encounters a lot of economically disadvantaged students who lack materials at home with which to practice their budding reading skills. They also have a growing English language learner (ELL) population. Foundational reading skills are especially difficult to learn if English is not your first language or is not spoken at home. Thanks to their Reading Eggs initiative, Baker is starting to see great results with their ELL students. 

Edmentum: What results can you share about the success of this implementation?

Olds:  Overall, as shown on the system’s reports as well as anecdotally by the teachers at Baker, this year’s crop of young-five’s and kindergarteners are much more prepared to excel at reading as they move through the rest of the grade levels at Baker. Some of the teachers even reported improvement in the short time students had with Reading Eggs between the kindergarten screening and the start of the 2012-13 school year.

Baker has set some impressive goals for themselves, vowing that 80% of their students will be assessed as proficient in reading by this year’s MEAP and DIBELS testing. When the success of this year’s kindergarteners and young five’s is projected out, they expect all of their students to be proficient once these students start testing in second grade.

Thank you to Larinda Olds for sharing your success.  Read their full story here.