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Oregon Enhanced ELA State Review for K–5

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Welcome

Elementary Literacy Program – Family Welcome Letter

Lectoescritura en Español – Carta de bienvenida para las familias

Grade K

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Welcome

Elementary Literacy Program – Family Welcome Letter

Lectoescritura en Español – Carta de bienvenida para las familias

Grade K

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Amplify CKLA Review for Alabama

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Amplify and SFUSD Partnership

We recognize and respect the unique differences of each of our partnering districts—and that includes San Francisco USD.

Out of the box, Amplify Caminos offers districts a rich, comprehensive, research-based SELA experience. That said, no two districts are exactly alike. To that end, we are committed to working with San Francisco USD to ensure that Amplify Caminos addresses the needs of your community. This includes providing implementation guidance and support, as well as collaborating with your staff to determine which domains need to be modified or exchanged.

What is Amplify Caminos?

Amplify Caminos is a core Spanish language arts program for grades TK–5 that delivers:

  • Authentic instruction built from the ground up for the Spanish language.
  • A unique research-based approach truly built on the Science of Reading.
  • A combination of explicit foundational skills with meaningful knowledge-building.
  • Embedded support and differentiation that gets all students reading grade-level texts together.
  • Opportunities for students to see the strengths and experiences that all people share while also celebrating each others’ unique identities and experiences.



Watch the video below to learn more about Amplify Caminos for Grades K–2.



Watch the video below to learn more about Amplify Caminos for Grades 3–5.

How does Amplify Caminos work?

Amplify Caminos is built on the science of how kids learn to read—in Spanish.

Amplify Caminos is all about helping you teach students how to read, all while giving them authentic and engaging reasons to read. That’s why Amplify Caminos develops foundational skills and builds knowledge in tandem.

  • Knowledge: Through complex and authentic Spanish read-alouds with an emphasis on classroom interactivity, oral comprehension, and contextual vocabulary, students start to build their awareness of the world around them—and the way the reading skills they’re building give them access to it.
  • Skills: Starting with the sounds at the core of the Spanish
    language, students practice their phonemic awareness, handwriting skills, vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. Through daily practice, students become aware of the connection between reading and writing, building confidence as they go.
Illustration depicting the flow of genetic information, represented by ribbons transitioning from dna to rna, connected to various educational images and diagrams.

Respecting the development differences between grade ranges, Amplify Caminos teaches foundational skills and background knowledge as two distinct strands in grades K–2, and combines them into one integrated strand in grades 3–5.

Grades K–2:
Every day, students in grades K–2 complete one full lesson that explicitly and systematically builds foundational reading skills in the Amplify Caminos Lectoescritura strand, as well as one full lesson that builds robust background knowledge to access complex text in the Amplify Caminos Conocimiento strand. Through learning in each of these strands, students develop the early literacy skills necessary to help them become confident readers and build the context to understand what they’re reading.

Grades 3–5:
In grades 3–5, the Amplify Caminos Lectoescritura and Conocimiento strands are integrated in one set of instructional materials. Lessons begin to combine skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater writing emphasis. Students can then use their skills to go on their own independent reading adventures.

What do Amplify Caminos students explore?

Amplify Caminos builds students’ knowledge about the world.

In addition to teaching all students to crack the written code (which is vital for equity), the Amplify Caminos program helps students see the strengths and experiences we all share while celebrating their own unique identities and experiences.

This is accomplished through the exploration of topics and text that feature people who resemble students and familiar situations or experiences while also exposing them to people whose appearances, lives, beliefs, and backgrounds differ from their own.
 

Engaging domains

Amplify Caminos builds knowledge coherently across subjects and grades.

Throughout the program, students use their skills to explore domains that relate to storytelling, science, and the history of our world as seen through the eyes of many different groups.

Carefully selected to build from year-to-year, our grade-appropriate topics help students make and deepen connections while also reading, writing, and thinking creatively and for themselves.

Curriculum flowchart for Kindergarten to Grade 5, showing subject progression in language, science, and social studies, with highlighted and connected units.

New Knowledge Research Units for Grades K–5

Our brand-new Knowledge Research units carry forward Amplify Caminos’ powerful and proven instructional approach while also:

  • Adding more diversity. The rich topics and highly visual components featured in these units provide students with even more “windows and mirrors” and perspectives as they work to build knowledge.
  • Adding more authentic literature. Each new research unit revolves around a collection of high-interest authentic trade books that will spark more curiosity and inspire more inquiry.
  • Adding more flexibility. Units can be implemented for extended core instruction during flex periods, district-designated Pausing Points, or enrichment periods.

Units cover a variety of rich and relevant topics:

With these new units, students will soar to new heights with Dr. Ellen Ochoa, Amelia Earhart, and the Tuskegee Airmen. They’ll feel the rhythm as they learn about Jazz legends Miles Davis, Tito Puente, and Duke Ellington. And they’ll explore the far reaches of the world with Jacques Cousteau, Matthew Henson, and Eugenie Clark.

  • Grade K: El arte y el mundo que nos rodea
  • Grade 1: Cuentos de aventuras: relatos desde los confines de la Tierra
  • Grade 2: ¡A volar! La era de la aviación
  • Grade 3: Jazz y más
  • Grade 4: Energía: pasado, presente y futuro
  • Grade 5: Más allá de Juneteenth: de 1865 al presente

Units will be made available in English and Spanish, and will include the following components:

Why we added this unit:
“Every child is an artist,” said Picasso, meaning that every child uses art to explore and understand the world around them. El arte y el mundo que nos rodea honors that truth by introducing Kindergarten students to some of the ways in which artists have explored and understood the world around them.

This domain introduces students to artists from different time periods, countries, and cultures. Throughout the unit, students learn about different kinds of art and how artists use the world around them as they make art. They also connect this to what they have already learned about the earth, plants, and animals in other Caminos domains: Granjas, Plantas, and Cuidar el planeta Tierra. In addition, students connect this to what they have learned about sculptors in the Presidentes y símbolos de los Estados Unidos domain. As they explore different artists and artistic traditions, they develop their ideas about how humans are connected to each other and to the world around them.

As you read the texts in this unit, students may observe ways in which the characters or subjects are both similar to and different from students. This is a good opportunity to teach students awareness and sensitivity, building on the idea that all people share some things in common, even as they have other things that make them unique. This unit also offers an excellent opportunity to collaborate with your school’s art teacher, as many lessons have suggested activities to help students understand the kind of art they are studying.

Within this unit, students have opportunities to:

  • Use details to describe art.
  • Identify three ways to create art.
  • Identify characteristics of cave art.
  • Sequence the steps of making pottery.
  • Describe how artists can create work connected to the world around them.
  • Describe what makes Kehinde Wiley’s portraits unique.
  • Explain how the texture of a surface can affect artwork created on it.
  • Explain what a sculpture is.
  • Describe what makes James Turrell’s artwork about the sky unique.
  • Explain what a museum is and what kinds of things you can see or do there.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • Georgia O’Keeffe por Erica Salcedo
  • Yayoi Kusama: De aquí al infinito por Sarah Suzuki
  • Tejedora del arcoíris por Linda Elovitz Marshall
  • Las tijeras de Matisse por Jeanette Winter
  • El museo por Susan Verde
  • Quizás algo hermoso: Cómo el arte transformó un barrio por F. Isabel Campoy

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
This domain introduces students to adventure stories set around the world and challenges students to dig into the adventures through research. By listening to the Read-Alouds and trade books, students increase their vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, learn valuable lessons about perseverance and teamwork, and become familiar with gathering information for research.

In this unit, students study the careers of real-world explorers Dr. Eugenie Clark and Sophia Danenberg, marvel at the inventions of Jacques Cousteau, think critically about how teamwork and collaboration can make greater adventures possible, learn about the science and technology that enable adventures, and research some of the ways humans have confronted challenges at the edges of the world, from the oceans below to space above.

Each lesson in the domain builds students’ research skills as they ask questions, gather information, and write a paragraph about their findings. Students share what they have learned about adventures in an Adventure Gallery Walkthrough. By taking on the persona of one of the adventurers they meet in the Read-Alouds and trade books, students deliver their final paragraphs as if they are a “speaking portrait” of that person. Students are invited to dress up as that adventurer if they desire.

In addition, teachers can set aside time outside the instructional block to create the picture frames students will hold as they present to the Adventure Gallery Walk guests. Frames can be made from shirt boxes, cardboard, construction paper, or any art supplies that are on hand. This might be an opportunity to collaborate with the school’s art department if resources are available. Another option is to ask students to make their frames at home with their caregivers. On the day of the Adventure Gallery Walk, students will be the hosts and take on specific jobs, such as welcoming the guests, describing their work throughout the unit, and pointing out the areas of study on the domain bulletin board. You can find a complete list of student jobs in Lesson 13.

How this unit builds knowledge:
This unit builds upon the following Caminos units that students will have encountered in the previous grade.

  • Rimas y fábulas infantiles (Kindergarten)
  • Cuentos (Kindergarten)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Cuentos de aventuras: relatos desde los confines de la Tierra. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • My Name Is Gabito/Me llamo Gabito por Monica Brown
  • Galápagos Girl/Galapagueña por Marsha Diane Arnold
  • My Name Is Gabriela/Me llamo Gabriela por Monica Brown
  • El viaje de Kalak por María Quintana Silva y Marie-Noëlle Hébert
  • Señorita Mariposa por Ben Gundersheimer
  • Sharuko, el arqueólogo peruano/Peruvian Archaeologist Julio C. Tello por Monica Brown
  • Abuelita fue al mercado por Stella Blackstone

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
With this domain, students head up, up, and away with an introduction to the soaring history of aviation. Students learn the stories of early aviators, such as the Montgolfier brothers, the Wright brothers, Aida de Acosta, and Amelia Earhart.

During the unit, students study the science of flight, including the physics concept of lift, and research the social impacts of the world of flight. Finally, students let their research skills take flight as they explore key figures from the world of aviation.

The lessons in this domain build on earlier Grade 2 Caminos domains about the westward expansion, early Greek civilizations, and Greek myths, and lay the foundation for learning about other periods of world history in future grades.

How this unit builds knowledge:
This unit builds upon the following Caminos units that students will have encountered earlier in the year.

  • La civilización griega antigua (Grade 2)
  • Mitos griegos (Grade 2)
  • La expansión hacia el oeste (Grade 2)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in ¡A volar! La era de la aviación. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • ¡A volar! Todo sobre aviones por Jennifer Prior
  • Amelia sabe volar por Mara dal Corso
  • Héroes de la aviación que cambiaron el mundo por Dan Green
  • El niño que alcanzó las estrellas por José M. Hernández
  • La niña que aprendió a volar por Sylvia Acevedo
  • Buenas Noches Capitán Mamá por Graciela Tiscareño-Sato

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
This domain teaches students about the vibrant music, poetry, and culture of the Jazz Age in the United States. Students learn about famous writers and musicians like Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Melba Liston, Tito Puente, and Miles Davis. They study how the jazz art form took root in the South, then spread to the North to become the sound of the Harlem Renaissance, eventually connecting people around the world in musical expression.

During this unit, students perform guided research to further explore both the history of jazz and what jazz is today. They develop research skills and then use those skills to find deeper connections between the stories and music of the Jazz Age and music today. As students learn about the world of jazz, they collaborate and share ideas with their classmates. They also practice sharing feedback focused on their written work, and, at the end of the unit, students present their research to the group.

The lessons give students opportunities to dive into the rhythms and stories of jazz, utilizing the knowledge sequence in this unit to:

  • Collaboratively generate research questions about jazz, jazz musicians, contemporary musicians from the state where they live or have lived, and the evolution of jazz music.
  • Utilize Read-Alouds, independent reading, and partner reading to learn about the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, jazz music, and biographies of celebrated jazz musicians and writers.
  • Research the answers to their generated questions, gather information, write a short research essay about a famous jazz musician, write a short essay about a contemporary musician from the state where they live or have lived, and give a presentation about their research.

How this unit builds knowledge:
Within this unit, students have opportunities to:

  • Ask relevant questions and make pertinent comments
  • Identify details in texts
  • Determine key ideas of texts by evaluating details
  • Make text-based inferences
  • Generate questions based on prior knowledge and gathered information
  • Synthesize details across texts to demonstrate comprehension
  • Discuss and explain an author’s purpose
  • Identify and cite reliable primary and secondary sources of information
  • Compose a well-organized and focused informative essay
  • Make connections between topics
  • Present information using appropriate media

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • ¡Esquivel! Un artista del sonido de la era espacial por Susan Wood
  • Ray Charles por Sharon Bell Mathis
  • Tito Puente, el Rey del Mambo por Monica Brown
  • Me llamo Celia, la vida de Celia Cruz por Monica Brown
  • ¡Azúcar! por Ivar Da Coll

In this unit, students also read the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. (Available for free through the Academy of American Poets website and the Poetry Foundation website, with recorded audio available through the website for John Hancock College Preparatory High School.)

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
With this domain, students become tomorrow’s problem solvers in this study of energy in the United States. Analytical reading skills are developed by examining the challenges of early energy innovators. Students then read about current energy practices and young energy change-makers across the world.

Throughout the unit, students conduct research into different sources of energy and present a proposal, putting them in the shoes of future energy innovators. They also use the knowledge sequence in this unit to:

  • Collaboratively analyze texts to identify cause-effect and problem-solution relationships.
  • Generate questions and conduct research about energy.
  • Write an opinion essay making their case for a fuel of the future.
  • Create energy proposals using primary and secondary resources.

How this unit builds knowledge:
This unit builds upon the following Caminos units that students will have encountered in previous grades as well as earlier in the year.

  • Plantas (Grade K)
  • La historia de la Tierra (Grade 1)
  • ¡Eureka! Estudiante inventor (Grade 4)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Energía: pasado, presente y futuro. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • La historia de los combustibles fósiles por William B. Rice
  • El niño que domó el viento por William Kamkwamba y Bryan Mealer

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
Within this domain, Students learn about General Granger’s announcement in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, a day marked in history as Juneteenth. Texts and multimedia sources will support foundational knowledge-building about the end of slavery in the United States. A review of the first freedom announcement, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, provides students with background knowledge to further emphasize the significance of Juneteenth in American history.

This unit also takes students on a journey beyond Juneteenth, as they study specific contributions of African Americans from 1865 to the present day. Students participate in a virtual field trip to Emancipation Park in Houston, Texas and use the knowledge sequence in this unit to:

  • Collaboratively generate research questions about Juneteenth, The Great Migration, innovators and inventors, education, the humanities, activists, and allies.
  • Use Read-Alouds, independent, and partner reading to learn about African American contributions from 1865 to the present.
  • Research to find answers to their generated questions, gather information, and write a four-chapter Beyond Juneteenth book.

How this unit builds knowledge:
This unit builds upon the following Caminos units that students will have encountered in previous grades.

  • Los nativos americanos (Grade K)
  • Una nueva nación: la independencia de los Estados Unidos (Grade 1)
  • La Guerra Civil de los Estaods Unidos (Grade 2)
  • La inmigración (Grade 2)
  • Los nativos americanos (Grade 5)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Más allá de Juneteenth: de 1865 al presente
. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • Martí’s Song for Freedom/Martí y sus versos por la libertad escrito por Emma Otheguy
  • ¡Celebremos Juneteenth! escrito por Carole Boston Weatherford
  • Side by Side/Lado a Lado: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez/La Historia de Dolores Huerta y César Chávez escrito por Monica Brown
  • Canto de alabanza para el día: Poema para la ceremonia inaugural del mandato de Barack Obama escrito por Elizabeth Alexander, traducido por Rodrigo Rojas

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Diverse texts

Amplify Caminos puts a variety of texts in the hands of students every day.

Amplify Caminos includes both transadaptations and authentic texts written by Latin American and Spanish authors. In addition to featuring a diverse range of authors and topics, our texts represent individuals and characters with a broad range of identity factors, including socioeconomic status, age, ability, race, ethnicity, country of origin, religion, and more.

Amplify Caminos texts include:

  • Authentic literature: Authentic literature exposes students to a variety of text types and perspectives to deepen their knowledge of fascinating topics in social studies, science, literature, and the arts. Authentic texts support text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text connections for readers.
  • Decodable Student Readers: Amplify Caminos is built on the conviction that equitable instruction is vital to an effective program. Decodable Student Readers at grades K–2 are newly re-designed to celebrate students’ diverse experiences and feature individuals with a broad range of identity factors, including socioeconomic status, age, ability, race, ethnicity, country of origin, religion, and more.
  • ReadWorks® texts: Amplify and ReadWorks have partnered to deliver high-quality texts curated to support the Amplify Caminos Knowledge Sequence and to extend student learning. Texts include high-interest nonfiction articles in topics in social studies, science, literature, and the arts. These texts are accompanied by vocabulary supports and standards-aligned formative assessment opportunities. Teachers can monitor their students’ progress using the ReadWorks reporting features.
Three book covers displaying children's books in spanish, each featuring colorful and stylized illustrations related to cultural stories.

Amplify Caminos Trade Book Collection Guide

Each book in our authentic literature collection was selected specifically to support and enhance the content of the K-2 Conocimiento Strand. These anchor texts are intended for use as an introduction to each domain—engaging students, piquing their curiosity, and building initial background knowledge—before diving into the deeper content of the domain Read-Alouds.

Every trade book has an instructional guide that includes the following:

  • Author and illustrator
  • Book summary
  • The Essential Question of the Knowledge domain, connecting the book to the domain
  • Key Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary words found in the book
  • A group activity to reinforce and extend students’ knowledge and understanding
  • A performance task to help gauge students’ comprehension of concepts in the text
  • Writing prompts to expand understanding and critical thinking
  • Text complexity ratings and descriptors for quantitative, qualitative, and reader/task categories

Download the Amplify Caminos Trade Book Collection Guide for Grades K–2.

Detailed information about text complexity ratings and descriptors; additional uses for the books before, during, and after domain instruction; and the complete list of domains and books for each grade level can be found in the More About the Books section of this guide.

What makes Amplify Caminos different?

Built on the Science of Reading

Built out of the latest research in the Science of Reading, Amplify Caminos delivers explicit instruction in both foundational literacy skills (systematic phonics, decoding, and fluency) and background knowledge in grades K–2 with an integrated approach to explicit instruction in grades 3–5.

Three connected orange blocks labeled

Explicit systematic skills instruction

The skills instruction in Amplify Caminos was distinctly developed with the Spanish language in mind. Its foundational lessons are specific to the language, rather than a direct translation from Amplify CKLA’s English skills instruction.

Reading instruction begins with the vowels first, then the most common consonants, and finally the least common consonants. Students will blend and segment sounds to form syllables, and syllables to form words.

Although Spanish has a highly predictable orthography, there are a few silent letters (h is always silent, u is silent after g or q), as well as letters that can make different sounds, depending on the letters that follow them. For that reason, syllables with these letters are taught somewhat later in the progression. The same is true for syllables with infrequently occurring consonants, such as z, k, x, and w.

Coherent knowledge instruction

While students are learning how to read, the Conocimiento strand gives them authentic and engaging reasons to read.

Amplify Caminos uses spiral learning to reinforce every student’s ability to develop skills like reading, writing, speaking, and listening in Spanish that can be transferred to English. As students engage with their lessons, they explore the similarities and differences in grammar, vocabulary, writing, and language use between Spanish and English. This bridge helps students learning two languages to strengthen their knowledge in both.

Through cross-curricular content, students explore units that relate to storytelling, science, and the history of our world in a holistic and thoughtful way. With these units, you’ll bring the world to your students, showing them how reading can become an exciting, rewarding, and useful part of their lives.

A collage of illustrated book covers, including themes of Don Quixote, space exploration, and anthropomorphic animals in various scenarios, all enriched with Spanish language elements.

Embedded differentiation for all learners

Amplify Caminos provides built-in differentiation strategies and supports in every lesson.

  • Apoyo a la enseñanza y desafío: Support and Challenge suggestions in every lesson provide assistance or opportunities for more advanced work toward the goal of the lesson.
  • Notas culturales: These point-of-use notes provide additional information about the traditions, foods, holidays, word variations, and more from across the Spanish-speaking world.
  • Apoyo adicional: Every lesson in the Lectoescritura (Skills) Strand provides additional support activities suggested to reinforce foundational skills instruction. These activities can be given to any student who requires extra help, including students with special needs.

Systematic and cohesive writing instruction

Writing instruction in Amplify Caminos builds systematically and cohesively within and across grades.

In Grades K-2, writing mechanics—including handwriting and spelling—are taught in the Amplify Caminos Lectoescritura strand. Starting in Grade 1, instruction includes four steps in the writing process: planning, drafting, editing, and publishing and features lessons that have modeling, collaboration, and sharing. As students gain skills and confidence, they are able to take on more of these steps independently. Students learn to use planning techniques, including brainstorming and graphic organizers.

