(NEW YORK, NY –DECEMBER 6, 2016) – Students in grades K-12 are rising to the LightSail 25 Challenge which aims to increase student reading stamina and build excitement around literacy. Created by LightSail Education, the leading education technology dedicated to turning students everywhere into readers, the challenge is open to classrooms across the U.S. that use LightSail, uniting them with the common goal of reading as much as possible during each day of the challenge. The event runs from January 9, 2017 through February 10, 2017.
LightSail’s technology embeds assessments and progress monitoring in books and articles in a natural way. Students answer multiple-choice, written-response, and Cloze assessments throughout each text. As student ability grows, LightSail tracks achievement and updates the selections in each reader’s library – that way, students are always reading just right texts and teachers have real-time access to track literacy growth and ability to intervene as needed. LightSail is currently available on iPads, Google Chromebooks and Android devices.
Armed with data on student behavior from the 2015-16 school year, LightSail has substantiated the powerful impact of students reading at least 20 minutes a day on its platform. The company analyzed the number of minutes and pages read among more than 16,000 students. The results underscore how crucial each additional minute is in driving Lexile growth, the standard literacy assessment in schools. The data showed that students who read between 20 – 30 minutes per login grew 2.5 times typical Lexile growth. And students who read 30 minutes or more per login had average gains three times what’s considered typical (4.9L per week).
“The science is simple: the more students read the more literacy growth they achieve,” said Gideon Stein, LightSail’s Founder and CEO. “Just like with physical exercise, readers can also build their stamina if they practice every day. LightSail helps keep them engaged by recommending texts that are appropriate to each student’s personal abilities and rewards them for reaching milestones. That, combined with a library of great books and texts they want to read, helps students to strengthen and flex their central reading muscle, the brain.”
The three schools with the highest average minutes read per student will be awarded $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000 worth of e-books as prizes from LightSail. For more information about The LightSail 25, visit edu.lightsailed.com/lightsail25
ABOUT LIGHTSAIL EDUCATION
LightSail is the adaptive reading platform that helps students, classrooms, and school districts exceed their literacy goals.
LightSail students get access to personalized libraries filled with thousands of engaging, just-right texts to choose from. Our award-winning solution embeds in-text assessments that motivate students to increase the volume of their reading along with the difficulty of the texts they choose.
LightSail teachers get real-time access to meaningful data about student reading behavior, comprehension, and growth so they can provide the necessary guidance to enhance learning and encourage a love of reading. For more information, visit http://lightsailed.com/.