WOW Connect by Stones2Milestones

Enabling teaching reading by empowering teachers to help children move from 'Learning to read' to 'Reading to learn'.

A study titled ‘30 Million Word Gap’ by researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley of the University of Kansas, USA on language development in young children states that by the age of 3, children who aren’t exposed to books/stories have a vocabulary of 30-50 words, compared to a 1,000-word vocabulary of children who have been read to from infancy.

Being able to read independently at expected grade level fluency with comprehension by the end of grade 3 is the single largest predictor of all future academic success, including the board exams in grade 12.

This situation is even more challenging in the case of Indian children who attend English medium schools, with 9 in 10 children not reading at grade levels they are supposed to. Imagine the impact of this!

Moreover, reading has proven to be the most effective tool for the child to meet expectations in the school of making meaning of the world through different dimensions – scientific, mathematical, social, emotional and aesthetic.

At Stones2Milestones, we are committed to achieving this by teaching young children to read in English in a systematic, contextual, progressive and age-appropriate manner.  

We do this through a teacher-led in-school reading program called Wings of Words (WOW) Connect using an ecosystem approach via research based original teaching material, teacher training, community building. A reading app to increase the bond between parents and children and a reading diagnostic test is an integral component of the same. 

All of the above is provided at less than $1/child/month. 

We measure our venture’s impact qualitatively and quantitatively. Through WOW Connect, our teacher support and training app, we are able to see and measure the following granularly:

• The speed with which teachers are able to do the program in the classroom and the usage metrics

• Feedback for each session, its accompanying literature and activity - and their assessment answers

• The speed, ease and comfort with which teachers share their success, ask questions and clear their doubts through a simple conversation and engagement system

We also run baseline and endline assessments in our partner and control schools to measure progress in children’s reading comprehension and fluency, In order to define grade wise national reading benchmarks for the country, we will be conducting India’s first pure play English Reading Skill Assessment - FAST again in 2018 to measure the reading skill gap for 1.5 million children.

The above two platforms are complemented by a third tech platform at home for parents called FREADOM which is an application designed to help parents raise happy readers at home by spending just 10 minutes READing stories, Doing activities, READing NEWS & TRACKINg reading, all in a gamified ecosystem. The teacher then uses this data to enhance the in-classroom implementation of the teaching reading curriculum. 

We are on our way to map the reading genome for a country where reading levels don't exist and use that to create the above mentioned precision engineered solution that are personalised and adaptive, making them available at a price point unimagined before. 

It's precision engineered to suit each classroom the educator teaches. WOW Connect is an innovative tech platform that takes an ecosystem approach and is built to achieve impact at scale keeping in mind the convenience of a educator. 

The platform itself helps the teacher to:

•  TEACH reading using easy to implement personalised lessons
•  LEARN how to teach reading via engaging video training courses
• ASSESS her growth via regular assessments
• ENGAGE with a global community of teachers

It is complemented by diagnostic and impact assessments through FAST (www.f-ast.in) and resources for parents to foster reading at home via Freadom app (www.getfreadom.com)

Technology forms the base of the entire platform. WOW Connect is a tech platform for teachers and built to scale. The app is available on Android, iOS and the web. Irrespective of the category of the school, the app has a teacher centric design and can be used by teachers anywhere on their handheld devices or computers thus empowering them through technology. The technology even works without internet connectivity. 

• We are looking at 10,000 teachers across the country teaching reading via our application over the next 12 months 
• 1.5 Million students / 5000 schools across the country will be taking our Reading Assessment FAST
• 300,000 students that those teachers work with will become proficient readers with grade level comprehension and fluency 
• Enable teacher to help improve reading grade levels of children by 60%
• Make the app bilingual and completely offline so that it is accessible by low income / govt. schools 

The three pronged strategy we are looking to employ over the next 3-5 years is:

1. Create awareness: A vast majority of the people including the educated segment are not even aware of the reading gap. Our reading skill assessment, FAST which will go out to 1.5 million children in 2018 and expand exponentially over the next 3 years to 10 million children

2. Solve: Our reading solutions have been developed after years of research and has a proven impact across segments. 

3. Collaborate: We would look to join hands with co-believers who have diverse solutions at multiple levels

• Our current model of reaching the schools and through them the teachers and children is an inbound lead generation driven model 
• This is done via our diagnostic reading assessment FAST, strategic partnerships and visibility initiatives
• Retaining customers once they have signed up and making sure they expand their association beyond the grades that they initially sign up for is ensured by a very strong focus on in-class excellence and teacher support online and offline
• Our baseline and endline tests and impact reports at the end of the year are proof enough for customers to continue using 

• We are currently working with over 100 schools which comprise 500+ teachers and around ~30000 children as paid customers
• These are spread across 21 cities in the country 
• All the 100+ schools use our tech solutions directly in teaching reading to the children in Grades Nursery - 3 in the classroom
• They undergo Baseline and Endline test to assess impact 
• Teachers are first trained on the solution at the start of the academic year and then supported through the year via online mediums in terms of implementation 

• We look to expand the usage to over 5000 teachers and 300,000 children over the next 12 months 
• We would be serving them by:
  • Helping them diagnose the issue: A vast majority of people including the educated segment are not even aware of the reading gap. Our reading skill assessment, FAST is a diagnostic that does that
  • Precision Engineered Solution: Giving teachers just the right lesson plans and learning courses they need to be equipped with to solve the issue
• In 3 years, we are on track to impact 10 Million children and 300,000 teachers

We have a very clear vision to help each child find his/her place in the world and an urgent and important mission to Create a Nation of Readers which is one of the fundamental ways to achieve our vision. Our team is very passionately aligned to this and we ensure that any new hires have this as their key trait to succeed. 

The culture we have been able to build over the years makes us confident of high quality talent and resources we have been able to attract and will attract.

Key Terms of business with the School Annual contract with a soft commitment of 3 years for experiencing significant impact

1. Not an optional program and goes to all children of the grades signed up

2. Per student per annum charge of $10-15 (we have variants)

3. 25% payment on booking, 50% before dispatch of material and 100% before orientation training

4. Anything outside the committed components from Stones2Milestones is on a pay per use basis

Hence our primary revenue stream is a per student per annum fee that we receive from each of our partner school. Our agreement is with the School and not each child.

• We see MIT Solve initiative as an important co-believer in our Mission to Create a Nation of Readers. 
• We are applying for this to get an opportunity to collaborate by bringing in our sharp focus on identifying and solving the reading skill gap with Solve’s network, reach and focus on teachers/educators as the last mile delivery of the solutions. 
• With our technology platforms and solutions we can work with Solve to provide teachers world over a tool that can transform how reading is taught (if at all!) across most countries where English is not the first language.

One of the key barriers in expanding our work is creating awareness. Solve, with its credible research oriented background and global network can help in creating awareness and the urgency to address this global epidemic of reading deficiency.

750 million people in the world can't read this sentence.