Las Brisas Academy

Goodyear, Arizona

2025 Read Live School of the Year Runner-up

Submitted by Erin Brandon, Reading Specialist

Las Brisas Academy receives a $500 Read Naturally Gift Certificate.

Las Brisas Academy has used Read Live for years with their intervention groups. This year, they’ve kickstarted a new initiative to support all students in the earliest stages of their reading development: Read Live Roadrunners. Now, every first-grade student in the school uses Read Live for 30 minutes every day. For every three stories a student completes, they earn a small prize and get to move their roadrunner along the progress board on the wall.

Teachers have observed remarkable growth: students reading fewer than 10 words per minute in December increased to 40-50 words per minute in the Spring. Additionally, students’ scores on the Acadience Reading assessment have notably improved.

But perhaps most importantly, the first graders at Las Brisas Academy are truly experiencing the joy of reading. Not only are students feeling more confident in their own reading abilities, but thanks to the Roadrunners board, they are also celebrating their growth as a community. Students see their classmates’ progress and they cheer each other on! The overall success of the Read Live Roadrunners initiative has been so great that they’re planning to expand it to more grade levels next year.

Las Brisas Academy has a strong belief in every child’s potential and is dedicated to providing sustainable, individualized, and impactful reading instruction to all students. They are a model of excellence in literacy instruction and a very deserving awardee of the Read Live School of the Year scholarship.

Check out their full nomination below including their video submission and their story.

At Las Brisas Academy, we’ve proudly used Read Live for years as part of our reading intervention program for 1st through 3rd grade. This year, we took it to the next level by launching a new initiative in January called Read Live Roadrunners, specifically designed for our first graders, and the results have been nothing short of extraordinary.

Every first-grade student now participates in Read Live for 30 minutes each day. As the reading interventionist, I work alongside my fantastic paraprofessional to push into classrooms daily, supporting students and conducting assessments. The growth we’ve seen has been remarkable: students reading fewer than 10 words per minute in December are now confidently reading 40–50 words per minute.

Read Live has become an essential tool for building both fluency and confidence. Its flexibility allows us to easily tailor stories to meet each child’s individual needs. Students feel more confident, and that success has become a powerful motivator.

To keep the excitement going, we created the Read Live Roadrunners board—a fun and interactive visual that tracks every three stories completed. Students earn small prizes and get to move their roadrunner along the path. They are constantly checking their progress, cheering each other on, and are genuinely thrilled to see how far they’ve come.

Not only has Read Live boosted classroom engagement, but we’ve also seen a noticeable increase in our Acadience scores. The success of this initiative has been so impactful that we’re already planning to expand it to more grade levels and start even earlier next school year.

We believe Las Brisas Academy should be chosen because we’ve made the most of limited resources and created a sustainable, impactful program that is truly growing readers. With creativity, dedication, and a strong belief in every child’s potential, we’ve turned a simple idea into a school-wide celebration of progress. This is just one of many reasons why we would be honored to be recognized.

Read Live has truly transformed the reading experience for our first graders—and we’re just getting started!