The Read to Ride Program Review

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explain how one elementary school in a  large Central Florida school districtutilized a program called “Read-to-Ride” to help students meet personalized reading goals. “Read-to-Ride” is an extrinsically motivated program where elementary school students can earn a skateboard if they meet a certain reading goal by the end of the school year. Students agree upon a targeted reading goal with their teachers and work throughout the year to reach that goal. The program is built around the Accelerated Reader model using STAR reading tests, which estimate oral fluency and sets projected goals for them in the beginning of the year. This study took place in one elementary school with a group of 2nd grade students in a large Central Florida county school district during the 2021-2022 school year, in which students returned to face-to-face instruction after the COVID-19 Pandemic. This project had three interval checkpoints: August 2021 (baseline), December 2021 (progress), and May 2022 (results). The demographics of the elementary school represent a high poverty student population with 100% free and reduced lunch, and 80.7% minority students. Levene’s and t-test results suggest that students started at roughly the same reading scores with the experimental group delivering statistically significant reading score improvements in the post-test.  Based on our results, we suggest that this program or similar programs serve as an extrinsic motivator to encourage students to read.