Ready4Reading Evidence Portfolio
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o SoapBox Labs’ Speech Recognition Technology is incorporated in the program that allows students to record their voices reading words and sentences. The program’s artificial intelligence- based speech engine is built to recognize children’s voices and diagnose reading accuracy. SoapBox listens to students practicing reading and provides detailed assessment and feedback reports to teachers.
Formative Assessment to Facilitate Data-Driven Instruction
Next, Ready4Reading is designed to incorporate continuous assessments that provide educators with targeted data and actionable insights that can serve to optimize literacy instruction. Formative assessment — the ongoing assessment process to inform instruction — can have a highly positive impact on student reading achievement (Kingston & Nash, 2011; Xuan et al., 2022). Research indicates that formative assessment is most effective for schools when assessment data is used to set learning goals for students, continuously monitor and diagnose student performance relative to these learning goals, and ultimately, help teachers make instructional decisions in response to students’ learning progress (National Research Council, 2000; Yan & Ming Chiu, 2023). Broadly, research suggests that the more teachers leverage data from assessments to not only inform their instruction, but to better individualize and differentiate instruction for students, the greater impact it has on students’ literacy learning (Conner et al., 2009).
Ready4Reading Research Alignment: Formative Assessment
As it relates to this research, Ready4Reading is created with the intent of incorporating continuous assessments that are designed to provide educators with targeted data and actionable insights needed to optimize literacy instruction. The assessment tools provided through Ready4Reading are described below. Ready4Reading incorporates use of Letters2Meaning (L2M) — a normed, computer adaptive assessment that tests students’ letter identification, letter-sound identification, word reading, spelling, and basic comprehension skills. This 10-minute assessment requires students to identify letters by name and by sound, select letters to build words, and select words to generate sentences. L2M employs an adaptive scoring algorithm to produce a single grade equivalent score (G.E.) based on a student’s response to questions. The G.E. represents how well a student is reading compared to a representative sample of students from across the United States (norms for Letters2Meaning are calculated using data from the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement and the NWEA MAP Reading assessment). Specifically, the G.E. s core represents a student’s reading ability as a given grade and month combination; for example, a student with a G.E. Score of 2.3 is reading at the level of a 2nd grader during the third month of school. The assessment is administered through the program five times per year (every 6 – 8 weeks) and provides a metric for grouping students as well as a way for teachers to monitor student learning progress. • Placement and Progress assessments:
• Formative assessments: The program incorporates SoapBox Child-Specific Voice Technology, an AI- based speech engine built to accurately recognize children’s voices and
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