Beginning in Grade 4, the Amplify Caminos writing process expands to also include sharing and evaluating. In Grades 4 and 5, the writing process is no longer conceptualized as a series of scaffolded, linear steps (an important change from the Grade 3 writing process). Rather, students move between components of the writing process in a flexible manner, similar to the process mature and experienced writers follow naturally.

young male students writing with a pencil

Amplify Caminos’ writing instruction provides a clear progression through the text types in each grade.

Because Amplify Caminos has two strands of lessons in Grades K-2, Lectoescritura and Conocimiento, students are exposed to both narrative and informational texts throughout the year. In Grades 3-5, the integrated units feature study in literary, informational, or a mix of both types of texts, depending on the content of the unit.

  • Grades K–2 introduce and establish the key elements of each text type, allowing students to gain comfort and confidence writing narratives, opinions, and informative texts. This enables students to practice thinking about content in different ways, offering more depth and breadth to their understanding of core content and of the writing text types.
  • By Grade 3, students will have gained significant practice in narrative, opinion/argumentative, and informational/explanatory forms of writing and will continue to apply those skills through Grade 5.

How does Amplify Caminos integrate with the other parts of the literacy system?

Amplify Caminos + mCLASS® Lectura

Achieve complete parity between English and Spanish assessments with mCLASS Lectura for K–6. mCLASS Lectura allows teachers to connect with their Spanish-speaking students face-to-face, one-on-one, and in the language most comfortable to them. The result? Valid and reliable student data reports
available in both English and Spanish, enabling teachers to pinpoint where their Spanish-speaking or emergent bilingual students really are in their skill development and what instruction to prioritize.

Reading assessment validated for benchmark, progress monitoring, and dyslexia screening

Amplify Caminos + Amplify Reading

Amplify Reading is an engaging, adaptive digital program that extends the learning in Amplify Caminos. Amplify Reading offers support to a large sub-group of English learners (ELs) through Spanish voice-over. Spanish voiceover instructions are available in vocabulary and sentence-level comprehension games so ELs can build their vocabulary, language, and critical comprehension skills before moving into analyzing complex texts

Spanish Support

Demo access and sample materials

Ready to explore on your own? First, watch the videos below to learn about the program’s components and how to navigate the digital platform.

Physical materials walkthrough video



Digital navigation video

Demo access

Next, follow the instructions below to access your demo account.

Laptop screen displaying a login page for
  • Click the CKLA and Caminos Demo button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • To explore as a teacher, enter this username: t1.sfusdreviewer@demo.tryamplify.net
  • To explore as a student, enter this username: s1.sfusdreviewer@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter the password: Amplify1-sfusdreviewer
  • Click the Programs and apps menu
  • Select CKLA Teacher Resource Site
  • Select the desire grade level
  • Use the toggle to switch between English (CKLA) and Spanish (Caminos) resources.
CKLA and Caminos Demo

Sample materials

Finally, click on the grade levels below to explore your requested sample units.

Each book in our authentic literature collection was selected specifically to support and enhance the content of the K-2 Conocimiento Strand. These anchor texts are intended for use as an introduction to each domain—engaging students, piquing their curiosity, and building initial background knowledge—before diving into the deeper content of the domain Read-Alouds.

Every trade book has an instructional guide that includes the following:

  • Author and illustrator
  • Book summary
  • The Essential Question of the Knowledge domain, connecting the book to the domain
  • Key Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary words found in the book
  • A group activity to reinforce and extend students’ knowledge and understanding
  • A performance task to help gauge students’ comprehension of concepts in the text
  • Writing prompts to expand understanding and critical thinking
  • Text complexity ratings and descriptors for quantitative, qualitative, and reader/task categories

Download the Amplify Caminos Trade Book Collection Guide for Grades K–2.
Detailed information about text complexity ratings and descriptors; additional uses for the books before, during, and after domain instruction; and the complete list of domains and books for each grade level can be found in the More About the Books section of this guide.

Conocimiento Strand:

Lectoescritura Strand:

Conocimiento Strand:

Lectoescritura Strand:

Integrated Strand

Additional resources

Texas SLAR Literacy Adoption

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Introducing new units for Amplify CKLA and Amplify Caminos K–5

As part of our commitment to creating even richer and more wide-ranging curricula, we are excited to release six new units for both Amplify CKLA and Amplify Caminos!

Click here to learn more about Amplify CKLA.

Click here to learn more about Amplify Caminos.

About these units

Our brand-new Knowledge Research units carry forward the powerful and proven instructional approach of both Amplify CKLA and Amplify Caminos while also:

  • Adding more variety to engage students from many walks of life. The rich topics and highly visual components featured in these units provide students with even more “windows and mirrors” and perspectives as they work to build knowledge.
  • Adding more authentic literature. Each new research unit revolves around a collection of high-interest authentic trade books that will spark more curiosity and inspire more inquiry.
  • Adding more flexibility. Units can be implemented for extended core instruction during flex periods, district-designated Pausing Points, or enrichment periods.

Units cover a variety of rich and relevant topics:

Three illustrations: one shows people at a gaming session, the middle depicts a diverse group standing together, and the third portrays a group gardening outdoors.

With these new units, students will soar to new heights with Dr. Ellen Ochoa, Amelia Earhart, and the Tuskegee Airmen. They’ll feel the rhythm as they learn about Jazz legends Miles Davis, Tito Puente, and Duke Ellington. And they’ll explore the far reaches of the world with Jacques Cousteau, Matthew Henson, and Eugenie Clark.

  • Grade K: Art and the World Around Us/El arte y el mundo que nos rodea
  • Grade 1: Adventure Stories: Tales from the Edge of the World/Cuentos de aventuras: relatos desde los confines de la Tierra
  • Grade 2: Up, Up, and Away: The Age of Aviation/¡A volar! La era de la aviación
  • Grade 3: All That Jazz/Jazz y más
  • Grade 4: Energy: Past, Present, and Future/Energía: pasado, presente y futuro
  • Grade 5: Beyond Juneteenth: 1865 to present/Más allá de Juneteenth: de 1865 al presente

Units are available in English and Spanish, and will include the following components:

  • Teacher Guide
  • Student Activity Books
  • Image Cards
  • Trade Book Collection
  • Digital Components (grades K–3 and 5)

Grade K: Art and the World Around Us/El arte y el mundo que nos rodea

“Every child is an artist,” said Picasso, meaning that every child uses art to explore and understand the world around them. Art and the World Around Us honors that truth by introducing Kindergarten students to some of the ways in which artists have explored and understood the worlds around them, too.

This domain introduces students to artists from different time periods, countries, and cultures. Throughout the unit, students learn about different kinds of art and how artists use the world around them as they make art. They also connect this to what they have already learned about the earth, plants, and animals in other Amplify CKLA and Amplify Caminos domains: Farms/Granjas, Plants/Plantas, and Taking Care of the Earth/Cuidar el planeta Tierra. In addition, students connect this to what they have learned about sculptors in the Presidents and American Symbols/Presidentes y símbolos de los Estados Unidos domain. As they explore different artists and artistic traditions, they develop their ideas about how humans are connected to each other and to the world around them.

As you read the texts in this unit, students may observe ways in which the characters or subjects are both similar to and different from students. This is a good opportunity to teach students awareness and sensitivity, building on the idea that all people share some things in common, and have other things that make them unique. This unit also offers an excellent opportunity to collaborate with your school’s art teacher, as many lessons have suggested activities to help students understand the kind of art they are studying.

Within this unit, students have opportunities to:

  • Use details to describe art.
  • Identify three ways to create art.
  • Identify characteristics of cave art.
  • Sequence the steps of making pottery.
  • Describe how artists can create work connected to the world around them.
  • Describe what makes Kehinde Wiley’s portraits unique.
  • Explain how the texture of a surface can affect artwork created on it.
  • Explain what a sculpture is.
  • Describe what makes James Turrell’s artwork about the sky unique.
  • Explain what a museum is and what kinds of things you can see or do there.

Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • The First Drawing by Mordicai Gerstein
  • Van Gogh and the Sunflowers by Laurence Anholt
  • My Name is Georgia by Jeanette Winter
  • A Life Made by Hand by Andrea D’Aquino
  • Rainbow Weaver by Linda Elovitz Marshall
  • Luna Loves Art by Joseph Coelho

Grade 1: Adventure Stories: Tales from the Edge of the World/Cuentos de aventuras: relatos desde los confines de la Tierra

This domain introduces students to adventure stories set around the world and challenges students to dig into the adventures through research. By listening to the Read-Alouds and trade books, students increase their vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, learn valuable lessons about perseverance and teamwork, and become familiar with gathering information for research.

In this unit, students study the careers of real-world explorers Dr. Eugenie Clark and Sophia Danenberg, marvel at the inventions of Jacques Cousteau, think critically about how teamwork and collaboration can make greater adventures possible, learn about the science and technology that enable adventures, and research some of the ways humans have confronted challenges at the edges of the world, from the oceans below to space above.

Each lesson in the domain builds students’ research skills as they ask questions, gather information, and write a paragraph about their findings. Students share what they have learned about adventures in an Adventure Gallery Walkthrough. By taking on the persona of one of the adventurers they meet in the Read-Alouds and trade books, students deliver their final paragraphs as if they are a “speaking portrait” of that person. Students are invited to dress up as that adventurer if they desire.

In addition, teachers can set aside time outside of the instructional block to create the picture frames students will hold as they present to the Adventure Gallery Walk guests. Frames can be made from shirt boxes, cardboard, construction paper, or any art supplies that are on hand. This might be an opportunity to collaborate with the school’s art department if resources are available. Another option is to ask students to make their frames at home with their caregivers. On the day of the Adventure Gallery Walk, students will be the hosts and take on specific jobs, such as welcoming the guests, describing their work throughout the unit, and pointing out the areas of study on the domain bulletin board. You can find a complete list of student jobs in Lesson 13.

This unit builds upon the following Amplify CKLA and Amplify Caminos units that students will have encountered in the previous grade.

  • Nursery Rhymes and Fables/Rimas y fábulas infantiles (Kindergarten)
  • Stories/Cuentos (Kindergarten)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Adventure Stories: Tales from the Edge of the World. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • My Name is Gabito/Me llamo Gabito by Monica Brown
  • Tomas and the Galápagos Adventure by Carolyn Lunn
  • The Astronaut with a Song for the Stars: The Story of Dr. Ellen Ochoa by Julia Finley Mosca
  • Mae Among the Stars by Roda Ahmed
  • Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean’s Most Fearless Scientist by Jess Keating
  • Manfish by Jennifer Berne
  • Keep On! The Story of Matthew Henson, Co-Discoverer of the North Pole by Deborah Hopkinson
  • The Top of the World: Climbing Mount Everest by Steve Jenkins

Grade 2: Up, Up, and Away: The Age of Aviation/¡A volar! La era de la aviación

With this domain, students head up, up, and away with an introduction to the soaring history of aviation. Students learn the stories of early aviators, such as the Montgolfier brothers, the Wright brothers, Aída de Acosta, and Amelia Earhart.

During the unit, students study the science of flight, including the physics concept of lift, and research the social impacts of the world of flight. Finally, students let their research skills take flight as they explore key figures from the world of aviation.

The lessons in this domain build on earlier Grade 2 CKLA and Amplify Caminos domains about the westward expansion, early Greek civilizations, and Greek myths, and lay the foundation for learning about other periods of world history in future grades.

This unit builds upon the following Amplify CKLA and Amplify Caminos units that students will have encountered earlier in the year.

  • The Ancient Greek Civilization/La civilización griega antigua (Grade 2)
  • Greek Myths/Mitos griegos (Grade 2)
  • Westward Expansion/La expansión hacia el oeste (Grade 2)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Up, Up, and Away: The Age of Aviation. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • Up and Away!: How Two Brothers Invented the Hot-Air Balloon by Jason Henry
  • The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Blériot by Alice and Martin Provensen
  • The Flying Girl: How Aída de Acosta Learned to Soar by Margarita Engle
  • Wood, Wire, Wings: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane by Kirsten Larson
  • Helicopter Man: Igor Sikorsky and His Amazing Invention by Edwin Brit Wyckoff
  • The Tuskegee Airmen Story by Lynn Homan and Thomas Reilly
  • Skyward: The Story of Female Pilots in WWII by Sally Deng
  • Aim for the Skies: Jerrie Mock and Joan Merriam Smith’s Race to Complete Amelia Earhart’s Quest by Aimee Bissonette

Grade 3: All That Jazz/Jazz y más

This domain teaches students about the vibrant music, poetry, and culture of the Jazz Age in the United States. Students learn about famous writers and musicians like Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Melba Liston, Tito Puente, and Miles Davis. They study how the jazz art form took root in the South, then spread to the North to become the sound of the Harlem Renaissance, eventually connecting people around the world in musical expression.

During this unit, students perform guided research to further explore both the history of jazz and what jazz is today. They develop research skills and then use those skills to find deeper connections between the stories and music of the Jazz Age and music today. As students learn about the world of jazz, they collaborate and share ideas with their classmates. They also practice sharing feedback focused on their written work, and, at the end of the unit, students present their research to the group.

The lessons give students opportunities to dive into the rhythms and stories of jazz, utilizing the knowledge sequence in this unit to:

  • Collaboratively generate research questions about jazz, jazz musicians, contemporary musicians from the state where they live or have lived, and the evolution of jazz music.
  • Utilize Read-Alouds, independent reading, and partner reading to learn about the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, jazz music, and biographies of celebrated jazz musicians and writers.
  • Research the answers to their generated questions, gather information, write a short research essay about a famous jazz musician, write a short essay about a contemporary musician from the state where they live or have lived, and give a presentation about their research.

Within this unit, students have opportunities to:

  • Ask relevant questions and make pertinent comments
  • Identify details in texts
  • Determine key ideas of texts by evaluating details
  • Make text-based inferences
  • Generate questions based on prior knowledge and gathered information
  • Synthesize details across texts to demonstrate comprehension
  • Discuss and explain an author’s purpose
  • Identify and cite reliable primary and secondary sources of information
  • Compose a well-organized and focused informative essay
  • Make connections between topics
  • Present information using appropriate media

Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • Birth of the Cool: How Jazz Great Miles Davis Found His Sound by Kathleen Cornell Berman
  • Little Melba and Her Big Trombone by Kathryn Russell-Brown
  • Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson: Taking the Stage as the First Black and White Jazz Band in History by Lesa Cline-Ransome
  • Tito Puente, Mambo King by Monica Brown
  • Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music by Margarita Engle
  • Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra by Andrea Pinkney

In this unit, students also read the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. (Available for free through the Academy of American Poets website and the Poetry Foundation website, with recorded audio available through the website for John Hancock College Preparatory High School.)

Grade 4: Energy: Past, Present, and Future/Energía: pasado, presente y futuro

With this domain, students become tomorrow’s problem solvers in this study of energy in the United States. Analytical reading skills are developed by examining the challenges of early energy innovators. Students then read about current energy practices and young energy change-makers across the world.

Throughout the unit, students conduct research into different sources of energy and present a proposal, putting them in the shoes of future energy innovators. They also use the knowledge sequence in this unit to:

  • Collaboratively analyze texts to identify cause-effect and problem-solution relationships.
  • Generate questions and conduct research about energy.
  • Write an opinion essay making their case for a fuel of the future.
  • Create energy proposals using primary and secondary resources.

This unit builds upon the following Amplify CKLA units that students will have encountered in previous grades as well as earlier in the year.

  • Plants/Plantas (Grade K)
  • The History of the Earth/La historia de la Tierra (Grade 1)
  • Eureka! Student Inventor/¡Eureka! El arte de la invención (Grade 4)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Energy: Past, Present, and Future. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • Buried Sunlight: How Fossil Fuels Have Changed the Earth by Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm
  • Energy Island: How One Community Harnessed the Wind and Changed their World by Allan Drummond
  • The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Picture Book Edition by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

Grade 5: Beyond Juneteenth: 1865 to present/Más allá de Juneteenth: de 1865 al presente

Within this domain, Students learn about General Granger’s announcement in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, a day marked in history as Juneteenth. Texts and multimedia sources will support foundational knowledge-building about the end of slavery in the United States. A review of the first freedom announcement, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, provides students with background knowledge to further emphasize the significance of Juneteenth in American history.

This unit also takes students on a journey beyond Juneteenth, as they study specific contributions of African Americans from 1865 to the present day. Students participate in a virtual field trip to Emancipation Park in Houston, Texas and use the knowledge sequence in this unit to:

  • Collaboratively generate research questions about Juneteenth, The Great Migration, innovators and inventors, education, the humanities, activists, and allies.
  • Use Read-Alouds, independent, and partner reading to learn about African American contributions from 1865 to the present.
  • Research to find answers to their generated questions, gather information, and write a four-chapter Beyond Juneteenth book.

This unit builds upon the following Amplify CKLA units that students will have encountered in previous grades.

  • Native Americans/Los nativos americanos (Grade K)
  • A New Nation: American Independence/Una nueva nación: la independencia de los Estados Unidos
    (Grade 1)
  • The U.S. Civil War/La Guerra Civil de los Estados Unidos (Grade 2)
  • Immigration/La inmigración (Grade 2)
  • Native Americans/Los nativos americanos (Grade 5)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Beyond Juneteenth: 1865 to present. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom by Angela Johnson
  • The Great Migration: An American Story by Jacob Lawrence
  • Sing a Song: How “Lift Every Voice and Sing” Inspired Generations by Kelly Starling Lyons
  • Side by Side/ Lado a lado: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez/ La Historia de Dolores Huerta y Cesar Chavez by Monica Brown
  • Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters by Barack Obama

Amplify Caminos for SFUSD

Amplify Caminos is an authentic elementary Spanish language arts program. Like its English language counterpart, Amplify CKLA, Amplify Caminos provides explicit, systematic foundational skills instruction sequenced with deep knowledge-building content to foster comprehension. When used with Amplify CKLA, Amplify Caminos provides full parity across English and Spanish that’s suitable for any dual language implementation model.

Colorful illustration featuring a child in traditional Andean clothing, tropical plants, a volcano, a toucan, a horse rider, and the word "Gracias!" written in Spanish.

Amplify and SFUSD Partnership

We recognize and respect the unique differences of each of our partnering districts—and that includes San Francisco USD.

Out of the box, Amplify Caminos offers districts a rich, comprehensive, research-based SELA experience. That said, no two districts are exactly alike. To that end, we are committed to working with San Francisco USD to ensure that Amplify Caminos addresses the needs of your community. This includes providing implementation guidance and support, as well as collaborating with your staff to determine which domains need to be modified or exchanged.

What is Amplify Caminos?

Amplify Caminos is a core Spanish language arts program for grades TK–5 that delivers:

  • Authentic instruction built from the ground up for the Spanish language.
  • A unique research-based approach truly built on the Science of Reading.
  • A combination of explicit foundational skills with meaningful knowledge-building.
  • Embedded support and differentiation that gets all students reading grade-level texts together.
  • Opportunities for students to see the strengths and experiences that all people share while also celebrating each others’ unique identities and experiences.

Watch the video below to learn more about Amplify Caminos for Grades K–2.

Watch the video below to learn more about Amplify Caminos for Grades 3–5.

How does Amplify Caminos work?

Amplify Caminos is built on the science of how kids learn to read—in Spanish.

Amplify Caminos is all about helping you teach students how to read, all while giving them authentic and engaging reasons to read. That’s why Amplify Caminos develops foundational skills and builds knowledge in tandem.

  • Knowledge: Through complex and authentic Spanish read-alouds with an emphasis on classroom interactivity, oral comprehension, and contextual vocabulary, students start to build their awareness of the world around them—and the way the reading skills they’re building give them access to it.
  • Skills: Starting with the sounds at the core of the Spanish
    language, students practice their phonemic awareness, handwriting skills, vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. Through daily practice, students become aware of the connection between reading and writing, building confidence as they go.
A diagram illustrating reading development as intertwined strands: language comprehension and word recognition, progressing from basic skills to increasingly strategic and automatic reading.

Respecting the development differences between grade ranges, Amplify Caminos teaches foundational skills and background knowledge as two distinct strands in grades K–2, and combines them into one integrated strand in grades 3–5.

Grades K–2:
Every day, students in grades K–2 complete one full lesson that explicitly and systematically builds foundational reading skills in the Amplify Caminos Lectoescritura strand, as well as one full lesson that builds robust background knowledge to access complex text in the Amplify Caminos Conocimiento strand. Through learning in each of these strands, students develop the early literacy skills necessary to help them become confident readers and build the context to understand what they’re reading.

Grades 3–5:
In grades 3–5, the Amplify Caminos Lectoescritura and Conocimiento strands are integrated in one set of instructional materials. Lessons begin to combine skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater writing emphasis. Students can then use their skills to go on their own independent reading adventures.

What do Amplify Caminos students explore?

Amplify Caminos builds students’ knowledge about the world.

