"Reading Buddies"

Local television station KVAL recently came out to Howard Elementary School to interview teacher Carol Grieg Petitti and her kindergarten students about how they are using the iShuffle to reinforce learning instruction at home. The program has been created by the teacher through a Title II grant, and has resulted in dramatic reading skill growth. The program has recently been awarded the Pioneer Award for innovation from the Confederation of School Administrators (COSA).

Students get coded learning packets to take home, shown above, which hold their book, the iShuffle with a 20-30 minute recorded lesson, and a worksheet.	Their regular routine at home is to open the package, put the earphones on, plug them into the iShuffle, and follow directions.	After listening to the lesson and following along in their book, students will do a worksheet which extends learning: letter and word sounds, letter tracing, and alphabetic principles.
A student is happy to show the television interviewer how the iShuffle works.	"What do you hear," she asks. "I hear my teacher," he replies. This connection reinforces lesson in the classroom.	Then the student eagerly shows how he is able to read his story.
A student ponders the question of whether using the iShuffle is easy - yes! Other people (younger siblings) in the family can use it, too, which gives them an early start in literacy.	Yes, he says, he likes using the iShuffle at home - it's fun, and his parents can follow along with what he is learning.	Second language families find it especially helpful, both in order to encourage their child, and also in their own language acquisitioh.
Students in the Reading Buddies program show dramatic Reading B enchmark gains. In the fall, 6 were needing intensive reading help, 6 strategic help, with non at benchmark. By the 10th week of using the iShuffle Reading Buddies program, only one student was not at benchmark level, needing only strategic help.	Extra time in reading experiences has long been touted as the way to raise achievement levels, but the Reading Buddies iShuffle program goes beyond that. The child's own teacher's voice is what he/she hears, the family is actively involved, and reading experiences are linked to classroom instruction. The results speak for themselves. Click here to see a QuickTime Movie of Carol's recoding of a Reading Buddy Lesson.	The Reading Buddies student growth (blue) is greater than that for students with an extended school day (red), and far exceeds those with ordinary classroom instruction (yellow), whether in letter naming fluency (LNF), phoneme segmentation fluency (PSF), or nonsense word fluency (NWF).