How to implement the Science of Reading in your classroom today

What is the Science of Reading, anyway?

An overview of the Science of Reading

The Science of Reading refers to the wealth of research on how students best learn to read. At its heart is what experts Philip Gough and Bill Tunmer proposed as the Simple View of Reading.

When presented with a passage of text, how do you extract meaning from it? According to the Simple View, you need to do two fundamental things:

1. Convert written words into speech (decoding)
2. Understand that speech (decoding language comprehension)

Decoding

The Simple View points out that when children first learn to read, they already understand a lot of spoken language. But written words and letters are as strange to them as:

If you can’t decode the symbols in a sentence,you can’t read it—even if you know the language in which it’s written.

The best way to help students begin to read for themselves is to get them started on decoding, so it’s important to teach them that words are made up of sounds (phonemes), and then teach them what sounds the letters stand for. Unfortunately, the English system of writing does not make this easy. With at least six possible sounds for the letter “e,” kids can’t just learn that “e” makes the /e/ sound — though that’s a good start. They have to learn each specific pattern.

We know everyone is born with the language part of the brain — the speech and meaning parts.

Additionally, everyone is born with the visual part of their brain. We easily recognize shapes, objects, places, and faces. However, no one is born with the connections between vision and speech, and these are the connections that enable reading. Instead, you have to build the visual word form area of your brain one connection at a time. For example, to learn that “sh“ stands for the /sh/ sound at the start of “ship,” a tiny part of your brain gets rewired. Scientists have recently begun to understand how that works, and it turns out it’s a lot like building a muscle. This muscle is called the visual word form area, and it’s the seat of reading.

What does this all mean for teaching and learning to read?

On average, it takes a child two to three years to learn to decode English. It is the toughest alphabetic writing system in the world.

But, like a muscle, you can grow your brain with practice. Heikki Lyytinen, a Scandinavian neuroscientist, showed that the visual word form area begins to appear in the brain scans of non-readers after as little as five hours of training in decoding. Teachers need to help students practice deliberately, focusing on their weakest skills and working hard to improve them.

Math Teacher Lounge episode: Howie Hua on making math viral

K—12 math instruction has come a long way from having students memorize times tables. Thanks to innovative instructors like Howie Hua, it’s gone all the way to TikTok. And it’s gone viral.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer recently talked to Howie Hua on Math Teacher Lounge—now a podcast!

Meet Howie Hua

Howie Hua is a lecturer at Fresno State. He teaches math to future elementary math teachers. That’s a good thing, because he doesn’t just make math “come alive.” He makes it go viral.

He has more than 32,000 followers on TikTok (@howie_hua), where his brief, punchy math explainer videos have garnered nearly 500,000 likes.

That’s why Bethany Lockhart Johnson was so excited to talk to him on the podcast, she says. “He is inviting us to think about how we ask questions in mathematics in ways that get people buzzing. His ideas and thoughts have gone viral and people are in conversation in a way that we long for them to be, out in the streets shouting about mathematics.”

(Fun fact: Hua can also throw a rifle 15 feet in the air, do a back flip, and catch it. Don’t believe us? Check out his TikTok.)

Questions are as important as answers

“I think people don’t want to watch a 20-minute YouTube video on something math-related. Maybe they just want a short one-minute explainer,” says Hua.

Even in one minute, Hua shines new light on math functions and concepts—and more.

“People want to understand what’s actually happening,” says Hua. “For example, I got so many nice comments when I explained the long division algorithm. I said, ‘Let’s visualize it.’ It’s not just connecting the permutation and the combination formulas. People want to know what’s happening rather than just ‘Use this formula to get an answer.’”

Dan Meyer shares a couple of Hua’s most popular TikToks:

Test Talk: Reduce test anxiety by having students talk in a group about a test for five minutes before putting pencil to paper.
How do you calculate … ? In his Mental Math Mondays series, Hua asks viewers to tell him exactly how they solve a given arithmetic problem. “One of my favorite hobbies is to listen to how people think about math,” says Hua. “So if you want to make my day, comment or stitch this video with how you would calculate 17 plus 18 in your head.”

Hua says that to ask “Hey, how would you think about this?” does more than give him insight. Asking questions helps build community, and shows people that there are many ways to arrive at an answer.

Says Hua: “It really goes to show that math is a creative subject. ‘Hey, can we find another way? What’s another way that we can do this?’ I tell my students, the beauty is in us, not the final answer.”

Join the challenge

Here’s Hua’s Math Teacher Lounge challenge for this episode:

Walk around and find something that you can count, take a picture, and then ask around: “Hey, how would you count these?” See if their way is the same as yours—or if it blows your mind.
Share your pictures and thoughts by tagging us (@MTLShow) and Howie (@Howie_Hua) on Twitter, and sharing them in the Math Teacher Lounge Facebook group as well.

Bonus: Did you do the daily Wordle before you read this post? You might have learned something about teaching math—listen to the podcast to find out why (and to hear why on earth Dan Meyer would start his guesses with “PYGMY”)

The Math Teacher Lounge podcast is available on all major streaming platforms and on mathteacherlounge.com. Math Teacher Lounge is presented by Amplify and Desmos. Visit Amplify’s website to find out more about Amplify Math.

Science or literacy instruction? You don’t have to choose!

We often think of literacy and science as academic opposites. (“Physics for Poets,” anyone?)

But scientists can’t do their jobs without reading, writing, listening, and communicating.

That’s why thoughtful science instruction is literacy-rich science instruction.

Language and literacy in science education: why it makes sense

All scientists use literacy skills in order to obtain, evaluate, and communicate information about the natural world. They use oral and written explanations and arguments to share their ideas. Scientists rely on claims, evidence, and reasoning—just like anyone who needs to communicate or convince.

“Science needs literacy, and literacy needs content. So these two subjects are a natural fit,” says Rebecca Abbott, professional learning lead for the Learning Design Group at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science.

They’re a natural fit—and when they converge, they enhance each other.

Science and literacy integration helps students:

Understand that reading and communicating are crucial to science.
Develop ways of thinking that support the scientific approach.
Refine sense-making skills that are key to both disciplines.
Find a great reason to read—that is, to keep up with the latest scientific studies and discoveries!

Look ahead at the standards that guide instruction in grades 6–8. You’ll see that in several ways and places, literacy and science are integrated. That is, certain Common Core ELA standards intersect with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

To cite just a few examples, the Common Core requires students to be able to:

Cite text evidence to support analysis of science/technical texts. (RST6-8.1)
Follow a multistep procedure. (as in an experiment) (RST6-8.3)
Integrate quantitative information expressed both in words and visually. (RST6-8.7)

But we can start earlier than that. And we should. So what about science and literacy in the elementary classroom? Grades K–5 provide the opportunity to lay the groundwork for those skills—even for teachers not fully grounded in science instruction.

Integrating literacy and science: Challenges and solutions

How to integrate science and literacy?

Abbott acknowledges that science and literacy integration can seem challenging for educators. She notes that many elementary schools understandably prioritize ELA and require substantial literacy blocks. The common mindset: “If I teach literacy, I don’t have much time for science.”

The solution? A mindset shift from “either/or” to “both/and.”

What does that look like? Well, what if we were simply to combine literacy and science? What if, for example, we dedicate some of those literacy blocks to reading science-related texts?

Unfortunately, that approach—while a fine activity—doesn’t meet the larger goals. It’s incidental, so it doesn’t get students engaged in deep knowledge- and vocabulary-building over time. And it doesn’t get students deeply involved in figuring out a scientific phenomenon.

A “both/and” approach doesn’t just connect science and literacy—it prioritizes them both at the same time, so that they reinforce each other.

A literacy-rich science classroom

In an ideal scenario, a school or system could make a top-down change so that literacy is infused into subjects across the school day.

But there are other ways to “use literacy in the service of science,” says Abbott. For example, students in an elementary science classroom could explore why it’s daytime where they are but night somewhere else. As they build explanations, they can consider the word “because” and its relationship to the concept of cause and effect.

Similarly, elementary students can learn new vocabulary in service of scientific concepts. In this video, you’ll see kids using Amplify Science learn the word “disperse” as they learn how seeds travel.

And all along, they’re communicating, using evidence-based argumentation, and building background knowledge through text.

For the teacher, it’s less about delivering scientific information and more about helping students use and develop literacy skills to figure science out.

Amplify Science is designed to deliver exactly that experience. Read this brochure to find out more about literacy-rich science instruction.

Language comprehension: Building mental models

©Alexander Huth / The Regents of the University of California

Throughout this five-part series, we will cover the main components of the Science of Reading (SoR) and provide additional resources and research to guide your exploration and implementation of this important movement.