In addition to teaching all students to crack the written code (which is vital for fairness), the Amplify Caminos program helps students see the strengths and experiences we all share while celebrating their own unique identities and experiences.

This is accomplished through the exploration of topics and text that feature people who resemble students and familiar situations or experiences while also exposing them to people whose appearances, lives, beliefs, and backgrounds differ from their own.

Engaging domains

Amplify Caminos builds knowledge coherently across subjects and grades.

Throughout the program, students use their skills to explore domains that relate to storytelling, science, and the history of our world as seen through the eyes of many different groups.

Carefully selected to build from year-to-year, our grade-appropriate topics help students make and deepen connections while also reading, writing, and thinking creatively and for themselves.

Curriculum flowchart showing reading themes and activities from Kindergarten to Grade 5, organized by grade level and literary theme, with interconnected boxes for each topic.

New Knowledge Research Units for Grades K–5

Our brand-new Knowledge Research units carry forward Amplify Caminos’ powerful and proven instructional approach while also:

  • Adding more content for students from all walks of life. The rich topics and highly visual components featured in these units provide students with even more “windows and mirrors” and perspectives as they work to build knowledge.
  • Adding more authentic literature. Each new research unit revolves around a collection of high-interest authentic trade books that will spark more curiosity and inspire more inquiry.
  • Adding more flexibility. Units can be implemented for extended core instruction during flex periods, district-designated Pausing Points, or enrichment periods.

Units cover a variety of rich and relevant topics:

With these new units, students will soar to new heights with Dr. Ellen Ochoa, Amelia Earhart, and the Tuskegee Airmen. They’ll feel the rhythm as they learn about Jazz legends Miles Davis, Tito Puente, and Duke Ellington. And they’ll explore the far reaches of the world with Jacques Cousteau, Matthew Henson, and Eugenie Clark.

  • Grade K: El arte y el mundo que nos rodea
  • Grade 1: Cuentos de aventuras: relatos desde los confines de la Tierra
  • Grade 2: ¡A volar! La era de la aviación
  • Grade 3: Jazz y más
  • Grade 4: Energía: pasado, presente y futuro
  • Grade 5: Más allá de Juneteenth: de 1865 al presente

Units will be made available in English and Spanish, and will include the following components:

  • Teacher Guide
  • Student Activity Books
  • Image Cards
  • Trade Book Collection
  • Digital Components (for Grades K–3 and Grade 5 only)

Why we added this unit:
“Every child is an artist,” said Picasso, meaning that every child uses art to explore and understand the world around them. El arte y el mundo que nos rodea honors that truth by introducing Kindergarten students to some of the ways in which artists have explored and understood the world around them.

This domain introduces students to artists from different time periods, countries, and cultures. Throughout the unit, students learn about different kinds of art and how artists use the world around them as they make art. They also connect this to what they have already learned about the earth, plants, and animals in other Caminos domains: Granjas, Plantas, and Cuidar el planeta Tierra. In addition, students connect this to what they have learned about sculptors in the Presidentes y símbolos de los Estados Unidos domain. As they explore different artists and artistic traditions, they develop their ideas about how humans are connected to each other and to the world around them.

As you read the texts in this unit, students may observe ways in which the characters or subjects are both similar to and different from students. This is a good opportunity to teach students awareness and sensitivity, building on the idea that all people share some things in common, even as they have other things that make them unique. This unit also offers an excellent opportunity to collaborate with your school’s art teacher, as many lessons have suggested activities to help students understand the kind of art they are studying.

Within this unit, students have opportunities to:

  • Use details to describe art.
  • Identify three ways to create art.
  • Identify characteristics of cave art.
  • Sequence the steps of making pottery.
  • Describe how artists can create work connected to the world around them.
  • Describe what makes Kehinde Wiley’s portraits unique.
  • Explain how the texture of a surface can affect artwork created on it.
  • Explain what a sculpture is.
  • Describe what makes James Turrell’s artwork about the sky unique.
  • Explain what a museum is and what kinds of things you can see or do there.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • Georgia O’Keeffe por Erica Salcedo
  • Yayoi Kusama: De aquí al infinito por Sarah Suzuki
  • Tejedora del arcoíris por Linda Elovitz Marshall
  • Las tijeras de Matisse por Jeanette Winter
  • El museo por Susan Verde
  • Quizás algo hermoso: Cómo el arte transformó un barrio por F. Isabel Campoy

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
This domain introduces students to adventure stories set around the world and challenges students to dig into the adventures through research. By listening to the Read-Alouds and trade books, students increase their vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, learn valuable lessons about perseverance and teamwork, and become familiar with gathering information for research.

In this unit, students study the careers of real-world explorers Dr. Eugenie Clark and Sophia Danenberg, marvel at the inventions of Jacques Cousteau, think critically about how teamwork and collaboration can make greater adventures possible, learn about the science and technology that enable adventures, and research some of the ways humans have confronted challenges at the edges of the world, from the oceans below to space above.

Each lesson in the domain builds students’ research skills as they ask questions, gather information, and write a paragraph about their findings. Students share what they have learned about adventures in an Adventure Gallery Walkthrough. By taking on the persona of one of the adventurers they meet in the Read-Alouds and trade books, students deliver their final paragraphs as if they are a “speaking portrait” of that person. Students are invited to dress up as that adventurer if they desire.

In addition, teachers can set aside time outside the instructional block to create the picture frames students will hold as they present to the Adventure Gallery Walk guests. Frames can be made from shirt boxes, cardboard, construction paper, or any art supplies that are on hand. This might be an opportunity to collaborate with the school’s art department if resources are available. Another option is to ask students to make their frames at home with their caregivers. On the day of the Adventure Gallery Walk, students will be the hosts and take on specific jobs, such as welcoming the guests, describing their work throughout the unit, and pointing out the areas of study on the domain bulletin board. You can find a complete list of student jobs in Lesson 13.

How this unit builds knowledge:
This unit builds upon the following Caminos units that students will have encountered in the previous grade.

  • Rimas y fábulas infantiles (Kindergarten)
  • Cuentos (Kindergarten)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Cuentos de aventuras: relatos desde los confines de la Tierra. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • My Name Is Gabito/Me llamo Gabito por Monica Brown
  • Galápagos Girl/Galapagueña por Marsha Diane Arnold
  • My Name Is Gabriela/Me llamo Gabriela por Monica Brown
  • El viaje de Kalak por María Quintana Silva y Marie-Noëlle Hébert
  • Señorita Mariposa por Ben Gundersheimer
  • Sharuko, el arqueólogo peruano/Peruvian Archaeologist Julio C. Tello por Monica Brown
  • Abuelita fue al mercado por Stella Blackstone

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
With this domain, students head up, up, and away with an introduction to the soaring history of aviation. Students learn the stories of early aviators, such as the Montgolfier brothers, the Wright brothers, Aida de Acosta, and Amelia Earhart.

During the unit, students study the science of flight, including the physics concept of lift, and research the social impacts of the world of flight. Finally, students let their research skills take flight as they explore key figures from the world of aviation.

The lessons in this domain build on earlier Grade 2 Caminos domains about the westward expansion, early Greek civilizations, and Greek myths, and lay the foundation for learning about other periods of world history in future grades.

How this unit builds knowledge:
This unit builds upon the following Caminos units that students will have encountered earlier in the year.

  • La civilización griega antigua (Grade 2)
  • Mitos griegos (Grade 2)
  • La expansión hacia el oeste (Grade 2)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in ¡A volar! La era de la aviación. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • ¡A volar! Todo sobre aviones por Jennifer Prior
  • Amelia sabe volar por Mara dal Corso
  • Héroes de la aviación que cambiaron el mundo por Dan Green
  • El niño que alcanzó las estrellas por José M. Hernández
  • La niña que aprendió a volar por Sylvia Acevedo
  • Buenas Noches Capitán Mamá por Graciela Tiscareño-Sato

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
This domain teaches students about the vibrant music, poetry, and culture of the Jazz Age in the United States. Students learn about famous writers and musicians like Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Melba Liston, Tito Puente, and Miles Davis. They study how the jazz art form took root in the South, then spread to the North to become the sound of the Harlem Renaissance, eventually connecting people around the world in musical expression.

During this unit, students perform guided research to further explore both the history of jazz and what jazz is today. They develop research skills and then use those skills to find deeper connections between the stories and music of the Jazz Age and music today. As students learn about the world of jazz, they collaborate and share ideas with their classmates. They also practice sharing feedback focused on their written work, and, at the end of the unit, students present their research to the group.

The lessons give students opportunities to dive into the rhythms and stories of jazz, utilizing the knowledge sequence in this unit to:

  • Collaboratively generate research questions about jazz, jazz musicians, contemporary musicians from the state where they live or have lived, and the evolution of jazz music.
  • Utilize Read-Alouds, independent reading, and partner reading to learn about the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, jazz music, and biographies of celebrated jazz musicians and writers.
  • Research the answers to their generated questions, gather information, write a short research essay about a famous jazz musician, write a short essay about a contemporary musician from the state where they live or have lived, and give a presentation about their research.

How this unit builds knowledge:
Within this unit, students have opportunities to:

  • Ask relevant questions and make pertinent comments
  • Identify details in texts
  • Determine key ideas of texts by evaluating details
  • Make text-based inferences
  • Generate questions based on prior knowledge and gathered information
  • Synthesize details across texts to demonstrate comprehension
  • Discuss and explain an author’s purpose
  • Identify and cite reliable primary and secondary sources of information
  • Compose a well-organized and focused informative essay
  • Make connections between topics
  • Present information using appropriate media

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • ¡Esquivel! Un artista del sonido de la era espacial por Susan Wood
  • Ray Charles por Sharon Bell Mathis
  • Tito Puente, el Rey del Mambo por Monica Brown
  • Me llamo Celia, la vida de Celia Cruz por Monica Brown
  • ¡Azúcar! por Ivar Da Coll

In this unit, students also read the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. (Available for free through the Academy of American Poets website and the Poetry Foundation website, with recorded audio available through the website for John Hancock College Preparatory High School.)

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
With this domain, students become tomorrow’s problem solvers in this study of energy in the United States. Analytical reading skills are developed by examining the challenges of early energy innovators. Students then read about current energy practices and young energy change-makers across the world.

Throughout the unit, students conduct research into different sources of energy and present a proposal, putting them in the shoes of future energy innovators. They also use the knowledge sequence in this unit to:

  • Collaboratively analyze texts to identify cause-effect and problem-solution relationships.
  • Generate questions and conduct research about energy.
  • Write an opinion essay making their case for a fuel of the future.
  • Create energy proposals using primary and secondary resources.

How this unit builds knowledge:
This unit builds upon the following Caminos units that students will have encountered in previous grades as well as earlier in the year.

  • Plantas (Grade K)
  • La historia de la Tierra (Grade 1)
  • ¡Eureka! Estudiante inventor (Grade 4)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Energía: pasado, presente y futuro. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • La historia de los combustibles fósiles por William B. Rice
  • El niño que domó el viento por William Kamkwamba y Bryan Mealer

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Why we added this unit:
Within this domain, Students learn about General Granger’s announcement in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, a day marked in history as Juneteenth. Texts and multimedia sources will support foundational knowledge-building about the end of slavery in the United States. A review of the first freedom announcement, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, provides students with background knowledge to further emphasize the significance of Juneteenth in American history.

This unit also takes students on a journey beyond Juneteenth, as they study specific contributions of African Americans from 1865 to the present day. Students participate in a virtual field trip to Emancipation Park in Houston, Texas and use the knowledge sequence in this unit to:

  • Collaboratively generate research questions about Juneteenth, The Great Migration, innovators and inventors, education, the humanities, activists, and allies.
  • Use Read-Alouds, independent, and partner reading to learn about African American contributions from 1865 to the present.
  • Research to find answers to their generated questions, gather information, and write a four-chapter Beyond Juneteenth book.

How this unit builds knowledge:
This unit builds upon the following Caminos units that students will have encountered in previous grades.

  • Los nativos americanos (Grade K)
  • Una nueva nación: la independencia de los Estados Unidos (Grade 1)
  • La Guerra Civil de los Estaods Unidos (Grade 2)
  • La inmigración (Grade 2)
  • Los nativos americanos (Grade 5)

The specific core content targeted in these domains is particularly relevant to the Read-Alouds students will hear in Más allá de Juneteenth: de 1865 al presente
. The background knowledge students bring to this unit will greatly enhance their understanding of the trade books used in this unit.

Trade books in this unit:
Instruction in this unit revolves around the following collection of high-interest authentic trade books. One copy of each trade book is included with the unit materials.

  • Martí’s Song for Freedom/Martí y sus versos por la libertad escrito por Emma Otheguy
  • ¡Celebremos Juneteenth! escrito por Carole Boston Weatherford
  • Side by Side/Lado a Lado: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez/La Historia de Dolores Huerta y César Chávez escrito por Monica Brown
  • Canto de alabanza para el día: Poema para la ceremonia inaugural del mandato de Barack Obama escrito por Elizabeth Alexander, traducido por Rodrigo Rojas

Sample materials:
Take a sneak peek at the rich instruction and engaging activities for this unit by viewing the PDFs below.

Wide-ranging texts

Amplify Caminos puts a variety of texts in the hands of students every day.

Amplify Caminos includes both transadaptations and authentic texts written by Latin American and Spanish authors. Our texts feature a wide variety of authors, topics, individuals and characters representing many different socioeconomic statuses, ages, abilities, races, ethnicities, countries of origin, religions, and more.

Amplify Caminos texts include:

  • Authentic literature: Authentic literature exposes students to a variety of text types and perspectives to deepen their knowledge of fascinating topics in social studies, science, literature, and the arts. Authentic texts support text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text connections for readers.
  • Decodable Student Readers: Decodable Student Readers at grades K–2 are newly redesigned to include students from all walks of life and educational backgrounds. They feature characters with a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, ages, races, religions, and more.
  • ReadWorks® texts: Amplify and ReadWorks have partnered to deliver high-quality texts curated to support the Amplify Caminos Knowledge Sequence and to extend student learning. Texts include high-interest nonfiction articles in topics in social studies, science, literature, and the arts. These texts are accompanied by vocabulary supports and standards-aligned formative assessment opportunities. Teachers can monitor their students’ progress using the ReadWorks reporting features.
Three children's book covers in Spanish are shown: "La Flor de Oro," "El conejo en la Luna," and "El secreto de las hormigas," each featuring illustrated artwork.

Amplify Caminos Trade Book Collection Guide

Each book in our authentic literature collection was selected specifically to support and enhance the content of the K-2 Conocimiento Strand. These anchor texts are intended for use as an introduction to each domain—engaging students, piquing their curiosity, and building initial background knowledge—before diving into the deeper content of the domain Read-Alouds.

Every trade book has an instructional guide that includes the following:

  • Author and illustrator
  • Book summary
  • The Essential Question of the Knowledge domain, connecting the book to the domain
  • Key Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary words found in the book
  • A group activity to reinforce and extend students’ knowledge and understanding
  • A performance task to help gauge students’ comprehension of concepts in the text
  • Writing prompts to expand understanding and critical thinking
  • Text complexity ratings and descriptors for quantitative, qualitative, and reader/task categories

Download the Amplify Caminos Trade Book Collection Guide for Grades K–2.

Detailed information about text complexity ratings and descriptors; additional uses for the books before, during, and after domain instruction; and the complete list of domains and books for each grade level can be found in the More About the Books section of this guide.

What makes Amplify Caminos different?

Built on the Science of Reading

Built out of the latest research in the Science of Reading, Amplify Caminos delivers explicit instruction in both foundational literacy skills (systematic phonics, decoding, and fluency) and background knowledge in grades K–2 with an integrated approach to explicit instruction in grades 3–5.

Flowchart showing "Language comprehension" times "Word recognition" equals "Skilled reading," with text in both Spanish and English inside orange boxes.

Explicit systematic skills instruction

The skills instruction in Amplify Caminos was distinctly developed with the Spanish language in mind. Its foundational lessons are specific to the language, rather than a direct translation from Amplify CKLA’s English skills instruction.

Reading instruction begins with the vowels first, then the most common consonants, and finally the least common consonants. Students will blend and segment sounds to form syllables, and syllables to form words.

Although Spanish has a highly predictable orthography, there are a few silent letters (h is always silent, u is silent after g or q), as well as letters that can make different sounds, depending on the letters that follow them. For that reason, syllables with these letters are taught somewhat later in the progression. The same is true for syllables with infrequently occurring consonants, such as z, k, x, and w.

Coherent knowledge instruction

While students are learning how to read, the Conocimiento strand gives them authentic and engaging reasons to read.

Amplify Caminos uses spiral learning to reinforce every student’s ability to develop skills like reading, writing, speaking, and listening in Spanish that can be transferred to English. As students engage with their lessons, they explore the similarities and differences in grammar, vocabulary, writing, and language use between Spanish and English. This bridge helps students learning two languages to strengthen their knowledge in both.

Through cross-curricular content, students explore units that relate to storytelling, science, and the history of our world in a holistic and thoughtful way. With these units, you’ll bring the world to your students, showing them how reading can become an exciting, rewarding, and useful part of their lives.

Embedded differentiation for all learners

Amplify Caminos provides built-in differentiation strategies and supports in every lesson.

  • Apoyo a la enseñanza y desafío: Support and Challenge suggestions in every lesson provide assistance or opportunities for more advanced work toward the goal of the lesson.
  • Notas culturales: These point-of-use notes provide additional information about the traditions, foods, holidays, word variations, and more from across the Spanish-speaking world.
  • Apoyo adicional: Every lesson in the Lectoescritura (Skills) Strand provides additional support activities suggested to reinforce foundational skills instruction. These activities can be given to any student who requires extra help, including students with special needs.

Systematic and cohesive writing instruction

Writing instruction in Amplify Caminos builds systematically and cohesively within and across grades.

In Grades K-2, writing mechanics—including handwriting and spelling—are taught in the Amplify Caminos Lectoescritura strand. Starting in Grade 1, instruction includes four steps in the writing process: planning, drafting, editing, and publishing and features lessons that have modeling, collaboration, and sharing. As students gain skills and confidence, they are able to take on more of these steps independently. Students learn to use planning techniques, including brainstorming and graphic organizers.

Beginning in Grade 4, the Amplify Caminos writing process expands to also include sharing and evaluating. In Grades 4 and 5, the writing process is no longer conceptualized as a series of scaffolded, linear steps (an important change from the Grade 3 writing process). Rather, students move between components of the writing process in a flexible manner, similar to the process mature and experienced writers follow naturally.

young male students writing with a pencil

Amplify Caminos’ writing instruction provides a clear progression through the text types in each grade.

Because Amplify Caminos has two strands of lessons in Grades K-2, Lectoescritura and Conocimiento, students are exposed to both narrative and informational texts throughout the year. In Grades 3-5, the integrated units feature study in literary, informational, or a mix of both types of texts, depending on the content of the unit.

  • Grades K–2 introduce and establish the key elements of each text type, allowing students to gain comfort and confidence writing narratives, opinions, and informative texts. This enables students to practice thinking about content in different ways, offering more depth and breadth to their understanding of core content and of the writing text types.
  • By Grade 3, students will have gained significant practice in narrative, opinion/argumentative, and informational/explanatory forms of writing and will continue to apply those skills through Grade 5.

How does Amplify Caminos integrate with the other parts of the literacy system?

Amplify Caminos + mCLASS® Lectura

Achieve complete parity between English and Spanish assessments with mCLASS Lectura for K–6. mCLASS Lectura allows teachers to connect with their Spanish-speaking students face-to-face, one-on-one, and in the language most comfortable to them. The result? Valid and reliable student data reports
available in both English and Spanish, enabling teachers to pinpoint where their Spanish-speaking or emergent bilingual students really are in their skill development and what instruction to prioritize.

A laptop screen displays a slide describing the Lectura data-driven instructional cycle with sections for Assessment, Reporting, and Instruction, each illustrated with sample interface screenshots.

Amplify Caminos + Amplify Reading

Amplify Reading is an engaging, adaptive digital program that extends the learning in Amplify Caminos. Amplify Reading offers support to a large sub-group of English learners (ELs) through Spanish voice-over. Spanish voiceover instructions are available in vocabulary and sentence-level comprehension games so ELs can build their vocabulary, language, and critical comprehension skills before moving into analyzing complex texts

Language selection screen with options for English and Spanish, and an illustrated girl saying “¡Hola!” in a speech bubble. The heading reads “Idiomas.”.

Demo access and sample materials

Ready to explore on your own? First, watch the videos below to learn about the program’s components and how to navigate the digital platform.

Physical materials walkthrough video

Digital navigation video

Demo access

Next, follow the instructions below to access your demo account.

