AVON — Literacy rates for Hoosier children are improving.
This summer, the Indiana Department of Education reported historic increases in reading proficiency scores for students.
According to state reports, third-grade literacy rates have reached a historic high, with a five percent increase in proficiency from the previous year.
This year's assessment results revealed that 87.3% of Hoosier third graders demonstrated proficient reading skills.
The IREAD-3 exam measures foundational reading skills, including phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency.
IREAD can be high stakes for second and third graders, who are required to pass in order to proceed with their education.
“These teachers do a great job teaching the content. There’s something to be said about the format and delivery method of the test and what that environment feels like. It affects the way you might take a test," Will Pfaffenberger, a father from Avon, said.
When he and his wife, Adrienne, were helping their son prepare for the exam last year, they noticed a lack of digital tools available to study and practice.
So they created one.
“We were trying to grab PDFs and worksheets and things we could find online. There’s a smattering of information on the DOE website, but we wanted something that was robust and lengthy," Adrienne said.
The Pfaffenbergers say they collaborated with Indiana teachers, parents and students to develop the app.
The IREAD-3 Practice App is designed specifically for second and third grade students in Indiana, built to look and feel similar to the IREAD-3 test format.
It includes:
- Beginning sounds
- Middle sounds
- Ending sounds
- Prefixes
- Suffixes
- Context clues
- Synonyms
- Antonyms
- Homographs
- Literary passages
- Non-fiction passages
With these categories, the app provides comprehensive coverage of what Indiana students will likely encounter on test day.
The IREAD-3 Practice App launched last month on the Apple App Store.