Say you’re given a passage of text to read. This particular paragraph describes half an inning of a made-up baseball game.

After you read the passage, you are asked to reenact the scene.

Which is more likely to aid your success?

A. Your ability to read

B. Your knowledge of baseball

C. It makes no difference

Would you be surprised to know the answer is actually B?

In part one of our series, “What is the Science of Reading anyway?,” we discussed the two main components of the Science of Reading: decoding (converting written words into speech) and language comprehension (understanding that speech). We also provided in-depth coverage of both learning and teaching how to decode the symbols of the English alphabet and strengthen the reading muscle.

LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION

In 1988, two young researchers and 64 students took part in an experiment that has forever changed how we think about reading and comprehension. One by one, the students were handed the same story covering half an inning of a made-up baseball game and asked to reenact it.

To the researchers’ surprise, they found that reading ability had little impact on how well kids understood the story—but knowledge of baseball did. In fact, students who were weak readers did as well as strong readers if they had knowledge of baseball.

Teaching knowledge explicitly improves reading comprehension. As Willingham has said, “Reading tests are knowledge tests in disguise.”

Researchers at the Haskins Lab at Yale tested this theory and found an extraordinarily high correlation between how well a 7-to-9-year-old child can recognize words and how well they comprehend text.

Common teaching mistake — Strategy instruction

So if reading comprehension is driven by a student’s vocabulary and knowledge, are widely taught strategies like finding the main idea equally critical?

Many strategies make intuitive sense: Stopping and re-reading when comprehension breaks down, for instance, is helpful for many children. But teaching the main idea strategy over and over is less helpful.

It is hard to find the main idea of a piece of writing if you don’t really understand any of the ideas in it. And even if you know a strategy — like re-reading when stuck — you also need to be well-versed in when to apply the strategy. You need to notice that you didn’t understand the text.

Often, strategy instruction neglects to offer students practice with identifying the situations in which they should use the strategy.

In the 1940s, a skills shift began to take place in education systems throughout the world. Its effects can be traced in the U.K., Sweden, Germany, and, most recently, France. This shift brought an emphasis on reading and math, squeezing out the broader knowledge taught in the sciences and social sciences. Some have linked the decline in standardized test scores—the SAT in the U.S. and the DEPP national exam in France—to this shift.

The National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education reported that today, classes in grades K–3 spend just 19 minutes per day on science and 16 minutes per day on social science.

To counter this loss of broader knowledge in our students, research suggests that we teach comprehension strategies in moderation and use the freed-up time to build knowledge (and vocabulary).

But simply exposing students to everyday speech doesn’t build a strong vocabulary. In a typical conversation, there are around 20 unusual words—such as dismayed or zeal—per 1000 words. Newspapers and books contain more than twice as many. Rich vocabulary, then, is gained not solely through speech, but through reading. Rich vocabulary, then, is gained not solely through speech, but through reading—especially when reading a variety of text types.

Mental models

Some readers with good word recognition, vocabulary, and knowledge are still weak comprehenders. Why might this be the case?

After students read a passage, they aren’t likely to recall the precise wording, but they will probably remember the ideas. Researchers use the term mental model to describe the structure you create in your mind to perform this feat of comprehension. Think of the process of building a mental model as a sort of micro-comprehension. Weak comprehenders build poor models. Hence, when asked prediction or mapping character development questions, they answer poorly.

There are four critical skills students need to improve their mental modeling:

Decoding the usage of anaphoras (she, they, him). Some early readers can’t reliably figure out who the pronoun is referring to, especially in ambiguous text.
Understanding the use of markers to signal ways that the text fits together — connectives, (like so, though, whenever) structure cues, and directions. Inexperienced readers may not know that but, though, yet, and however signal that something opposite follows.
Writers make assumptions about what can be left unstated. For instance, when they read “Carla forgot her umbrella and got very wet today,” good readers will use their prior knowledge to conclude that it rained. Weaker readers who fail to make these gap-filling inferences wind up with gaps in their mental model.
When something doesn’t make sense, you stop, re-read, and try to figure it out. Weaker readers just keep going—not because they’ve failed to figure it out, but because they’ve failed to notice that they don’t understand. They need explicit instruction in monitoring comprehension as they read.

Overview

Think of reading as a suitcase that you need two keys to open. The first key is word-level decoding, a skill that becomes automatic and fluent. The second key is language, vocabulary, and domain-specific knowledge. The more words you can decode, the more new words — and their meanings — you can learn. Similarly, the more knowledge you have on a topic, the more you can soak up on the same topic — and on related topics.

These two keys make up the Science of Reading. When schools focus heavily on one key or the other, the suitcase doesn’t open. So now the greater task of applying this knowledge in the classroom awaits us.

For more in-depth examples, brain scans, and information about the Science of Reading, download our free primer:

Science of Reading – Make the Shift Today

Learning mathematics through problem solving: Part 1

Productive struggle as a path to success

Many of us grew up with word problems as a part of math instruction, but we now know that students learn better when problems are more than just a part of learning. In fact, research shows that learning based on problem solving sets math students up for long-term success.

Why problem-based learning matters

What’s the problem with word problems? So-called “show-and-tell” pedagogies often rely on teachers demonstrating how to solve math problems, which doesn’t produce the kind of sticky learning that puts students on a path to long-term success.

As a result, too few students are prepared for Algebra I. Even fewer go on to succeed in the high school math courses that are prerequisites for college and for careers that require quantitative skills.

Research published in Frank Lester’s 2003 book Research and Issues in Teaching Mathematics Through Problem Solving shows that instruction is more effective when the students themselves grapple actively with the math problems, working in groups or individually. This productive-struggle approach is often called problem-based learning.

What problem-based learning looks like

In a problem-based lesson, students are introduced to a handful of interesting and often real-world problems or tasks that can be understood and/or solved by referencing background knowledge, previously learned content, and newly provided information.

These problems are designed to get students thinking about solutions they can then discuss with their peers. According to 2019 research conducted by Jack Dieckmann and Renae Skarin, this fosters both understanding of the content and math language development.

Over the course of the problem-based lesson, the teacher monitors student work, selects examples of that work to discuss with the class, and asks questions that propel the conversation and learning forward (as described by Margaret Schwan Smith and Mary Kay Stein in their 2011 book Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions.

This synthesis incorporates students’ new insights and conceptions into their bigger-picture understanding of mathematics.

Problem-based math programs

There are already high-quality curricula that call for this kind of pedagogy, but this approach can be hard to implement because it requires both a shift in practice for many teachers and more active engagement from students.

That’s why the highest-quality problem-based lessons embody all eight of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Teaching Practices. Amplify Math is one of them.

How can your community get involved in the science classroom?

In a recent episode of Science Connections: The Podcast, veteran middle school science teacher Ryan Renee Rudkin sat down with host Eric Cross to discuss ways educators can get community members involved in the science classroom.

You can access the full episode here, but we’ve pulled out Ryan’s top three teacher takeaways for you to use in your classroom today!

1. Ask your community to get involved.

Ryan’s creative instructional approach extends beyond the walls of her classroom. She finds value in enlisting the support of community members as featured classroom guest speakers. These valued guest speakers share their real-world experiences to help students relate to science content.

Some examples of Ryan’s community partnerships:

A local meteorologist’s hometown celebrity status helped students transfer the knowledge learned during a sixth-grade weather unit.
A cardiac nurse practitioner led an actual heart dissection with Ryan’s students.
A nutritionist joined as a guest speaker during the metabolism unit.

When Eric asked how Ryan was able to identify so many willing community members and parents to come speak to her students, she said, “People want to come and talk to kids. It doesn’t hurt to ask.” Ryan utilizes social media, PTA groups, and family surveys. “You just have to get creative. Look in your community and see what you have.”

2. Increase caregiver engagement.

Ryan understands there are various barriers that may affect her students’ attendance and classroom engagement. Because of this understanding, she extends grace to her students and prioritizes making them feel valued. This is exemplified by Ryan calling students’ caregivers every Friday. Students are able to listen to the positive conversations and look forward to them every Friday. These positive touchpoints establish a strong caregiver-teacher relationship and open the door for dialogue between students and families as they celebrate student success.

3. Get students excited about showcasing their knowledge of science content.

One of Ryan’s top goals in her classroom is to create an enjoyable learning environment and to do so, she encourages educators to be resourceful. “Don’t reinvent the wheel,” she says. “There are so many things out there that you can borrow and make it your own.”

To keep students excited about science content, Ryan implements activities like Science Olympiad, an in-person or remote science competition that provides standards-based challenges; and March Mammal Madness, an annual tournament of simulated combat competition among animals that utilize scientific information to educate students about inter-species interactions.