  • Click the CKLA and Caminos Demo button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • To explore as a teacher, enter this username: t1.sfusdreviewer@demo.tryamplify.net
  • To explore as a student, enter this username: s1.sfusdreviewer@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter the password: Amplify1-sfusdreviewer
  • Click the Programs and apps menu
  • Select CKLA Teacher Resource Site
  • Select the desire grade level
  • Use the toggle to switch between English (CKLA) and Spanish (Caminos) resources.
CKLA and Caminos Demo

Sample materials

Finally, click on the grade levels below to explore your requested sample units.

Conocimiento Strand:

Lectoescritura Strand:

Conocimiento Strand:

Lectoescritura Strand:

Integrated Strand

Additional resources

CKLA – Knowledge Research Units for K–5

To view this protected page, enter the password below:



Welcome, Ohio Department of Education and Workforce!

Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition builds on the principles and instruction of previous editions to provide better-than-ever support for teaching and learning. The focus continues on delivering evidence-based instruction across a system of multi-tiered supports aligned with the Science of Reading and Writing.

We’re excited to share this site, where you’ll find a range of materials and literacy tools including Reviewer Resources and Teaching Materials (Teacher Guides, Activity Books, and Student Readers) organized by grade and unit.

We welcome your thoughts and questions!

Reviewer resources

Alignment and scope and sequence

Core Comprehensive English Language Arts:

Core Foundational Skills:

Curriculum maps

Core Comprehensive English Language Arts:

Core Foundational Skills:

Kindergarten

Explore all available resources for Kindergarten, organized by strand and unit.

Core Comprehensive English Language Arts

Unit 1: Star Light, Star Bright: Nursery Rhymes and Fables

Unit 2: See, Hear, Smell, Taste, Touch: The Five Senses

Unit 3: Underdogs and Heroes: Stories

Unit 4: See How They Grow: Plants

Unit 5: Moo, Cluck, Oink: Farms

Unit 6: Deep Roots: Introduction to Native American Cultures

Unit 7: All Around the World: Geography

Unit 8 (Choice): Royal Tales: Monarchs

Unit 8 (Choice): National Icons: Presidents and American Symbols

Unit 9 (Choice): Our Planet: Taking Care of the Earth

Unit 9 (Choice): Rain and Rainbows: Seasons and Weather

Unit 10: Shaped by Nature: Art and the World Around Us

Core Foundational Skills

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Unit 7

Unit 8

Unit 9

Unit 10

Ancillary Components

  

Grade 1

Explore all available resources for Grade 1, organized by strand and unit.

Core Comprehensive English Language Arts

Unit 1: The Moral of the Story: Fables and Tales

Unit 2: From Nose to Toes: How Your Body Works

Unit 3: Common Threads: Different Lands, Similar Stories

Unit 4: Reach for the Stars: Astronomy

Unit 5: Charting the World: Geography

Unit 6: A World of Homes: Animals and Habitats

Unit 7: A New Nation: American Independence

Unit 8 (Choice): Once Upon a Time: Fairy Tales

Unit 8 (Choice): Our Planet: The History of the Earth

Unit 9 (Choice): From Babylon to the Nile: Early World Civilizations

Unit 9 (Choice): Early Americas: Maya, Aztec, and Inca

Unit 10: Adventure Stories: Tales from the Edge

Core Foundational Skills

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Unit 7

Ancillary Components

  

Grade 2

Explore all available resources for Grade 2, organized by strand and unit.

Core Comprehensive English Language Arts

Unit 1: Fortunes and Feats: Fairy Tales and Tall Tales

Unit 2: The Birthplace of Democracy: Ancient Greece

Unit 3: Legends and Heroes: Greek Myths

Unit 4: Our Planet: Cycles in Nature

Unit 5: Butterflies, Bees, and Beetles: Insects

Unit 6: A House Divided: The American Civil War

Unit 7: Sounds and Stanzas: Poetry

Unit 8 (Choice): Journeys to America: Immigration

Unit 8 (Choice): Making a Difference: Creating Change

Unit 9 (Choice): Building Blocks: All About Nutrition

Unit 9 (Choice): Early Asian Civilizations: India and China

Unit 10: Taking Flight: The Age of Aviation

Core Foundational Skills

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Ancillary Components

    

Grade 3

Explore all available resources for Grade 3, organized by unit.

Core Comprehensive English Language Arts

Unit 1: Timeless Tales: Classic Stories

Unit 2: Fur, Fins, and Feathers: Animal Classification

Unit 3: Rhythm and Rhyme: Poetry

Unit 4: Rise and Fall: Ancient Rome

Unit 5: Our Solar System and Beyond: Astronomy

Unit 6: Regions and Cultures: Native Americans

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: Charlotte’s Web

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: Stella Díaz Has Something to Say

Unit 8 (Choice): Systems and Senses: The Human Body

Unit 8 (Choice): From Glow to Echo: Light and Sound

Unit 9: From Blues to Bebop: All That Jazz

Ancillary Components

Supplemental Skills Units

Grade 3 Supplemental Skills units are included in core classroom kits, although the instruction isn’t required for Grade 3 standards coverage.

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

 

Grade 4 Core Comprehensive ELA

Explore all available resources for Grade 4, organized by unit.

Unit 1: My Story, My Voice: Personal Narratives

Unit 2: Knights and Castles: Europe’s Middle Ages

Unit 3: Meaning and Metaphor: Poetry

Unit 4: Eureka! Student Inventor

Unit 5: Our Planet: Geology

Unit 6: Road to Independence: The American Revolution

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Season of Styx Malone

Unit 8 (Choice): Crafting Stories: A World of Tales

Unit 8 (Choice): Adventure on the High Seas: Treasure Island

Unit 9: Inspiration and Ingenuity: American Innovation

Ancillary Components

Grade 5 Core Comprehensive ELA

Explore all available resources for Grade 5, organized by unit.

Unit 1: In My Own Words: Personal Narratives

Unit 2: Early Americas: Maya, Aztec, and Inca

Unit 3: Visions in Verse: Poetry

Unit 4: A Knight’s Tale: Don Quixote

Unit 5: The Deep Blue World: Oceans

Unit 6: Cultures and Histories: Native Americans

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Phantom Tollbooth

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Science of Breakable Things

Unit 8 (Choice): Arts and Culture: The Renaissance

Unit 8 (Choice): Through the Forest: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Unit 9: Building Up the World: Global Architecture

Ancillary Components

Digital platform

In the 2025-26 school year, Amplify CKLA’s all-in-one platform will offer essential tools that streamline instruction for teachers and engage students with meaningful content. Teachers can plan and deliver lessons efficiently, while students can access assignments, assessments, and fun practice games.

Presentation Screens
Deliver interactive lessons with ready-made, customizable slides for every lesson.

Auto-scored digital assessments
Assess vocabulary, comprehension, and knowledge development at the end of each K–2 Knowledge and 3–5 Integrated Unit.

Standards-based reports
Identify strengths and growth areas for individuals, small groups, or your entire class. Interactive dashboards offer detailed results from assessments and activities.

Skill-building practice games
Engage students with interactive games that reinforce concepts and make learning fun. Powered by Boost Reading™, these games align with lessons and provide real-time feedback.

eReader
Students access texts, take notes, and use audio-enabled eReaders to enhance their reading experience.

Sound Library
Students watch articulation videos and listen to songs for each sound to support phonological awareness.

Vocab App
Helps students in Grades 3-5 practice Amplify CKLA Tier 2 vocabulary words with fun, interactive games.

Intervention Toolkit
Offers user-friendly resources designed to aid educators in identifying and addressing deficiencies in students’ foundation skills.

Program support resources

Additional program resource documents:

Bring the world to students with a proven PreK–5 literacy curriculum

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is the leading early literacy curriculum grounded in the Science of Reading. By combining knowledge-building and research-based foundational skills, our instruction guides educators in developing strong readers, writers, and thinkers.

With a powerful online platform and a parallel Spanish language arts curriculum, Amplify CKLA provides a comprehensive solution for PreK–5 educators and students. Para la versión en español, haga clic aquí.

Request samples

Background knowledge drives results

The Amplify CKLA PreK–5 literacy curriculum equips students with rich knowledge that intentionally builds to inspire curiosity and drive results. Explore research revealing the power of our knowledge-based curriculum including a study that meets qualifications for ESSA Tier I: Strong Evidence.

Amplify CKLA serves

38,000+

Classrooms

2,700,000+

Students

50

U.S. States and D.C.

Independently and rigorously reviewed

Amplify CKLA is among the few curricula that is both recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign—for its excellence in intentionally building knowledge—and rated all-green on EdReports, earning green scores across all gateways.


Read the review on EdReports

Our approach

Grounded in the Science of Reading and following the Core Knowledge approach, the Amplify CKLA PreK–5 curriculum combines rich content knowledge in history, science, literature, and the arts with systematic, research-based foundational skills instruction.

Grounded in the Science of Reading

As the first publisher to build a curriculum based on the Science of Reading, we put research into action with explicit systematic foundational skills instruction alongside a proven knowledge-building sequence. In collaboration with education experts and practitioners, we provide powerful resources that drive real results. Explore our Science of Reading success stories.

Developing foundational skills with explicit, systematic instruction

Amplify CKLA’s research-based scope and sequence progresses from simple to more complex skill development, starting with phonological and phonemic awareness. Instruction guides you in explicitly teaching the 150 spellings for the 44 sounds of English, with an intentional progression and review of skills to set your students up for success.

Following a proven knowledge-building approach

Following the Core Knowledge Sequence–a content-specific, cumulative, and coherent approach to building knowledge–students dig deeper and make connections across content areas to build a robust knowledge base for comprehending complex texts. See how the Core Knowledge curriculum is proven to improve reading scores and eliminate achievement gaps.

Built in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation

Amplify CKLA is the premier high-quality instructional materials offering for elementary language arts, built in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation to help students effectively develop deep content knowledge and foundational skills.

Learn more about the Core Knowledge Foundation

Cultivating biliteracy with parallel English and Spanish programs

Amplify Caminos is the perfect Spanish language arts partner to Amplify CKLA. The aligned programs combine rich content knowledge with systematic foundational skills instruction grounded in the Science of Reading that follows biliteracy principles, and supports multiple teaching models.

Learn more about Amplify Caminos

Amplify CKLA efficacy study

Tier I ESSA Evidence: Amplify CKLA knowledge-building improves achievement.

Download now

What’s included

The program provides engaging print and multimedia materials designed to build a robust literacy-rich foundation in every classroom.

CoreELD and companions

High-quality teacher materials

Amplify CKLA teachers effectively deliver instruction with print and digital resources, including:

  • Teacher Guides with embedded differentiation.
  • Formal and informal assessments.
  • Ready-made and customizable lesson slides.
  • Trade books and Novel Guides.
  • Teacher resources and on-demand professional development.

Immersive student resources

Amplify CKLA students stay engaged with a variety of print and digital resources, including:

  • Original decodables and read-aloud Big Books (K–2), Student Readers (3–5), and trade books (K–5).
  • Student Activity Books with embedded assessments (K–5).
  • Research units for independent research built around a trade book (K–5).
  • Poet’s Journal and Writer’s Journal (write-in student readers for Grades 4–5).
  • Quests for the Core to support immersive, problem-based learning in Grades 3–5.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources help students practice key skills using fun, varied approaches that build independence.

  • Chaining Folder (K)
  • Letter Cards (K–2)
  • Syllable Cards (K–2)
  • Image Cards (K–3)
  • Blending Picture Cards (K)
  • Consonant and Vowel Code Flip Books (1–2)
  • Exclusive digital Sound Library

Robust digital experience

Amplify CKLA teacher and student resources are available through a digital experience platform that enhances instruction and saves you time. With everything you need in one place, you can effectively plan lessons, present content, and review student work.

  • Ready-made yet customizable lesson presentation slide decks
  • Dynamic live-review student tool
  • Interactive and student-friendly experience
  • LMS integration
  • Knowledge Builder animated videos
  • Recorded Read-Alouds
  • Professional development website
  • Real-time program support via email, live chat, and phone

English Language Learner program

Language Studio, designed for Amplify CKLA, provides WIDA-aligned daily instruction for English Language Learners to deepen their academic English.

Writing explorations program

A unique companion for Amplify CKLA, Writing Studio provides a deep dive into informational, narrative, and opinion writing to build strong, passionate writers.

Covers of four "Writing Studio Teacher Guide" books for different grades, featuring educational icons in orange, purple, blue, and teal color schemes.
All materials

Explore more programs based on the Science of Reading

All of the programs in our literacy suite are designed to support and complement each other. Learn more about our related programs:

Amplify Caminos

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Boost Reading

Boost Reading is a Science of Reading K–5 personalized reading program that’s he…

mCLASS

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See all programs

What’s included in our Spanish language arts curriculum

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is available in both English and Spanish. Amplify Caminos al Conocimiento Esencial, our robust Spanish language arts companion for grades K–5, supports multiple teaching models, including dual language immersion and transitional classrooms.

A laptop screen displays a kindergarten instructional webpage in Spanish, showing lesson categories with illustrated thumbnails and navigation options.

Year at a glance

The program’s intentional Knowledge Sequence from K–5 connects knowledge and vocabulary within a grade level and across grade levels, for deeper reading comprehension and preparation for college, career, and life. Instead of “activating prior knowledge,” Amplify Caminos helps you build it in the classroom from day one, for every child, expanding each student’s knowledge base long before they transition to reading to learn.

Curriculum flowchart showing reading themes and activities from Kindergarten to Grade 5, organized by grade level and literary theme, with interconnected boxes for each topic.

Units & domains at a glance

Each Knowledge Domain in grades K–2 and Unit in grades 3–5 varies in the number of days based on instructional purpose. Just as with our top-rated Amplify CKLA program, the Amplify Caminos materials engage and delight young learners with resources that are both appealing and original.

Una mujer rubia con un vestido azul cuida ovejas blancas y negras, sosteniendo un bastón de pastor. Un cerdo vestido de azul corre y un hombre de negro toca el violín en una valla. Al fondo hay una casa.

Domain

Nursery Rhymes and Fables/Rimas y fábulas infantiles

Start learning about literature with these classic Mother Goose rhymes.

Ilustración de tres personas en un paisaje cubierto de hierba, una tratando de atrapar mariposas con una red, otra escondiéndose detrás de una escultura alta y frondosa de una mano y otra con binoculares.

Domain

The Five Senses/Los cinco sentidos

Learning about the body starts with learning about how we experience the world.

Una ilustración que representa a un gran lobo con sombrero de copa liderando un desfile de animales y personas con instrumentos musicales a través de un paisaje montañoso.

Domain

Stories/Cuentos

Learn about the parts of a book and some of the stories that go in one.

Una ilustración vibrante de una escena rural con colinas, una granja, una mariposa, un sol brillante, varias verduras como tomates y lechugas, y un gusano en el suelo.

Domain

Plants/Plantas

Discover the lifecycle of plants and the history of George Washington Carver.

Ilustración de una escena de granja que muestra un camión rojo que transporta verduras, campos de cultivo, vacas pastando en una colina, un granero y un molino de viento contra un cielo azul.

Domain

Farms/Granjas

Now we know how plants make their food… but what about animals?

Ilustración de un nativo remando en una canoa en un río con búfalos pastando en un campo, tipis al fondo y pájaros volando en el cielo bajo un sol brillante.

Domain

Native Americans/Los nativos americanos

Who were the first people in America? A look at the Lenape, Wampanoag, and Lakota Sioux.

Una ilustración muestra un rey y una reina en tronos, un castillo en un acantilado y una mujer con enanos cerca de un árbol. Cortinas rojas enmarcan la escena.

Domain

Kings and Queens/Reyes y reinas

To understand fairy tales, it’s best to first understand royalty.

Ilustración que muestra las cuatro estaciones: primavera con flores, verano con árboles verdes, otoño con hojas que caen e invierno con nieve y gente en trineo. Un niño lee debajo de un árbol.

Domain

Seasons and Weather/Las estaciones y el tiempo

The study of natural cycles continues with the weather and why it happens.

Un velero de madera con símbolos de cruz roja en sus velas navega cerca de una isla tropical con exuberante vegetación y palmeras. A lo lejos se ven otros dos barcos en el agua.

Domain

Columbus and the Pilgrims/Colón y los peregrinos

A look at the first contact between Europe and the Americas, and some of its results.

Una escena histórica muestra gente afuera de una gran mansión de estilo colonial con dos chimeneas. En primer plano se ve un carruaje tirado por caballos y a la izquierda se ve una casa más pequeña.

Domain

Colonial Towns and Townspeople/Las colonias y sus habitantes

Before the War for Independence, how did the town and country depend on one another?

Ilustración de personas clasificando materiales reciclables en un parque cerca de un río contaminado. Las fábricas emiten humo al fondo, mientras que las mariposas, las flores y los árboles están presentes en el primer plano.

Domain

Taking Care of the Earth/Cuidar el planeta Tierra

We only have one Earth—here are some ways to help care for it.

Ilustración del Monte Rushmore con los rostros tallados de cuatro presidentes de Estados Unidos. Un águila vuela en primer plano.

Domain

Presidents and American Symbols/Presidentes y símbolos de los Estados Unidos

Start learning about government through the lives of five presidents.

Una ilustración caprichosa que muestra animales de granja alrededor de una casa en un árbol junto a un río. Un zorro, un conejo y una oveja interactúan mientras la gente acampa junto a una fogata al fondo. Una araña cuelga del árbol.

Domain

Fables and Stories/Fábulas y cuentos

Learn some of the key elements of a story through classic fables.

Ilustración que presenta anatomía humana, actividades de estilo de vida saludable, profesionales médicos, símbolos dietéticos, una ambulancia y microorganismos, destacando la conexión entre salud, nutrición y ejercicio.

Domain

The Human Body/El cuerpo humano

What are germs? What are the organs? And what does it all have to do with health?

Una ilustración que presenta varias escenas de cuentos de hadas y folclore, incluida una calabaza grande, un tigre, Caperucita Roja, personas con atuendos tradicionales y una pagoda roja con una montaña de fondo.

Domain

Different Lands, Similar Stories/Tierras diferentes, cuentos similares

A world tour of storytelling, and the stories that stay the same across the world.

Ilustración que muestra el antiguo Egipto con pirámides, la Esfinge, agricultores arando un campo con bueyes y ganado pastando bajo un cielo soleado.

Domain

Early World Civilizations/Antiguas civilizaciones del mundo

Rivers, farming, writing, and laws: just what does it take to build a civilization?

Escena ilustrada de la antigua Mesoamérica con maíz, un río, agricultores y pirámides al fondo. En primer plano se ve a una persona con traje tradicional.

Domain

Early American Civilizations/Antiguas civilizaciones de América

What will we find in the great temples of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca civilizations?

Ilustración de la exploración espacial: se lanza un cohete, un astronauta se para cerca de un módulo de aterrizaje, una persona usa un telescopio y aparece un planeta distante con anillos sobre un fondo estrellado.

Domain

Astronomy/Astronomía

How the Earth relates to the moon, the sun, and the rest of the planets.

Dos paleontólogos en un paisaje volcánico examinan fósiles en primer plano, mientras un volcán emite humo y lava al fondo.

Domain

The History of the Earth/La historia de la Tierra

Just what lies beneath the Earth’s surface, and what can it teach us about the past?

Una escena de vida silvestre diversa que presenta un cactus del desierto con un pájaro, un conejo, elefantes, un león, un oso polar sobre el hielo y montañas distantes bajo un cielo nublado.

Domain

Animals and Habitats/Los animales y sus hábitats

A look at the connection between how animals live and where they make their homes.

Una princesa con un vestido rosa sostiene una rana junto a un arroyo con un castillo, árboles y gente al fondo. En primer plano camina un zorro con un sombrero con una pluma roja.

Domain

Fairy Tales/Cuentos de hadas

What do fairy tales have to teach us about how stories are told?

Ilustración que muestra una escena histórica con soldados, veleros y hombres con atuendo colonial discutiendo en el interior.

Domain

A New Nation: American Independence/Una nueva nación: la independencia de los Estados Unidos

The story of the birth of the United States out of the 13 Colonies.

Los pioneros con carros cubiertos y caballos señalan hacia un valle con tipis nativos, fogatas y humo elevándose. Un oso se encuentra sobre una roca y se ven montañas al fondo.

Domain

Frontier Explorers/Exploradores de la Frontera

The story of the journey west from the newborn U.S.A. to find the Pacific Ocean.

Un hombre con un hacha se encuentra entre paisajes exagerados con un castillo, un tren con humo, un buey azul y una persona con un mono observando la escena.

Domain

Fairy Tales and Tall Tales/Cuentos de hadas y cuentos exagerados

Learn about exaggeration and characterization on the frontier.

Ilustración de un paisaje vibrante que presenta diversos monumentos culturales, incluidos templos, palacios, pirámides, una escena de elefantes, montañas distantes y fuegos artificiales en el cielo.

Domain

Early Asian Civilizations/Antiguas civilizaciones de Asia

Tour the world of classical civilization, starting with India and China.

Ilustración que muestra la antigua Grecia con un anfiteatro, estatuas, soldados con armadura, un barco y un templo en una colina rodeada de vegetación.

