8 year old Kaylie smashes school’s lockdown reading target with animal fundraiser

Renaissance believe that every pupil can be a successful learner and their portfolio of education technology products, from Accelerated Reader to myON news, empower teachers to help their students to reach their full potential.
 
Eight year old Kaylie Bowler, from Perth, is in Year 4 at Goodlyburn Primary School and has used Renaissance’s Accelerated Reader to challenge herself and fundraise during lockdown. Kaylie is a huge animal lover and under normal circumstances can usually be found at Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife on the weekend, her family are members of both. 
 
To encourage Kaylie and her peers to read on their own during lockdown, Kaylie’s class teacher set a lockdown reading target challenge of reading 25 books, to achieve the ultimate award – a platinumcertificate.  The children read their books on Accelerated Reader, Renaissance’s software which helps teachers monitor and track the progress of their pupils. It also gives pupils engaging comprehension activities and quizzes to improve their literacy skills and motivate them to read. Kaylie quickly smashed the highest goal and read 30 books in just one week!  Her teacher and mum suggested she set herself a personal challenge, which she did with the aim of reading 100 books before the end of term and fundraising for her two favourite animal organisations. 
 
Kaylie was inspired to fundraise for the zoo and wildlife park after seeing that they both needed donations to make sure they had enough food for their animals. Kaylie smashed her personal target and raised over £150 for Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park in just four weeks!
 
Kaylie’s teacher said: “Before lockdown, Kaylie wasn’t one of the most confident readers, but lockdown has really spurred her on and motivated her to read, along with support from her class teacher. Accelerated Reader has been a great tool, especially during these difficult times as we teachers can see tangible results when student’s reading levels improve. Kaylie isn’t only reading all of these books but we can see from the quizzes she completes after reading them that she understands what she’s reading and that the books are at the right level for her. Literacy skills are the foundation that learning across all subjects relies on, so having a firm grasp of them now will support Kaylie in learning across the curriculum. It’s been a delight to watch Kaylie blossom.” 
 
Kaylie’s mum said “Kaylie is animal obsessed so when she saw her favourite zoo and wildlife park needed donations, she wanted to do all she could to help. She loved the challenge of reading her books and then completing the quizzes on Accelerated Reader. As the results are instant it helps keep kid focused and really driven to make sure they are paying attention when they read, and asking questions if they don’t understand anything. We’re really proud of her raising over £200 for such good causes and are excited to see what she’s going to challenge herself to do next!”