Like many student/parent teams, my grade schooler and I logged hours together at the kitchen counter working on his reading. From second grade onward, we'd sit side by side. With my finger, I underlined the words across countless pages as he read. When he skipped or misread a word, I would stop advancing my finger. That was the sign for him to try again. Often, he felt discouraged and worried that he wasn't making progress. I did my best to reassure him, yet often I shared the same fear.
My son is generally an easy-going kid. Still, there were frequent moments of frustration followed by creative attempts to delay or evade the whole exercise. As he got older, my son wanted to read on his own. I liked the idea but knew that without the benefit of my feedback, his accuracy would not improve. My son didn’t understand the importance of reading words accurately. He understood most of the stories he was reading and assumed that was enough. He didn't realize that high accuracy rates would soon be essential for word problems in math, instructions in science labs, taking tests and more.
Through those years, I kept thinking of the tagline in the Apple ad, "There’s an app for that"... and wondering why there wasn't an app for this!
And now there is!
We built Rally to do everything that a concerned parent would do, and more.