Domain

Ancient Greek Civilization/La civilización griega antigua

The tour continues with the philosophy and politics of Greece.

Illustration of various mythological scenes including greek gods, a flying horse, and roman architecture under a sunny sky.

Domain

Greek Myths/Mitos griegos

Dive deep into the characters and storytelling of classic myths.

Ilustración de una batalla entre barcos británicos y estadounidenses cerca de un fuerte. El barco británico está a la izquierda con soldados, mientras que el barco estadounidense está a la derecha. La gente porta una gran bandera estadounidense en primer plano.

Domain

The War of 1812/La guerra de 1812

Learn about America’s “Second War for Independence.”

Un paisaje nevado con un zorro durmiendo en una madriguera, gente corriendo y andando en bicicleta por un sendero y árboles que muestran los cambios estacionales.

Domain

Cycles in Nature/Los ciclos de la naturaleza

Introducing the natural cycles that make our lives possible.

Ilustración de carros cubiertos tirados por caballos a lo largo de un sendero en el desierto, con un coyote aullando sobre una alta formación rocosa y un tren de vapor al fondo.

Domain

Westward Expansion/La expansión hacia el oeste

Why did pioneers go west? What happened to the people who were there?

Ilustración de un jardín vibrante con flores, abejas, mariposas, una oruga en una hoja, una crisálida y un apicultor que maneja una colmena junto a un estanque.

Domain

Insects/Los insectos

Lay the grounds for animal classification by looking at solitary and social insects.

Ilustración de una escena histórica con gente escuchando el discurso de un hombre en una plataforma. Al fondo se ve un río y una procesión de personas. En primer plano hay un documento de proclamación.

Domain

The U.S. Civil War/La Guerra Civil de los Estados Unidos

Begin to grapple with U.S. history’s central crisis over slavery.

Una escena en la que aparece una persona explicando un diagrama anatómico humano, otra persona haciendo ejercicio, una cadena de ADN, campos y un microscopio de fondo.

Domain

Human Body: Building Blocks and Nutrition/El cuerpo humano: componentes básicos y nutrición

A deeper dive into the digestive system and the nutrition process.

Un grupo diverso de personas se encuentra en un muelle con vistas a un bullicioso puerto con barcos y un gran barco, un avión volando por encima y la Estatua de la Libertad al fondo.

Domain

Immigration/La inmigración

Why did people immigrate to the United States, and what did they find here?

Women in early 20th-century clothing march with signs for voting rights and justice in front of a yellow bus labeled "Cleveland Ave.," making history that can inspire lessons in a K–2 language arts curriculum.

Domain

Fighting for a Cause/Luchar por una causa

How people can do extraordinary things to make the world better for everyone.

Dos ratones antropomórficos en un bote de remos, uno de ellos remando, navegan por un río tranquilo rodeado de exuberante vegetación y árboles. El ratón que rema lleva una chaqueta azul y el otro ratón parece conversar.

Unit 1

Classic Tales: The Wind in the Willows/Cuentos Clásicos: El viento en los sauces

A deep dive into character, theme, and POV in classic stories from around the world.

Ilustración de un jaguar, una garza, una rana roja, una tortuga y un pez en un paisaje vibrante con montañas y vegetación bajo un cielo soleado.

Unit 2

Animal Classification/La clasificación de los animales

How do we classify different animals by their appearance and behavior?

Ilustración de una figura humana que muestra la anatomía interna, incluidos el cerebro, los pulmones, el corazón, el sistema digestivo y una articulación de la cadera resaltada sobre un fondo degradado.

Unit 3

The Human Body: Systems and Senses/El cuerpo humano: sistemas y sentidos

Let’s take a closer look at how the skeleton, muscles, and nervous system all work.

Un ángel se arrodilla ante una mujer sentada en un sofá dorado encima de un templo en una noche estrellada. Unas escaleras conducen al templo en un paisaje montañoso.

Unit 4

The Ancient Roman Civilization/La civilización romana antigua

What is Rome’s greatest cultural contribution? In this unit, your students decide.

Ilustración de un perro saltando bajo un árbol, persiguiendo una abeja, con una mesa en primer plano sosteniendo una jarra y vasos de limonada. El sol brilla intensamente en el cielo.

Unit 5

Light and Sound/La luz y el sonido

The science behind all the ways we see and hear the world.

Un barco vikingo con una proa en forma de dragón navega en el océano bajo un cielo azul con nubes. El barco tiene una sola vela grande y varios escudos recubren sus costados.

Unit 6

The Viking Age/La era vikinga

An immersive narrative experience about what life was like in Viking communities.

Ilustración de una escena espacial con varios planetas y anillos sobre un fondo de estrellas. Dos planetas grandes dominan el primer plano y se ven planetas más pequeños al fondo.

Unit 7

Astronomy: Our Solar System and Beyond/Astronomía: nuestro sistema solar y más allá

More about our universe, including a writing project about daily life on a space station.

Una persona sentada en el borde de un acantilado con vistas a un vasto paisaje desértico con nubes arremolinadas en el cielo.

Unit 8

Native Americans: Regions and Cultures/Los nativos americanos: regiones y culturas

How did Native American nations change their way of life in different parts of the world?

Ilustración de un velero en el océano con la costa este de América del Norte visible a la izquierda.

Unit 9

Early Explorations of North America/La exploración europea de América del Norte

What was it like to sail to North America with the early European explorers?

Una pintura representa una escena del siglo XVII con colonos, un velero al fondo y un hombre conduciendo un carro tirado por caballos cargado de mercancías. Se ve a otras personas descargando y trabajando cerca.

Unit 10

Colonial America/La época colonial en los Estados Unidos

A study of the very different ways of life in the different pre-U.S. colonies.

Ilustración que muestra el ciclo de la vida: un esqueleto en el suelo, un pájaro posado en una cerca, otro pájaro en una planta y un ave rapaz más grande arriba, todos conectados por flechas circulares.

Unit 11

Ecology/Ecología

Students keep ecologist’s journals to learn about our world and how best to protect it.

Una mano alcanza una manzana verde en una rama. Cerca hay una brújula, un termómetro, un lápiz, notas musicales y un granero rojo sobre un paisaje cubierto de hierba.

Unit 1

Personal Narratives/Narrativas personales

Read stories of personal experience… and learn to reflect on your own.

Ilustración medieval que representa un grupo de figuras con armadura a la entrada de un alto castillo gris con puente levadizo, adornado con banderas y rodeado por un paisaje decorado y fondos ornamentados.

Unit 2

Empires in the Middle Ages/Los imperios en la Edad Media, parte 1 & Los imperios en la Edad Media, parte 2

Explore the medieval history of Europe and the Middle East.

Ilustración dorada de un dragón con alas sobre fondo beige, rodeado de diversos elementos decorativos como estrellas, hojas y estampados abstractos.

Unit 3

Poetry/Poesía

Study the poetry of many nations using licensed text anthologies, and begin to write your own.

Vintage styled illustrations of a microscope, an old telephone, and a clock on textured background with geometric patterns.

Unit 4

Eureka! Student Inventor/¡Eureka! Estudiante inventor

Transform the class into a lab for students to build and present inventions.

Formaciones rocosas en un paisaje desértico con capas vibrantes y arremolinadas de arenisca roja, naranja y amarilla bajo un cielo parcialmente nublado.

Unit 5

Geology/Geología

Plate tectonics, volcanoes, erosion: all the forces that shape the Earth.

Una imagen abstracta y colorida que representa varias formas geométricas de edificios sobre un fondo azul estampado.

Unit 6

Contemporary Fiction with excerpts from The House on Mango Street/Ficción Contemporánea con Fragmentos de La Casa en Mango Street

Explore The House on Mango Street… and write a book while doing it.

Cuadro que representa a un hombre y un niño tocando una gran campana en una torre, con espectadores al fondo y un cartel de "LIBERTAD" visible.

Unit 7

American Revolution/La Revolución estadounidense

Why did America seek independence? Let’s investigate the causes and effects.

Un pequeño bote de remos con tres personas navega por mares agitados mientras dos grandes barcos luchan al fondo, con humo y fuego visibles.

Unit 8

Treasure Island/La Isla del Tesoro

How dSeek the treasure of plot in this detailed study of a classic fiction adventure.

Unit 1

Personal Narratives/Narrativas personales

Through writing and sharing their writing, students begin to identify themselves as writers.

Unit 2

Early American Civilizations/Las primeras civilizaciones americanas

Students craft a codex to explain the rise and fall of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca people.

Dos jinetes medievales a caballo, uno de ellos con la espada en alto, avanzan por un terreno rocoso. El fondo presenta un paisaje brumoso bajo un tono violeta.

Unit 3

Poetry/Poesía

Students close read many forms of poetry… and learn to write them.

Collage ilustrado con un paraguas, un cuervo, un sextante náutico, estrellas, una luna creciente y una brújula sobre un fondo beige texturizado.

Unit 4

Adventures of Don Quixote/Las Aventuras de Don Quijote

Was Don Quixote right to fight the windmill? In this full-length novel study, students decide.

Unit 5

The Renaissance/El Renacimiento

Exploring the art and literature of the Renaissance through the works of its masters.

Tres hombres vestidos con ropa de época examinan una gran hoja de papel dentro de una imprenta. Un hombre parece llevar un delantal, mientras que otro señala el papel y el tercero observa de cerca.

Unit 6

The Reformation/La Reforma

How did the printing press transform the religion and society of Europe?

Patrón botánico morado y lila con hojas, plantas y formas abstractas, incluida una luna creciente y estrellas, sobre un fondo violeta oscuro.

Unit 7

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream/Sueño de Una Noche de Verano de William Shakespeare

Students enter the world of Shakespeare by reading, designing, and acting out his work.

Retrato en tonos sepia de una joven de pelo largo, con un collar de pedrería y un chal drapeado.

Unit 8

Native Americans/Los nativos americanos

How did the policies of the U.S. government impact Native American culture and lives?

Una lupa sobre documentos que contienen una pintura de paisaje de montañas, un dibujo con la etiqueta "Raptor Claw" y una nota adhesiva con la "Pista n.° 2". También se ven un sobre y una insignia exterior.

Unit 9

Chemical Matter/Química

Students use knowledge of chemistry to solve a mystery.

Print & digital components

The program includes instructional guidance and student materials for a year of instruction, with lessons and activities that keep students engaged every day.

Component

FORMAT

Knowledge (Conocimientos) Teacher Guides (K–2)

Knowledge Strand Teacher Guides contain Amplify CKLA’s cross-curricular read-alouds and application activities, all of which are standards-based to build mastery of content knowledge and literacy skills. There is one Teacher Guide per Knowledge Domain.

Print and digital

Knowledge Image Cards (K–2)

Amplify Caminos includes Image Cards for each Knowledge Domain to bring each topic to life through vivid visuals.

Print and digital

Knowledge Flip Books (K–2)

Projectable Flip Books are provided to accompany the read-alouds in each Knowledge Domain.

Digital

Teacher Guides (3–5)

Teacher Guides for grades 3–5 units are based on content-rich topics and incorporate reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in the context of background knowledge. There is one Teacher Guide per unit.

Print or digital

Teacher Resource Site (K–5)

The program includes a one-stop-shop website for lesson projections, digital versions of all Amplify Caminos materials, lesson planning resources, multimedia (such as eBooks), and more.

Digital

Professional Learning Site (K–5)

The Professional Learning site includes training materials, best practices, and other resources to develop program expertise. Access professional development anywhere, anytime.

Digital

Component

FORMAT

Knowledge (Conocimiento) Activity Books (K–2)

Activity Books provide students with the opportunity to deepen world and word knowledge by responding to text in a diversity of ways.

Print

Student Readers (3–5)

Student Readers serve as content-rich anchor texts for each unit. Units such as Poetry and Contemporary Fiction feature authentic texts originally written in Spanish.

Activity Books (3–5)

Activity Books in grades 3–5 provide daily opportunities for students to hone reading and writing skills within the context of each unit.

Print and digital

Explore more programs

Our programs are designed to support and complement one another. Learn more about our related programs.

Amplify CKLA Skills

Amplify CKLA Skills offers the explicit skills instruction needed in today’s cla…

See all programs

Welcome to Amplify CKLA!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is a cutting-edge and effective core ELA program for students in grades K–5. It was developed in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation, features proven evidence-based instructional practices, and was specifically designed to help teachers implement Science of Reading principles.

Note: We’re continually adding information to this site, including specific details regarding our alignment with your non-negotiables. Keep checking back with us between now and April 20, 2023.

Getting Started

On this site, you’ll find a variety of resources designed to support your review and evaluation of the program. Before you dive in, watch the Orientation Overview and Program Overview videos below to learn about CKLA’s alignment to CCSD’s ELA adoption requirements, as well as where to find key program resources.

[Video] Orientation Overview

[Video] Program Overview

In the video below, learn about CKLA’s structure and materials, as well the research behind the curriculum.

Evidence-Based

[Video] Pedagogical Overview with Simple View of Reading

In the video below, Amplify’s Chief Academic Officer Susan Lambert shares the big picture of CKLA, and explains why it was created and the impact it’s making across the country. Below are a few portions of the video that you may find particularly helpful as you conduct your review.

  • 0-1:00 Why CKLA?
  • 1:00-4:40 How CKLA was built on the Simple View of Reading
  • 4:40-8:00 How to review the CKLA Components
  • 8:00-end Teacher Testimonial

[Features] Supporting the Simple View of Reading

Built out of the latest research in the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA delivers explicit instruction in both foundational literacy skills (systematic phonics, decoding, and fluency) and background knowledge in grades K–2 with an integrated approach to explicit instruction in grades 3–5.

Review this Science of Reading toolkit to learn more about the Science of Reading best practices integrated throughout CKLA.

See our Science of Reading solutions in action! Click here to see a real example of how one Ohio district is implementing and educating their K–8 community on the Science of Reading as a response to Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement Initiative.

Great reading instruction starts with helping kids develop great decoding skills. By building a solid foundation of phonological awareness and phonics, reading the words on the page becomes automatic so that comprehension and critical thinking can happen. Our instruction is supported by:

  • Step-by-step lessons with multisensory approaches, clear lesson objectives, and embedded formative assessments.
  • Decodable books and student readers with ebook and audiobook versions that feature engaging plots and relatable characters.
  • An engaging sound library with fun songs and videos that develop phonological awareness.
  • An interactive Vocab App featuring engaging activities with immediate feedback and automated, customized instruction based on student performance.

Students build grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves. Our instruction is supported by:

  • Knowledge builders that provide a quick overview of each domain with its key ideas.
  • Interactive Read-Alouds designed to build knowledge and vocabulary.
  • Content-rich anchor texts that support students as they tackle increasingly complex text and sharpen their analytical skills.
  • Social and emotional learning paired with lessons in civic responsibility.

Easy-to-Use Materials

Amplify CKLA offers a number of digital and multimedia resources to support instruction and enhance the teacher and student experience.

  • Amplify CKLA Digital Experience Site: All teacher and student materials are posted on this site for planning and information purposes, including Teacher Guides, Readers, Activity Books, Ancillary Materials, videos, additional resources, and links to other useful sites, such as the Professional Learning site.
  • The Professional Learning Site: This site includes training materials, best practices, and other resources to develop program expertise. Access professional development anywhere, anytime.
  • Intervention Toolkit: The Intervention Toolkit provides easy-to use resources to assist teachers in filling gaps in students’ foundational skills. Teachers will find hundreds of activities to support phonics, fluency, comprehension, handwriting, and other key skills.
  • The Science of Reading: The Podcast: Hosted by Susan Lambert, The Podcast delivers the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Each episode takes a conversational approach and explores a timely topic related to the Science of Reading.

In addition to the videos below, our CKLA Components Guide can be a helpful tool as you explore the materials provided within your sample tubs.

[Video] Physical Materials Walkthrough

As you explore your physical samples, the material walkthrough video below can be a helpful resource. In particular, we suggest watching the following portions of the video.

  • 0-4:38 CKLA components for K–2
  • 4:38-7:00 CKLA components for 3–5
  • 7-7:30 CKLA Program Guide
  • 10:12-13:20 CKLA’s Teacher Resource Site

Note: The below video covers both our K-5 program (Amplify CKLA) as well as our 6-8 program (Amplify ELA).

[Video] Digital Materials Walkthrough

In the video below, learn about CKLA’s digital tools for teachers and students across both classroom and asynchronous environments.

As you prepare to explore our digital platform, be sure to watch and refer to the video below.

Diverse Texts

In Amplify CKLA, texts serve a variety of purposes, from building background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension to building decoding and fluency skills.

In grades K–2, instruction is segmented between two strands: Knowledge and Skills.

  • Reading within the Knowledge Strand is centered around authentic read-alouds and trade books that are intentionally sequenced to build content knowledge and vocabulary in specific domain topics around literature, history, science, and the arts. Because research shows that students’ listening comprehension outpaces their reading comprehension until their early teens, Amplify CKLA strategically uses read-aloud text in this strand, allowing students to focus their cognitive energy on gaining meaning from the words and better understanding from the images.
  • Reading within the Skills Strand centers around carefully crafted Student Readers that teach students how to read. Structured as chapter books, these readers are 100% decodable and were developed to align with Amplify CKLA’s scope and sequence for phonics, directly connecting instruction to student practice in connected texts. Students use the Readers to practice decoding, fluency, and comprehension during shared reading lessons, targeted close reading sessions, in small groups, and independently.

In grades 3–5, integrated units bring the Skills and Knowledge strands together as students become increasingly automatic and strategic in their word recognition and language comprehension skills. Student reading and comprehension activities involve a variety of reading materials:

  • Authentic Read-Alouds and trade books ensure students encounter a variety of perspectives as they use these complex text to increase their knowledge while practicing vocabulary and listening comprehension skills.
  • Student Readers connect to each theme and are designed to increase in complexity over time, providing a continual challenge as students’ reading and listening comprehension skills develop and strengthen throughout the year.
  • Novel Guides provide teachers a flexible option for extending authentic reading and text-based activities in the classroom using award-winning and acclaimed novels.
  • ReadWorks articles give students access to additional high-quality texts aligned to both Amplify CKLA knowledge topics and the topics outlined in the Common Core State Standards.

Decodable Readers at Grades K–2

Our Decodable Readers are designed to progress in skills, mirroring the scope and sequence of instruction, which allows students to immediately apply what they are learning to 100% decodable text. More specifically, our decodables:

  • Are uniquely designed to provide intensive practice with the CKLA code while students read compelling and engaging stories and informational texts for the first time.
  • Gradually introduce students to “tricky” spelling concepts, such as different sounds that use the same letter code.
  • Increase in text complexity (i.e., content, length, and vocabulary) as students progress through the grades.
  • Include fiction and nonfiction text.
  • Are available as ebooks and audiobooks.

Below, you can see how students grow from year-to-year across grades K–2.

Student Readers at Grades 3–5

By grades 3–5, students have mastered the basics of decoding and are hungry to use what they’ve learned to reach out to the world. Although Read-Alouds remain an important part of lessons, students are also encouraged to practice independent reading starting in grade 3 with the support of carefully crafted Student Readers. These readers are chock-full of various text types, cultural stories, and a blend of fiction and nonfiction texts that are tied to and support the overarching theme of the unit.

Read-alouds

Authentic literature exposes students to a variety of text types and perspectives to deepen their knowledge of fascinating topics in social studies, science, literature, and the arts. Authentic texts support text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text connections for readers.

Trade books

Our optional Trade Book Collection (and suggested list of additional trade books) align with our grade-level topics, and extend the knowledge students are learning through an authentic text.

Novel Guides

Novel Guides bring students beyond the CKLA curriculum. We provide fifteen full days of instruction on contemporary trade books, as well as writing prompts that help students navigate the authentic literature they love.

ReadWorks

Amplify CKLA and ReadWorks® have partnered to deliver high-quality texts curated to support the Amplify CKLA Knowledge Sequence and to extend student learning. Texts include high-interest nonfiction articles in topics in social studies, science, literature, and the arts. These texts are accompanied by vocabulary supports and standards-aligned formative assessment opportunities. Teachers can monitor their students’ progress using the ReadWorks reporting features.

Reading resources

The following resources may be helpful as you explore our approach to reading and the role that diverse texts play in the program.

Writing

CKLA is rich with opportunities for students to develop, practice, and hone their writing skills. While the shape of writing instruction looks slightly different at each grade level, a commonality across all grades K–5 is that writing isn’t taught in isolation. Rather, it’s embedded within the context of each unit, and is connected to what students read.

At Grades K–2, writing takes place in both the Skills and Knowledge strands.

  • Explicit instruction in writing skills (such as sentence structure) and handwriting takes place in the Skills Strand, and is tied to the decodable readers used within each unit.
  • Extended writing and writing process activities take place in the Knowledge Strand.

At Grades 3–5, writing is embedded through the integrated units.

