Reading Partners Silicon Valley is proud of its on-going collaboration with Google at Lakewood.
As the Lakewood Elementary School Reading Center sponsor, Google helped Reading Partners provide 66 kindergarten through fourth-grade students with two, 45-minute tutoring sessions each week throughout the school year. Reading Partners and 71 volunteer community tutors, including Google employees, supported students in mastering key reading skills through data-informed, curriculum-driven, one-on-one tutoring. Our community volunteers worked! As they master these skills, these students are on a path to reading proficiently. Reading Partners is a non-profit organization that runs its programming in five Title-I Sunnyvale schools.
Lakewood numbers: 66 students, 71 volunteers, 2,023 sessions, 88 percent of K-2 students mastered foundational literacy skills, 77 percent of students showed improvement in general academic behaviors.
During the 2017-2018 school year, Google provided both funding and employee volunteers to Reading Partners. Google is the specific Reading Center sponsor for Lakewood Elementary. A Reading Center sponsor provides critical funding to a specific school where Reading Partners is active. This funding ensures the Reading Partners’ program continues to serve students who are reading below grade level. Google has renewed this support and is still the active school sponsor for Lakewood Elementry during the 2018-2019 school year.
Thank you to both Google and Reading Partners for encouraging and empowering our students to be life-long learners!
Reading Partners helps low-income students move toward reading proficiency by helping them develop mastery of key reading skills through data-informed one-on-one volunteer tutoring. To learn more visit https://readingpartners.org/location/silicon-valley/.
Student Highlight: Daniel
Daniel, a second-grader, was enrolled in Reading Partners in the fall of the 2017-2018 school year. Despite his age and grade, Daniel was reading at a kindergarten level. He struggled to correctly identify letters and in many cases, did not know what sound each letter made. His teacher felt that Daniel would be best served by someone who could work one-on-one with him and referred him to Reading Partners.
Even though he had a hard time grasping these basic literacy skills, Daniel always remained positive and excited to learn. He loved coming to Reading Partners and couldn’t wait to see “Ms. Melanie” or “Mr. Grant”, his volunteer tutors. Each of them worked with Daniel for 45 minutes a week, ensuring that he received two individualized tutoring sessions.
Daniel’s favorite books to pick during the tutor Read Aloud were non-fiction. His curiosity about the world helped motivate him as he and his tutors worked with him through the curriculum. “It was fun to see how excited Daniel got when we worked on how to blend sounds. He couldn’t wait to see what words formed when we combined different sounds together,” said Melanie.
By the end of the year, Daniel had narrowed his gap and accelerated the rate at which he was learning. He moved from Reading Partners’ Emerging Readers curriculum (based on kindergarten standards) to Beginning Readers (based on first grade standards). His teacher also reported increased confidence in the classroom. When his tutor, Grant, gave him a pack of summer reading, Daniel said, “I can’t wait to read these!”
Article by Monique Garcia External Relations Manager for Reading Partners Silicon Valley.
