Little Rock School District Joins myON in Support of 24/7 National Reading Challenge

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - June 3, 2015 - PRLog -- Personalized literacy environment available to all elementary students, creating a community-wide culture of reading

Little Rock, AR (June 2, 2015) — In a joint partnership, the Little Rock School District and representatives of myON, a digital literacy platform, announced local participation in a national reading challenge that promotes convenient opportunities for reading wherever students are. LRSD administrators created a vision to fully integrate technology within their curriculum in the spring of 2013 to ensure each of their students was reading at or above grade level. The level of commitment from initial pilot to district wide implementation throughout the 30 plus elementary schools exceeded expectations. With access to thousands of digital titles, Little Rock students are reading more, becoming more engaged as well as becoming more confident in their ability to read.

Little Rock School District, which serves approximately 25,000 students, is committed to raising academic achievement throughout the district. In order to accomplish this, administrators are providing several technology tools, as well as unlimited access to myON’s books to encourage reading in and out of school as well as ensure that all students are reading at grade level by the 3rd grade.

Initially, Little Rock piloted myON in four elementary schools and by the fall of 2013 and were seeing exceptional results. Using myON, teachers were able to see which books students were choosing books allowing them to learn what was interesting to each student, as well as ensuring they were choosing books at or above their current reading level. From the onset, teachers were seeing these students logging time on myON both in and out of school.

“As we continue to explore all of the possibilities, this program is proving to be effective for our students,” said Baseline Elementary School literacy teacher Latonya Jackson. “myON offers a unique opportunity to infuse technology, reading and curriculum in a fun and challenging way.”

Elementary Media Specialists, district elementary literacy coaches, as well as teachers noticed an immediate shift in how students engaged in reading and were amazed to see the sheer volume of books being read. “We had triple the number of books opened compared to what students actually completed, but that was not discouraging,” said Barbara Williams, director of district instructional technology and library media. “We attribute the large volume of books opened and read to the vast amount of titles available on myON. It was amazing to learn more about what piqued students’ interest as they navigated the platform.” Due to the large selection of books available, every student can find something of interest, which, in turn provides them confidence to continue reading.”

McDermott Elementary School Principal Scott Morgan initiated the first school reading challenge prior to the 2013-14 school year. As a result, students were empowered to read and recorded nearly 21,000 total books read to date. Based on the success of that challenge the former superintendent created his own district wide challenge to motivate students to read before, during and after school, McDermott won that challenge.

“Since we implemented myON, teachers have told me that students, mostly boys, are reading as much as two grade levels ahead of where they are in school,” said Scott Morgan. “myON has provided us an avenue to get kids excited about reading, pushing them to read more and more on their own. They love it.”

About myON

myON, a business unit of Capstone is a personalized digital literacy environment that transforms learning. myON expands the classroom for teachers and students by providing unlimited access to the largest collection of more than 8,000 enhanced digital books with multimedia supports, real-time assessments and close reading tools. myON empowers students and teachers with real-time, actionable data—number and type of books opened and read, time spent reading, results of regular benchmark assessments, and more—based on embedded Lexile assessments that measure student reading growth. With myON, every student experiences the benefits of personalized literacy instruction to propel them to new and unlimited opportunities.