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A new way to teach reading at the elementary level is now in place for Winona Area Public Schools (WAPS). The resources center on helping young students grasp how words sound and go together and providing in-time explanations. 

The resources for teaching elementary students how to read come from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) and are called Intro Reading, Arriba La Lectura and Amira. Intro to Reading includes resources for teachers to use while helping students expand their vocabularies, gain fluency in reading and improve their knowledge of the sounds that make up words and words themselves, Goodview Elementary School Principal Emily Cassellius said at the School Board’s September 15 meeting. Teachers can use these resources while teaching a whole class, working with a small group of students or helping students individually. Arriba La Lectura includes these resources in Spanish, and teachers in the Rios Spanish Immersion Program at WAPS will use them. 

The resources for teaching reading also include an artificial-intelligence-powered tutor (AI) tutor called Amira that provides real-time corrections to students as they read. For example, as students read aloud, the AI tool can tell them if they mispronounce a word, Director of Learning and Teaching Kristie O’Brien said. The correction could include a video showing a student how to move their mouth to say a word, Cassellius said. The tool can distinguish accents, O’Brien said, to help students in EL programming. The tool also has data from recordings of many students from the program being used elsewhere, Cassellius said, and becomes smarter the more data it gets. School Board Karl Sonneman had asked how the program addresses different accents of native English speakers and speech difficulties. Students would use the tool about 10 minutes at a time, Cassellius said. It may also be possible to use the tool to help screen for dyslexia, she said. 

“It does sound like this would be something for individualized learning,” School Board member Stephanie Smith said. “So it’s something that I think is fantastic: meeting students where they’re at and helping them progress from there.” 

The resources include many assessments for teachers to use to hone instruction, Cassellius said. School Board member Jim Schul expressed an interest in potentially applying the results to the district’s annual academic accountability plan and learning programs for students in special education. 

Cassellius said teachers expressed a desire for new reading resources last year, and after narrowing down options and trying them out, about 87 percent of teachers wanted to move forward with the HMH tools. The previous reading resources at WAPS focused on comprehension, she said, and some teachers of the youngest students felt they needed to find other materials to supplement those resources. 

Teachers received some training with the new resources this summer, O’Brien said, and will continue to have training opportunities this school year. 

Now, over the next several weeks, teachers will begin using the tools and check in on what is and is not working next month, Cassellius said. 

School Board member Steve Schild asked for the board to receive updates on how implementing the resources goes. “It’s more important than reading scores,” he said, adding that helping students read can be life-changing. 

“We, too, see the importance of reading,” Cassellius said. “We’re really excited about this.” 

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