Rock 'N' Read with Bill Jones

Our program on February 10^th was a presentation by Bill Jones about a social program he co-founded,         Rock N Read. Bill is a former practicing attorney, and he and his partner Ann Kay 

founded this program to help improve reading among young students in the Minneapolis School System.

            With the aid of corporate and private donors, they bought and outfitted an old MTC bus with 32 computer stations, and they take to bus to grade schools with students who have low reading scores (students reading significantly below their grade levels). The computers have a music learning program which was specially designed to help students increase their reading ability by singing familiar songs. Use of this program increases a student’s reading ability by one grade level for each 13 hours of using the software. Reading skills are one of the most important elements in an education program, and this software effort seems to be helping improve results in one of the lowest performing schools in the state. In their experience, the program works very well for students in any year of grade school (K thru 8), but is especially effective for young people grades 2 thru 5.

            Because of the relationship between music and reading, Bill and Kay are next going to set up choirs to make the learning process more fun for the participants.