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Three Powerful Ways Reading Data Helps Teachers Enhance Personalized Learning

Categories: Curriculum & Access, Education & Teaching, Reading Strategies for K-12, Student Centric Learning, Teacher Best Practices

It’s no surprise that personalized learning is a prime topic for educators. The world and the way we learn is aggressively changing. Some educators believe personalized learning is the “heartbeat” of what works well for a particular learner like audiobooks for struggling readers.

According to Patrick, Kennedy, and Powell (2013), personalized learning means tailoring learning for each learner’s interest, strengths and needs, encouraging flexibility to support mastery and enabling learners to influence how, what, when, and where they learn.

That’s pretty much what educators who rely on Learning Ally believe. Our audiobook solution is not only a vast database of digital textbooks, classics, literature and fun titles it is an important information hub for teachers to gain real-time reading metrics and insight into students’ personal reading preferences. This automated data saves teachers precious time. It enhances teachers’ ability to personalize achievement goals and make course corrections. This data also gives teachers the proof to celebrate every students’ reading efforts.

How can Learning Ally reading data be effective for you?

1. Set personalized learning goals for each student

We recommend 20 minutes a day for 33 days to make reading habits stick. The educator portal takes the laborious work of tracking each student’s reading progress on paper, to a digital dashboard tracking time on task, number of days a student reads, number of pages and books completed. Teachers tell us that by drilling down into individual student usage they gain insight into students’ preferred genres and favorite authors. This is useful knowledge to spark reading interests and encourage independent reading.  

2. Progress monitor and course correction  

The ability to make adjustments in a students’ reading program at any time during the semester is a tangible benefit. In the educator portal, teachers can quickly identify students that need additional support in accessing and using the Learning Ally app effectively to build stronger reading habits and pinpoint improvement areas in reading. Some teachers use the data in a more holistic approach to engage students in meaningful discussions to help them feel more supported and empowered to keep reading.   

3. Celebrate small and large successes

Learning Ally data can also lead to improved social-emotional well-being. Teachers appreciate the data they see about a students’ reading progress and use that data to support student recognition and to celebrate the successes of the most vulnerable readers – a notable effort.

Strengthen Your Reading Environment with Personalized Data

With the right data, educators can be more confident that they are reaching each student individually and helping them to make progress according to their learning potential. The ultimate goal is to motivate students who don’t like to read to help them enjoy more books and thrive in the classroom. This is the heartbeat of personalized education and when this happens, there is no greater gift for the student and the teacher.

Let’s get you signed up for Learning Ally!  

Schedule a demo to see how Learning Ally delivers an immediate impact for your struggling readers and how the reading data dashboard works. For more information about a school subscription, call 800-221-1098 or email programs@LearningAlly.org.


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