"The Program Works! The Students Love It!"
What a difference 9 weeks makes! The following quotes come from a series of interviews we conducted with teachers and principals in some of the first schools using TUNEin™ to READING in our home town of Tampa during the 2006-2007 school year. Click here to see a list of the participants’ names, titles and schools.
Throughout the interviews, we saw striking similarities in the experiences of educators. Follow them now on a path…
From skepticism...
To excitement…
To witnessing gains in fluency, oral reading, comprehension and confidence…
To becoming strong advocates for TUNEin™ to READING
From skepticism….
“In the beginning, believe me, I had my doubts. Is this music or is it reading?”
“In education, there are so many different initiatives coming at us, it’s like one more thing I have to do, that’s what the initial feeling was. My principal’s gone crazy, she’s given me another program to fit into a day that’s already too short.”
“I had to wrap my mind around how this was going to work, how you could have a reading gain improvement of 1 to 3 grade levels in a period of 9 weeks with a program that was initially developed to help a singer stay on pitch. Having an educational background in reading and best practices, I’m kind of thinking, well, what’s the deal here?”
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To excitement…
“Some of the kids who would do nothing for us, they’re low motivated, they don’t want to participate. They started becoming engaged. …After about the fourth or fifth day, it was: Why aren’t we going to singing today? When are we going again?”
“There was excitement from the beginning. The minute they put on their headsets and their mike, they really think they’re competing.”
“We’ve got some kids who were scoring 100 by the time we were finished, but at the beginning they had 18, or 6, some even got zeros. It really boosted their ego. These are kids who have been unsuccessful pretty much their entire educational career and now they’re seeing themselves do well. I think that helped a lot.”
“Some of them, when they really get into it, it’s like everything else disappears.”
“My really struggling readers, you could not get them to say a word. When they started doing TUNEin™ to READING and they were successful, they were begging the teacher to go. They’d see me and they’d say, When can we go to the lab to do TUNEin™ to READING?’”
“It looked like too much fun to not be a part of it!”
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To witnessing student gains in fluency, oral reading, comprehension and confidence…
“It has promoted the flow of reading, their fluency has picked up.”
“What I’ve seen is kids wanting to read aloud in the classroom after they’ve spent two or three days in the library with TUNEin™ to READING doing their singing.”
“It’s been very effective with [children with] ADHD.They can read a little faster and comprehend a sentence, not just a word. The rhythm of the music brings it all together so they’re able to see it as a whole sentence and not a single word.”
“With students that have very broken English, I have seen their fluency improve. …When they first started singing, they sang just like they spoke, with breaks between every other word or every three words. I’m seeing that disappear, the words are just starting to flow.”
“It has been surprisingly effective with ESE students. These students need all the extra help you can give them. …Every student in the ESE class has come down and now wants to check out book and read.”
“A lot of these children have never had an opportunity to shine. …A lot of it is the language deficit. With TUNEin™ to READING, they felt like they were a part of things with everybody else, they were all singing in the same language. It didn’t matter if they didn’t speak English well.”
“If you’ve ever heard someone reading aloud, with practice, the more they’re at it, the better they get. That’s what happens with TUNEin™ to READING.”
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To becoming strong advocates for TUNEin™ to READING…
“The program works. The students love it!”
“Do it! This is a fun way for them to learn.”
“Don’t just listen to a presentation. Go to a school and see for yourselves. You’ll be hooked, like I am!”
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