Ready Readers Plus Combats Literacy and Math Obstacles for Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland Members
2016 marks The Literacy Cooperative’s 10 year anniversary! To celebrate this milestone, we partnered with the Cleveland Bridge Builders Class of 2016 to showcase community organizations across Greater Cleveland that have incorporated literacy-based programs into their scope of service during the past 10 years. We asked them to write a post highlighting their journey, featuring their accomplishments, achievements and how they have helped the community learn and grow over the last ten years. We will be featuring the posts throughout the next few months.
Our second guest post comes from The Boys and Girls Clubs of Cleveland, written by Jazmine Walker, Academic Success Manager.
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland have made many positive strides over the last 10 years. One of which includes adding Ready Readers Plus onto our list of programs!
Ready Readers Plus is an early literacy program aimed at improving the math and reading skills for members’ ages 6 to 9 years old through a series of fun, educational and familial opportunities. It has been shown through low literacy scores in Cleveland that there is a deficit in the way our members are learning. More and more, we are encountering members that are consistently passing through grades but are not able to perform basic calculating functions. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland decided to combat these obstacles, so that our members will be able to keep a competitive edge in academia. This is done through program based on a curriculum outline that’s aligned with 5 common core standards, a family engagement component and incentives!
RRP instructors have made conscience decisions to be intentional while creating an environment that is conducive to productivity, fun and academia. Our Family Engagement component is also essential to the success of the program. Each site has one family night event per month. So far, 44% of parents reported a greater confidence in their child’s advancement in school as a result of attending the RRP program at least 3 times per week. Parent involvement at the Walton Club has increased substantially during the 2015-16 program year. The teachers and administrators at the 
school have provided BGCC with the NWEA standardized testing scores for the 2nd grade students (members and non-members), and are in the process of providing us with test scores for all grade levels. This is a big victory for our organization as it can be very challenging to obtain grade information from our school sites. Having this information serves as a means for us to compare our member’s progress to non-members and based on the comparison we have done on the 2nd graders scores, the results show that Club members at Walton performed better on this exam than their non-attending peers!
We are excited to see what accomplishments our members will make this school year! We are anticipating that 50% of our members will increase their math and reading skills.
Ten years ago, there was no early literacy program comparable to RRP at BGCC. Members are now being exposed to a setting that is educational, yet exhilarating!
To learn more about The Boys and Girls Clubs of Cleveland be sure to check out their website: http://www.clevekids.org/ .