MyOn Reading Program
The program goal is to improve the literacy skills and reading comprehension of 4,450 students in Grades 2-12 in five low-income South Phoenix schools (the target population and geographical area served). The student demographics are approximately 80% Hispanic, 12% African American, 2% Asian, 1% American Indian and 5% Caucasian. On average, 85% of the students qualify for the Federal Free/Reduced Lunch Program. The program activities include:
1. Having Elevate Phoenix's teacher-mentors work with teachers to teach Arizona Department of Education standards-compliant academic reading curriculum to high school students.
2. Training high school students to serve as peer teachers to conduct a reading program and rallies for elementary students using character, life skills and civics awareness curriculum.
3. Giving students free 24/7 access to 8,000+ digital books through MyOn Reader (a web-based, literacy environment for students), which matches vetted titles with student reading levels and interests, generates a recommended list of e-books, and tracks students' reading improvements. We also conduct summer reading activities for hundreds of youth.
4. The MyOn Reader e-books include hundreds of topics that interest the students, including sports, mysteries, biographies, technology, history and current cultural issues. Students can access MyOn Reader using an electronic device (i.e. Smartphone, Kindle, etc.). We also conduct teacher training and parent literacy education on MyOn’s evaluation tools that measure the number of books each student is reading and the improvements in their skills and comprehension.
5. Over the past year, Elevate Phoenix assisted 3,700 students through its Reading Program and related literacy activities that included reading activities and contests, students served in its summer reading and activity programs that began with the Summer School Program and high school students who received tutoring assistance in reading and who used MyOn Reader to improve their reading skills. The students read 17,224 books, spending 3,464 hours reading. All of the students improved their reading skills and Lexile scores by at least 10% -- many increased it by much more than that. In fact, the third graders raised their scores by 57-83%!