Research: Millington Youth Center

***The studies on this page reference the Reading Horizons reading program for corrections. Reading Horizons also creates and distributes many other types of reading curriculum products including a structured literacy program for elementary schools, a reading intervention program secondary schools, and an ELL reading program.***

Summary of Findings

Medical and educational needs of participants had been a barrier to their academic progress. Use of Reading Horizons interactive software with this population of students contributed to ability to read words of increasing difficulty and an ability to read more words on lists of Most Common Words.

Background

This residential youth facility was established to meet the needs of adolescents with medical issues and academic challenges. The participants in the study were identified with at least one, and frequently a combination, of the following: intellectual disability, low IQ, suicidal, bipolar, ADD, aspergers, conductive hearing loss, fetal alcohol syndrome, speech and language disorder, and low retention. Some students were also linguistically-diverse. Needs resulted in low attendance for some participants. Most participants in the study had a history or reading difficulties and challenging behavior. Most participants began with at least a two grade-level deficit in reading skills.

Resources

Reading Horizons interactive software.

Implementation

Reading Horizons interactive software was implemented with participants. The Word Recognition Assessment and the Most Common Words Assessment were administered before and after software use. The Word Recognition Assessment provides students an opportunity to read word lists of increasing difficulty and receive a score based on corresponding grade equivalents. Levels on the test range from 0.0 to 12.0. The Most Common Words Assessment score is the percentage of sight words and high-frequency words read correctly on the list.