Transforming reading in a student-centred learning environment

Key outcomes

• Targeted support and measurable growth: Data-driven insights help teachers identify key areas for reading support and evidence progress.
• Improved engagement: Accelerated Reader and myON are motivating tools that adapt to individual student needs to build reading success.
• Teacher empowerment: A systematic approach combines technology with pedagogical best practice to ensure purposeful reading practice.

“Reading English books used to feel like mountain climbing. Now it feels like walking."– Grade 4 student

Hangzhou Dipont School of Arts and Science is an international school in Zhejiang, China with students from kindergarten through to grade 12. The forward-looking, innovative school delivers outstanding educational standards, a rich programme of curricular and extracurricular activities and a comprehensive student welfare system. This creates a learning environment that integrates the best of international and Chinese education to maximise each student’s potential. 

Creating a systematic approach to reading support

With a diverse range of students from a variety of international backgrounds, reading and literacy support is a key focus for the team in the bilingual department at the school. After a review in 2023, it was agreed that they would put in place a new student-centred reading framework that would allow the team to better assess reading comprehension and progress and help drive student engagement with reading. They would provide teachers with easy access to reading data that would guide intervention and enrichment alongside curriculum-linked book recommendation strategies.

The school now use Renaissance’s Complete Literacy Solution (CLS) to assess, monitor and guide their students’ reading journeys. CLS connects assessment, personalised reading practice and authentic reading experiences in one platform, helping every learner build reading success while giving schools – and families – clear evidence of progress.

Star Reading provides a complete online assessment that can be completed in just 15-20 minutes, enabling teachers to identify and respond to learning gaps while evaluating progress, guiding decisions in the classroom with simple, reliable data. Accelerated Reader helps the school to monitor, manage and motivate reading, with structured opportunities for independent reading. The myON digital reading platform provides unlimited student access to high-quality reading materials, supporting reading practice and providing insights into reading fluency and frequency.

Setting a reading standard 

The team began by setting a clear expectation for students in grades 1 to 8 to complete a minimum of 100 minutes of reading each week. This target equates to around 15-20 minutes per day, with slightly longer sessions at the weekend. 

The students’ weekly reading is tracked via the interactive reporting in Accelerated Reader and myON, with a regular review each Monday of the previous week’s data. The teaching team use this as an opportunity to celebrate those students who have met the 100-minute challenge and to offer interventions for any students who may need support. These students get the chance to attend a lunchtime ‘Reading Camp’ where they spend 20 minutes reading with teacher guidance.

Xiaochen Li, English Teacher and Grade Leader at the school, explains more: "A good system doesn’t just track performance, it leaves a door open for students who are temporarily behind. Within weeks, most students no longer need the Reading Camp intervention because they have established daily myON habits.”

The weekly data looks at four metrics, allowing a broad overview of authentic, quality reading engagement for each student. The metrics are:

• Reading days – the number of days per week that the student engages with texts
• Books completed – the total number of books that the student has finished
• Quiz accuracy – their Accelerated Reader assessment scores, with a target of 80%+
• Reading time – against the 100-minute baseline

So even if a student’s minutes have fallen short, teachers can look at whether they had a high reading frequency or strong comprehension scores that could still earn recognition. 

Engaging students in reading, linked to classroom learning

The school use Accelerated Reader to guide students to books that are most likely to catch their interest. Every student has an individual reading difficulty range, helping them find a ‘just right’ balance between reading success and reading challenge. On finishing each book, students take a quiz which offers immediate post-reading checks of their comprehension. 

myON is introduced with a class session to guide the students through the platform navigation. After that students use myON independently, choosing from a wide selection of exciting titles that can be read on a range of digital devices, both on- and off-line, in school and at home. Each student has their own myON profile which offers them personalised recommendations according to their individual interests and reading level – keeping them challenged and engaged. Students can actively engage with texts by adding annotations and notes, marking up pages, looking up and highlighting words, listening to audio narration and interacting with enhanced digital books.

Hangzhou Dipont students regularly use these myON features:

• Listen & read mode: natural-voice audio narration allows the students to hear the text read aloud fluently, including pronunciation of unfamiliar words – this is particularly useful for English as an additional language (EAL) students.
• Read-aloud mode: here students can record themselves reading out loud, then listen back and self-assess to build their pronunciation, pace, tone and fluency. Teachers can also listen to the recordings over time to monitor and celebrate progress.
• Vocabulary Tools: the built-in dictionary functionality helps on-the-spot comprehension, building vocabulary and understanding.

