Reading Simplified Academy has made a significant impact on literacy in a second Colorado school with Maplewood Elementary in District 6 reporting impressive student gains in just one year.
Imagine the wind and trees of the Colorado landscape as I share how Reading Simplified’s carefully designed system is spreading and strengthening literacy in the state.
Wind of Successful Teacher Professional Development
Maplewood Elementary’s journey began when Instructional Coach Jennifer Rios-Alers noticed the “insane growth” achieved by Meeker Elementary through Reading Simplified.
Inspired by Meeker’s success, Maplewood enrolled its teachers in the Reading Simplified Academy through a school partnership. You’ll get to hear from the teaching team in a video at the end of this blog!
In just one year, Maplewood celebrated its own literacy gains, with Kindergarten and first-grade teams achieving outstanding results.
The bar graph below shows the last 3 years’ Kindergarten data at Maplewood, with the bar on the right representing this year’s End Of Year (EOY) data.
Kindergarten and First-Grade Success
For those who may not be familiar with DIBELS data, 52-54% of kindergartens at Maplewood were achieving grade-level expectations or “benchmarking” before implementing Reading Simplified.
This year, trained Reading Simplified teachers were able to raise that by ensuring that 73% of their students were meeting expectations!
And gains were also apparent in first grade!
Students scored 37% at or above Benchmark EOY last year and 59% at or above benchmark this year – a 22 point gain!
That’s acceleration!
Gains Beyond the Classroom
Maplewood didn’t stop with students; they extended professional learning to families.
Teacher Sarah Mireles taught parents Switch It, which helped them feel more comfortable reading with their children at home.
Such amazing results! This year we continued on with Switch It for our adult learners as well and added decodables too! Our adult learners were a bit nervous to start reading in English but the skills they gained from Switch It, accelerated the process! Many of our adult learners stated that they felt much more comfortable reading with their children at home in English! Such exciting news for our scholars, staff, and families!
These “Family English” classes, featuring multilingual families learning with Switch It, exemplify how Reading Simplified’s professional development addresses the foundational skills of all learners.
The Science of Acceleration with Reading Simplified: A Comparison
Reading Simplified was started in 2016 because Marnie wanted evidence-based early reading instruction that accelerated student learning to be more fully disseminated.
The Targeted Reading Intervention she helped develop at The University of North Carolina, got good results but wasn’t reaching classrooms outside of the research schools. A classic research-to-practice gap!
So Marnie decided to pivot and created Reading Simplified to have more effective dissemination.
Reading Simplified was designed to support teachers’ successful starts with evidence-aligned instruction, regardless of their previous training and experience.
To further this goal, Reading Simplified emerged with an even more streamlined system for professional development, offering a condensed lesson plan that includes just a handful of powerful activities. This approach ensures that teachers have access to effective and manageable tools to enhance their instructional practices.
And while doing that, Marnie wanted teachers to skyrocket student outcomes rapidly and increasingly using diagnostic thinking.
This is where I’ll call on your imagination as we take inspiration from the name of the school, “Maplewood,” and the Colorado landscape.
So how can the dispersed seed of Reading Simplified get the gains Maplewood has experienced?
Well, because it’s not only designed for disbursement but for acceleration.
The maple tree’s seed is called a “samara.”
The unique design of samaras, also known as “helicopters” or “whirligigs,” ensures they travel far, mirroring Reading Simplified’s approach to spreading educational excellence.
Samaras are designed for dissemination and autorotation; Reading Simplified is designed for dissemination and acceleration!
There are three key attributes of the design of Reading Simplified that allow accelerated growth for students and teachers alike.
Reading Simplified’s Streamlined Pathway
Like the samara has a thick leading edge; Reading Simplified has a Streamlined Pathway.
Reading Simplified provides a simple, one-page Streamlined Pathway, eliminating the need to worry about numerous teaching points and allowing educators to focus on what truly matters – student outcomes.
Reading Simplified’s Efficient Features
Like the samara has an efficient, dense wing; Reading Simplified has an efficient lesson plan with dense activities.
The program offers a three-component lesson plan encompassing Re-Reading for Fluency, Word Work, and Guided Oral Reading. This plan helps students quickly understand the alphabetic principle.
Each activity is designed to address multiple literacy skills simultaneously – we talk about this as “integration” while researchers have various terms to describe the concept.
Reading Simplified’s Cohesive Planning
Like the samara has a center of mass; Reading Simplified has cohesive planning across the school.
A cornerstone of the Reading Simplified journey is the incorporation of small group models and differentiated literacy centers.
This cohesive approach ensures targeted instruction tailored to each child’s needs by placing them on one of three Streamlined Pathways, regardless of their grade level.
Together, these attributes produce the additional benefits of saving you planning and instructional time.
