Educational Technology holds a lot of promise, especially as learning become increasingly digital. Its successful implementation, however, relies heavily on individual teachers who are already faced with a heavy workload. In fact, a recent article in The Conversation written by Drs. David Marshall, Teanna Moore, and Timothy Pressley points out that teachers who adopt new technologies sometimes report even higher amounts of burnout. This means that it does not suffice to simply produce new technologies meant to improve learning outcomes – these technologies need to be easy to integrate into real classrooms!
To this end, Cascade Reading has been hard at work establishing use cases with teachers across a range of grades to ensure our technology helps real teachers unlock their students’ reading and learning potential. In the past, this has helped us understand, for example, which features are most helpful on the Cascade Explorer View, the contexts in which the Chrome Web View is most helpful, and how our Passage Library can be integrated into curricula.
Part of this longitudinal effort was to collect user feedback data, in conjunction with observed student growth in reading abilities, to understand how teachers are leveraging Cascade Reading to help their students succeed. What we found is that students in a variety of K-12 grades demonstrated improved comprehension, boosts in reading confidence, and improved oral reading fluency when Cascade Reading tools were incorporated into their classroom and curriculum.
Improved Comprehension
Sophomore high school students at a charter school in Omaha, NE were given science tests in the Cascade Format among other implementation strategies. As a result, these students reported being able to better understand what was asked.
“Students really like the spacing – they liked that everything is not in one crowded space.”
– High School Science Teacher
Improved Oral Reading Fluency
Students in several Minnesota elementary and middle schools showed higher oral reading fluency both when reading texts aloud as a class and in their benchmark assessments.
“There was good growth across the board. Even my lowest student made tremendous growth (went up by 30 points).”
– 1st Grade Teacher
“This year’s Aimsweb assessments blew the other years out of the water.”
– Reading Specialist/Interventionist
Improved Confidence
Students across 1st through 12th grades reported higher confidence, from 1st graders reading stories aloud as a class, to 5th graders reading passages about Native American history, to high schoolers using the Cascade Explorer to help them with their writing assignments.
“All of my 4th and 5th graders – their confidence is through the roof. They’re all volunteering to read aloud in class.”
– Reading Specialist/Interventionist
These results are vital for demonstrating Cascade Reading’s efficacy. Not only does it lead to improvements in experimental research settings, it also leads to learning and reading improvements in real classrooms. Reading changes lives. And Cascade changes reading for real students and teaching for real teachers.
