Assisting Children to Read More - Coursework Example

Books and Future Table of Contents 0 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 2.0 INTRODUCTION: BOOK, AND THE FUTURE 6 3.0 BACKGROUND: THE LASTING BENEFITS OF READING 6 4.0 DISCUSSION: THE NEED AND THE PROCESS 8 4.1 Current Situation 8 4.2 Process 9 4.3 Staffing 10 4.4 Budget 10 4.5 Projections 11 5.0 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 11 1.0 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The intention of the project was to assist children to learn how to read more often. It was associated with long-term benefits like increased vocabulary and placement in better schools and careers. Focusing on children from Pittsburg Public School, Romo Communications tasked its subsidiary RoMo One-on-One with fulfilling this request. Consequently, the project was divided into three sections namely formulating and distributing a survey to students in the Pittsburgh Public School District and analyzing the results at the end, developing a user-friendly website for students to prove their knowledge of books, and educating district faculty on the use and intent of the program, so that they may encourage the students. In order to determine how to get students to read, RoMo One on One set out to determine the activities that students were spending their time on. However, the group set the foundation for their projects by identifying the long-term benefits of reading. Even though, reading was faulted on making an individual intelligent than the other, the group acknowledged it was a necessary catalyst in increasing intelligence. Reading sharpens cognitive skills, such as communication, vocabulary, focus, and memory that are known to boost communication in students. The project faced a major problem because students at the public school did not want to read, and it was necessary to create an incentive to encourage a reading culture. The long-term objective of encouraging students to read is to increase their chances of joining better colleges and land in successful careers to later assist others in society. Therefore, this called for an incentive by the group because there was a current decline in SAT tests in writing and reading. Funnily, the SAT tests were soon becoming the standard for choosing students to college, which would lead to poor selections to colleges. In order to create an incentive for students to read books that expand knowledge on a variety of life issues, RoMo One on One group decided to develop a website that students could log into and take quizzes on books they had read. In this incentive, passing quizzes about books earned students points depending on a book’s difficulty and the points were redeemed for prizes. This was considered a diversion tactic to keep students away from their electronics. However, the group made many modifications to their incentive in order to increase its effective and outcome. In doing so, the group made an extensive and comprehensive list of books from a range of genres not limited to fiction, nonfiction, magazines, and textbooks. Moreover, competency was achieved in awarding points because the group developed rated quizzes that not only ensured students read a book, but also understood its intended message. This was achieved through structuring questions around vocabulary, critical thinking, and plot. Finally, the outcome of the incentive was boosted when the group developed three versions of the program namely desktop application, web-based site, and mobile application for website. All these versions were intended to increase student access to books and quizzes in a world of Smartphones. The project reduced its operating costs by reducing the number of staff needed to implement the program. The staffs at RoMo One on One were responsible for implementing the program and liaised with the district faculty to assist in distributing survey papers and librarians across the district to develop questions for the quizzes. Moreover, other budgetary costs, such as prizes were determined by the school district and they worked with developers to identify long term needs of the project. With everything set, the program was projected to reverse SAT scores within the first five years of implementation. Moreover, ten years would lead to increase in SAT scores to levels never realized before. This would help students to make the world a better place. The project concluded that the future of this country depends on future generations. In its attempt to provide incentives to students to read, the project concluded increase in demand for college applications made it necessary to improve the SAT scores in high school. Moreover, many students did not read because they remained engaged with electronics and bothered less about grades. In encouraging them to read, the group intended to have each book students read in the quiz system. It is because developing a reading culture was beneficial to the country and not only students. Academic excellence would lead to successful careers where students would later assist members of the community. 2.0 INTRODUCTION: STUDENTS, BOOK, AND THE FUTURE This project was devised with the intention of helping children learn to read more often. The long-term goal of this project will be to increase the student body’s vocabulary, and in the long run, help them get into better schools and careers. The project, itself, can be divided into the three following sections: Formulating and distributing a survey to students in the Pittsburgh Public School District, and analyzing the results at the end. Developing a user-friendly website for students to prove their knowledge of books. Educate district faculty on the use and intent of the program, so that they may encourage the students. 3.0 BACKGROUND: THE LASTING BENEFITS OF READING RoMo Communications, Inc. has been recruited by the Pittsburgh Public School District to formulate a project that would make their students like to read more. A major subsidiary of RoMo Communications, Inc., RoMo One-On-One has been tasked with fulfilling this request. Superintendent Linda Lane, along with the rest of the school board, agreed that the best way to determine how to get students to read is to first find out what other activities they were spending their time on. No, reading more does not instantly make one person more intelligent than another. However, it can be the catalyst. Studies have shown that reading more can increase a variety of cognitive skills including: vocabulary, communication, memory, and focus (Cooke, n.d.). Vocabulary and communication go hand-in-hand. Reading allows you to learn new words that you may have never seen before. More so, if you are looking up the definition of one word, you may find another – expanding your total vocabulary even more. Just like vocabulary, reading helps you learn how to piece sentences and words together in different ways, allowing for more diverse speech and writing. Reading a book for a long period time involves quite a bit of focus, and while you are focusing so hard, your brain is learning each and every phrase that the author has written. Reading a single book has already improved four major skills that we use every day. The problem is that students do not want to read. There is no incentive for them to. They think in the “now”, and do not have a care in the world as to where they will be after high school. This true issue needs to be addressed in this district, and the country as a whole. 