ABSTRACT

“Inspired to Read! Improving Reading Performance for At Risk Children” by Shana Donald will focus on improving reading levels for at-risk children. The initiative began after 75 out of 250 students at Creative Angels Learning Center had reading performances that were proven to be very low by last year’s Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress (M-Step) assessment. There are various reasons for this low performance which include, but are not limited to: attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, limited proficiency in spoken English, or even lack of appropriate home literacy experiences. In the United States, approximately thirty-four percent of children entering kindergarten lack the basic skills needed to learn how to read. If children are not assisted with this, by the time they are in the fourth grade, children will be in the sixty-five percent of fourth graders who read below the basic level and will eventually fall behind as the curriculum advances. With this grant, an evidence based educational software, Mind Play, will be implemented. Funding in the amount of $10,000 is requested for all the resources needed to make this possible. Mind Play will provide an essential foundation in learning to read, write, spell, and provide activities for expanding word knowledge, phonics, comprehension and more to improve children’s reading performance. It will also provide a universal screener tool that will be utilized to assess students’ improvements throughout the reading program. The results from the M-Step assessment will also be used to monitor improvement.