The youngest students in the Sto-Rox School District will benefit from a new interactive tool that will assess their literacy skills. The school board last Thursday approved a purchase of software from EarlyBird Education for students in Kindergarten and first grade. The software will be used starting this fall.
“Written language is a code and requires systematic instruction. Great instructional design starts with knowing where learners are with each of their skills,” said Superintendent Megan Marie Van Fossan. “We are very excited to partner with EarlyBird Education to assist our educators in using some of the best tools and research in the world.”
A screenshot of the EarlyBird Education website, featuring “Pip the EarlyBird.”
EarlyBird provides a computer tablet game that automatically evaluates students’ reading abilities for disorders including dyslexia. Students’ work is scored as they work with “Pip the EarlyBird,” who guides them through a series of assessments with other animal friends.
“Because it's game-based, it’s really enjoyable for our students,” said Dawn Brookhart of EarlyBird. “It is so much more than an early literacy screener. Through the EarlyBird Dashboard, teachers are empowered to use curriculum-agnostic interventions based on each student’s instructional profile. It is diagnostic assessment and prescriptive instruction all in one toolkit.”
The screening software was developed by Dr. Nadine Gaab, a developmental neuroscientist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Dr. Yaacov Petscher, a professor of social work at Florida State University, in tandem with CEO Carla Smalls, leader of the Boston Children’s Hospital Digital Health Accelerator. Gaab and Smalls were part of the 2019 MIT Solve class, earning $55,000 in grant money to further the EarlyBird project.
Van Fossan shared, “This is a dream come true! We have known for decades that the earlier you identify gaps in understanding, the easier it is to remediate skills. While we have had reading screeners for over 20 years, the one piece missing from most programs is research-to-practice strategies. With EarlyBird, our educators will find easy-to-implement and highly-effective strategies to help improve reading outcomes for early learners.”
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