  • Across each unit, students work on smaller, more discrete writing skills alongside their Student Reader. These skills eventually culminate at the end of each unit in the form of a writing project.
  • In 4th and 5th grades, we expand writing even further with the addition of Poetry units.

Writing and text-dependent questions

The overwhelming majority of questions, tasks, and assignments in CKLA materials are text-dependent. Every CKLA unit and domain is based around key texts that are either read aloud, with a peer, or independently. These readings are followed by class discussions where students are expected to refer to these texts when answering literal, inferential, and evaluative questions, both orally during class discussions and through written responses.

  • Literal questions assess students’ recall of key details from the text. These are text-dependent questions that require students to paraphrase and/or refer back to the portion of the text where the specific answer is provided.
  • Inferential questions ask students to infer information from the text and to think critically. These text-dependent questions require students to summarize and/or reference the portions of the text that lead to and support the inference they are making.
  • Evaluative questions ask students to build on what they have learned from the text using analytical and application skills, often to form an opinion or make a judgment. These questions require students to paraphrase and/or cite the textual evidence that substantiates their argument or opinion.

In addition, students are often asked to generate additional questions based on the texts. Students further demonstrate understanding in writing by applying what they have learned and providing evidence from the text to back up their answers and opinions. For example, Grade 3 students learning about sea exploration write a paragraph from the perspective of a sailor on John Cabot’s ship, stating their opinion of whether the hardships they experienced are worth the adventure or glory and citing examples from the text to support their response. Grade 5 students studying the Adventures of Don Quixote write a four-paragraph persuasive essay arguing whether they believe Don Quixote’s good intentions justify his often calamitous actions, using reasons and evidence from the text to support their claims.

Writing with authentic literature

Novel Guides are designed around authentic texts students love. They not only help students foster a love for reading, they also present authentic opportunities for students to express themselves through writing. Novel Guides provide daily text-based writing and discussion through five activity types:

  • Ask contains questions for discussion, reflection, or brief written responses. These questions cover information all students should understand as they read the text.
  • Explore prompts offer brief research opportunities centered around items mentioned in the text.
  • Imagine activities promote creativity and further reflection.
  • Observe items ask students to take notes or make other kinds of observations about what they have read.
  • Understand questions push students to explore connections to the text.

Writing and enrichment

Writing tasks throughout the program provide almost limitless opportunities for extension. Feedback from the teacher, peers, and self-reflection provide students opportunities to strengthen their writing. For example, advanced students can be encouraged to:

  • Use more complex and unusual descriptive vocabulary.
  • Incorporate figurative language into their writing.
  • Write multi-clause sentences with more complex joining words.
  • Create longer or richer opinion, explanatory, and narrative pieces.
  • Evaluate the use of informational textual characteristics and use in their own writing (e.g., headers, bullets).

Writing resources

The following resources may be helpful as you explore our approach to writing and how writing develops across the program.

Access the program

Explore as a teacher

Before logging in, watch this brief video on navigating the CKLA Teacher Resource Site.

Ready to explore as a teacher? Follow these instructions:

  • Click the CKLA Teacher Resource Site button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter the username: t1.ccsd-k5-ckla@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter the password: Amplify1-ccsd-k5-ckla
  • Click the CKLA Teacher Resource icon
  • Select a grade level
CKLA Teacher Resource Site

Explore as a student

Before logging in, watch this brief video on navigating the CKLA Student Hub.

Ready to explore as a student? Follow these instructions:

  • Click the CKLA Teacher Resource Site button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter the username: s1.ccsd-k5-ckla@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter the password: Amplify1-ccsd-k5-ckla
  • Click the CKLA Teacher Resource icon
  • Select a grade level
CKLA Student Hub

Check out these additional resources

Nevada submission resources:

CKLA review resources:

S3-04: Using AI and ChatGPT in the science classroom

A graphic with the text "Science Connections" and "Amplify" features colorful circles and curved lines on a dark gray background.

In the latest episode of the Science Connections podcast, we explore AI in education and its impact on students. Listen as I sit down with teachers Donnie Piercey and Jennifer Roberts to discuss ChatGPT and how we can use it to build science and literacy skills in K–12 classrooms while preparing students for the real world.

And don’t forget to grab your Science Connections study guide to track your learning and find additional resources!

We hope you enjoy this episode and explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page!

DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT

Jennifer Roberts (00:00:00):

If a kid graduates from school without knowing that AI exists, they’re not gonna be prepared for what they face out in the world.

Eric Cross (00:00:07):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross.

Eric Cross (00:00:12):

This season of the podcast, we’re making the case for everyone’s favorite underdog, science. Recently we’ve been highlighting the magic that can come from integrating science and literacy. So if you haven’t checked out those recent episodes, definitely go back in your feed after you’re done with this one. This time around, we’re going to deep dive into what artificial intelligence means for literacy instruction, and how science can be a force for good, in responsibly exposing students to AI. To help me out, I’m joined by two extremely accomplished educators. Jen Roberts, a veteran high-school English teacher from San Diego, who among many things runs the website LitAndTech.com. And I’m also joined by fifth-grade teacher Donnie Piercey. In addition to being Kentucky’s 2021 Teacher of the Year, Donnie also has an upcoming book about bringing AI into the classroom. Whether you’ve never heard of ChatGPT or whether you’re already using it every day, I think you’ll find this a valuable discussion about the intersection of science, English, and technology. Here’s Jen and Donnie.

Eric Cross (00:01:17):

So first off, welcome to the show. It’s good to see you all. What I wanna do is kind of start off by introducing both of you. And so we’ll just go K–12. So <laugh>, Donnie.

Jennifer Roberts (00:01:30):

Donnie goes first.

Eric Cross (00:01:31):

Donnie’s gonna go first. Donnie out in Kentucky. Just a little background. What do you teach; how long you’ve been in the classroom; and what are you having fun with right now?

Donnie Piercey (00:01:38):

Yeah, so my name is Donnie Piercey. I’m a fifth-grade teacher from Kentucky. Live and teach right here in Lexington, Kentucky, right in the center of the state. I’m the 2021 Kentucky Teacher of the Year. But I’ve been teaching elementary school for the past … I think this is year 16 or 17. It’s long enough where I’ve lost count, and I can’t even count on fingers anymore. My friends like to joke that I’ve taught long enough where now I can count down. You know, it’s like, “All right, only so many more years left.” But yeah, teach all subjects. Science definitely is one of the subjects that I don’t just try to squeeze into my day, but make sure that … it’s not even a devoted subject, but one that I definitely try to — don’t just have that set time, but also try to do some cross-curricular stuff with it. So definitely the rise of AI in these past few months, which feels like years by this point, has definitely played quite the role, in not just changing the way that I’ve been teaching science, but really all my subjects. So, excited to chat with y’all about it.

Eric Cross (00:02:47):

Nice. I’m excited that you’re here. And Jen?

Jennifer Roberts (00:02:51):

Hi, I’m Jen Roberts. I teach ninth-grade English at Point Loma High School, and that’s where I usually stop when I introduce myself. But for your sake—

Eric Cross (00:03:00):

I will keep introducing you if you stop there. <laugh>

Jennifer Roberts (00:03:04):

I am nationally board-certified in English Language Arts for early adolescence. I am the co-author of a book called Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning, from Stenhouse, with my fabulous co-author Diana Neebe. Shout out to Diana. I blog at LitAndTech.com about teaching and technology and literacy and the intersection of those things. And I’m looking forward to talking about how AI is showing up in my classroom and the fun things I’m doing with it.

Donnie Piercey (00:03:31):

And one of us is actually secretly a robot, and you have to guess which one.

Jennifer Roberts (00:03:35):

Have to guess which one. Yes. <laugh>

Eric Cross (00:03:37):

That would be super-meta. And you were the CUE — Computer-Using Educator — outstanding teacher or educator? Whatever. Either one. Of the year.

Jennifer Roberts (00:03:45):

I was the CUE ’22 Outstanding Educator. Yes. And I’ve won a few other things as well.

Eric Cross (00:03:53):

The gaming backpack.

Jennifer Roberts (00:03:54):

I’ve won a gaming backpack recently! Yes. I once won an iPad in a Twitter chat.

Eric Cross (00:03:58):

What?

Donnie Piercey (00:03:58):

What’s a gaming backpack? Hold on. We need to talk about that.

Jennifer Roberts (00:04:01):

We will talk about that. <laugh> And then, I was once a finalist for county Teacher of the Year. That’s as close as I got to Donnie. Donnie was the Kentucky Teacher of the Year. He got to go to the White House and stuff. That was exciting.

Donnie Piercey (00:04:13):

<laugh> I mean, to be fair, there’s only three million people in Kentucky, and about what, 50 million people that live in California? <Laugh> So odds are definitely stacked in my favor, I think.

Jennifer Roberts (00:04:23):

So you’re saying we’re even there? Is that, is that what you’re going for?

Donnie Piercey (00:04:25):

Yeah, evens out. Evens out.

Eric Cross (00:04:27):

So I’ve been looking forward to talking to you both for a while now, and talking about artificial intelligence. It’s like the big thing. And both of you, at different ends of the spectrum and in my life, have contributed to this. Donnie, you’ve been sharing so much great information online about how you’re using AI in elementary. Jen, you are the reason I got into education technology years ago, right when I was becoming a teacher. And so being able to talk with you both about it excites me a lot. So first off, for the listeners who may not have any experience with it — and there’s still a lot of people out there who have not been exposed to it, haven’t got their feet wet with it yet — I’m hoping we could start off maybe with an explanation of … we could do AI, ChatGPT, I know that’s the big one. But simply explaining what it is, just for the new person. And whoever wants to start off can tell us about it. Or maybe we’ll start … we’ll, let’s actually, let’s do this: Let’s continue going like K–12? So Donnie, maybe you could … what’s your pitch to the new person of, “Hey, this is what it is”?

Donnie Piercey (00:05:31):

All right. So, AI, artificial intelligence, probably the way that most people are exposed to it, at least since November when it launched, is through ChatGPT. Where if you Google it, you know it’s made by a company called OpenAI. The best way to describe what it is … when you go there for the first time, make an account, it’s free. You have like a little search window, looks like a Google search bar. And instead of searching for information, you can ask it to create stuff for you. So for example, like on Google search, you might type in a question like, “Who was the 19th president of the United States?” Where on ChatGPT, instead of just searching for information, it creates stuff for you. So you could say, you could ask it to, “Hey, write a poem about the 19th president of the United States.” Or, “Write a short little essay comparing, I don’t know, Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr.” And it would do that for you. You know, that’s most people’s first exposure to AI, at least in these past few months. Instead of … you know, it’s artificial intelligence, but it’s not just chatbots. There’s lots of other AI that exist out there.

Jennifer Roberts (00:06:47):

And I think that’s the thing: that people don’t realize how much AI is already in their lives.

Donnie Piercey (00:06:51):

For sure. Yeah.

Jennifer Roberts (00:06:52):

You know, they just haven’t seen … the term that I see being used a lot now is “generative AI.” AI that can produce something. It can produce writing, it can produce art, it can produce a script, it can produce a character. But the AI that has been helping you pick what to watch next on Netflix and the AI that’s helping Google help you get where you wanna go on Google Maps faster, those are forms of artificial intelligence as well.

Donnie Piercey (00:07:21):

Yeah. I mean, even those, when you get that that message in Gmail, and instead of having to type out that response that says, “Yeah, that sounds great,” you can just click the little button that says, “Yeah, that sounds great.” I mean, that’s been in Gmail for years, but that’s artificial intelligence too.

Eric Cross (00:07:39):

Absolutely. So why is it important, do you think, for educators to, to be familiar with it? Like, why are we all so excited about it?

Jennifer Roberts (00:07:47):

So, educators need to know what kids are into, and kids are obviously into ChatGPT. And anyone who’s an educator right now has probably already had something cross their desk — or more likely their computer screen — that was written by AI and passed off as a student’s own work. And that is, of course, the great fear among teachers everywhere, that this is what kids are just gonna do these days and they won’t be able to catch it and children won’t be doing their own work and this and this. But I think the big reason teachers need to know what’s going on is because teachers need to be futurists. Our clientele will live in the future. We teach kids, kids will become adults, adults will live in the world. And so if we’re not thinking about and trying to predict on some level what’s gonna happen 5, 10, 15 years from now … we might be wrong, but what if we’re right?

Jennifer Roberts (00:08:38):

And if we’re not at least trying to think about what is their future world gonna look like, then we’re not serving our students well. I did a whole night talk on that. So I think ChatGPT is part of that. I teach seniors. I had this moment of realization I felt a few months ago. I’m like, “This is gonna be the world they graduate into. They need to know what this is before they leave me.” If I don’t teach them how to use this well, and not the way they’re using it — which is to copy and paste the teacher’s assignment and drop it into ChatGPT and take whatever it spits out and turning that in without even looking at it — if I don’t teach ’em how to use it critically, if I don’t teach them how to write effective prompts, if I don’t teach them how to use the AI as a tool, as a collaborator, then they’re gonna graduate into a world where they lose out to people who do know how to do that. And I think the advantage goes to kids who have access and knowledge of what’s in front of them and what’s available, and can use all of the tools at their disposal. Because when you’re writing in school and you write with a collaborator, that could be considered cheating. But when you do that out in the adult world, that’s considered doing a good job. <Laugh> Being a team player. <Laugh> You know, adults don’t work alone for the most part. And adults are expected to churn out beautiful, perfect content no matter how they got there. So if I’m not teaching my kids how to use this, they’re not being ready. They’re not gonna be ready to be the adults that I want them to be.

Donnie Piercey (00:10:07):

A hundred percent agree. And I also believe … as you know, I teach elementary school. I also don’t think anybody is saying that on the first day of kindergarten, you hand a kid a Chromebook and load up an AI chatbot or ChatGPT and say, Hey, this thing’s gonna do all your work for you for the next 12 years; just coast through life. You don’t have to think creatively. You don’t have to learn how to develop a paragraph or learn how to write a speech or develop an idea. Like, I don’t think anybody’s saying that, because as an elementary school teacher, there’s many days when I’m like, “Y’all, we’re just putting the Chromebooks away today and we’re just gonna go old-school. We’re just gonna maybe just jot down five quick ideas and stand up and present those ideas to the class.”

Donnie Piercey (00:10:54):

Because while AI definitely will, like you were saying, Jen, play a significant role in the lives of our students who are, not just graduating, but the 10- and 11-year-olds in my classroom this year. A significant role in their lives. It’s also really important to recognize that we’re not saying that this means that “Hey, kids don’t have to work anymore.” They still have to put forth that effort. There’s still — one of the ways that you become a good writer is by trial and error. And sometimes that trial and error comes through talking to a teacher or talking like you were saying to a peer or collaborating with a peer and saying to them, “Well, this sentence here, this paragraph here, really doesn’t make sense.” And I do believe one of the ways — especially as AI starts to become more fine-tuned and starts to be embedded more and more in tools like Google Docs and Microsoft Word — is it’s almost going to be a tutor to students.

Donnie Piercey (00:11:56):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative> Where I could very easily see in a few years, or maybe a few months, who knows what Google or any of these other big companies has rolling out, where a student could highlight a paragraph that they wrote simply, and then say, “Hey, proofread this for me,” or “Check for coherence.” Or even just ask a simple question: “Does this paragraph make sense?” Because you can already do that. You can copy a paragraph over into a chatbot and say, “Hey, does this make sense?” You know, “Rate my idea from one to 10,” and it’ll do that for ’em.

Jennifer Roberts (00:12:26):

We did that last week <laugh>.

Donnie Piercey (00:12:28):

Yeah. Right. I mean, that’s the thing. That technology exists now. It’s just not totally embedded yet. But based on what I’ve read and what I’ve seen, that’s gonna happen sooner rather than later. And it’s really, really important that we teach our students that, “No, you’re not just gonna use this, this tool to cheat, but you can use this tool to help you become a more creative student.”

Jennifer Roberts (00:12:50):

This is the use case in my classroom. Can I talk about that? You ready for that?

Eric Cross (00:12:53):

Please.

Jennifer Roberts (00:12:54):

OK.

Eric Cross (00:12:54):

Please.

Jennifer Roberts (00:12:55):

So my ninth graders are writing a comparative analysis essay, where I took them to the student art gallery and I made them pick two pieces of completely unknown student art and take notes on it, so they could go back and write this essay. And as soon as we got back to class, I said, can ChatGPT write this for you? And they all kind of froze ’cause I didn’t tell them what ChatGPT was. And they weren’t sure if they were allowed to know or not. And finally one of them kind of bravely raised his hand and said, “No.” And I said, “Why not?” And he said, “Well, the AI hasn’t seen the art. How can it write an essay about art when the art is completely original that we just went and looked at?” I said, “It’s almost like I planned it that way, isn’t it?” And they laughed nervously. And then I said, “Does that mean it can’t help us with this assignment?” And they said, “Well, no — of course it can’t help us, because it has not seen the art.” And I said, “Well. …” And I open ChatGPT, and I typed in what they were trying to do: “I need to write a comparative analysis essay comparing two pieces of student art on these reasons. And I need to choose which one did it better, basically. Can you help me with an outline?” and ChatGPT produced a lovely outline. And I looked at that with my students and we looked at it together and I said, “This is what it gave us. Would this be helpful to you?” And they’re like, “Yeah, that would be helpful to us.” So we — to be clear here, I was the only one using ChatGPT in the room. They were not actually using it. We were using it together. I copied and pasted the outline that it gave us and put it in their learning management system where they could access it so they could use the outline that the robot provided, and then they could use that to make their own writing better. So then I let them write for a little while, and, after they’d written for a little while, I said, “Does anybody wanna let me share your first paragraph with ChatGPT and see what it thinks of how you’re doing?” And a brave student raised his hand and we took his paragraph and we put it in ChatGPT, and it spit back advice. We said, “This is what I have so far for my first paragraph. Do you have any advice for me?” And we gave it the writing, and the first piece of advice it gave back was very generic, you know, “Add a hook,” you know, like kind of thing. But after that, it started to get more specific about things he was actually doing in his writing. And it started to give him some feedback. And we looked at that together as a class. And I said, “Does any of that feedback help you?” And he said, “Oh yeah, absolutely. I’m gonna go add some revisions to my paragraph.” And other students did too. They looked at the feedback he got and used that to improve their writing. And so everybody went and revised. And I said, “Look, if you take what the robot gives you and you copy and paste it, and you turn it in as your own work, it’s gonna get flagged for plagiarism. And that’s not gonna go well. But if it gives you writing advice the same way I would give you writing advice, and you decide that advice is good, and you take that advice and you incorporate it into your own writing yourself, then the robot’s making you better, but you’re still the one doing your own writing.” And the writing they turned in from that assignment was, was better. It wasn’t written by ChatGPT; it was still about the student art that they found in the gallery. But I showed them a path. Like, it can help you with an outline, it can help you with feedback. Right? These are fair ways to use it that’s gonna make you better. And they really liked that. They really liked — no one had shown them that before. The idea that you don’t just take the teacher’s prompt and give it to it … like, these are new uses to students and worked well.

Eric Cross (00:16:17):

So right now, you both just laid out these ways that you’re using it. And I do this with people that I’m trying to introduce to ChatGPT or AI. ‘Cause I get excited. Anyone could write a 500-word persuasive essay on the use of color in The Great Gatsby or The Outsiders, and they can get something back within seconds. But for a lot of educators, it might feel like the sky is falling.

Donnie Piercey (00:16:43):

Oh, understandably! Understandably. I mean, that totally makes sense.

Eric Cross (00:16:49):

What would you say to them? Donnie, go ahead.

Donnie Piercey (00:16:51):

Yeah. Well, I feel like every teacher kind of goes through the same experience when they see like a generative chatbot. I mean, all these major companies are gonna start incorporating AI, the generative AI piece. And a lot of times, when they see it for the first time, two things. First they’ll say “Oh, but I’ll know that that’s not my students’ writing.” Which, frankly, I think is a good thing, because that tells me that the teachers know their students’ writing. They’ve seen them write in person. They’ve conferenced with them one-on-one. And if a student were to turn something in to me, who I know might be a struggling writer, maybe it’s not their strength, and all of a sudden they’re turning in this10-page dissertation-worthy thesis written at a PhD level, I’m like, “All right, man, you’re nine. Can we talk about where this came from?” <laugh> But I also don’t think that at like the heart, I don’t feel like kids want to cheat. I really don’t. I feel like sometimes like kids are in a situation where they’re like, “OK, I’ve got nothing left. I gotta get this assignment done.” And when those kind of things happen, that’s when we as teachers, we have those one-on-one conversations. Even when I showed my students ChatGPT and even some of the AI image-generating stuff for the first time, and I talked to them about, “What do y’all think about this?” Because, you know, they’re under 13. In my district, ChatGPT is blocked for students. Staff, we have access to it. And that’s just because one, it’s so new, and at the same time, we need to figure out, “What’s the best way they can go about using this tool?” But when we were talking about it as a class, you know, I didn’t want to ignore the elephant in the room. So I asked them, I said, “Hey, do you feel like this is something that you all would use to. …” I mean, I used the word. I said “cheat.” And to be honest, the majority of the students in my class, they were taken aback. They’re like, “What? You think we just would cheat all the time?” Right? <Laugh> And I’m like, “Oh, well good. I’m glad to know that integrity is still alive and well.” But yeah, that’s definitely my thoughts on it, as far as not only the student integrity piece — I think that that’s the big thing that you need to just bring up with your students. Because again, I like to think that I’ve seen my students write enough that if they were going to turn something in that wasn’t their voice, or it didn’t sound like them, like I could have that conversation. And don’t be surprised, too, if in the next … I don’t know, one month to a year, there’s lots of AI detectors that exist. A lot of them are these like third-party things. You can go ahead, but I would not be surprised if in the next year or so, like you start to see those AI detectors be built into Google Docs, into Microsoft Word, into even Canva. And honestly, it’s almost like a fail-safe button for teachers, that we could say “All right, this is telling me that this is 99% probably written by AI.” So you can have that conversation with a student that way.