Why Let Reading Simplified Spin Your Way?
The deliberate design of Reading Simplified’s system mirrors that of the samara seeds, with streamlined pathways, efficient lesson plans with dense activities, and cohesive decision-making – contributing to acceleration for teachers and students while saving you time!
That’s our why.
But let me acknowledge something real quick –
Knowledge about evidence-based reading is spreading, sometimes through mandates and sometimes because teachers are eager for it.
There’s another flying metaphor that comes up from time to time that squashes change efforts:
“building the plane while flying it”
This metaphor can be viewed as freedom, giving up old ideas and perfectionism, staying curious, and promoting a way of approaching change with curiosity.
Teachers often interpret policy changes and other instructional changes with a lot of hesitation expressing their insecurity more like this,
“It’s like they’re building the airplane while it’s in the air.”
I completely get that.
We’d prefer not to do that, but it is often a necessity.
I think we can embrace the metaphor as motivational, even when we have only partial information at the beginning of some endeavors
But those endeavors must be backed by excellent design and good science.
That is what’s been achieved with Reading Simplified.
The system is built on excellent design and contemporary science, ensuring rapid and effective results.
Results like those with rural schools during the Targeted Reading Intervention are the proven DNA of this system.
And these examples of low-income, diverse schools in Colorado like Meeker and Maplewood, are just adding up showing how feasible Reading Simplified is!
Teachers can start to fly this “helicopter” of Reading Simplified before they know how it is built – experience some whimsy before they get technical.
We encourage and allow that sometimes at no cost in workshops like our 3 Simple Steps for Science of Reading Success.
But let me assure you, it is built.
And it is built better than most.
Teacher Professional Development Gets More Technical
Through membership in the Reading Simplified Academy, educators learn how the parent tree of the Reading Simplified system is fully designed slowly, over time, and in a way that stifles the overwhelm experienced in “one and done” professional development.
To accomplish that this year, in the classrooms of Maplewood Elementary, teachers embarked on a cycle of professional learning, honing their skills and deepening their understanding of the Reading Simplified system.
After the first several modules of the Reading Simplified Academy
designed for dissemination and acceleration, we slow it down for a descent, mirroring what those maple helicopters do as they find the ground.
Practitioners, therefore, get a more pivotal view of the nuance of each activity and how they work together.
“Knowing more deeply what each activity is designed for helps you diagnose when each activity will give the best leverage.”
Teachers also explore students’ most pressing needs, and members gain insight into how features of Reading Simplified are more defined, and perhaps even more “jagged,” allowing them to catch more wind than other similarly designed systems.
One feature Maplewood teachers wanted to figure out was how to teach short vowels more quickly, so they could move on to more advanced material with their students.
I’d love to share that feature with you now.
Final Thoughts
Jennifer highlighted the balance of whimsical and technical aspects in Maplewood’s success,
We attribute these results to the Reading Simplified Streamlined Pathways’ acceleration and using this diagnostic approach to identify the most pressing need.
This growth wouldn’t be possible if schools kept their successes to themselves.
Thank you to schools like Meeker and Maplewood for sharing their stories!
You too can explore school-based partnerships and professional development with the Reading Simplified Academy, where the perfect blend of whimsy and technicality fosters the change you seek and produces “insane growth” for your students.
How Does 40% Reading Growth in 1 Year Happen?
Marnie recently visited with the dedicated staff at Maplewood to learn more about their impressive progress and the strategies they’ve used to successfully implement Reading Simplified.
Meet your team of education leaders:
- Jennifer Rios-Alers (Instructional Coach),
- Sarah Mireles (CLD Teacher),
- Rebekah Herget (Kindergarten Teacher), and
- Rebecca Hoover (3rd Grade Teacher).
Key Takeaways from Their Journey:
“We were seeing the kids really taking so much more agency and initiative – diving into texts sooner than ever before.” - Jennifer
“My kids are already starting to blend, sound it out, and get comfortable putting those sounds together to read words. It’s actually amazing how quickly they’re picking it up, especially having just started reading!” - Rebekah
“We’re thrilled that Reading Simplified turned out to be easier to implement than expected. I’ve even seen students who would usually avoid the computer program opt for a book or a Sort It activity instead!” - Rebecca
Jennifer’s Top Tip for Getting Started:
“The best advice I can give is just go for it.”
Sarah’s Encouragement:
“I would say–don’t dabble for too long. There’s nothing like seeing students recognize themselves as readers. Even if they struggle to read, they are starting to rapidly move!”
Watch the full conversation:
Your Turn
What about you?
Are you in the whimsy stage or at the technical point of your journey with accelerated reading instruction? Or, do you still need the seed to just blow your way?
We’re here for it all!
Comment below!
