In the four months since the Ignite Reading program launched at four of the district’s six elementary schools, first-grade students are seeing significant gains in their skills—and interest—in reading.
Samantha Morin, who teaches grade 1 at Morgan School, is thrilled with the success her students are having thanks to the Ignite Program.
“I'm really proud of them,” she said. “The program has really engaged my students in reading. They're so focused.”
Last fall, the Irene E. & George A. Davis Foundation awarded a $282,500 grant to Holyoke Public Schools to support a pilot literacy tutoring program for students at Donahue, Kelly, Morgan, and Lawrence schools. The funding is supporting the district’s participation in Ignite Reading, which provides “high dosage” individualized one-on-one support from trained tutors for students who are struggling readers.
For Ms. Morin, the program has been a game changer for her students.
“It's been great to see them so engaged. I see them reading, and I hear them sounding out words,” she said. “I can see from the data that they're reading, and they're improving, and they're growing and learning. The things that I'm teaching in my reading instruction correlates with what they're doing on Ignite so it's just like extra practice, and it's been really great. We do a lot of reading at Morgan School. We are reading in our small groups. We're reading in our whole groups. We're reading with interventionists, and this is just like a nice cherry on top.”
Ignite Reading tutors have been assigned to work individually with 113 Holyoke students in grade 1 to help them close foundational reading skills gaps. There are 168 first-grade students in the four participating schools—so tutoring support will reach 67% of these schools’ first-graders in the first year.