With over a decade of experience in the classroom, Ryan exemplifies how creativity, resourcefulness, and passion for learning can positively affect student engagement in the classroom.

For a more in-depth look, listen to the full episode to hear Eric and Ryan discussing the importance of connecting with students and caregivers in the science classroom:

Science Connections: The Podcast featuring veteran middle school teacher Ryan Renee

Personalized learning grounded in the Science of Reading

Surveying the landscape

Recent data shows that far fewer young students are on target for reading proficiency than in previous years. In fall 2020, kindergarteners were 6 percent less likely to be on track in reading than they were in the 2019–20 school year.

How do we reverse these trends? A personalized learning program steeped in research-based literacy practices can be your first step. In this blog, we introduce personalized learning programs for early literacy, discuss why they should be aligned with the Science of Reading, and outline the key features that all effective personalized learning programs should have to support ALL students.

What is personalized learning?

“Personalized learning in literacy education is an approach in which teaching and other learning experiences build on each student’s strengths, address each student’s needs, spur student motivation and agency, and help all students meet grade-level standards and, ultimately, achieve college and career readiness.”

— Student Achievement Partners

Achieve the Core outlines a set of key components every personalized program should include to accelerate literacy:

How can I bring the Science of Reading into personalized learning?

Not all personalized learning programs should be treated equally. Programs should provide explicit, systematic foundational skills, continue to build background knowledge, and support core Science of Reading instruction. Focusing on the things we do while we’re reading that allow us to make sense of text — also known as comprehension processes — is a key component of supporting beginning readers.

How will I know if a personalized learning program is based on research about how children learn to read?

We’ve provided a checklist of key features to look for when selecting a personalized learning program grounded in the Science of Reading.

1) Look for a program that complements your Science of Reading instructional practices.

The content of a personalized program should support your core Science of Reading instruction.

Look for research-based instruction aligned to Scarborough’s Reading Rope, a focus on comprehension processes and language structures in addition to foundational skills, and personalization that adapts based on student needs.

2) Look for a program that employs a whole-child approach.

A whole-child approach focuses on students’ individual strengths and needs.

Look for targeting of skill practice at the just-right level in ALL areas, a focus on students’ individual strengths as well as their needs, and more opportunities for success, all of which build student confidence.

3) Look for a program that uses an adaptive scope and sequence.

In an adaptive model, students progress along a unique pathway through a learning map that adapts based on their performance.

Look for full adaptivity — where students progress along a pathway that adapts on multiple dimensions, not just one. The program should offer data to place students into personalized pathways and continue to analyze student performance data to determine the skills they practice and when.

4) Look for a program that acts as a digital tutor to save teachers time.

A program that aims to save you time provides students with differentiated instruction and pathways when they’re really struggling.

Look for a program that provides scaffolding and differentiated pathways to students when they’re struggling, and offers precursor and ancillary skill development and advancement opportunities before revisiting challenging content. Programs should alert teachers with targeted resources to support students and keep them moving.

5) Look for a program that motivates students intrinsically.

Programs that focus on intrinsic motivation leverage a growth mindset theory to ensure that students have fun while they learn.

Look for a program that rewards persistence as much as performance and ensures students have fun while they learn.

Personalized learning supplemental tool: Amplify Reading

Amplify Reading is a personalized learning program powered by the Science of Reading. The program blends compelling storytelling with research-based instructional practices to offer:

Personalized instruction across 13 different critical skill areas that adapt to each student’s needs while building on their strengths.
Explicit practice in comprehension processes, phonics, and vocabulary.
Extra support and scaffolds for struggling readers and English learners.
An immersive game-play design that motivates students and makes learning to read fun.

To learn how this program can accelerate reading growth in your district, request a personalized walkthrough below.

Request a walkthrough

Amplify Reading – Amplify Reading

Proven to boost critical reading skills and captivate students Based on the science of reading, Amplify Reading…readingsuccess.amplify.com

Work cited

Liben, Meredith, et al. “What Principles Must Underlie Successful Personalized Learning?” Peers and Pedagogy, 27 Oct. 2020

Learning disabilities and their emotional impact

Welcome back to Science of Reading: The Podcast! How can we as educators better understand what the process of being diagnosed with a learning disability looks and feels like for children? Beyond that, what does it feel like to go through school undiagnosed and how does that impact how students relate to themselves, their peers, and school in general?

Find your child’s interests, or your student’s strengths … pursue those and give them opportunities to let those feed their soul.
Dr. Sheila Clonan, Psychologist and founding Board Member of The Reading League

This episode features Dr. Sheila Clonan discussing her work with identifying learning disabilities (particularly dyslexia) in children. Dr. Clonan also explores the mental and emotional effects of learning to read with dyslexia and how it impacts behavior and self-concept, providing two insightful analogies that illustrate what it feels like for students who aren’t given explicit instruction but are still expected to know how to read. She then ends the episode with practical advice for educators and parents on how to support and encourage children.

Listen below!

For more wisdom and research on the best ways to teach reading, subscribe to Science of Reading: The Podcast.

Learning mathematics through problem solving: Part 2

Problem-based learning can put students on the path to math success. In this post, we’ll dig a little deeper into what it is, what it’s not, and teachers’ role in putting it into action.

You can read the first post in this series here.

Tackling real-world questions

In our previous post, we established that a problem-based math curriculum sets math students up for long-term success. We showed that lessons in a problem-based learning model introduce students to interesting and often real-world problems or tasks that require them to draw on background knowledge, previously learned content, and/or new information.

Problem-based learning vs. teaching as presenting

With traditional show-and-tell pedagogy, the teacher describes the procedures and formulas to answer problems and then gives students an opportunity to practice what they’ve been shown. This model is very common—most middle school and high school math teachers report using it as their primary mode of instruction.

With this approach, instruction is focused on getting answers through isolated skills and processes, so many students fail to develop the conceptual foundations required for the math to make sense. This often means students don’t know when a piece of knowledge is useful to a new, novel problem.

While teachers may be able to make a given lesson fun (for example, by turning it into a game), the math in the lesson is often uninspiring. Students may remember the game, but forget the math.

The limits of telling students how to do things

The occasional use of direct instruction is not always a bad option for teachers. Not all concepts and skills require substantial inquiry in order to stick or make sense.

But there are limits to deploying direct instruction as the primary mode of teaching. They include the following:

For routine algorithmic problems such as calculating the sum of two multi-digit numbers, teaching has to involve a certain amount of telling—but just telling students how do something doesn’t set them up for success. Students remember algorithms better over the long term when those procedures are grounded in conceptual understanding. If students forget a procedure, conceptual understanding can help them recover it.
Not every problem is routine or has an algorithm. Word problems are a big part of math, and word problems aren’t routine. No algorithm can make solving them a mechanical process. Instead, students have to comprehend the situation and create equations or models that reflect the relationships presented in the problem.
In middle school math, algorithms become even less prevalent. As soon as rational numbers enter the scene, even a numerical calculation like -1(-1 – 1) has elements of strategy.

Algebra often presents a student with choices, as when solving an equation like 3(x + 1) = 6. Will they begin by using the distributive property to rewrite the equation as 3x + 3 = 6? Or should they begin by dividing both sides of the original equation by 3 to obtain x + 1 = 2?

With problem-based pedagogy, choices about how to solve a word problem or which calculation strategy to pick can become learning moments. If some students do it one way while other students do it another way, both groups can learn by discussing how the two methods relate.

How Amplify Math can help

Amplify Math lessons help teachers cultivate and structure these student conversations. The program includes easy-to-follow instructional supports that make implementing a problem-based program more effective and enjoyable for both teachers and students. The lessons are designed to elicit creative thinking and get students collaborating.

By working on problems that are intriguing, engaging, and relevant, students see how the math they are learning in class connects to their everyday lives. Students are placed into situations where they need to reason, collaborate, revise their thinking, and apply what they’ve learned.

Empowering multilingual learners

Welcome back to Science of Reading: The Podcast!

For most teachers, it’s no longer a question of if you’ll have a multilingual learner in your classroom, but rather a question of how many, and what languages they bring with them. While the Science of Reading can help all learners, its insights should be applied differently when students are learning a home language as well. The more we’re able to read, the more we’re able to learn.
—Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

In this episode, Susan Lambert is joined by Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan to discuss the unique challenges and opportunities presented when teaching multilingual learners how to read. Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is a bilingual speech-language pathologist and certified academic language therapist who serves as director of Valley Speech Language and Learning Center in Brownsville, Texas. In this episode, she discusses how teachers can make connections between students’ home languages and English in order to celebrate their language and give them new tools to better understand English. She also stresses the importance of teachers educating themselves on their students’ home languages so they can spot orthographic and phonological similarities and differences. She also highlights the importance of educator collaboration for student success.

