LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The pandemic made a lot of things more challenging. From going to the grocery store to visiting loved ones in the hospital— things were also, especially complicated for young students trying to stay on grade level at school.
On Thursday, the Little Rock School District hosted a demonstration to show administrators how a new online tutoring program will help students catch up on their reading levels.
"It's really targeting the specific gaps that students have in their early literacy skills," Little Rock School District's Chief Academic Officer, Melissa Gudy said.
When students put on their blue headphones— that means it's tutoring time.
"The Ignite Reading program is a daily intervention, it's 15 minutes, it's a high dosage tutoring where kids are online, across the computer with a tutor that they see virtually every day," Gudy explained.
She said that more than half of the district's students are not reading on grade level and that she saw the learning gaps before the pandemic started.
"I think the pandemic has certainly exacerbated those gaps and really created additional issues with attendance and students not being in school," she said.
That's why the district is partnering with Ignite Reading to get students caught up.
One thousand students across 12 different schools are participating in the pilot program that started this semester.
Sequoia Randall is a 3rd-grade teacher, who has 13 students enrolled in Ignite. She explained that she has already seen improvement.
"They're working on fluency. They're working on oral skills, they're working on comprehension, they're working on decoding, and my kids log off and they're excited and they're like I learned this word today," Randall said.
Ignite Reading Founder and CEO, Jessica Sliwerski said three thousand students across the country are enrolled in Ignite— and her goal is to get one million.
"We have a crisis nationally and so we're focused at Ignite reading upon ensuring that every single student has the right to learn to read on time, which we define as ideally by the end of first grade," Sliwerski described.
As a former teacher, Sliwerski said she knows how challenging it can be to teach kids how to read, so that's why online one-on-one tutoring is so beneficial.
"To see the kids and to hear the kids and to see the data that shows that these students are learning to read is incredibly emotionally gratifying," she said.
The district plans to use Ignite Reading through May and hopes to keep it next school year too.