Roythezebra.com Survey Findings & Survey Winner

We ran a survey earlier this year to find out more about how you felt about Roy. Approximately 400 respondents completed the survey and it showed some really interesting results. Specifically, I wanted to know more about how teachers were using the site, how important or not tablet devices are and which are the best ways to communicate with you.

Here's some of the interesting findings:

• Roy is mostly used within two age groups: 5 to 6 year olds and 7 to 8 year olds. 65% of teachers who completed the survey use it with more than 10 pupils every year. This means that www.roythezebra.com reaches out to approximately 1.5 to 2 million children every year to help them with their literacy skills (conservatively estimated).
• Teachers in the main use mostly the free games, then the free guided reading story, then the printable resources. Interestingly the lesson plans weren't used very often
• Naturally, teachers valued the story and the games most, with nearly 70% saying that they highly value them (as opposed to 'I value')… nearly 40% of the teachers didn't know there were songs on the site… 
• 98% of the teachers said that www.roythezebra.com helped their pupils become better readers (this is up since our last survey) with more than half saying that they strongly agreed with the fact that Roy helped improve reading skills
• 99% of the teachers said that www.roythezebra.com makes reading fun for their pupils and 98% said that the website was simple and easy to use… more than 70% for both of these questions 'strongly agreed' with these statements : )
• Not many people knew about this blog!! More communication needed there…
• More stories and games were wanted by everyone!
• More than 160 positive statements were made by teachers… thank you for taking the time to write them, some added a great deal of detail…
• A minority of teachers didn't like the fact that some elements are being charged for… 95% of the resources on www.roythezebra.com are still free and the five batches of software are really needed to help support the free elements. I still work part-time on the website as I need another job to help support my work with Roy and living! So please continue to help in this area; the software gives you a great tool to use in the classroom and helps provide much appreciated income for the website - a win win..!

A very big thank you to everyone that completed the survey.

We've also just announced the survey winner...

Congratulations go to Shawn Blair who tutors literacy skills with Academic Solutions of Texas who completed the survey and won the free prize draw of $150 of Amazon vouchers. Shawn has been using the website for some years and said "Wow, thank you so much! That is so exciting! I use the Roy the Zebra website with kids I am tutoring; they can't wait to see what will happen to Roy each week…", happy spending Shawn!