Waterford Reading Academy (WRA) combines adaptive instructional software that guides students from learning to read to reading to learn with tools for teachers, students, and families to build strong, supportive networks.

For students, WRA offers skills practice via adaptive online instruction, teacher assignments, and guided student choice. Students have access to developmentally appropriate new and familiar books, rich literature, and nonfiction texts from the very beginning to encourage independent reading.

Teachers receive planning resources and coaching to guide successful implementation and usage. Dashboards, reports, and access to customer success support help teachers target instruction for individual students, small groups, or the whole classroom. Benchmark assessments track student growth and proficiency throughout the school year, and detailed end-of-year reports celebrate the progress made by individual students, classrooms, and entire schools.

Families get in on the action right from the beginning, with orientations that teach them how to support their students’ learning. They then receive weekly recommendations to encourage learning at home and reinforce the concepts students are learning at school. Throughout the year, families also receive recognition of goals met so they can celebrate academic successes.

Formats/platforms used:

Waterford Reading Academy can be accessed via web browser or iOS or Android apps.

Primary website’s URL:

https://www.waterford.org/reading-academy/

Problem Solved:

Waterford helps students learn to read and successfully transition into independent readers while supporting family engagement with the classroom.

Grade/age range:

PreK–6

Core or supplemental?

Waterford Reading Academy addresses the core curriculum subject of literacy, however because of the way in which our platform and curriculum was designed, we see educators using WRA as both core and supplemental curriculum.

Standards:

Waterford Reading Academy is mapped to the Common Core State Standards for literacy, Head Start, and all individual state standards.

Lesson time needed:

15-20 minutes a day, 5 days a week is recommended, however, that has fluctuated with the onset of the pandemic and transition to at-home learning.

Pricing models:

WRA has a SaaS pricing model on a per-student basis as well as site-based pricing (school or district wide)

Additional services:

Waterford.org provides professional development for educators along with the Waterford Reading Academy platform.

What makes Waterford Reading Academy unique?

Waterford Reading Academy combines adaptive instructional software with an emphasis on building networks between school and home.

Characteristics:

Waterford Reading Academy was designed especially for young minds, with animated activities, fun characters, and catchy songs to engage and encourage children. If a child is struggling to grasp a concept with one activity, the adaptive program delivers a different activity to teach that skill to avoid frustration and discouragement. The computer-learning portion is only 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week to match children’s attention span and it provides off-line supplemental activities parents can do with their child to reinforce concepts taught in the program at school, teach social emotional skills and encourage learning to continue at home.

Here’s what users are saying:

“Waterford is like having someone else giving my students access to re-teaching of my lessons on a daily basis, everyone is able to grow at their own pace, and I love that.”

-- Kerry Tran, PreK special education teacher at Mobile County Public Schools

“Waterford offers the teacher skills that the children are not working up to par on and gives her that list so that she can do her interventions for each child. Our instructional assistants take the students out like a half-hour each day and they work on different skills from the area of difficulty.”

-- Lois Rieckhoff, Olive Branch Principal at Portsmouth School District

"A class might have students that are all over the scale because I’ve had that. I feel like there’s something for every child in this program. I felt like it was age-ppropriate. It’s a program that met them at their level, it taught them what they needed to learn, it would backtrack, wouldn’t let them get things wrong, it always helped and scaffolded the information in where they didn’t have it. Now I’m seeing them do things that, you know, I’m surprised that they’re doing so quickly and it’s amazing.”

-- Victoria Francis-Talley, Douglass Park Kindergarten teacher at Portsmouth School District