Using the myON library, teachers create curated thematic book lists for each instructional unit. This supports learning across the curriculum and allows students to read within their appropriate levels while reinforcing classroom vocabulary. When newly learned words appear again in independent reading, it embeds that vocabulary and accelerates the acquisition of new terms.

One student from grade 4 described the transformation: "Reading English books used to feel like mountain climbing. Now it feels like walking."

Actionable reading data and insights

The school use Star Reading every quarter to gain a picture of each student’s reading development. The quick, adaptive assessments provide precise data that helps guide the team on next steps for each child – tracking change, not just performance. 

Xiaochen Li explains more: “The purpose of the tests is not to rank the students. We want to answer three key questions: How much has this student’s reading level changed since entry? Where are they stuck – is it vocabulary, comprehension strategies or text complexity? What targeted support can we provide that will help next?”

The tests provide a grade equivalent (GE) score, which is norm-referenced and represents how a student’s test performance compares with other students internationally. 

Xiaochen Li continues: “When a student’s GE value grows slowly, our teachers can examine the Star Reading diagnostic reports that present diagnostic and skills information for each child. If long-sentence processing is the barrier, they can recommend books with simpler syntax and linear narratives. If vocabulary breadth is limited, despite adequate GE levels, then teachers can assign multiple books within the same theme, creating repeated exposure to domain-specific terminology.”

"We don’t have poor students," Xiaochen Li emphasises. "Only students who haven’t found the right books yet."

The importance of celebrating success

The teaching team use the Star Reading data to provide vital insights – but also know that celebrating success and recognising progress provides great motivation for the students. 

They have created a range of initiatives to amplify the school’s reading culture including a monthly ‘Reading Stars’ competition. At grade-level assemblies they celebrate the top 10 readers based on the combined metrics of reading days, books completed and quiz accuracy. Xiaochen Li explains: “The prizes are modest, postcards or class points, but this public recognition has proved very powerful.”

Reading corners have been set up, curated by the students, including a combination of school-purchased books and student-donated favourites. The checkout logs from this selection quickly become organic recommendation lists that resonate with the students. Xiaochen Li explains: “Peer endorsement proves more influential than adult suggestions.”

The student voice is also important. Weekly reading corner monitors recommend favourite books from ones they have recently read – the class then reads one page aloud together. Xiaochen Li comments: “We’ve seen quiet students often becoming animated when sharing beloved books.”

A positive impact

After implementing Renaissance’s Complete Literacy Solution, the team are delighted to have seen an increase in student confidence and engagement – with data showing that reading volume has tripled. Students are now more willing to take part in English classes and the school’s Cambridge ESL assessment reading comprehension accuracy has improved by approximately 20% year-on-year. 

The impact is clearly visible in students’ Accelerated Reader data from this academic year, which shows their GE scores. Across all grade levels, students demonstrated measurable growth between Semester 1 and Semester 2, with improvements evident in both GE levels and quiz accuracy rates.

AR (Accelerated Reader) - by Class

Xiaochen Li shares more: “We saw participation in our English class expand from a handful of students to over half the class volunteering responses.”

“Now our Monday mornings look completely different – with students asking staff, ‘Did I meet my standard last week?’ and proudly announcing, ‘I read four books this week!’”

Professional development has been central to the school’s literacy success. Recognising that even the best tools depend on skilled implementation, the school invests in bi-annual internal training to ensure their teachers can confidently interpret the Star Reading reports, use myON’s search and filtering features to identify appropriate texts, and integrate Accelerated Reader data into their classroom instruction.

This ongoing professional learning extends beyond formal training. The teachers collaborate by creating and sharing curated book lists that align with classroom units, enabling one teacher’s work to benefit an entire grade level. 

By combining high-quality professional development with a collaborative culture, Hangzhou Dipont has built a sustainable, scalable approach to literacy instruction that empowers educators and improves outcomes for students.

Looking to strengthen literacy across your school?

The Complete Literacy Solution brings together Star Reading, Accelerated Reader and myON in one connected literacy platform. Star Reading helps schools understand each student’s reading level and progress, while Accelerated Reader and myON help students access books they can read, enjoy and succeed with, in school and at home.

Together, the solutions support a continuous cycle of insight, personalised practice, visible progress and reading development. Students build confidence through choice, success and achievable challenge, while school leaders and teachers use integrated data and trusted evidence to guide support and demonstrate impact to inspectors and parents.

Discover how Renaissance’s Complete Literacy Solution can transform literacy in your school.

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