Ready4Reading Evidence Portfolio
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Ready4Reading Research Alignment: Building Student Engagement
In the context of this research base, Ready4Reading is designed to motivate and engage learners through interactive activities and high-interest texts. A s outlined by the program’s developers, Ready4Reading is constructed to motivate students to “ learn to read, read to learn, and love to read. ” The program aims to promote student autonomy through its gradual release model of “teach, practice, apply, and prove. ” This framework strategically transfers the responsibility of the learning process from the teacher to the students until students can carry out the task independently. For example, in Wiley Blevins ’s Teaching Phonics lessons, teachers explicitly teach and model phonics and word strategies with the aim of clearly demonstrating to students how to decode and read words fluently. The program’s Short Read Decodables are then used to provide students an outlet to apply their decoding skills while building foundational literacy. The Read to Know Text Sets offer more complex decodable texts that act as a bridge to natural language texts. In this stage, students receive additional guided instruction and practice reading in small groups to solidify nascent skills. In Read to Know Text Sets, students engage in independent reading practice and then complete the program’s L 2M assessments and SoapBox activities to demonstrate their learning. Throughout these program activities, instructional supports are provided to students in the form of interactive scaffolds, graphic organizers, sensory scaffolds, and other features including videos, audio narration, multimedia supports, and manipulatives. Other program features are aimed at providing immediate feedback to students and encouraging students’ perseverance. Here , online activities using SoapBox Lab’s speech recognition technology allow students to record their voices while reading. When a student misreads a word, the Soapbox avatar offers feedback that aims to promote “ sticktoitiveness ” as well as growth mindset. The program’s decodable texts are explicitly designed with the intention of being engaging and relatable for students. Short Reads Decodables and Read to Know Text Sets include a diverse array of fiction genres aimed at appealing to young learners including realistic fiction, humorous fiction, fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, folktales, and mystery . Similarly, the program’s informational texts are also explicitly intended to foster engagement. These texts include fact book pages, science journals, guidebook pages, question-and-answer book pages, magazine articles, newspaper articles, and how-to articles. Across these materials, passages cover topics such as animals (including cats, birds, rabbits, insects, and pets), science (biology, shadows, animal classification, and astronomy), personal relationships (friendship, confidence, and family), health (food, cooking, and water), civic information (voting and landmarks), multicultural literature (folklore and stories), careers, sports, art, technology, and math.
Activities aimed at promoting active forms of learning are also embedded in the program. These are described below:
o Digital Interactive Resources are provided that are designed for use with interactive whiteboards and tablets. These aim to provide hands-on learning opportunities in whole-group and small-group instruction. These activities include: ▪ “ Picture-Sound Sorts ” where students sort pictures according to whether a picture’s name begins or ends with a particular sound.
© Johns Hopkins University, 2023
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