Reading Reimagined: How Rally Reader’s Gamified Model Boosts Motivation

Introduction

Literacy instruction, including phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, and comprehension, can be especially challenging for students with diverse learning needs. When reading is difficult, motivation plummets, confidence suffers, and academic growth stalls. AIM Academy teacher Gabby Bieros sees this firsthand. “A lot of my students have dyslexia, so they struggle with reading,” she explains. “I have really high readers who are already at grade level, and I have some 6th graders reading at a second or third grade level. They see everyone else being able to do independent things, but they still need support.” Like many educators, Gabby needed a tool that could bridge these gaps—something that could support struggling readers without limiting those already thriving.

With the support of AIM Academy administrators, Gabby introduced her students to Rally Reader, a literacy app she was familiar with from a previous research partnership. The impact was immediate. “My students at the beginning of the year hated reading—they hated picking up books,” she says. “Now, they’re loving the books they read in my class, and they’ve asked to download Rally Reader at home.”

The shift started with motivation. Rally Reader’s gamified approach made reading feel less like a chore and more like a challenge worth sticking with. That motivation fueled persistence; an essential learning behavior that opens the door to real progress. As students spent more time reading, their fluency improved, their accuracy stabilized, and their confidence soared. With access to over 50,000 titles and individualized, adaptive feedback, every student, regardless of their reading level, had a clear path to success. “Because the books are things they picked, my students are super engaged with them,” Gabby says. The results were unmistakable. On average, Gabby’s class passed their reading goal more than twenty times, developed more consistent reading rates, and reached new milestones.

Gamification: How Learning Becomes Fun

Gamification, or the integration of game-like elements like rewards, challenges, and competition in non-game contexts, has been shown to boost motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes in education (Mandell et al., 2025). By tapping into students’ natural desire for achievement and recognition, gamification can transform learning from something students have to do into something they want to do. But for gamification to truly work, the content must be meaningful and appropriately leveled. Allowing students to self-select books based on their interests and abilities is key to sustaining motivation and persistence (Cheng et al., 2012). The combination of choice, playfulness, and visible progress creates a powerful engine for learning.

For Gabby Bieros, Rally Reader’s gamification model made a measurable difference. “I’ve seen improvement in both their interest in reading and their academic level… because the books are things that they picked.” Features like Rally’s Trip Words reports helped Gabby tailor instruction to her students’ needs. By tracking which words students consistently struggled with, she was able to target those skills both in class and through Rally’s game-based practice. Students got repeated, low-stakes exposure to tricky words in a playful setting, which helped them overcome challenges more quickly.

Motivated by the app’s rewards and personalized feedback, Gabby’s students kept coming back to read, and that persistence paid off. “Their confidence in and comfort with reading has helped them understand that they’re going to make mistakes, but that’s okay because there are things we can do to support them.” For her students, gamification didn’t just improve engagement; it sparked the persistence they needed to keep growing

Strategy and Implementation

In 2024, empowered by AIM Academy’s mission to “continually be at the forefront of cutting edge advances in educating children who learn differently,” Gabby Bieros applied to participate in a Rally Reader pilot program and research partnership to evaluate the effectiveness of the literacy app. Selected classes gained access to Rally’s expansive library of over 50,000 titles from leading publishers and adaptive literacy coach technology. Together with Rally Reader staff, Gabby tracked student engagement and progress throughout the school year to ensure consistent participation. To facilitate smooth integration, Rally Reader conducted professional development sessions for educators. These sessions provided teachers with strategies for incorporating the app into their weekly literacy routines.

Rally Reader offered Gabby’s students multiple engagement pathways, including diverse reading materials that matched their interests, levels, and genre preferences. The app’s personalized coaching allowed students to self-select books and practice skills like decoding at their own pace. Gamification features, such as badges and progress tracking, further enhanced motivation by creating a positive, low-stress learning environment that appealed to all readers. The study also analyzed user experience and potential improvements to comprehensively assess Rally Reader’s impact on literacy development.

For Gabby, the impact independence and choice made on her literacy curriculum was visible. “Reading with Rally is not a chore for [my students] because they have final say of what to read. For my students who are reading at a lower level, it’s great that they still feel like they’re reading a chapter book… and with Rally, even if a book is a little bit too challenging for them, they still have support.”