4.0 DISCUSSION: THE NEED AND THE PROCESS The results of this project will not only benefit the students today. It will help them earn better scores to get into better college programs, which will benefit society as a whole in the future. Overall, though, we are hoping that this will truly make students like to read. If this happens, then they will pass it down to their children as well. 4.1 Current Situation The SAT test is going to be a standard by which students get chosen for colleges for the foreseeable future. Colleges are also becoming much more challenging to get into. Because of this, we would like to think that students are doing better on their SAT tests as well. This is not the case. As shown in Figures 1 and 2, there has been a negative trend in the Reading and Writing SAT scores since they began keeping records. Yes, going from an average of 507 to 497 in Reading or 497 to 487 in Writing is not that big of a decrease, but it is still just that – a decrease. 4.2 Process As we previously proposed to Superintendent Linda Lane, we are going to first distribute a survey to students of the Pittsburgh Public School District. We are then going to analyze the results, and pass those results over to our development team. They will then develop a website that students can log into to take quizzes on books that they have read. The students will earn an allotted amount of points based on the difficulty level of the book. These points can then be redeemed for prizes. This will provide incentive for the students to read books in their spare time instead of spending all of their time with electronics. This type of program is not brand new. In 2003, Renaissance Learning released their Accelerated Reader application. This program allowed students to choose from a vast variety of books, and take quizzes on them. Many school districts used this program as part of their curriculum. This does not motivate the student though. Sadly, not every student cares about their grades as much as they should. Especially at a younger age, students are not going to spend their free time reading just for that grade. We at RoMo One-On-One understand that students respond better to other incentives. We want to finish what Renaissance Learning started. We want to use them as inspiration, but with a different result. We would first want to make the list of books that we have quizzes for as extensive as possible. Accelerated Reader includes fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, and magazines (Accelerated Reader, 2014). We would also make sure that the quizzes are not too simple for students. Our program will not simply prove if the student has read the book. It will make sure that they understand the book. Questions will be structured around not only the plot, but also vocabulary, and for the more difficult books, critical thinking. We do plan on developing three versions of our program. The first will be a desktop application that can be installed in libraries or computer labs in any school. The second would be a web-based site, which students would be able to log into from anywhere. Finally, the third version will be a mobile version of the web site. With the constantly growing use of smartphones, phablets, and tablets, this will allow the students to take quizzes no matter where they are. 4.3 Staffing As we originally proposed, this project will be primarily implemented by in-house RoMo One-On-One employees, with the help of the district faculty to distribute the survey. We also will be partnering with a group of librarians from across the country to formulate the quiz questions that the students will see. 4.4 Budget Estimated hours Rate Total Survey Question Development 4 $150/hr $600 Survey Data Processing 28 $30/hr $840 System Development 100 $50/hr $5000 Prizes N/A N/A > $1 >$6440 Example Prizes Prize Cost Points PlayStation Plus 3 Month Card $17.99 250 Xbox Live 3 Month Gold Card $24.99 250 Jam Classic Wireless Bluetooth Speaker $29.99 400 Cinemark Movie + Popcorn and Drink Card $29.99 400 Walmart Gift Card $50.00 1000 iTunes Gift Card $50.00 1000 iPad Mini 16GB $249.99 10,000 Beats by Dre Studio $299.99 25,000 As previously stated, the prizes will be chosen by the school district. We will have developers on this program long term, so if an item were to go out of stock, we can always add more to the store. 4.5 Projections We know that it would be impossible to make the trend in test scores go up overnight. We also know that it can be hard to break bad habits, even when implementing an incentive like this. We are hoping to reverse the SAT score trend within 5 years of beginning this program. Within 10 years, we a projecting that SAT scores will be the highest that they have ever been. RoMo One-On-One is determined to make sure that future generations are prepared to make the world a better place. Each and every generation needs to be more educated to do that. This endeavor will help kick start the students of the Pittsburgh Public School District, and hopefully the rest of the country not long after. 5.0 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The benefits greatly overcome the costs. The future of our country relies on the next generations. As we begin this extensive project, we have come to the following conclusions and recommendations about the impact that providing students with incentives to read would have on not only their own lives, but the lives of everyone around them for many years to come: 1. SAT scores, on average, are the lowest that they have ever been. With colleges becoming more demanding, this is very detrimental. By 2020, five years after implementation, scores are expected to top their current highest averages, 507 for Reading and 497 for Writing. 2. Students are spending more and more time using electronic devices every year. Students will be more likely to read books if the end-result is more uses for their electronics. 3. RoMo One-On-One plans on having nearly every book that a student may want to read in our quiz system. This will ensure that students can never use the excuse that “there’s nothing to read”. 4. This endeavor does not exclusively benefit the students. It benefits everyone living in the United States. If the next generations are better educated, they will be the inventors, engineers, lawyers, and doctors who help everybody else. On the basis of this idea, we recommend that we get the ball rolling. The sooner that the project is started; the sooner the outcomes will show themselves. The present and future benefits of students reading more strongly suggests that there is not chance for negative impact. RoMo One-On-One is confident that prizes will motivate students to read more books. In the end, it is truly about helping the future generations. Read More