Bisbee Rotary is behind this wonderful program which is being introduced to our community and will benefit our young students to be successful readers.  Please consider volunteering.

Azura Literacy's mission statement: https://www.azuraliteracy.org/

At Azura Literacy, we are dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty and fostering upward mobility for children in Arizona’s most under-resourced communities through literacy. We empower struggling readers by providing individualized support to help them become proficient, paving the way for a brighter future.

Here are some student stories as to the benefit of this program:

Student Story #1

Mary was a 3rd grader in foster care who had been in and out of schools and was struggling with reading and had developed a strong belief that she was “bad at reading.” She’d been told this by multiple adults, and as a result, she refused to engage with reading and developed a protective attitude that she was “too cool” to care. Mary joined our program one summer, and, in the beginning, she refused to read any books out loud with the tutor and mostly responded with shrugs or annoyed short answers. Her tutor knew that the first step was going to be breaking down that wall of negative beliefs Mary had formed about reading and about herself. So, the tutor started with something simple: just reading to Mary, letting her choose whatever books looked fun to her, and gradually encouraging her to engage in small ways, maybe read a few words this time and next time a few sentences, making sure to respond positively and encourage every effort Mary made, making sure she heard those words she so desperately needed to hear, that she WAS a good reader and that she COULD do it. Within a few sessions, Mary’s guard started to come down, her demeanor was more positive, and her confidence was growing. Her tutor was able to start some more targeted skill work with Mary while continuing to engage her in authentic books. After a few weeks, Mary started wanting to read every page of the books out loud herself and was fully engaged in discussing the books with her tutor. By the end of the summer, in just 8 short weeks, her reading accuracy improved from 69% to 86%, and her comprehension score went from 60% to 100%.

Student Story #2

Carlos was another 3rd grader in our program. When Carlos started with us, he was a little behind with phonics skills and accuracy but was struggling quite a bit with fluency and comprehension. He also just thought reading was boring, probably because he didn’t understand much of what he read or always had to read boring remedial readers. His tutor knew the key to engaging him was finding books that captured his interest and that utilized his first language, which was Spanish. Carlos loved cars and planes, so in the first session, they searched the digital library for all the car and plane books they could find to make a collection of favorites. They also searched for interesting books that were in Spanish or were bilingual to practice comprehension skills that could apply to both languages while building his English vocabulary. Carlos’s pre-assessments told us he needed some help with vowel digraphs and past tense endings, but his tutor knew that if he started with the phonics skill books, Carlos would lose interest. Instead, his tutor found ways to incorporate practice with these skills within authentic books that Carlos actually wanted to read. Within those car and plane books, Carlos had opportunities to practice those phonics skills, read longer, larger words more fluently and encounter higher-level vocabulary than he would have been exposed to in the remedial readers. Within one semester, Carlos mastered reading accuracy, and within the school year, his comprehension score went from 46% to 76%. His mom told us,  “Now he enjoys reading more, he does it more fluently, and his reading has improved at school. He can now understand what he's reading, and that excites him.”