In the area of early literacy, we created two unique and replicable strategic partnerships: (1) between CUNY Brooklyn College and Reading Go and (2) between Reading Go and the GO Project (GO).
Reading Go is a literacy, high dosage tutoring intervention targeting below grade-level K-2 readers. The Reading Go lesson plan integrates instruction on the five essential components of literacy. Throughout the lesson, students work on their phonemic awareness, phonics (decoding and encoding), fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.
We pioneered a partnership that utilized Brooklyn College students enrolled in graduate and undergraduate early childhood literacy courses as tutors for Reading Go – these students were able to accomplish required fieldwork hours by tutoring struggling readers in New York City public schools. This partnership had very strong reading gains for the participating students and received significant interest from the funder community. It continues today, as part of the CUNY Reading Corps. See the CUNY Reading Corps catalyst section for more details.
Separately, we catalyzed a partnership between GO and Reading Go. GO provides year-round educational and family support programs for under-resourced New York City’s public school children who are performing below grade level. At the GO Project, the 1:1 tutoring sessions resulted in strong gains for GO’s youngest learners – all students grew at a faster rate than what was expected of them during the school year. GO continues to utilize the Reading Go programing on its own, without Heckscher’s continued support.