DreamBox Reading Park (Reading Park)–which recently joined the Discovery Education family of award-winning suite edtech solutions–is an interactive resource designed to develop foundational reading skills for the earliest readers in PreK-2. The program guides early learners toward successful and productive reading journeys through a playful, engaging, and personalized learning environment. Reading Park combines state-of-the-art adaptivity with research-based literacy pedagogy in lessons designed by experienced reading academics, school administrators, classroom teachers, curriculum designers, and game design experts.

Key features for Reading Park include personalized and engaging learning experiences, pedagogical research-based curriculum, and a focus on phonemic awareness and phonics.

While engaging students in a fun learning experience, Reading Park offers educators an easy-to-navigate dashboard with a skills report so they can see where students are mastering concepts and where there may be more need for support.


Formats/platforms used:

Reading Park uses interactive formats to teach students foundational literacy skills. For example, when learning high frequency words, young learners will not only see the words written as text, but they will also hear the audio of the word.

A sample of other interactive lesson engagements include:

  • Match: Students drag an answer to a prompt.
  • Collect: Students move matching answers to the prompt.
  • Choose: Students select one correct option from a selection.

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Primary URL:

https://www.dreambox.com/readingpark


Problem solved:

The National Assessment of Educational Progress 2022 trend report shows a decline nationwide in reading for 4th graders, especially in places where technology is not being used supplementally to help improve outcomes. Since 3rd grade reading readiness is a key indicator of students’ future academic success, it’s critical that the youngest learners acquire foundational reading skills by the end of second grade.

Discovery Education’s DreamBox Reading Park product is designed to support young readers through a unique combination of in-lesson and between-lesson adaptations offering the most personalized and effective technology-driven instruction available to today’s students. Reading Park is built on DreamBox’s Intelligent Adaptive Learning platform–a unique, patented system that leverages cognitive science and research-based learning principles to engage and support students of any age to learn any subject.

The program is designed to be intuitive, ensuring that students can play to learn without teachers first needing to give a lesson on a concept or instruct students on how to use the program. The program examines each student’s strategies for completing tasks and answering questions, thereby making it possible to recognize and understand the types of errors or mistakes a student makes.


Grades/ages:

Reading Park is a PreK-2 product ideal for pre-readers or early readers. While the program is designed for PreK-2, in some cases third and fourth grade readers may benefit from the pedagogy of this program.

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Core or supplemental:

Reading Park is a supplemental program that guides students toward successful and productive reading through a playful, engaging learning environment.


Standards:

Reading Park meets Foundational Reading Standards for grades K-2 as outlined in national and state English Language Arts (ELA) standards.


Lesson time needed:

To optimize the benefits of Reading Park, students should engage with the program at least 30 minutes per week, over the period of 3 to 5 days. Focused time in the program will provide students with the phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding instruction needed to become skilled readers.


Pricing model:

Pricing for Reading Park varies depending upon several factors based on the school or districts preferences.


Additional services needed:

Reading Park can be used by young students with minimal guidance from others because the user interface includes onscreen manipulatives, which are developmentally appropriate. Due to the accessibility of the design for young learners, teachers do not need to have additional training to implement the program.

Additionally, technical requirements and recommendations for Reading Park include a computer (PC, Mac, Chromebook), minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, the most current version of Google, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, or Apple Safari browser, and a headset.

With Reading Park, there are also offline printable lesson sheets to support and supplement learning.


What makes Reading Park unique?

Reading Park’s unique combination of in-lesson and between-lesson adaptations offers the most personalized and effective technology-driven instruction available to today’s students.

Reading Park also offers a fun experience for young learners. To captivate the audience of early readers, students directly interact with the Reading Park, a magical place where Squiggles teach Monsters how to read using the Squiggle Book. The program encourages students to explore different areas of Reading Park, each of which includes Quests filled with lessons and rewards. A variety of incentives, including Squiggle Rewards and Backpack Rewards, provide extrinsic motivation and encourage students to put forth their best effort.

Students can exchange rewards for access to interactive activities, all of which are linked to curriculum and learning objectives. Instructional scaffolds include audio and visual cues, helpful pop-ups and hints, and continuous access to an expanding reference guide in the form of the Squiggle Book, which reflects their learning to date.


Characteristics:

DreamBox Reading Park incorporates key principles of effective instructional design, including:

  • Clearly informing students of what they can expect to learn while engaged in the program and offering continuous feedback
  • Gamification of instruction and practice
  • Student performance with foundational reading concepts is continuously accessed

Additionally on-screen features are designed to meet the cognitive and motor-skill abilities of younger learners. For example, Reading Park uses a custom, enhanced version of Andika, a sans-serif font family that was designed specifically for literacy use. The clean, unencumbered letters of this font family closely resemble written letters, which helps set the groundwork for a reading/writing connection.


Here's what users are saying:

“They are really enjoying it. It is fun and educational. It’s like they are playing a game.”

- Second grade teacher

“My students love Reading Park. They enjoy doing the games where they match pictures with letter sounds.”

- 2nd grade teacher

“It was kind of easy…and it made me feel smart. :)"

- 3rd grade student

“I like that it helps me learn! I like the pictures from the real world like New York City! I like the cute characters and monsters! I like the dancing monsters and flowers!”

- Elementary student