Listen now!

For more wisdom and research on the best ways to teach reading, subscribe to Science of Reading: The Podcast.

Supporting science students with a creative twist

In this episode of Science Connections: The Podcast, Kentucky Science Teacher of the Year Shad Lacefield sat down with host Eric Cross to discuss ways to create memorable learning experiences for students.

You can access the full episode here, but we’ve pulled out Shad’s top three teacher takeaways for you to use in your classroom today!

1. Go above and beyond for your class.

During remote learning, Shad was having a tough time connecting with students and keeping them engaged virtually, so he started something called “Vader Visits.” Shad would dress up as Darth Vader and show up at students’ houses as an incentive to get them to turn in their work on time and stay interested in what he was teaching in science class at the time. It was a commitment for Shad, as he had to fit that into his teaching (and life) schedule, but he was able to keep his students interested in science class, and learned more about each student he went to visit. The practice was so successful, he extended it beyond remote learning.

I still try to dress up at least once every week, if not once every other week just to make whatever we’re doing fun.
– Shad Lacefield

2. Get to know your students in creative ways.

As part of his Vader Visits, Shad was able to get students to open up and share more of their interests with him, which helped him build better connections with each student. As a way to connect with students less interested in Star Wars, Shad asked them about their other interests and found new costumes. For some students, he would show up dressed up as Harry Potter. For others, he would dress up as Mario from Mario Brothers.

I went [on] over 50 visits and it was cool to see kids in their home and talk to them and meet their parents. It was a great opportunity for me to engage with parents as well, [to ask,] ‘how is online learning going? What can I do to support you? Do you have any questions?’
– Shad Lacefield

3. Be open to new ways to reach students.

Shad has creatively expanded his teaching to include outlets that he knows kids are interested in outside of school. He makes TikTok videos. He weaves Minecraft references into his lessons. He uses YouTube. He even creates new characters to keep things fresh. By speaking a “language” that was familiar to students, Shad was able to create more meaningful connections with his students as both learners and people. And it helped him stay positive as an educator.

I just go back to, ‘why did I do this to begin with?’ And it gets me excited to be like, ‘I did it for the kids, and it’s about the kids.’ I get joy when they’re laughing and smiling.
– Shad Lacefield

For a more in-depth look, listen to the full episode to hear Eric and Shad discussing ways to create memorable learning experiences for students.

Science Connections: The Podcast featuring Kentucky Science Teacher of the Year Shad Lacefield.

Learning mathematics through problem solving: Part 3

Tackling real-world questions as a path to math success

In previous posts, we’ve established that problem-based learning sets students up for long-term success. We’ve shown that problem-based lessons introduce students to interesting and often real-world problems or tasks, and described the key role teachers play in putting problem-based learning into action.

In this post, we’ll look more closely at how teachers can support students engaging in problem-based learning, even when the students do much of their work together in groups.

You can read the first post in this series here and the second post here.

Teachers transfer learning responsibility to students

In a problem-based lesson, students are introduced to a handful of interesting and often real-world problems or tasks that can be worked out by referencing background knowledge, previously learned content, and newly provided information.

With problem-based learning, teachers transfer the responsibility of the actual learning to students. Teachers set up the activities and lessons, then students are given the right information and scaffolds to make sense of math concepts and opportunities to practice and apply their learning.

These problems are designed to get students thinking—and talking together—about solutions. This way, students begin to grapple with math content and grasp math language development.

During class, the teacher’s role is to observe students, ask questions, select and share student work, and help students synthesize their learning at the end of the lesson. That’s where teachers help students apply new insights and conceptions to their bigger-picture understanding of the math at hand.

When students do need to be taught a process directly, teachers can shift from conceptual to procedural instruction. (For example, after making sense of adding signed rational numbers, students practice to gain fluency.) In these moments, the problem-based structure is focused more directly on producing answers and debugging procedures than on new sense-making.

Problem-based math teaching aligns with NCTM practices

The highest quality problem-based lessons embody all eight of the NCTM Teaching Practices. These are:

Establish mathematics goals to focus student learning.
Implement tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving.

Use and connect mathematical representations.
Facilitate meaningful mathematical discourse.
Pose purposeful questions.
Build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding.
Support productive struggle in learning mathematics.
Elicit and use evidence of student thinking.

How Amplify Math can help teachers

We started with a world-class problem-based curriculum (Illustrative Mathematics’® IM K–12 Math™) and made changes to help educators implement engaging problem-based core curriculum for students. Amplify Math helps shift to planning and teaching problem-based lessons, tracking student progress, and differentiating instruction based on real-time data. We’ve made the math problems more exciting and relevant for all students, thus making it easier for all students to become active participants in their learning.

How can teachers find new energy in the science classroom?

Hear from our Science Connections: The Podcast guest and science PD expert Jessica Kesler

In the final episode of the latest season of Science Connections: The Podcast, host Eric Cross sits down with Jessica Kesler, professional development facilitator for science teachers.

During the episode, Kesler describes her passion for sharing high-impact teaching strategies for science teachers and her experiences teaching in Philadelphia, and discusses how teachers’ roles often involve more than just delivering content.

Read on for a peek at the episode, and to learn more about science professional development for teachers.

Meet Jessica Kesler

“I wanted to be a surgeon,” says Kesler. But learning about science ultimately inspired her to help others learn it, too. Her passion is to empower educators to create engaging and effective classrooms that will foster future leaders, work she is able to do in her role as a professional development facilitator at TGR Foundation, a Tiger Woods charity. This position enables her to develop and implement professional learning experiences focused on STEM-based, student-centered learning practices.

Before joining the TGR Foundation, she taught in Philadelphia schools as a chemistry and science teacher for grades 4–12, which was a bit of a culture shock. Kesler had gone from teaching near-adults who could drive themselves to school to teaching young children who often related to teachers as parent figures. The experience taught her a lot about “patience and breaking information down even smaller,” she says.

I had to figure out new and inventive ways to teach science and bring it down so far that students would be able to grab onto it and achieve it. It was a challenge,” she continues. “But in the end it paid off. We hit our goals out of the park.

Teachers are the multipliers we need

Kesler and her team at the TGR Foundation designed their goals around a challenge issued by Tiger Woods himself: Reach millions of kids.

They knew that reaching one student at a time would make it hard to reach their goals.

The key? Focus on teachers, who can reach hundreds of students at a time. “They can have this multiplicative effect that can help us reach those millions of kids and help prepare them for careers,” she says.

Here are just a few of the teaching strategies and pieces of advice they offer science educators:

Develop your inquiry environment. This means thinking not just about your physical space, but also your intellectual space. Kesler asks: “What are the things that you can embed into your physical space and develop in a student’s intellectual space that will help you create a holistic and growing environment?”
Be the entrepreneur of your classroom. Kesler and her team like to ask how a teacher can use entrepreneurial techniques to tackle issues in their schools, districts, and spheres of influence.

Teacher trends emerging as the pandemic shifts

“Teachers are eager, but tired,” says Kesler. She notes that while school may be back in session, educators are still managing the effects of the pandemic and trying to get kids excited (and keep them excited) about science.

While teachers want to learn and do more, they are more concerned than ever about having enough time, funding, and energy to do so.

Says Kesler: “I know you don’t have enough time to try to do 29 extra things. My advice is always: Do one thing at a time. Start with something small. Asking your students a few questions rather than lecturing to them doesn’t take a whole lot of extra time, but it gives you so much extra insight. So let’s not work harder. Let’s work smarter.”

She continues: “It’s not Thanksgiving, where you just keep piling on a plate. It’s a time where you organize your inquiry to restructure your plates so that everything has a place and a time.”

Listen to the whole episode and to the rest of the podcast.

About Amplify’s Science Connections: The Podcast

Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So how do we help kids figure that out? How are we preparing students to be the next generation of 21st-century scientists?

Join host Eric Cross as he sits down with educators, scientists, and knowledge experts to discuss how we can best support students in science classrooms. Listen to hear how you can inspire kids across the country to love learning science, and bring that magic into your classroom for your students.

Amplifying Your District Award winner

This Amplifying Your District Award honored two district leaders who are driving change using the Science of Reading in 2021. Motivated by low literacy rates in her school district, Alli Rice dug into the research behind the Science of Reading because she was determined to increase equity. Through various events and Knowledge Builders for the teachers in her care, she then effectively led the shift to a research-based curriculum in her district. Read on for our conversation with Alli about her work with the Science of Reading!

What does the Science of Reading mean to you?

For me, it’s really about equity. Thousands of kids are already a step behind because of their skin color, their neighborhood, or their zip code, all of these things that really shouldn’t define their academic ability or their opportunity in life. I’ve looked at statistics around prison populations and illiteracy rates. Some, so many adults are functionally illiterate and they can’t fully understand. They can’t even read their prescriptions.

