Rime Magic: Studies Back It Up!

Keep an eye on this page to learn more about tracking the success of Rime Magic in classrooms around the country. We’ll be updating periodically with additional research, plus written and video testimonials from classroom teachers, literacy coaches, reading specialists, and administrators.

Rime Magic Study with Fowler Unified School District

Here are the results from the Rime Magic study in Malaga Elementary School and Sutter Middle School in Fowler Unified School District during the 2017-18 school year, conducted by the Fresno C2C (Cradle to Career).

First and second grades: one classroom added Rime Magic to the regular language arts program for five to ten minutes and one classroom did the regular program only. Special education students and others with low word recognition in third through sixth grades received 5 – 10 minutes of Rime Magic outside of the regular classroom. Sixth – eighth graders in middle school also received 5 – 10 minutes of Rime Magic in addition to their regular language arts activities. A formal report will be published in August, 2018. These preliminary results show word recognition growth in months compared to control groups.

DOWNLOAD AND READ THE FULL FRESNO C2C RIME MAGIC REPORT

View Data Highlights

Watch the video about the study

Rime Magic Pilot Study with Fresno County Juvenile Hall

In a Rime Magic pilot study, Cradle to Career (C2C) and Youth Safety Partners joined the Fresno County Probation at Juvenile Hall to conduct a Rime Magic pilot study with high school age incarcerated teenagers, completed during the summer of 2017. The study was conducted for two weeks from July 17 to July 28, 2017 in 5 thirty-minute sessions a week. Each session consisted of Rime Magic and supported reading with a high-interest, challenging book. The total time for instruction if a student had 100 percent attendance over the two-week intervention was 4.5 hours. Participants made between 5 months and over two years growth in word recognition in eight or nine 30-minute sessions.

DOWNLOAD AND READ THE FULL FRESNO C2C RIME MAGIC REPORT

READ THE PILOT STUDY REPORT

Reading Intervention Program at Acorn Woodland Elementary School

At Acorn Woodland Elementary School a reading intervention teacher worked with upper-grade students whose word recognition grade equivalents were below 3.0, with up to three years growth in three months of instruction.

Download and read the Acorn results

Reading Intervention Program at Oak Grove Middle School

One hundred English-speaking students at Oak Grove Middle School had word recognition grade equivalents below 4.0 in the fall. Small groups met with a Rime Magic intervention teacher for short periods and 81% of the students ended the year with word recognition grade equivalents between 4.1 and 9.8. The other 19 students had IEP’s and still made significant growth.

Download and read the Oak Grove results

Reading Intervention Program at Maxwell Park Elementary School

During the 2008/2009 school year, a simple yet effective after-school reading intervention took place for students whose low word recognition was holding them back.  Second through fifth-graders met with a teacher after school for 45 minutes two days a week.  The intervention consisted of ten minutes of Rime Magic and lots of reading, focusing on comprehension.  The results of the state test that was given at the time showed huge growth for fourth and fifth graders.  According to administrators, these results were unprecedented at the school.

Download and read the Maxwell Park data

 

Prevention and Intervention that Work!

Research that supports this original system of reading intervention strategies is drawn from extensive work in the areas of literacy and reading intervention. Onset/rime research shows that the brain is better able to make sense of the structure of words when they break the word into onset and rime rather than focusing on each individual phoneme (Margaret Moustafa (1997), Usha Goswami and Peter Bryant (1990). As Dr Richard Allington points out (Allington (2001, 2009), currently special education students do not catch up with their peers, falling further behind each year (Denton, Vaughn, & Fletcher, 2003, p 203). The work of Lucy Calkins (2001), Stephen Krashen (1993), Regie Routman (2003, 2013), Allington, (2009), and Patricia Cunningham (2004, 2012), supports the importance of short, engaging decoding instruction that leaves a significant amount of time for reading books at appropriate levels and focusing on comprehension and metacognition. Teachers in school districts throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in California have seen remarkable progress with students who have fallen behind in grades 3-12. Students are making one to two or more years’ growth in word recognition in just a few small-group sessions.