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Reading is more than just words on a page. For students like my first-graders at Stellar Elementary, it unlocks doors of opportunity. Over the past 12 years as an educator I’ve taught elementary, middle, and high school, but when I started teaching first-grade reading at Stellar I unexpectedly fell in love. They have surprised me with their excitement to learn and joy for life!
This is a big moment for reading instruction in Wisconsin. With the passage of Act 20 in 2023, the state is requiring all schools to provide science-based literacy instruction. When lawmakers announced their recommended curricula under the new law, I was happy to see Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) on the list. This is a curriculum I already know well, since we’ve been implementing it at Stellar over the past year!
When I first started at Stellar in 2019, the reading teachers were creating lesson plans from scratch every night, using four or five different curricula. It was a lot of work! Then Carmen put a call out for teachers to help choose one research-based literacy curriculum for the whole school. As lead literacy teacher, I felt it was important to get involved. My colleague, Annie Ela and I reviewed different options, and settled on Amplify because of its focus on skill-building in grades K-2.
This is our first full year implementing Amplify at Stellar. While no one curriculum is perfect, it’s great to have everything in one place instead of putting together different pieces of the puzzle every day. I’ve been able to keep the core of things that I love, while increasing enjoyment and rigor for the kids. For a school with a high proportion of Spanish-speaking families, the curriculum has plenty of built-in support to meet students wherever they’re starting from.
At Stellar, we have designated teachers for reading and math in every grade. Because I specialize in reading, I can help my students focus just on literacy for half of their school day. Amplify helps me make phonics engaging and fun, with easy-to-understand texts about exciting topics like animals or volcanoes or outer space. When students are using Amplify Boost, the online learning platform, I can keep tabs on how they’re progressing and give one-on-one instruction. And everything in the curriculum is connected, so I’m building on what they learned in kindergarten while setting them up with the skills they’ll need in second grade.
Even in this first year, we’re seeing promising signs. More than 70 percent of Stellar students across all grades have already met their mastery goals for the year. In my own classroom, I’ve noticed that my students are more confident and getting better at recognizing the tricky sounds they’ll need to read second-grade texts next year.
Reading is a huge connection to our students’ future. They deserve the best teachers, teaching a high-quality curriculum. We’re doing that at Stellar, and I’m excited to see the state following suit. If we work hard at making sure our kids are strong readers, then their success can only increase.
