The rise in online learning:
- During the pandemic, many educators started looking for high-tech solutions to teaching reading. One practice that arose was mass Zoom tutoring sessions.
Examples of successful virtual reading programs:
- Ignite! Reading is a high-tech literacy initiative of nonprofit Open Up Resources. It starred a 9-week summer program for K-third grade students.
- Stanford’s Ravenswood Reads program is a literacy project that switched to an online format during the pandemic, offering reading tutorials to low-income K-third grade students.
- Check out the original resource to read more about these programs.
Concerns about online learning (especially for teaching reading):
- The California Reading Coalition emphasizes that kids learn better with real teachers and tutors. However, they also share that the use of ed-tech is meant to boost, not replace, the human component. Ed-tech makes learning more accessible, and it has led to good results.
Benefits of teaching reading online:
- Tutors can now use visuals as well as sounds to build context around words and meanings.
- Online platforms, such as Zoom, offer many opportunities for interaction.
- Zoom provides a safe space for students to get to know their tutors. Trust is important in building a child’s early literacy skills. They need to feel safe to make mistakes.
- The Ignite program was successful, with students making an average of 2.5 weeks of reading progress for each week in the program. This was largely due to these factors:
- Each student received 30 minutes per day of one-on-one tutoring from a remote tutor on Zoom. Half the session focused on building foundational reading skills, targeted to the student’s needs. The other half was spent reading together to build vocabulary and comprehension.
- The personalized instruction provided explicit and systematic instruction.
- Additionally, each child was challenged and rewarded in almost every lesson, leading to increased engagement. Rewards were easily handed out, being as simple as a heart stamped on the computer screen.
