Sparx Reader

Sparx Reader gives students access to a range of fiction texts suitable for their reading age. As students read, they answer questions. This makes their reading visible to teachers, empowering them to actively build a culture of reading. This reading data can also be used to measure students’ improvement.

We found a strong positive correlation between the amount of reading done on Sparx Reader and increase in reading age: students who read more saw a greater improvement in their reading age.  To measure the amount of reading, we used the average SRP (Sparx Reader Points) earned each term-time week. 300 SRP is equivalent to 30 minutes of careful reading.

With hundreds of thousands of students and hundreds of millions of question attempts, we’re able to build a picture of the relative difficulty of each book. As we know the age of each student, we can estimate the ‘real-world difficulty’ of each book. For example, a book that is read well by thousands of 14-year-olds has a reading age of 14. As students read, Sparx Reader monitors their reading and continually refines the estimate of their ability. This measure of ability is used to offer books. To give an intuitive understanding of the Sparx Reading Age measure, let’s look at an example student based on real student data.