Reading Horizons Review: Brad Evans

When my administrator first informed me of Reading Horizons, I was resistant to start yet another curriculum. After using RH now for 4 years, I have a success story I'd like to share. I was working with a diverse group of ELL students (11 cultural/linguistic backgrounds) who also differed greatly with regards to content knowledge and reading ability. I was legitimately worried about my ability to address all of their needs. So, I systematically followed the RH curriculum using differentiated workstations and focusing on small groups. We worked roughly 3 hours per week on RH. By the end of the year, I had one student who had gained 900 Lexile points. My average Lexile growth for the class was 350. Nearly 1/3 of my students completed the course. 90% of my students who completed RH were able to exit our sheltered ELL program entirely. Furthermore, students rarely get the opportunity to entirely complete a curriculum. My students were quite proud of their certificates and are honestly better readers because they can now decode words successfully. The easy data-tracking of RH also made it a cinch to demonstrate my students' growth to administrators, parents, colleagues, as well as to our own class. As each student neared the finish line, they began to brag that they had completed so many lessons per week. This built momentum so that all of my students were working fervently towards a goal. RH's inherently data-driven nature, explicit methodology, and capacity to serve diverse learners helped me and my students be successful.

***The reading curriculum, referenced in the review above, teaches structured literacy and has helped hundreds of thousands of students improve their reading scores.***

Grade Level: Secondary