I also work for a district where most of our kids are on the lower end for socioeconomic status. We have a very high ELL population and 63 home languages spoken in my district. And we are the urban center of our area. Historically, we have been a balanced literacy district, but we have watched our test scores decline.

Since discovering the Science of Reading and this completely different approach to teaching literacy, I feel like I have unlocked Pandora’s box of potential. By addressing our core and aligning our teaching practices, our students can feel success and our teachers will, too. My teachers here have the biggest hearts of any educators I have ever worked with, and they work tirelessly day in and day out to support our students. We try to provide as many enrichment opportunities to all of our kids and to expose them to the greatest and the best. The ability to read, to me, is the greatest civil right. If we’re not providing them that, I can’t sleep at night.

What news, materials, or information do you consume to help you teach?

We use Amplify CKLA and Amplify Reading and those programs are just wonderful. I am also an avid listener of Science of Reading: The Podcast. We arranged for Natalie Wexler and Susan Lambert to do a live professional development session in our district, which was so fantastic, especially for our most reluctant coaches and administrators. Our district-wide LETRS training has also been life-changing. We currently have 800 people who are completing the training, which has helped to align the district and put us all on this path to success.

One particularly impactful thing, and that I rely heavily on for support, is my teacher cadre. Each cadre is about 14 teachers in the district and they represent all of our clusters. We’ve partnered up with our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion department to do text bias reviews on materials, which has been important for our adaptations for cultural responsiveness. Our selection cadre came from that as well, when we landed on Amplify CKLA for K–3. The teacher input and camaraderie I get from my cadre is so instrumental and I am so grateful for them.

What advice do you have for teachers starting out with the Science of Reading?

Find your people, find your community. I remember Margaret Goldberg’s presentation during last spring’s Science of Reading symposium, and how she said you need to find your dots, you need to seek out like-minded people and go where they are. Find those people who are ready to make the change like you are, or perhaps have already done it, and can be that positive support system you need to make a difference. Don’t be afraid to message people on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, ask about their experiences, and build that community around you. Find the ones who are going to partner with you, who will lead you the right way, who will take your calls. And read all the books!

Watch the Science of Reading awards show!

Making the most of your stimulus funding

There are literally billions of dollars left in ESSER stimulus funds—and regardless of the role you serve in K–12 education, some of those dollars can help you and your students. Though you have until Sept. 30, 2024, to assign these funds, it’s never too early to ensure that you and your colleagues are taking advantage of what’s available to you to invest in your students and classrooms.

While 20% of your district’s funding must target instructional loss caused by the pandemic, you can direct the rest toward your specific needs—whether you need print instructional materials, dual language supports, or personalized learning to help your students catch up.

We’re happy to guide you through the current funding landscape and offer some tips for claiming your funding and helping get your students back on track.

Overview of the stimulus funding landscape

We’ve reached historic levels of federal investment to support the recovery of K–12 education. The American Rescue Plan (ARP) has supplied our nation’s schools with three buckets of ESSER stimulus funds:

$13 billion under the CARES Act in March 2020 (ESSER I)
$54 billion under the CRSA in December 2020 (ESSER II)
$122 billion under the ARP in March 2021 (ESSER III)

This brings the total funds to $189 billion—a staggering amount available to help you, your students, and your colleagues. ESSER III funds must be assigned by Sept. 30, 2024, but this doesn’t mean the programs and services you purchase will expire. Your state can request an 18-month extension to liquidate the funds, and the changes needed to transform student performance and other school needs aren’t bound by this date.

As you consider how to spend your funding, keep in mind that there are 16 types of allowable expenses, including learning software; summer learning and after-school programs for at-risk students; and activities that support federal requirements, such as ESEA and Titles I, II, III, and IV.

Spending priorities across states

Within the boundaries of allowable expenses, many states have already begun deciding how they want to target the specific needs of their districts.

Stimulus investments must reflect your district’s needs while taking into account the unique skills and gaps of individual students.

At the state level, Georgia is prioritizing student mental health and wellbeing, while Massachusetts is taking on that issue in addition to figuring out how to measure learning loss and helping districts reopen safely.

New York is emphasizing early childhood education, staff training, maintaining operations, and education technology. Kansas has similar goals with learning software, in addition to a focus on continuing operations, providing sanitation supplies, and catering to remote students’ needs.

One report tracking stimulus funding in 1,040 school districts across 35 states found patterns among school needs. More than half the districts studied set aside funds for summer learning, a third plan to pay for transportation, and a quarter will invest in online platforms.

Amplify programs fit the bill

All Amplify programs and services meet the funding criteria, including our literacy, dual language, and STEM suites.

Our literacy suite is made up of high-quality instructional materials that are based on evidence, which is one of the purchasing requirements in the American Rescue Plan. These programs provide students with personalized instruction—whether it’s at the core, supplemental, or intervention levels.

For more detailed information about using stimulus funding to get your students back on track in reading, watch our recent webinar to learn more about Amplify Reading, our personalized reading program for grades K–5, and mCLASS^Ⓡ, our early foundational literacy assessment.

Want to learn more about ESSER and how to use these funds thoughtfully? Visit our stimulus funding webpage where you’ll have access to a tracking tool that allows you to search by state and district to see approximately how much money is headed your way. As you explore ways to use the funds available to you, be mindful about the long-term impacts of the choices you’re making, and listen to your teachers, students, and overall school community. Creating or expanding upon an instructional system that includes core curriculum, a reliable assessment tool, and personalized and supplemental learning is a great way to set your teachers and students up for success now and in the future.

The importance of risk-taking in the science classroom

Hear from science educator Valeria Rodriguez on our Science Connections podcast

In this episode of Science Connections: The Podcast, host Eric Cross sits down with Valeria Rodriguez, a Miami-based science educator, instructional technologist, and illustrator.

During the episode, Rodriguez describes how she uses real-world projects to make lessons more meaningful, and why teaching students to sketchnote—a way of creating visual summaries of ideas—helps them take risks they can learn from and increases their conceptual understanding in science.

Read on for a peek at the episode, where you’ll learn more about the role of creativity in science and the importance of risk-taking in the classroom.

Risk aversion among students today

Valeria is a science educator, instructional technologist, and illustrator (not to mention former college athlete and Peace Corps member). She also combines her science and art expertise to work as a graphic facilitator, which is her role on a STEAM team teaching third through fifth graders in Miami, FL.

One thing Valeria has noticed in her classrooms is that her students often seem wary of taking risks and getting things wrong. How does she try to challenge and change this? Art.

Valeria works with her students to use drawing as a form of note-taking. In the process, she says, “I mess up all the time. I scratch things out because my students in general are risk-averse. They don’t want to make mistakes. And drawing is one of those things that taught me that it’s okay to make mistakes.”

Eric Cross says he sees the same risk aversion with his 7th graders. “When I ask them to give me a hypothesis about a phenomenon that I’m going to teach, I say, ‘It’s okay to be wrong’—but I see them drift to the Chromebook and want to Google it.”

Creativity in science versus “getting it right”

Sometimes risks lead to mistakes. But mistakes are not dead ends, these educators say. Mistakes are opportunities. They present opportunities not only for academic learning, but also for personal growth.

Of course, taking a risk may still deliver an expected or intended result. But even when it doesn’t, that result can be valuable.

Eric describes an activity where his students walk around the school campus swabbing various items to see what would grow in Petri dishes. “Some things grew and some things didn’t. Some of the experiments didn’t yield the cool results,” he says.

But that is exactly what gave the class the chance to speculate and learn about what factors—temperature, a pathogen, the swabbing technique—might have prevented growth.

Risk-taking also supports students’ personal growth, often in ways that prepare them to learn even more.

For one thing, taking risks helps students practice tolerating uncertainty.

“Sometimes my kids are frustrated because I don’t have yes or no answers,” says Valeria, citing the example of an activity with a weather balloon. “We don’t know how high it’s gonna go. Is the GPS tracker gonna work? We don’t know, but we have to do all the steps and find out. I have to say, ‘It’s okay to be frustrated.’”

Taking risks can also lead to results that are less measurable, but equally valuable. When she does art and sketchnoting with her students, “Some people will say they ‘messed up’ the drawing,” Valeria says. “But you know what? They gave it character.”

How teachers can model risk-taking

“Part of our job is also taking risks,” says Valeria, describing the time her class wound up having to do a tethered weather balloon launch because they couldn’t get approval in time to launch the balloon in their location near an airport.