Jennifer Roberts (00:20:03):

I mean, if you’re worried about it, Formative, right now, will even tell you if something is copy-and-pasted into the boxes that they give you for students to write in. I find that kids who cheat are desperate, you know. Especially at the high school level. They’re panic mode. And, and usually their panic comes from, “I have no idea how to even start this assignment.” And so part of what I wanna use ChatGPT for is to lower that barrier for them. Like, you’ve got an assignment, you don’t know where to start. Tell the robot, tell ChatGPT, about the assignment and ask it for a list of steps. You know, ask it for an outline. Ask it for a time management plan. I see so much tremendous potential for this to help many of my students with IEPs who have executive functioning issues.

Donnie Piercey (00:20:49):

Oh, a hundred percent, right?

Jennifer Roberts (00:20:51):

Yes, a hundred percent. This can be their personal assistant who, you know, instead of me sitting with them one-on-one and saying, you know, “This is the task you need to do, let’s break it down into these six discrete chunks,” the artificial intelligence can do that for them. And it can do that for teachers too. <laugh>

Donnie Piercey (00:21:09):

Jen, I was just thinking about, how long until we see like the phrase artificial intelligence written onto a student’s IEP? I could see that happening very, very soon.

Jennifer Roberts (00:21:20):

Right? They should be able to use that. And then, also, of course, all of its amazing beneficials for teachers. I had to completely rewrite a unit of my curriculum. I knew what I wanted to do. I had some ideas of things I wanted to put in there. And I resorted to, I went to EducationCopilot.com and typed in my stuff that I had: You know, what standards I wanted to cover, what outcomes I was hoping for mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And it generated an eight-week unit for me. And I actually told it then to go back and do it as a 12-week unit so that I’d have more stuff in there to go and cherry-pick to decide what I really wanted to do. But it gave me ideas. It gave me places to start. It saved me an hour of just brainstorming. And I don’t think that was cheating. I still got to go in and decide which ideas were valid. And I still got to … you know, I mean, I’m a teacher. Can I get accused of cheating? I don’t think that’s a thing. It’s—

Eric Cross (00:22:18):

That’s collaborating! It’s collaborating!

Donnie Piercey (00:22:20):

Collaborating! It’s a feature! It’s a feature.

Jennifer Roberts (00:22:22):

It’s Tony Stark talking to Jarvis. You know, they’re figuring it out together.

Donnie Piercey (00:22:26):

Oh, when you use the AI, Jennifer, do you call yours Jarvis? In my class we call him Jeeves. ‘Cause remember Ask Jeeves?

Jennifer Roberts (00:22:33):

I think Eric calls it Jarvis.

Eric Cross (00:22:35):

Yeah. Jarvis is gonna be the AI’s name when, when I can get that fully functioning. There are some things that you had said, I just wanna circle back on. Donnie, Jen — so what I heard was like, best intentions. The part you said about integrity and students wanting to cheat … even the mindset that we go in assuming our students, what they would want to do and assuming best intentions, really kind of frames how you look at this kind of technology. And then Jen, you kind of brought up why students cheat, and realizing that either they don’t feel equipped, or maybe it’s time management, or something else. But most people — and I believe this as an educator — most students want to learn, and they want to be able to perform and achieve. And when they cheat, it’s because they didn’t feel like they could, for whatever reason. Whether it’s it’s outside factors, whether it’s something internal, motivation, whatever it is.

Jennifer Roberts (00:23:24):

Or they were very disconnected and just didn’t care.

Eric Cross (00:23:27):

Sure.

Jennifer Roberts (00:23:27):

This is just busy work the teacher’s giving me, so I’m gonna give it very little of my time and energy. But I think, yeah, it can be that. But if the kid cares about it, if they wanna learn, they wanna learn, you know?

Eric Cross (00:23:40):

Right.

Jennifer Roberts (00:23:40):

This is the day of the internet. Any kid can learn anything they really want to learn. And we see that all the time in our classes. The kid who has zero interest in what I’m teaching in English, but he is an expert coder, and that’s what he wants to spend his time learning. He’s like, “Can I read this C++ book as my independent reading book?” And I’m like, “You know, actually, you can. Go ahead.” <Laugh>

Eric Cross (00:24:01):

Yeah. And for both of you, saying that this makes content more accessible … and I think Donnie, or Jen, you said something about IEPs. I actually put in having it write an IEP to see what would happen. I gave it a prompt for a student’s ability level and I asked it to create a plan. And then I asked it to create a rationale. And it did! And it was good! I went through and vetted it. And right now … you know, a lot of it is funny, ’cause the conversation I’m having with different teachers is kind of like the Wikipedia one. Remember when Wikipedia first got out and everyone was like trying to discourage everybody from using it, because, well, it could be changed by anybody? And now everyone’s like, “Oh, check Wikipedia, and then steal the sources, ’cause they’re already done for you.” Like, the mindset has shifted since then. And I was talking to someone and they said, “Well. …” And I said, “We can use AI, it could be a tutor, these other things. …” And they said, “Yeah, but what happens?” And then insert apocalyptic scenario. Like, what happens if you don’t have access to wifi? And it reminded me of, for some reason, cooking classes. So in the 1700s you probably had to be able to farm to be able to generate your food. Right? Like, you had to get it from somewhere. But if you take a culinary class now, you just go to the grocery store. And someone might say, “Well, but you should know how to farm, ’cause what if there was this worldwide apocalypse and nobody could go to the grocery stores?” <Laugh> And you’re like, “Well, balance of probability though.” You know, it’s like we’ve been really been living in these iterations of life, and I think this next step for some folks … like, we don’t even realize, even like something like bank statements, right? So many folks are paperless. And there’s always a what-if scenario. What if you need it and the internet goes down. But we get so used to to to technology advancing and making our lives different. This kind of seems like that next iteration. And I wanna ask you this question: Are we looking at like the next calculator? The next internet, with this tech? Or do you think it’s too early to say?

Donnie Piercey (00:26:01):

Well, I’ve seen a lot of people compare ChatGPT to a calculator. I’ve seen that pop up on social media. There’s, “Oh well, no, this is like when the calculator was invented. Everyone was up in arms about how ‘that’s not what math students should do.’ Math should be pencil and paper, math should be this.’” However, you can give a kid a calculator and you can give ’em a word problem and they can punch in all the numbers, but they could do the wrong operation or they could put the decimal point in the wrong place, ’cause the student is still the one who’s controlling what’s on the calculator. Where with AI, all you gotta do is just copy it and then paste it into the bot and it’ll spit out whatever the question asked it for. Whether it was, you know, a 500-word rationale or proof for something in geometry, or if it’s analyzing data on a chart, it’ll do all that.

Jennifer Roberts (00:27:00):

Yes. But it’s not that magical. It’s back to what Eric did with the IEP. He put in a prompt and then he knew enough to ask for a rationale and then he knew enough about IEPs to critically read the results he got and make sure they actually worked for what he needed. He had to know all that. He was an expert using it to do an expert thing. My husband’s a computer scientist; he got ChatGPT to help him write an app, and it was a new programming language to him, and he could put in the data and he could ask for things that I would’ve never thought to ask for. But because he knows the language of computer science, he knew what to ask for. And when it gave him results that were bad, he could see that, and he could say, “Yes, but do it again, but without this,” or “make this part more efficient.” He, again, knew what to ask for. So I think the generative AI is, as a partner with humans, a powerful thing. But if the human doesn’t know what they’re doing, yeah. You’re still not gonna get great results.

Donnie Piercey (00:28:03):

<laugh> And I think that’s why I’m coming at this from the elementary school perspective, right? Because in K–5 students are still learning, like, “Hey, where does the decimal point go?” They’re still learning, you know, if you’re dividing by a two-digit number, where does the first digit go, if you go in the old long-division algorithm? And so they’re still acquiring that base-level knowledge that … I don’t know, maybe this is similar to in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum says, “It didn’t take any knowledge to attain,” you know, “they stood on the shoulders of geniuses,” that whole thing. Like they had to acquire the knowledge for themselves, was his whole point. And so that’s why I don’t think it’s exactly the same as the calculator. It is definitely going to change things, in a similar way that the calculator did. But to me it’s just a whole new animal. And I don’t know if it’s going to be like the next internet, Eric — if you’re gonna get little devices that have AI built into it, like a Star Wars kind of thing, like a droid or something that follows you around — all that would be kind of cool, not gonna lie. But whether it’s something that you’ll access through the internet, something that’s built into your TV, that part I don’t know. But I do know that there’s a reason why all of these apps and all these companies are investing so much — not just energy, but time and money into it. Because they’re recognizing. “OK, this really has the potential to change things.” But if used well, and used safely, to change people’s lives for the better.

Eric Cross (00:29:41):

So I definitely hear that you both agree with the statement that if AI ChatGPT was used in the classroom, it could be a force for good. And literacy development. And I wanna shift gears a bit and then come back to the AI. So with that said — and we’re gonna get into some best practices in a minute — in Science Connections right now in this season, we’re making the case for how science can do more in classrooms and in schools. And so I’m I’m curious about what both of you think about the role in science fostering a better future when it comes to AI and education. And this season we’re really talking a lot about literacy. You know, in schools, so often it’s taught in a siloed way. And Donnie, you’re doing multi-subject. Jen, you’re single-subject: English. And we’ve really been trying to make this case for how science can actually support literacy, and these skills that students are trying to develop. So we’re going a little old-school, kind of diving into your content specialty, but maybe even pre-AI, or maybe AI has a component in this. But Don, maybe we’ll start with you. How has science been a way that has been helpful for your own literacy instruction? I know you do a lot of science, because I see your Google Earth stuff and the thing you did with the solar systems back in the day. And I think —.

Donnie Piercey (00:30:54):

Oh my gosh! You remember my <laugh> … wow.

Eric Cross (00:30:58):

That was amazing!

Donnie Piercey (00:31:00):

We haven’t done that since the pandemic. But I had my students go out, and using Google Earth, we built a scale model. Each of the students partnered up and they planned out on Google Earth a scale model of the solar system. They picked an object from around their house and we talked about like, “Don’t pick something bigger than a beach ball, or else, you know, your Neptune’s gonna end up like 10 miles away.” But you know, they just picked like a small ball, like a basketball, soccer ball, something like that. Or football, for international friends. And then we calculated the size of every other planet. And then on Google Earth, using their front lawn as where the sun was, then we went and we calculated where other planets would be, and then we actually drove to those locations and like held up the objects that would represent Neptune, Jupiter, Saturn, and all that. But it was a lot of fun.

Eric Cross (00:31:59):

And is that still accessible? ‘Cause I know you have some websites that you put resources out there.

Donnie Piercey (00:32:03):

Yeah. Yeah, I can … I wanna say on my Resources page — Resources.MrPiercey.com — I’ve got a link on there to a couple of student examples that I can share. And if not, when we get off this call, I’m gonna go on and put them on there <laugh> so people can find it. I’ll even throw on there just the assignment itself. So if you wanted to copy that and do that with your students, you could.

Eric Cross (00:32:27):

Donnie, the reason why I brought that up is because I saw that you had posted that or shared it a long time ago, and I just thought it was the coolest thing that you could totally do with middle-school students or high-school students. Jen, when I became a teacher, you said, “We’re all teachers of literacy.”

Jennifer Roberts (00:32:43):

<laugh> Yeah. I think we forgot to tell them that I was one of your professors.

Eric Cross (00:32:47):

Yes. <Jennifer laughs> One of the people who’ve definitely influenced and shaped my teaching. And that statement has never left my mind: that we’re all teachers of literacy. And I want to ask you, at the high-school level, how can science educators, or how can science — how have you seen it, or how does it, support literacy, when it’s done right?

Jennifer Roberts (00:33:09):

Like I said, I think we’re all teachers of literacy, but I think literacy is bigger than just reading and writing. I don’t think someone is literate if they can’t talk somewhat knowledgeably about what’s happening with climate change. I don’t think someone’s literate if they don’t know what’s going on in the world. And I think so much of what’s going on in the world has to do with science. We’re doing that all the time. If I could teach English just by giving kids articles about science, things to read, that would make my day. Right? We would never read another piece of fiction again. It would all be, you know, what’s happening to the ice sheet in Greenland. My students thrive on reading non-fiction. And then whenever that non-fiction touches on science is even more interesting. And whenever I can get them writing about data, particularly their own data that they collected, I think that’s building those science literacy skills as well. So I think science and English blend together very, very well. I think the literacy aspects of that are fantastic. There are more subject-specific vocabulary words, advanced vocabulary words, in science than any other discipline. And I don’t see why those shouldn’t come up in English as well. You know, my seniors will do a unit at the end of the year on the new space race. Unless I replace it with a unit about generative AI, which I’m seriously considering doing, ’cause I think they really need to learn about bias in AI algorithms and things like that. And I would like to have them read a whole bunch about that stuff. And I wanna give them the open letter that all those CEOs signed that said that AI research should slow down, and make them part of that live conversation about what’s happening in that field. So science comes into that. You know, when we read Into the Wild, we start talking about a whole bunch of scientific concepts. And when it rains in Southern California, we pull up weather maps and look at radar and talk about that and how that works.

Donnie Piercey (00:34:59):

That’s like once every 10 years, Jen? <Laugh>

Jennifer Roberts (00:35:02):

Well, actually, this year it rained a lot. It rained a lot in San Diego. Which is actually very high-interest for them. ‘Cause they wanna know, is it gonna be raining at lunchtime?

Eric Cross (00:35:12):

Jen, you said something … you have your students writing about data?

Jennifer Roberts (00:35:16):

Oh yeah.

Eric Cross (00:35:17):

Can you tell me more about that?

Jennifer Roberts (00:35:19):

So, this is something we’ve done with the ninth grade team for a long time now, is writing about their own data. So it started with a unit about stereotypes and stereotype threat. And they would collect data individually and then they would enter that data into a Google form and then we would give them the spreadsheet of the aggregate data from the whole ninth grade. And then we morphed that unit into one about academic honesty, and they filled out a survey at the beginning of the unit about their feelings about academic honesty and about experiences with academic honesty and cheating and homework and things like that. And then we would do the unit. We’d do all the readings in the unit. And they’d have these “aha” moments about things that were happening at other schools. And then at the end of the unit, we would give them back their own aggregate data and ask them to write about whether or not academic honesty was an issue at our school. And then to support that answer with evidence from their own dataset. So they had that spreadsheet to comb through and figure out, you know, where am I gonna stand on this? We give them the multiple-choice questions we gave them as the graphs, in Google Slides, so that they could write about them and talk about them, too. So yeah, getting kids to write about data. And the the sentence frames we gave them were sentence frames out of, They Say, I Say, from the chapter on writing about science. And <laugh> as they write this stuff, they’re like, “I feel so smart writing this way.” And I’m like, “I know, ’cause you’re writing about big important topics!” Right? And writing about their own data come to think of it is another great way to make an assignment both very personal to them, but also make it ChatGPT-proof, you know, if you’re looking for something that kids can’t just hand to the robot, the robot doesn’t have that data set.

Eric Cross (00:37:08):

Absolutely. And Donnie, at the elementary level, do you, do you make connections between science and literacy? In your class? You talked about with math, definitely with the solar system, but now, I’m curious, what are your newer projects? What have you been working on lately?

Jennifer Roberts (00:37:23):

What’s up now, Donnie?

Eric Cross (00:37:24):

Yeah, what are you doing?

Donnie Piercey (00:37:25):

Oh, man. Well, let me think. I’m just trying to think of some fun projects that we’ve done this year. Science that we can tie in Literacy and also some student creation. Just recently we had a … so I’ve wanted to expose my students to famous scientists that weren’t just white dudes from Europe. So for this year, what I did — and I actually used AI for this — I went into ChatGPT and I asked for 64 famous scientists and it listed them all off. And then I asked it, like, how many of these were white? And I think it said like 61 of them. You know, it had like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and a couple of other … I didn’t know who they were. So I’m like, “All right, so we need to make this more diverse and make this more equitable.” ‘Cause you know, with the student population in my classroom, try to find equal representation to make sure they can see themselves in some of these scientists. So, eventually got it narrowed down to where I had about 64 scientists. Half are women, half are men from all continents except Antarctica. I assigned these scientists to my students. Some got two; some got three. And their assignment was to go and one, do some individual research on this person, find out what they were famous for, what they were most well-known for, turn it actually into a persuasive piece, where I said, “Hey, you’re gonna have one slide.” And I’ll tell you why I gave him one slide in a minute. On that one slide, you’ve gotta convince the person who sees it that this scientist is the most important scientist since the dawn of creation. I said, “You could use images, text — I don’t care if they were famous for something that you didn’t even understand what it was. It’s a persuasive piece. You’re 10. Go all out. Add gifs, do that whole thing.

Eric Cross (00:39:21):

This is awesome.

Jennifer Roberts (00:39:21):

I wanna do this project.

Donnie Piercey (00:39:23):

And if you picked up on the number 64, and I did this in March, so what we did was throughout the weeks of March Madness of the women’s and men’s NCAA tournament, whenever a game was going on, we had another round of voting. I just paired ’em up. I was gonna like seed them, like 1 to 64 — that’s just way too much work for me <laugh>. So I just kind of did random kind of thing. But all the students had to do — they just saw the slides side-by-side, and the only question they had was, “Based on what you see here, who is the most important scientist? This person or this person?” And it eventually came down to Carl Sagan going up against Marie Curie.

Eric Cross (00:40:04):

OK, that’s a good matchup.

Donnie Piercey (00:40:06):

Yeah, well, the Marie Curie slide, they just liked the radium piece. So they added like some green glowing gifs. And I said, “Guys, it doesn’t always grow glow green.” But whatever. Anyway, eventually Carl Sagan, in case you wanted to know, according to the 10-year-olds in my classroom, is the most important scientist in the history of the world. So I don’t know if I agree with that per se — I think maybe Newton or somebody else might have had something else to say about it — but fun assignment. It was a unique way to expose my students to a bunch of ideas. I remember the student that I assigned Newton, the only thing that that she knew about Isaac Newton was “Didn’t he get hit in the head with an apple?” And I said, “Well, not exactly, I think you might have read or maybe seen too many like old-school cartoons or whatever.” But she ended up doing some research. She’s like, “Oh, I’ve heard of that before! That equal and opposite reaction thing.” Didn’t know what it meant. I had another student that just got really … you know, if you’ve ever been on one of those YouTube kicks where it’s just, you go like nine levels deep onto like, “What does this theorem mean?” Student sits in back of my classroom, I walked by one day and he’s just watching something on like the fifth dimension and what it might be. And I said, “Oh, your scientist got you started on that.” So definitely was a lot of fun. Unique way to combine reading, writing, but also expose my students to some ideas. And we’re definitely gonna do it again. I’ve actually done this assignment before. I picked 64 random elements on the periodic table. But their only slide that they have to make is “What’s your element? What is it used for? And then, why is this the most important element since the dawn of creation?” <Laugh> And, you know, there’s always that student that gets hydrogen. They’re just like “Sweet!” Right? They get excited about that one. <laugh>

Eric Cross (00:41:59):

Explosions.

Donnie Piercey (00:42:00):

Yeah. But then, for that kid who likes a challenge, or that student with the “gifted” label, you give them, like, einsteinium or palladium. Some of the more challenging ones. And they go all out with this. I didn’t use AI for that one, but it was kind of fun, and I figured it’d be neat to share an idea that another teacher could try.

Eric Cross (00:42:20):

Well you probably have at least two teachers right now that are gonna go and try that. And we’re both looking at you. So.

Donnie Piercey (00:42:24):

Go for it.

Eric Cross (00:42:25):

Thanks for that idea. I’m imagining my students coming in with jerseys with “neon.”

