Key points:
To ensure children build foundational reading skills in the early elementary years, educators have embraced the Science of Reading with its emphasis on phonics and phonemic awareness. As impactful as this approach is, one important aspect often gets overlooked amidst the logistics: How do we actually inspire students to fall in love with reading?
Children who love reading don’t just become better readers – they become deeper thinkers, more confident writers, and stronger students overall.
One of the most powerful ways to fuel this passion is to pull teachers free from the deluge of endless assessments, state mandates, and rigid curricula to allow them the opportunity to develop meaningful one-on-one bonds with students through the pages of their favorite books while using technology to support, rather than replace, those connections. When students see their teachers’ enthusiasm and mirror their joy over the written word, that is when lifelong readers are made.
At Franklin Square Union Free School District (UFSD) in Franklin, N.Y., school leaders and educators have worked together to establish a district-wide early literacy initiative that balances phonics and comprehension while centering teachers’ autonomy and creativity.
Shifting the district’s approach began with an honest examination of what wasn’t working, and one of the most glaring issues was the current reading system. Teachers felt the passages were often redundant, robotic, and out of context, leaving young readers frustrated and unmotivated. Compounding the problem, assessments were conducted just a few times a year to measure how students compared to state benchmarks rather than capturing their in-the-moment progress.
The district needed to build something that met all of the literacy briefs from the state of New York while creating an interactive, robust program that engaged students at every level – one that provided timely, actionable insights into their day-to-day growth so teachers could quickly address emerging learning challenges before they turned into significant literacy gaps.
With a suite of new resources, including Amira Learning, an AI-powered learning agent that acts as a tutor and reading coach and offers speech-recognition technology, Franklin Square UFSD has expanded its ability to provide pre-K through fifth-grade students with personalized, real-time reading support.
The program allows teachers to easily monitor reading fluency and comprehension without putting students through stressful, traditional testing. Students spend 20-25 minutes a week reading aloud with their AI tutor, which provides gentle corrections and encouragement when they struggle. Amira also offers specialized questions based on the passages they read, helping them deepen their understanding of the content. When assessments are centered on fun, students are excited to practice their emerging literacy skills.
Simultaneously, teachers can immediately identify students who need additional support and adapt one-on-one and small group instruction to each child’s specific needs. While classroom screen time is intentionally limited, every minute is meaningful, ensuring teachers can make the best instructional decisions based on real-time data. Just as important, interactive tools have freed educators from the hours of out-of-classroom time they previously spent on collecting and analyzing results.
In addition to investing in new tools, Franklin Square UFSD made a deliberate commitment to establish cohesive, research-aligned instruction district-wide while supporting teachers with day-to-day flexibility. For years, literacy programs varied by each school, each grade level, and even between classrooms, creating inconsistencies in students’ learning experiences as they moved between buildings.
Rather than create a top-down literacy plan, Franklin Square UFSD took a ground-up approach with teachers, seeking their insights on building a program everyone could agree on. All classrooms must meet basic state and district standards, but teachers are offered the flexibility to help their students reach them.
The last thing school leaders want is for the curriculum to take creativity out of the classroom. Teachers are encouraged to lead according to their strengths, whether they highlight particular stories, linger on a favorite unit, or design special, hands-on projects. That spirit of play and imagination they promote is key to inspiring confident, capable learners who see reading as less of an assignment and more of an adventure to explore.
At the start of the 2025/2026 school year, 35 percent of Franklin Square UFSD first graders read above grade level. By midyear, that figure climbed to 45 percent, driven by the combination of personalized reading tools and targeted, one-on-one teacher support. Results were even more dramatic for older students in fourth grade, growing from 21 percent to 47 percent over the course of four months. In addition, the percentage of fourth graders who required intensive support to catch up to their peers dropped from 20 percent to 7 percent, demonstrating that timely intervention is critical to closing learning gaps.
Building Science of Reading components into early literacy curriculum and integrating AI-based reading tools that connect to instruction significantly improves students’ vocabulary and comprehension. But lasting impact goes beyond technology alone – the biggest change happens once teachers are given the freedom to bring fun, play, and project-based learning back to the classroom. When schools choose technology that amplifies, rather than replaces, teachers’ expertise, students spend less time on their screens and more time learning from the person who matters most.