“A parent said, ‘Oh, you’re not releasing the balloon,’” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Well, this is a lot of work, too, and I went back to my class and I was like, “You know what? I took a risk to do this project. I could have played it safe with a handout of a weather balloon,” she laughs, “or, you know, a YouTube video. But we are continuing to push.”

She adds: “I want to thank the teachers who keep trying to do the hard things that aren’t tried and tested.”

Eric agrees. “There aren’t a lot of opportunities for students to see adults in positions of authority or that they respect or admire model failure,” he says.

Teachers can model risk-taking and “failure” outside of what they’re teaching—by just being who they are. “I cycle and I have scars everywhere. The image in my head is ‘I’m a cyclist,’ not ‘I’m banged up,’” she says. “They give me character and I keep riding.”

Listen to the whole podcast episode here and subscribe to Science Connections: The Podcast here.

About Amplify’s Science Connections: The Podcast

Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So how do we help kids figure that out? How are we preparing students to be the next generation of 21st-century scientists?

Aligning MTSS to the Science of Reading: Five critical elements of a research-based system

How science and data can help us deliver the instruction and interventions that help all kids read

Watching kids learn to read? Magic. Learning how kids learn to read? Science.

As you likely know, the Science of Reading encompasses the pedagogy and practices proven by extensive research to effectively teach children how to read. The growing body of evidence around the Science of Reading tells us that with explicit, systematic instruction, all students can learn to read at or near grade level.

So as educators, we can think of it as the science of teaching reading.

In this post, we’ll look closer at that science in the classroom and explore how it delivers literacy skills in a way that meets the needs of all students. We’ll describe the critical elements of a complete Science of Reading system—including, but not limited to, a Science of Reading curriculum—and explore how it aligns with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework.

We’ll also underscore the importance of data in informing instructional decisions—but in a way that might surprise you.

The five critical elements of a Science of Reading system

Strong core instruction grounded in Science of Reading principles is crucial. But in isolation, even that’s not enough. To be powerful and effective, a literacy system needs to bring together assessment, curriculum, intervention, personalized learning, and ongoing professional development.

An effective early literacy system aligns the following five key components with the principles of the Science of Reading. This way, each component shares a research-based foundation and works to meet the needs of all students.

Universal and dyslexia screening. Assessment should include universal screening, dyslexia screening, and progress monitoring to identify at-risk students with actionable data and align instruction to areas of greatest need.
Core instruction. A high-quality core program includes explicit, systematic instruction in foundational skills and a coherent approach to building background knowledge and vocabulary.
Personalized learning. Effective personalized learning programs support both remediation and acceleration. They can reinforce core instruction or serve as a supplement to provide teachers with a taste of what research-based instructional tools can do.
Intervention. Intervention should be staff-led and data-driven, with students’ needs clearly identified and frequently monitored.
Science of Reading professional development. Districts across the country are making the shift to the Science of Reading. As you evaluate where to start, begin by sharing and cultivating a learning community among colleagues. The more knowledge you gain, the easier it will be to identify which areas to prioritize.

How MTSS aligns with the Science of Reading

The approach described above can integrate powerfully with MTSS.

For a thoughtful discussion of this kind of integration with examples from real classrooms, listen to this recent episode of Amplify’s Science of Reading: The Podcast, with guest Dr. Brittney Bills, curriculum coordinator at Grand Island Public Schools.

In this episode, Dr. Bills described the difference between reading interventions grounded in a MTSS framework, and Response to Intervention (RTI). By definition, RTI reading is a response and solution to an identified problem. Though RTI is necessary and effective, MTSS can help prevent struggles in the first place.

Dr. Bills also shared one core idea that might surprise you: When it comes to differentiating instruction, small groups are not always the most effective approach. Instead, she introduces the concept (included in the MTSS model) of a class-wide intervention.

In Dr. Bills’s experience, grouping can take time away from instruction. “You might have a group of kids getting this five-minute intervention three times a week, and that group of kids getting that ten-minute intervention two times a week … we piecemeal that out,” she says.

But data can lead us to different decisions: “If 60% or more of your students are demonstrating a need for, say, oral reading fluency, then you would implement a class-wide intervention,” says Dr. Bills. “The reality is that we have more kids than not who have the same difficulties.”

Paraphrasing reading expert Dr. Steven Dykstra, Bills says, “We don’t need more individualized instruction. We need better cookie cutters.”

Of course, we still need data to guide us, Bills notes. “We want to leverage data to make decisions that are going to help us arrive at our outcomes or our goals in the most efficient and effective means possible.”

How Amplify can help

Amplify’s been turning that science into great literacy instruction for two decades. And through our Science of Reading podcast and free professional development events, we’re constantly working with the best experts in the field to make our programs even better—and to share the latest insights with teachers, because we believe the Science of Reading is for everyone.

Amplify’s early literacy suite is based on 20 years of experience with the Science of Reading. The assessment and intervention power of mCLASS^®, the core instruction of Amplify CKLA^®, and the personalized learning of Amplify Reading come together in a complete system that saves you time and aligns your literacy practices.

The suite comprises a family of programs that are all built on the Science of Reading and connect with one another. What makes it powerful?

It’s a cohesive literacy solution to support MTSS and RTI.
Aligned resources do away with the need for piecemealing.
Data drives next steps for whole-group, small-group, and individual student instruction.

Learning to read digitally vs. in print

Welcome back to Science of Reading: The Podcast!

We often assume children are digital natives, but research shows that many are not being taught to use technology even when they’re surrounded by it. And though some students prefer to read digitally, research has demonstrated that this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re reading more effectively. How can we, as educators, best utilize the strengths of both technology and print to build strong foundational skills in reading?

As we saw in this pandemic, reading digitally is not going anywhere … and, in fact, is what made learning even a possibility the past year and a half.
—Dr. Lauren Trakhman, Professor, University of Maryland, College Park

In this episode, Susan Lambert sits down with Lauren Trakhman and Patricia Alexander, professors from the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology within the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park, to discuss their research on the effectiveness of teaching reading in print vs. digitally.

Their conversation explores the ways in which teaching reading in print remains vital even in a digital world. Trakhman and Alexander also explain why it’s important to avoid making assumptions about students’ abilities to use technology and how that can be a detriment to reading success. Lastly, they discuss strategies for using technology to boost children’s foundational skills.

Listen below!

Defining math fluency with Jason Zimba

When we think of fluency, especially as a goal, we might think of speaking or reading a language. But fluency is also a goal in learning math! So what is math fluency? And what does it look like in the math classroom? In Season 6, Episode 1 of our Math Teacher Lounge podcast, Amplify’s own Jason Zimba helps us understand—using some analogies to baseball and chicken, of course.

Definitions of math fluency

We can develop fluency in many things, from coding to cooking. On the Math Teacher Lounge podcast, Amplify Chief Academic Officer of STEM Jason Zimba recounted becoming fluent in…roast chicken.

Jason describes practicing one particular recipe until it was perfect. For Jason, that meant not just that the outcome was flawless or delicious, but that he was eventually able to make it from memory, without thinking—and to naturally adjust and calculate for variables like a smaller or larger chicken, or an unfamiliar oven.

Math fluency works the same way. Practice brings effortlessness—freeing up time and mind space for new opportunities.

The word “fluency” comes from the Latin fluentia, which means “flowing.” When applied to math, it means ”skill in carrying out procedures flexibly, accurately, efficiently, and appropriately,” says podcast host and math teacher and advocate Dan Meyer. As with someone fluent in a language (or a recipe), someone fluent in math is able to think and calculate mathematically without struggle or effort—that is, with fluidity.

Podcast host and elementary educator Bethany Lockhart Johnson adds this informal description: “It’s that thing you don’t even think about anymore. ‘Cause it’s in there. You’re not still thinking about addition facts, because you’ve got it. And it fuels you. It’s the foundation that allows you to do all the other cool stuff.”

Fluency in the math classroom

What does fluency look like in practice? A young learner fluent in math will be able to smoothly recite the number word list in order (“one, two, three…”) and write the numerals from 0 to 9. As the student grows, so does their fluency with multi-digit calculation, rational-number arithmetic, and eventually even variable expressions.

“It’s a wordless but still somehow almost verbal sort of fluency, with properties of operations as the grammar of the language,” says Jason.

But “it’s not fact recall,” he says. “Recall is remembering or just knowing. Fluency refers to calculation.”

Why and how to improve math fluency

There are different paths to fluency, but all can lead to “conceptual richness and mathematical joy,” says Dan.

If fluency provides that crucial foundation, what happens to students who are not math-fluent?

“When kids don’t have access to [fluency], it keeps them from diving into the juicy parts of math,” says Bethany. “Math is so much bigger than addition facts, but when they don’t know those addition facts, that becomes all math is.”

