30-03-2025
‘Science of reading' curriculum will soon be offered to all Tri-City K-5 students
A new 'science of reading' core literacy curriculum piloted in Kennewick elementary schools is likely to set a better foundation for students to read, write and learn.
The Kennewick School Board on Wednesday unanimously approved the adoption of Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) at the recommendation of district staff and a materials committee.
In September, with the start of the 2025-26 school year, all K-5 classes will use Amplify CKLA.
This comes after the district piloted it in 25 classrooms across seven elementary schools. STAR test scores between fall and winter showed 18 classes had the equivalent academic growth of more than a year.
It's the same curriculum adopted last year by the Richland School District. Pasco School District in 2022-23 adopted the American Reading Company's Core, which is 'informed' by science of reading research.
That means all 18,000 elementary students in the Tri-Cities region will soon be learning through a science of reading curriculum.
Science of reading is a broad term that refers to a comprehensive body of empirical research spanning several decades detailing what matters and what works in the field of holistic literacy instruction.
It narrows in on two component skills: decoding and linguistic comprehension. And it highlights five 'pillars' of reading proficiency that students need: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
Its approach in the classroom is known as 'structured literacy.' It's different from the 'balanced literacy' method that's been popular in classrooms for decades, which promotes a 'well-rounded and comprehensive education in reading and writing.'
Teachers in recent years have also moved away from 'three-cueing' in favor of more scientifically sound and specific strategies to help students with reading roadblocks.
That strategy, also known as MSV (meaning, syntax, visual), entails students drawing from context clues, visuals or sentence structure to guess at a word's meaning.
Jilian Alfaro, a 4th grade teacher at Sage Crest Elementary, says it enhanced her students' curiosity and comprehension of complex concepts.
'Every child has the right to a rigorous and meaningful learning experience in which they can naturally grow, inquire, discover their passions and succeed,' she told parents at a community preview event.
Early childhood literacy education is important because students begin to use reading and writing as a primary medium to learn other concepts by the time they're in the third-grade. It can be a crucial indicator of a student's future success in high school, college and the workforce.
Kennewick will purchase eight years of digital access and five years of print from Amplify, totaling $2 million — a good price for K-5 reading curriculum.
Since 2016 it's used Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Journeys, but district staff moved up curriculum adoption earlier because the publisher is sunsetting the curriculum.
Alyssa St. Hilaire, Kennewick's assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, says the standout is that kids are 'excited and curious' to learn with Amplify CKLA.
'We also feel it's one of the best materials out there that's grounded in science of reading, and just really helping teach those skills in a systematic approach,' she said.
'Just hearing the kids be excited about learning about history and science is kind of the Velcro that helps all of that reading stick,' St. Hilaire said.
Students learn through shorter excerpts of learning with Journeys, while Amplify uses units to draw 'deeper learning' of concepts.
For example, science class might have a through line that goes from animals and habitats to eventually studying the plant cycle.
Past curricula taught skills in isolation, St. Hilaire says. But CKLA allows students to develop skills holistically through subject background knowledge.
Scarborough's Reading Rope shows what's going on in student brains as they build reading comprehension, St. Hilaire said.
Two 'strands' — language comprehension and word recognition — are foundational for students to build skilled reading. But those strands are composed of several skills making up the strand's 'fibers.'
For language comprehension, students need knowledge, vocabulary, sentence structure, reasoning and a mental model. For word recognition, they need to know sounds, letters and words.
As those skills become more strategic and automatic, students develop a strong 'rope' of reading comprehension that they'll use to learn for the rest of their lives.
St. Hilaire says the body of research isn't an educational fad.
'This is how our kids need to learn how to read,' she said. 'To hear kids' excitement about reading, to hear teachers excited to be teaching reading — this is how reading needs to be taught.'
School board president Gabe Galbraith says he's heard students at all levels were staying engaged and are demonstrating strong understanding of the content.
'In addition to improving reading comprehension, it fosters critical thinking and problem-solving. Initial results are showing positive growth in our students testing,' Galbraith said in a statement.
'The process has been very collaborative with staff doing a tremendous job with the initial discussions and piloting material in classrooms. The community provided very positive review feedback and the board has spent significant time collecting feedback and observing lessons in classrooms,' he continued.