Results and Analysis

The implementation of Rally Reader across participating classrooms yielded strong results, driven by students' increased motivation and persistence. For participating classes, reading speed increased by 17.5 words per minute, and accuracy improved by 41.6%. In Gabby Bieros’s class, students not only showed gains in fluency and accuracy—they exceeded their collective reading goal more than twenty times. This pattern of repeated success reflected genuine buy-in from students and a growing sense of ownership over their reading journeys.

For Gabby’s most reluctant readers, Rally Reader offered something new: a way to engage with reading that felt less intimidating and more rewarding. Gamified features helped spark initial interest, but it was sustained motivation, fueled by student choice, visible progress, and playful practice, that kept them coming back. “The students who used to resist reading started picking up books on their own,” Gabby shares. “They were motivated to persist independently, and that made all the difference.”

One of Rally’s most powerful tools for building persistence was its real-time support with fluency. By helping students identify and pronounce challenging words as they read, the app improved accuracy while also reinforcing confidence.

As students began to see and hear their own progress, their willingness to participate grew. Gabby noticed more students volunteering to read aloud and engaging actively in group discussions; clear signs of both increased confidence and comprehension.

Educators also highlighted the value of Rally Reader’s data-driven insights. The app’s recording feature became a key resource for 504, IEP, and ELD reclassification meetings, offering concrete evidence of student progress or pinpointing areas that needed additional support. The teacher dashboard provided real-time data on reading behaviors (books students gravitated toward and which words they repeatedly struggled with) and enabled tailored, responsive instruction.

Ultimately, Rally Reader’s blend of choice, gamification, and adaptive support created an inclusive environment where persistence could thrive. Whether students were catching up or moving ahead, they had the tools, the encouragement, and the momentum to keep growing. For Gabby and her students, the result was more than improved reading scores—it was a classroom full of readers who believed in their ability to succeed.

Conclusion

According to oral reading fluency norms by Betts et al. (2017), the national benchmark for sixth-grade oral reading accuracy is 95%, meaning students should read 95 out of every 100 words correctly. Alonzo et al. (2016) and the U.S. Department of Education recommend that students with learning differences aim for an accuracy rate of 90%. Before using Rally Reader, Gabby’s middle school class averaged 87% accuracy. After incorporating the app, their accuracy rose to 96%—an impressive 9-point gain—bringing them within the national standard, despite their learning differences.

Rally Reader’s unique gamification model is an effective strategy for addressing the diverse needs of students, fostering a love of reading, and developing persistence in learning. By providing a vast array of reading materials tailored to individual interests, reading levels, and learning needs, the app ensured that every student had the opportunity to engage with content in ways that best suited them.

The incorporation of gamified elements such as badges and progress tracking further motivated students, creating a low-stress environment that made learning enjoyable. The personalized literacy coaching and flexible learning paths allowed students to progress at their own pace, strengthening key literacy skills like phonemic awareness, decoding, and fluency. The resulting increase in engagement, confidence, and reading fluency demonstrates how well-designed educational technology can drive meaningful literacy development across diverse student populations.

For Gabby Bieros, Rally Reader has been an invaluable tool for student success. “Because they have learning differences [my students] were very hesitant to read out loud, even in small group settings. But now I have parents telling me their kids are coming home excited to read and talking about books that they’re interested in. To me that makes a world of difference. If a student is interested in reading on their own, that means I’m doing my job right."

Resources:

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Alonzo, J., Tindal, G., Ulmer, K., Glasgow, A., & Yuan, M. (2016). Oral reading fluency and the simple view of reading for predicting reading comprehension growth. Educational Assessment, 21(3), 205–226. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1167383.pdf

Betts, J., Pickart, M., & Heistad, D. (2017). Oral reading fluency norms: A valuable assessment tool for educators (Technical Report No. 1702). Behavioral Research and Teaching, University of Oregon. https://www.brtprojects.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TechRpt_1702ORFNorms_Fini.pdf

Breen, A. (2024). The Many Benefits of Reading for Pleasure. The University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development. https://education.virginia.edu/news-stories/many-benefits-reading-pleasure

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Mandell, B., Deese, A., Echevarria, K., Vines, K., & Flanagan, J. (2025). 5 benefits of Gamification | Smithsonian Science Education Center. Smithsonian Science Education Center. https://ssec.si.edu/stemvisions-blog/5-benefits-gamification

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