Without fluency, students miss opportunities to progress in (and enjoy) math, and may even develop math anxiety.

So how can you support math students in developing fluency?

For one thing, it’s important not to underestimate the value of practice and repetition. These approaches—especially when used in combination with other, more organic modes—can be highly productive, says Jason. “I worry about whether discomfort with repetitive practice is short-changing students of the power and confidence that fluency can bring.”

Dan compares it to achieving excellence in a sport—”like shooting from the same spot on the court over and over again,” he says. That kind of rote repetition is valuable in sports, and should also have its place in math instruction.

It’s also important for students to understand why they’re learning and even drilling their numbers, arithmetic, or times tables, Jason notes. They need to be “invested in understanding and agreeing that this is going to do something for them.”

One thing that helps: providing students a sense that they’ve accomplished something. “We need to have moments for them to reflect on what has been learned and what is now easy that was previously hard,” Dan says. He calls this process “humanizing fluency”—and Math Teacher Lounge will be here all season to help math educators do just that.

Save the date

Join us at NCTM in October for a live Math Teacher Lounge podcast recording with Dan Meyer and special guest Jennifer Bay-Williams! We’ll be investigating math fluency and finding fun ways to get all students engaged in math instruction.

Math Teacher Lounge LIVE!
NCTM | Oct. 27 | 2:30 p.m. EST (doors at 2:15) | Room 158AB

More to explore

The Science of Reading and the power of knowledge

The Science of Reading has shown repeatedly and definitively that background knowledge is much more than a nice-to-have when it comes to literacy. In fact, it’s a must.

One recent independent study led by Sonia Q. Cabell, Ph.D., and Hyejin Hwang, Ph.D., conducted two trials of more than 1,200 kindergarten students. Reading comprehension tests revealed that students who used a knowledge-building curriculum, such as Amplify CKLA, showed statistically significant positive effects on both social studies knowledge and vocabulary, even over just one semester.

So here’s what teachers need to know about the knowledge-building students require, starting early, to develop foundational literacy skills for life.

The power of knowledge and language comprehension, in action

Read the following passage.

Start by putting your clay on the bat as close to the center as possible, then turn your wheel on at full speed. After adding water often enough to keep the clay glossy, adjust it until it’s barely wobbling, then cone it up and center it further. Cone down and then open the clay. Lower your wheel speed to halfway and start pulling the walls. Compress the floor, and then start shaping. When you’re happy with your shape, use your wire tool to remove it from the bat, and set it aside to start drying before you trim, glaze, and fire it.

If you were ever trained in pottery, you probably understood a lot of that. If you weren’t, you could likely read the words and sense the tone, but most of the content would not make sense (Cone up? Cone down?) or stick in your mind at all.

That’s exactly how background knowledge powers reading comprehension.

The knowledge gap

Elementary students confront disparities in their background knowledge every day. Some have houses full of books and summers full of trips. One kid has a pet turtle, another celebrates Diwali, another grew up in the family restaurant. As you can probably imagine, they’d all get and retain a wide range of understanding from passages about, say, amphibians, alfredo sauce, and the Alps.

Not all foundational literacy instruction is built to access the knowledge students bring to the classroom, or to grow the knowledge they need to understand what they’re reading.

What’s more, having less background knowledge is correlated with socioeconomic status, with students who come from lower income families generally having less background knowledge than those who come from higher-income families. That’s how we know that knowledge is also a matter of fairness.

The role of writing instruction

Writing instruction grounded in the content of a knowledge-based curriculum can be a crucial contributor to knowledge-building, according to Wexler. It can help teachers:

Identify which gaps in background knowledge are holding a given student back.
Instruct students at higher grade levels, even if students reach those levels with gaps in background knowledge.
Boost learning across subjects.
Improve the quality of student writing itself, because it’s grounded in a topic they can say something about.
Foster comprehension by familiarizing students with the complex syntax of written language in their own writing.

The power of knowledge to connect

Big picture: Connecting to a student’s background knowledge can help unlock their full potential as a reader, writer, and member of the classroom and school community.

Allison Rice, elementary ELA curriculum coach for Kansas City Kansas Public Schools, tells this story about a girl in her class: “All through Unit 1 and halfway through Unit 2, she had not really participated or spoken in class, until they got to the lesson on Diwali. She celebrates Diwali. And all of a sudden, she had 1,000 things to contribute. Then her parents came in, they had never been into the school, and they finally felt welcomed and comfortable enough to come in and share about their culture, and the whole grade level had a huge party.”

This student was able to use her culture—and her knowledge—to create community in her classroom. “Here’s this little girl,” says Rice, “who for the first time has felt seen and reflected.”

Literacy resources for teachers and more

Free digital download: Learn why and how to build background knowledge among your students
Science of Reading: The Symposium
Webinar series: The More They Know: How building knowledge powers reading success

Problem-based learning in Amplify Desmos Math

This program brings problem-based learning into the math classroom, with an approach proven to help students develop math reasoning and problem-solving skills—not to mention deep understanding, fluency, and comfort with all things math.

Let’s take a closer look at problem-based learning in math, and at the contours of this exciting curriculum.

How problem-based learning helps math students—and math teachers

When you learned math, you likely started out learning arithmetic then moved on to solving word problems. You might have learned formulas, then practiced using them to determine the volume of a prism or which train will arrive at what time.

But life works differently. Sometimes we tackle the problem first, not the formula. When you get a new piece of technology—a phone, a TV, a computer—you might read the user guide, or you might just turn it on and try some things.

If that second style sounds like you, that’s common—and it’s an example of learning through problem-solving.

“It’s something we naturally do,” says Kristin Gray, executive director of Amplify’s math suite. “We’ve had a phone before, so we would pick up this new phone and try doing things that we know worked before, and then we would experiment. Does it work the same on this phone? This bouncing between experience and explanation is the foundation of how we learn through problem-solving.”

What does that look like in the math classroom?

Students tackling interesting problems, raising questions about the math required, receiving an explanation, and applying it back to the problem—just as in the example of new technology.

“When we show students how to get the answer, we send the message that math is solely about answer-getting and learning processes. Answers are important, but we want to use problems to teach the math, not just teach students to get the answer,” says Gray.

Learning through problem-solving can also engage more learners in math, says Gray. By influencing the way students (and teachers) think about what it means to know and do math, problem-based learning has the potential to shift the way they think of themselves as mathematicians.

“Students are naturally curious and like solving challenges and trying things in new ways, so that’s a great start,” says Gray.

And understanding is motivating. It inspires perseverance and confidence. It supports making connections, not learning concepts in isolation.

When students are given a new problem and are able to use prior knowledge to help solve it, that “promotes the development of autonomous learners,” says Gray.

Supporting the brilliance of student thinking

Our program combines interactive problem-based lessons with explicit instruction, reinforcement, and practice. Lessons build a strong foundation in procedural and fact fluency, deepen understanding of concepts, and enable students to apply learning to real-world tasks.

To learn more about how and why it all came together, watch the following video featuring Amplify Director of Project Management Christina Lee, Amplify Math advisor and Desmos user Fawn Nguyen, and Desmos Director of Research Dan Meyer.

Christina: Hi, I’m Christina, the product manager at Amplify working on our K–12 math program. As you may have heard by now, Desmos Classroom is joining Amplify. This includes all of teacher.desmos.com, including all of the free activities, the free activity builder, and the Desmos math curriculum. I have Fawn Nguyen and Dan Meyer here to answer a few questions about what’s going on. Thank you both for joining!

The first question is to you, Dan. One thing every Desmos user is going to want to know is, will the Desmos calculators and activities on teacher.desmos.com stay free to use forever?

Dan: Yes, period. It’s an important question and an easy one to answer. Our commitment to users, from day one, has been [to] whatever you can use for free. Now we’re not going to make you pay for that. We know how hard it is as a teacher to build your practice on top of software that could disappear, and Amplify shares that commitment in a rock-solid way.

Christina: That’s great to hear! Fawn, can you tell us a little bit about what you love about teacher.desmos.com? Why should a teacher who’s never used [it] check it out?

Fawn: How do I love teacher teacher.desmos.com? Let me count the ways! There’s nothing like it out there that allows teachers to build lessons from scratch. What makes it unique? Well, there are lots of things that are unique about Desmos, but the screen-by-screen build is a standout for me. It allows me to interact with students prior to moving to the next screen. More importantly, the interaction among the students and the teacher dashboard is just brilliant. It lets me see the students’ responses, especially the graphical ones, in real time. I feel like it’s a built-in formative assessment [in] the lesson. And not surprisingly, the structures from the five math practices by Peg Smith are built-in there with the selecting, sequencing, and connecting.

Christina: Dan, why does it make sense for Amplify and Desmos to build one core math program for grades 6–12?

