Newcomer Lena was new to the U.S. school system in the 2020-2021 school year. Her family is from Guatemala, and her first year in school was difficult, without much progress. Lena had very little spoken English, and her family was non-English speaking at home.

At the beginning of her 6^th grade year (2021-2022), although she had 100% letter recognition, she was struggling to read at a pre-primer level. The ELL specialist who worked with Lena decided to bring her into a small group setting during the fall of 2021 with two other students. In addition to small group instruction, independent work time each day included Duolingo™ and FluencyRev™.

During the school year, Lena read 156 books, and had 102 MOR (minutes of active reading) in FluencyRev™. In the first month, she was focused on one-word vocabulary style books, where she worked on building vocabulary. Her English vocabulary started to grow, and she began successfully decoding words! She quickly began to progress through books in FluencyRev™.

Two independent measures reflected the same excellent progress Lena made. Her Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI) words correct per minute – improved from 30 to 76. She also improved her STAR Reading Assessment score from a 0.9 to a 2.3. Lena progressed from a pre-primer level to a 2^nd grade level during the year!

Lena’s ELL teacher notes that this is significant progress for her. After only one semester, Lena made such progress that she was back in her 6^th grade classroom making progress with her classmates. She continued to practice her reading in FluencyRev™ throughout the school year, because she gained confidence by making progress independently. She was also motivated by goals set by her teachers – she reached every goal and was thrilled to get to join a special field trip to the zoo with other reading superstars in the district!