Colorado 7th grader reads 2 million words during summer break in English and Spanish

DENVER — A seventh grader at Rocky Mountain Prep Sunnyside has reached a milestone after he completed the school’s “Two Million Word Challenge.” Twelve-year-old Ayden Mejia-Solis has read 2,082,698 words since June 1. The goal was for all middle school students to read 2 million words during their summer break to prevent the summer slide. Mejia-Solis believed the experience would help him in the classroom.

“I want to improve. I want to go above and beyond,” Mejia-Solis said. “It can help me improve my English and Spanish if I read more.”

Mejia-Solis is bilingual with Spanish being his first language. He reached the 2-million-word milestone reading the Harry Potter series and passing tests on each in English and Spanish.

“It was a challenge because I wanted to improve my mind,” Mejia-Solis said. “Because there’s probably some words I didn’t even know existed in English or Spanish, so I could just help myself like that.”

Every middle school student attending a Rocky Mountain Prep school is given a list of possible books to read and complete starting in May. According to the school, literacy is important for English language development. They believe every 1 million words read is equivalent to one academic year of reading growth, one of the key reasons the Rocky Mountain Prep Network has made this a goal for its students. It’s a mission the school’s assistant principal of instruction, Elizabeth Rifkin, feels is important in closing the learning gap.

“We all know that foundational skills really come up in reading,” Rifkin said. “We want to ensure that they have every opportunity they can to achieve their goals of going to college and that is really going to start with being able to read and falling in love with reading from an early age.”

Rocky Mountain Prep has seen a leap in progress in the last year and earned a green rating on the 2024 School Performance Framework (SPF), a report that evaluates how well a school is performing based on key factors like academic growth and academic achievement. A majority of their students are bilingual with English as their second language. Rifkin said she was happy to see the positive results.

“We have definitely seen our test scores go up and, in some cases, our multi-lingual learners are actually outperforming our native English speakers in certain areas,” Rifkin said. “We see being bilingual as an asset to the students and their learning and their education.”

Ayden has passed his goal and is now at 3 million words. He said he wants to read 5 million before the end of the school year and encourages his classmates to read more.

“They could also increase their knowledge too,” Mejia-Solis said. ““It could help you with your education and you could learn how to write and speak better in other languages.”

For more information about Rocky Mountain Prep Sunnyside, click here: https://rockymountainprep.org/schools/sunnyside/.