Dan: We’ve been traveling on separate parallel paths for a really long time and it makes a lot of sense for us to go farther together. For instance, we’ve both been building a core curriculum based on the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum. We have both been doing that using core Desmos technology. We both share an understanding of the complexity of teaching, the brilliance of student thinking, and so it makes sense for us to merge together. Desmos brings to the table a deep understanding of how technology can support student learning, and Amplify brings to the table an understanding of how systems support students at scale. So we bring a lot of commonalities and a lot of elements that both of us need from the other.

Image showing an educational digital platform called Amplify Math in collaboration with Desmos Classroom. The interface includes various features such as textbooks, problem-based learning activities, interactive graphs, and practice exercises.

Christina: Fawn, you’ve been an advisor on the Amplify Math curriculum focused on problem-solving. In what ways do you think this knitting together of the two programs will help make teaching through problem-solving easier for teachers?

Fawn: I actually knit, Christina! So I really like your description of the partnership as knitting together the two programs. It’s like taking two luxurious fibers, if I may say––ironically, luxurious but free, which describes literally nothing except Desmos––and weaving them together to create a gorgeous and functional design. I’m thinking about a sweater vest for Dan, he would look great in it! Amplify truly understands what problem-solving is, that it’s non-routine. And Amplify’s math curriculum has many great activities. However, when this task can only live on a printed page it’s hard for it to stay as a problem-solving task. What I mean is that it’s hard for students to unsee things. So when it’s on paper, you have to show all the cards and that ruins everything to me, frankly. But with Desmos again, with that screen-by-screen build and the pause and pace functions, they are designed so that the timing of teacher moves can happen. I think the timing is really important. And then problem-solving is about tinkering with ideas and testing conjectures, and Desmos is built for such. It invites you to play, it invites you to take risks, and it doesn’t shame you when you make a mistake. So ultimately, Desmos brings school mathematics, which Amplify writes, closer to what doing mathematics looks like.

Christina: Dan, one final question for you. What’s going to happen to the Desmos calculators now?

Dan: The Desmos calculators, like all the other technology as part of this deal, will remain free into perpetuity. They’ll get spun over into a new corporation, a public benefit corporation called Desmos Studio, where they’ll have a lot more focus from the people who work on it and a lot more resources to expand and develop and do that work.

Christina: Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Fawn. Thank you both. I’m really excited about this opportunity we have to build something special for teachers and students! For more information about Amplify Math and Desmos Classroom, and everything else we’ve got going on, please visit amplify.com/futureofmath.

From math lesson planning to long-term success

Amplify Desmos Math makes it easy for both teachers and students to make the shift to a problem-based approach by providing captivating activities, powerful teacher-facilitation tools, and lots of support for differentiation and practice.

Lessons start with warm-ups that tap into prior knowledge and move into problems that require collaboration to solve. Teachers monitor, engage, and ultimately synthesize student work into the main idea. There are also ample opportunities for practice and reflection.

Amplify Desmos Math will be available for 2025–26 school year implementation. Interested districts can pilot the beta release starting fall 2024.

Learn more about Amplify Desmos Math.

Understanding dyslexia and the power of early intervention

What do Albert Einstein, Whoopi Goldberg, and Percy Jackson have in common?

A diagnosis (albeit retroactive or speculative) of dyslexia.

Fortunately, our understanding of the condition has progressed since the days of Einstein—and it’s also more accurate than it’s portrayed in The Olympians. (Percy’s challenges in that beloved series are said to result from his brain being “hard-wired” for ancient Greek, which is…not really a thing.)

So what do we know now? “You can screen early, and you can intervene just as early,” says Emily Lutrick, a preK–5 curriculum and dyslexia coordinator with almost 20 years of experience in education (and a guest on Science of Reading: The Podcast).

Let’s take a look at more of what we know about what dyslexia is (and is not), what students with these challenges struggle with, and the importance—and power—of early intervention.

What is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a neurological condition that affects the way a person’s brain processes written and spoken language—and thus their ability to read, write, and spell. It shows up as difficulties in accurate and fluent word recognition, spelling, and decoding.

More precisely, people with dyslexia often experience challenges in phonological awareness. They may struggle to break down words into their component sounds and to recognize the relationships between letters and sounds. These difficulties can make reading and writing laborious, and can—understandably—bring down a student’s performance and confidence. It’s a lifelong condition that requires (and responds to) specific research-based interventions.

In the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that about 15–20% of the population has symptoms indicating a risk of dyslexia or reading difficulty. The condition occurs across different cultures, languages, generations, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Common misconceptions about dyslexia

Dyslexia is not a result of laziness, poor teaching, or lack of effort (or of being a demi-god).

Let’s debunk some other misconceptions:

Dyslexia is not a visual problem that causes readers to mix up letters like “b” and “d.” People with dyslexia struggle to match letters to sounds. (Confusing letters is actually common—lots of kids do it, and then move past it, as they learn to read.)
We don’t have to wait for students to “fail” in order to identify signs of dyslexia. Some clues and signs may emerge even before students start school, such as a delay in learning tasks like tying shoes and telling time, or difficulties with self-expression; following directions; or learning the alphabet, rhymes, or times tables.
Students with dyslexia do not just need more time to learn to read. Dyslexia is not something outgrown. Students who are at risk of developing dyslexia need consistent, high-quality, research-based instruction.
People with dyslexia are slower / not as smart. On the contrary, people with dyslexia are able to think as quickly and creatively as others, and are just as intelligent.
Students with dyslexia need to use different materials than everyone else. Students with dyslexia can actually succeed using the same texts and curricula as their peers!
Students with dyslexia do have the potential to read at grade level when they have access to early intervention, targeted supports, and a flexible curriculum. In fact, a study at the University of Washington showed that only eight weeks of specialized instruction strengthened neural circuitry—and improved reading performance.

Types of dyslexia

Dyslexia is also not a one-size-fits-all condition. Some common types include:

Phonological dyslexia: This type of dyslexia primarily affects a person’s ability to decode words and recognize the sounds associated with letters and letter combinations.
Surface dyslexia: Students with surface dyslexia may struggle with irregular words that do not follow common phonetic rules but be able to read more regular words accurately.
Rapid naming deficit: This type of dyslexia is characterized by difficulty in rapidly naming familiar objects, colors, or symbols.
Double deficit dyslexia: Individuals with double deficit dyslexia exhibit both phonological and rapid naming deficits.

The importance of early intervention

Early intervention is key to helping students with dyslexia reach their full potential. Research has shown that identifying and addressing the condition in the earliest possible stages of education can significantly improve student reading and writing abilities—and so much more.

Early intervention generally focuses on building foundational skills such as phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, and reading fluency. It might include specialized instruction, assistive technology, and modifications to classroom materials and assessments.

Intervention has an emotional and social impact, too. Dyslexia can bring down a student’s confidence and even keep them on the social sidelines. By identifying and addressing dyslexia early, teachers can provide their students with access to emotional support and opportunities to catch and keep up with their peers, which helps them remain part of the classroom community.

Screening for dyslexia

Before intervention comes identification. That’s why mCLASS^® includes built-in dyslexia screening, with reliable tools such as:

Phonological Awareness Assessment: Assesses a student’s ability to recognize and manipulate sounds in words.
Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) Test: Evaluates how quickly a student can name.

And before all that, it’s important that teachers be the first eyes and ears. They may ask caregivers about any family history of reading difficulties, as the condition often has a genetic component. Lutrick watches for students who might be struggling to read fluently or think meta-cognitively about text. ”You know that they’ve got the ability but something is just blocking them,” she says.

One diagnostic tack she takes: Asking them to try to decode nonsense words. “For a child who is struggling and at risk of reading difficulty, every word may be a nonsense word,” she says. “Do they have the skills necessary to break it down? If not, I would like to try to help them fill those gaps as quickly as I can.” (mCLASS also includes a Nonsense Word Fluency assessment.)

And it’s possible to intervene even before that, as podcast host Susan Lambert notes: “If we are not already doing systematic and explicit phonics in kindergarten and first grade, there is a possibility that we wouldn’t identify those kids.”

Lutrick also points out that dyslexia can be disguised in many different ways. “Look at every student and see if there is something behind the mask,” she says. “We need to task ourselves to really look at every individual student as if each one of them is critically important, which we all believe, or we wouldn’t be in this profession.”

More to explore

Science of Reading: The Podcast, Season 7, Episode 7: Debunking the “gift” of dyslexia in children with Dr. Tim Odegard
Science of Reading: The Podcast, Season 1, Episode 6: The facts and myths of dyslexia with Emily Lutrick
Dyslexia Fact vs. Fiction
mCLASS^® Dyslexia Toolkit

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