Reading Comprehension Improvement - Case Studies

On this page are stories of individuals who have used My Reading Coach to improve their reading comprehension. The students were either part of one of the Tucson Urban League pilot study or in Mindplay's Lifelong Learning Center™.

There are also video and audio clips from the students. In order to play them you will need the free Real Player from Real Networks.

Andrea
Andrea was a sophomore in high school. She came from an upper-middle class family. She had received A's and B's throughout her school career. After doing poorly on a practice SAT, she and her parents were concerned with her low reading comprehension scores. The My Reading Coach assessment identified specific gaps in her encoding/decoding ability and major problems with comprehension. Also Andrea sometimes "zoned out" when reading - literally falling asleep while reading at home, in class and during tests. Andrea spent 10 hours on My Reading Coach mastering the 13 lessons that the program identified as necessary to fill in the gaps in her encoding/decoding ability. She spent approximately 4-6 additional hours working on comprehension. She learned how to comprehend a passage by visualizing what she read and how to Read Like You Talk™. According to her Stanford 9 scores before My Reading Coach, she was in the 30th percentile. After program completion she was in the 80th percentile of her grade level.

Naeli
Naeli was from a low socio-economic family. She was a bilingual sixth-grade student and the primary language spoken at home was Spanish. Naeli was reading below grade level and had no word attack skills. Her English vocabulary was below a 6th grade level as well. Naeli spent 54 hours on the program with approximately five hours of off-line, supplemental remediation. After completing the program, her encoding and decoding ability increased by 86%. She was also able to comprehend passages at her grade level. Her comprehension scores on the Degrees of Reading Power® went from stanine 1 to stanine 2.

Randy
Randy dropped out of high school after his freshman year. Our initial pre-test assessment indicated that Randy was reading at a 1.5 grade level. Over the next six weeks, Randy came to Mindplay to work on My Reading Coach two to three times a week. Randy spent a total of 39 hours on the program. The remediation effort required approximately six additional hours of effort. After completing the program, Randy was able to read and comprehends adult level material on his own. He was able to take the driver's exam, fill out a job application and get a job. Randy returned to school and was graduated the same year as his original class.

Brandon
Brandon came from a lower middle class background. When he started the second grade he could read about 20 sight words. His parents were very concerned about his lack of academic progress. The school told his mother that he had low average intelligence and placed him in a special reading program for limited language proficiency students. Brandon started the My Reading Coach late in September and completed it before the end of the year. By the second semester, Brandon was way ahead of the other students in his regular class and was no longer in the limited language proficiency class.

 

Lorenzo
Lorenzo was a 7th grade learning-disabled student from a low socio-economic family. Lorenzo spent 45 hours on the program and mastered lessons 1-37. He was unable to finish the program in the three-month pilot period. Approximately five hours of off-line, supplemental remediation were needed. He improved his comprehension by learning to "read like he talked"—learning how to pause and inflect while reading. His pre- and post-test scores indicate that his encoding and decoding skills improved by 72%.