Donnie Piercey (00:42:29):

Oh yeah. <laugh>

Eric Cross (00:42:30):

“Neon” on it. Just all ’80s out.

Donnie Piercey (00:42:33):

The game behind it, too, is you tell kids — again, this is just so the 10-year-olds in my class don’t get their feelings hurt — but I say, “Hey, and if your element gets knocked out, you just have to start cheering for whoever beats you in the tournament.” So by the end, you kind of got half the class cheering for one and half the class cheering for whatever.

Jennifer Roberts (00:42:53):

So the only thing I got outta that whole story that I’ve got for you is, as a child I met Carl Sagan. That’s all I got.

Donnie Piercey (00:43:02):

For real?

Jennifer Roberts (00:43:02):

For real.

Donnie Piercey (00:43:03):

So did he talk with that cadence and tone?

Jennifer Roberts (00:43:06):

Yes.

Donnie Piercey (00:43:06):

Like in real life? Wow.

Jennifer Roberts (00:43:07):

Yes. My father was one of the cinematographers on the original Cosmos. And I got to go to the set a few times.

Donnie Piercey (00:43:14):

That’s incredible!

Jennifer Roberts (00:43:15):

I did not appreciate what I was seeing as a child. But as an adult, I’m like, “That was cool. I was there.”

Donnie Piercey (00:43:20):

“You can see my shadow off in the distance.”

Jennifer Roberts (00:43:23):

I mean, maybe that’s part of why I’ve always had an interest in science. I’ve always had fantastic science teachers. Every science teacher I ever had was amazing.

Donnie Piercey (00:43:31):

I credit mine to Mr. Wizard. I don’t know if you ever watched Mr. Wizard and Beakman’s World?

Eric Cross (00:43:35):

I remember Mr. Wizard. Yep. Yep. I definitely remember Mr. Wizard, Beakman’s World, all those. That was on Nickelodeon back in the day. I had to get up early to watch that one. But there’s a YouTube video—

Donnie Piercey (00:43:44):

Six am!

Eric Cross (00:43:44):

<laugh> It was! It was super-early! But there was one, Don, I don’t know if you’ve seen this on YouTube, but it said “Mr. Wizard Is Mean,” and it’s just clips of when he’s—

Donnie Piercey (00:43:56):

Yelling at kids!

Eric Cross (00:43:56):

Chastising. Or being really direct. It’s just one after another.

Donnie Piercey (00:44:02):

He always asked ’em a question and if the kid, you know, didn’t answer it right, he’d be like, “Well, you’re not right, but you’re wrong.” You know, whatever. <Laugh>

Eric Cross (00:44:14):

I have to make sure I’m not subconsciously saying Mr. Wizard quotes when I’m talking in the classroom, when things are happening. But yeah, that video’s hilarious. So I just want to bring us back to AI, and ask this question: Do you think science has a special role to play when it comes to teaching kids about AI responsibly? Does science have a special role in that?

Jennifer Roberts (00:44:36):

I think the responsible piece of AI I wanna teach my students about is the part about the bias in the algorithms and the bias in the training. And I want them to understand how it works, well enough to make informed decisions about how it impacts their lives.

Donnie Piercey (00:44:56):

Hmm.

Jennifer Roberts (00:44:57):

Because I do have concerns about a tool that was trained on the internet. And the answers it gives you is the average of the internet. And do we trust the internet? And the answer from kids is always, “Well sorta, no.” <Laugh> So I want them to understand the social science behind that.

Donnie Piercey (00:45:18):

Yeah. And just along that same point, having the students recognize that just because, you know, you copy-and-paste a question in, the answer it spits out might not always be correct. So, teaching them that just like you would with a source that you find about a topic that you’re researching, you’ve gotta fact-check.

Jennifer Roberts (00:45:44):

It’s just like being a good scientist. A good scientist wouldn’t always accept a single result or the first result. You know, you would look at multiple angles. You would try things different ways. Last week I took the article my seniors were reading about victim compensation after 9-11, and in front of them, I gave ChatGPT, I said, “Are you familiar with this article by Amanda Ripley? And ChatGPT came back and said, “Oh yes, this was written in the Atlantic in 2020 and it’s about these things, blah, blah blah.” And my students looked at that and went, “That’s not the article we read.” And I said, “I know. It got it wrong. That’s amazing!” Yeah. And I was so happy that it got it wrong! ‘Cause I wanted them to see that happen.

Donnie Piercey (00:46:21):

And I guess one of the big science questions there, or one of the big science components there, is that idea of inquiry. Right? It’s almost like you have to teach students how to ask those deep questions about what AI spits out.

Eric Cross (00:46:35):

All of those tips are great. And it leads me to this last question I want to ask. New teachers that are out there — it actually doesn’t even matter; new teachers, experienced teachers, all of us are kind of new at different levels of this race. We’re all kind of starting it together. I mean, it hit mainstream. We’re all getting exposed to it. You all really dive into it. When tech comes out, I know you two really like, “OK, how can we use this to transform education and do awesome things for kids?”

Donnie Piercey (00:47:04):

Usually, when new tech comes out, “How can this make my life easier?” is usually the question. Yeah.

Jennifer Roberts (00:47:09):

“How can I save myself time with this?” Yes.

Donnie Piercey (00:47:11):

“How can this result in me watching more TV and you know, less grading,” sometimes.

Eric Cross (00:47:16):

And I start there like you, but then I end up more time that I fill with another project. And I need to learn how to stop doing that. I’m like, “Oh! I got more free time! … to go take on this other task.”

Jennifer Roberts (00:47:28):

Oh, all of my tech adoption is driven by “how can I work less?”

Eric Cross (00:47:32):

So you’re you’re talking to a new teacher, teacher’s getting exposed to this, they’re starting the school year or they’re just getting their feet wet with it. What advice would you give them about AI, incorporated into content or even just best practices? Where you’re at right now in your own journey, and someone’s asking you about it —what would you share with ’em? And Jen, I want to start with you.

Jennifer Roberts (00:47:53):

So, the first thing I did is I was in the middle of grading, you know, 62 essays from my seniors about Into the Wild, when ChatGPT became a thing last November. And I wanted to see what would happen. So the first thing I did was take the prompt that I had given my students and gave it to ChatGPT, ’cause I had just graded a whole bunch of those essays and my brain was very attuned to what my rubric was doing and what I was expecting as the outcome. So I could take what ChatGPT gave me as that quote unquote “essay” and evaluate it critically. And I was ready to do that. So my first advice is take something you’re already asking students to do and ask ChatGPT to do the same thing. So that as you look at the student results, you can compare that to what ChatGPTgives you. If what you’re finding is that ChatGPT can generate something that would earn a decent grade from you, you might need to change that assignment. And it doesn’t need to be a big change, but it might need a tweak or something, so that it, it does rely on the student voice, the students to do something more personal. I’m finding very helpful in my classroom is having my kids do projects where they are recording themselves on — I like Flip. So they’re writing a scene together and they’re having to record the scene together. And I’m emphasizing more of the speaking roles than the writing roles necessarily. So yes, first, take something you’re already doing, paste in to ChatGPT, see what the results are, see how that fits with what your students are doing, and then do that for every assignment you give and just sort of see what comes out of that, and see which assignments are failing and which assignments are working. ‘Cause that’s gonna give you a sense, when you do see one of those results from your students, you’ll be able to recognize it. But it’ll also help you tweak your assignments and decide, “How can I make this a little more original or a little bit more authentic for my students?” And if the robot, if the AI, can’t generate a response, what could the AI do that would be helpful to your students? Would be my next question. So can you use the AI to help them generate an outline? Can you use the AI to help them generate a list of steps to help them get started? And when you’re comfortable enough doing that by yourself, then don’t be afraid to open it in front of your class. If it’s not blocked at your school site, which I hope it’s not. Because I think the advantage goes to kids who have access to this in the long run, or at least see what it is and know what it is. Right? Because if a kid graduates from school without knowing that AI exists, they’re not gonna be prepared for what they face out in the world. So give them a chance to see you using it. Model effectively using it. I have a blog post about that. I just wrote it. LitAndTech.com. You can check that out. “Introducing 9th graders to ChatGPT.” How it went, right? There’s a chart there you can have. It’s my very first draft of this, but it seems to be very popular. So, you know, show students how it can be used as their mentor. If I can’t come read your paragraph because I have 36 kids in my classroom and I cannot stop and read everybody’s first paragraph, can you, if you want to, give your first paragraph to ChatGPT and ask for advice? And will that advice be helpful to you? So showing students how it can be used responsibly is, I think, something every teacher should be doing right now. And don’t hold back just because you’re afraid you’re gonna be teaching them what this is. They know what this is. Right?

Donnie Piercey (00:51:13):

They know what it is.

Jennifer Roberts (00:51:13):

Especially if you teach high school. They know what it is. I’ve had parents thank me for showing them how to use it responsibly. You know, this can actually be a really useful tool, but if you’re trying to make it do your work for you, it will probably fail you. If you’re trying to use it to help you do your work, it will probably be helpful. Sort of the way I’m breaking it down for them at this point. You want the great metaphor? The great metaphor is if you build a robot and send it to the top of a mountain, did you climb that mountain? No. If you build a robot and ask it to help you get to the top of the mountain, and you and the robot go together, did you climb that mountain? Yes.

Eric Cross (00:51:53):

I like that. I’m thinking through this. I’m processing that now.

Donnie Piercey (00:51:57):

Me too.

Eric Cross (00:51:59):

Yeah. I just imagine a robot holding my hand climbing Mount Everest and I’m like, “Yeah, I did it.”

Donnie Piercey (00:52:04):

If I got a robot though, like I would have to dress it like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2. Like I would just have to.

Eric Cross (00:52:10):

Of course.

Donnie Piercey (00:52:10):

Of course.

Eric Cross (00:52:13):

Donnie, same question. Advice. Teachers getting immersed into it. Tips. What would you say?

Donnie Piercey (00:52:20):

So, I would definitely agree with everything that Jen said. Just, if anything else, to familiarize yourself with it. Almost like pretend like it’s a student in your classroom and it’s answering questions, just so that way you can see what it can do. And you’re kind of training yourself, like, “Oh, well, if I ever need examples, exemplars.” If you’re in a writing piece and you don’t wanna sit there and write out four different types of student responses — you know, advanced writer, beginning writer, whatever — great way to to do that is you just—

Jennifer Roberts (00:52:48):

Oh yeah. We did that.

Donnie Piercey (00:52:48):

—copy the prompt in and give a beautifully written piece that a fifth grader would be impressed with. Boom. It’ll do it for you. In my classroom, the way that I approach it is I kinda look at AI as almost like this butler that I don’t have to pay. That if I need it to do something for me, it’s just bookmarked. I can click it. And I mean, sometimes I just talk to it like it’s a person. And it’s almost like, in the chat window, I’m just rambling at it, what I’m trying to do. And it’s almost like I’m talking to a coworker, and I’m trying to hedge out some ideas for a lesson. Simple example: For a science lesson, if you’re trying to come up with … let’s say you’re a fifth-grade — or, sorry, I teach fifth grade. Say you’re a seventh-grade science teacher. And you’re trying to teach the students in your class about Newton’s third law of motion. You know, every action [has an ] equal and opposite reaction. Look around your room. See what you have. Maybe look around and you’re like, “All right, I got a whiteboard, microscope, I’ve got magnets, a cylinder. …” And you just copy all this stuff into ChatGPT. Say, like, “Hey, I have all of these items. Cotton balls, peanut butter, whatever.” And say, “I’m trying to teach students Newton’s third law of motion. Give me some ideas of some ways I could teach it using some of these materials.” And it’ll do it! It’ll give you like five to 10 ideas!

Jennifer Roberts (00:54:15):

And then tell it what your students are into. Like, my students are really into basketball. Can you work that into this lesson?

Donnie Piercey (00:54:21):

Yeah! They’re into the Avengers! Hey, find some way to tie Spider-Man into this. You know, that was a pun that didn’t go so well. But, you know <laugh> figure out some way that you could incorporate this and it’ll do it. And Eric, like you said, it won’t be perfect. Right? But if anything else, if you’re a starting teacher and you’re trying to brainstorm ideas — try it.

Eric Cross (00:54:44):

And Donnie, as you were saying that, I was thinking — first, I imagined Spider-Man shooting cotton balls with peanut butter all over them — and then my mind went to having students have these items, like you were saying. And then they create labs, working alongside AI. To do inquiry. To create a lab about something, and then going and performing and collecting data. OK, that’s — now I wanna go do that tomorrow!

Donnie Piercey (00:55:10):

Listen, it is so easy to do. If you have an extra computer in your classroom. … We were talking about Jarvis and Iron Man and Tony Stark earlier. Make a new chat in ChatGPT. Tell it, “I want you to pretend that you are Tony Stark. Only answer questions as if you are Tony Stark.” Or “Pretend you’re Jarvis.” Whatever. “Stay in character the whole time. I’m going to have sixth grade students come up to you and ask you questions about science or forces of nature, and only answer questions like you’re Iron Man.” And guess what? You keep that station in your classroom. Students are working on a project — you know, in elementary school, a lot of times we’ll have that, “ask three before me” — you’re supposed to ask three friends before you go and bug the teacher. Well, maybe one of those “three before me” can be that little computer station, where they go up and ask Tony Stark a question, and then it answers them as Jarvis or Iron Man. I mean, we’re really just scratching the surface with all this AI stuff. And as more and more companies and more and more creatives are gonna start to realize everything that it can do, we’re gonna start to see it more and more. And hopefully we as teachers can really figure out how to use this tool to, of course, help students, but also help them be creative and explore and learn on their own.

Eric Cross (00:56:35):

That’s amazing. And just both of you are just dropping gems right now. And I wanna wrap up by saying — and I’ve said this before on earlier podcasts I’ve done — but at this phase in my life, the people that I’m the biggest fans of are teachers. And it’s true. I don’t mean that in a cliche way. When I watch celebrities and things like that, when I watch professional sports, that doesn’t fill me the way it used to when I was a kid. At this point, as a professional, I get inspired by other educators who are just doing awesome things. And when I think about educators who are doing that, you two are on that list of people that make me better. And when I get better, I can do better things for my kids. And so, one, I want to thank you for staying in the classroom and continue to support students. They’re so lucky to have you both. The second thing I wanted to say is, Jen, I wanna start with you. Where can people — and I know we said at the beginning — but where can people find the stuff that you put out? You got blogs, your social, your book.

Jennifer Roberts (00:57:28):

I got lots of social. Twitter, I’m JenRoberts1 on Twitter. And then my blog is LitAndTech.com. And then I’m on lots of the new social too, the Mastodons, the Spoutables, the Posts — those kinds of things — as just Jen Roberts, because I got in early and I got my real name without a 1. And there was some other one I’m on recently that I’ve forgotten about. But there’s lots of ’em. They’re fun. And I’m Jen Roberts. You can find me there.

Donnie Piercey (00:57:56):

And I’m SergeantPepperD on AOL, if anyone’s interested.

Eric Cross (00:58:00):

If you wanna hit Donnie up on AIM. <Laugh>

Donnie Piercey (00:58:03):

SergeantPepperD.

Jennifer Roberts (00:58:04):

You know, speaking of rock stars and people who do amazing things, I did write a blog post about using ChatGPT in the classroom, but I hear Donnie wrote a whole book.

Eric Cross (00:58:13):

Oh yeah. So, Donnie! Donnie, that’s a great segue. Thanks Jen. Donnie, how do people find out more? And can you tell us about this book you wrote, that’s coming out in the summer?

Donnie Piercey (00:58:22):

Yeah, so the book I wrote is called 50 Strategies for Integrating AI Into the Classroom. It’s published by Teacher Created Materials. They reached out to me. They had seen some of the stuff that I was doing, not just with ChatGPT, but also some image-generating AI stuff. You know, I got featured on Good Morning America, which was kind of cool. And they saw that and they said, ‘Hey, that looks really neat.” Reached out to me and asked me to write a book. And the idea behind the book, that launches this summer, it’s just 50 ideas, 50 prompts, different things that, as a classroom teacher, that you can do. So, you know, I think there’s so many AI books that are out there now. A lot of them are big ideas, which I think are important. Definitely important discussions that need to be, have around, the ethics of AI. What’s the role that AI should play in the classroom. But I just wanted to write a book, kind of like the discussion that, that Jen and I were just having, which is like, “Can we just share a whole bunch of ideas, different things that we could try with our students?” So definitely check it out. And I appreciate you giving me a shout-out too. That was cool, Eric. Thank you.

Eric Cross (00:59:35):

Of course. Definitely. And Donnie, your Twitter is again. …

Donnie Piercey (00:59:39):

Oh, @MrPiercey, M R P I E R C E Y.

Eric Cross (00:59:44):

Follow Donnie. Follow Jen. Tons of stuff on there. Both of you, thank you so much. For your time, for talking about students and how we can take care of them, science, literacy, AI. I hope we can talk about this again. I feel like even if in just six months, we might be saying different things. In a year, the landscape might completely change. And that makes it really fun. But thank you both for being on the show.

Jennifer Roberts (01:00:04):

Thank you for having us, Eric.

Donnie Piercey (01:00:05):

Thank you so much, Eric. We appreciate it, bud.

Eric Cross (01:00:10):

Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Jen Roberts and Donnie Piercey. Jen Roberts is a veteran English teacher at San Diego’s Point Loma High School and author of the book Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning. You can keep up with her at LitAndTech.com. And Donnie Piercey is a fifth-grade teacher from Lexington, Kentucky. He hosts the podcast Teachers Passing Notes. Stay up-to-date with him at Resources.MrPiercey.com. And let us know what you think of this episode in our Facebook discussion group, Science Connections: The Community. Make sure you don’t miss any new episodes of Science Connections by subscribing to the show, wherever you get podcasts. And as always, we’d really appreciate it if you can leave us a review. It’ll help more people and AI robots find the show. You can find more information on all of Amplify’s shows on our podcast hub, Amplify.com/hub. Thanks again for listening.

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What Jennifer Roberts says about science

“If I’m not teaching my students how to use this, then they’re not going to turn into the adults we need them to be… If we’re not at least trying to think about what our future world is going to look like, then we’re not serving our students well.”

– Jennifer Roberts

High School English Teacher

Meet the guests

Jen Roberts is a Nationally Board Certified high school English teacher with 25+ years of experience teaching Social Science and English Language Arts in grades 7-12. She has had 1:1 laptops for her students since 2008 and is the co-author of Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning. A Google for Education Certified Innovator since 2011, Jen was named the CUE Outstanding Educator in 2022. Her interests include literacy instruction, standards based grading, and leveraging Google tools to make her teaching more efficient and effective.

A woman with light skin and blond hair stands outdoors, framed by illustrated graphics including a blue flask and curved lines. Green foliage is visible in the background.

Donnie Piercey, the 2021 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, is a fifth-grade teacher in Lexington, Kentucky.  With a passion for utilizing technology to promote student inquiry, learning, and engagement, he has been teaching since 2007. In addition to being in the classroom, he runs a podcast, Teachers Passing Notes that is produced by the Peabody Award winning GZMShows, and holds several recognitions, including a National Geographic Fellowship to Antarctica in 2018. His most recent work in Artificial Intelligence has not gone unnoticed, earning him multiple appearances on Good Morning America, the Associated Press, and PBS. His upcoming book, “50 Strategies for Integrating AI in the Classroom” published by Teacher Created Materials, is written for educators looking for practical classroom approaches to using AI. All told, Donnie has been invited to keynote and present at schools in thirty-three states and on five continents.

A man with short brown hair and a beard smiles at the camera, wearing a red shirt, framed by a circular graphic with a blue flask icon.
A laptop screen displays the “Science Connections: The Community” private group page, with science-themed icons decorating the background and edges.

About Science Connections

Welcome to Science Connections! Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So…how do we help kids figure that out? We will bring on educators, scientists, and more to discuss the importance of high-quality science instruction. In this episode, hear from our host Eric Cross about his work engaging students as a K-8 science teacher. 

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Welcome, Program 3 reviewers!

We’re honored to introduce you to Amplify California Language Arts. We’re confident you’ll find this comprehensive program to be a powerful tool for bringing the vision of the California ELA/ELD Framework to life in classrooms across the state.

Please start with the video on the right to learn how to navigate the program and access key features referenced within our submission. Below you’ll find additional resources to support your review.

Your review samples

We’re excited for you to begin your review of Amplify California Language Arts, a comprehensive biliteracy program for kindergarten through grade 6.

Reviewer Binders (K–6)

Your physical samples should have arrived in grade-specific boxes with three Reviewer Binders.

  • The first binder will contain logistical program review information and the printed Evaluation Criteria Map.
  • The second binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades K–2.
  • The third binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades 3–6.

Physical samples (trade books)

Your review of the program will be entirely digital with the exception of the trade books that you will be receiving as physical samples. You can expect to receive 13 boxes of physical materials for your review. Twelve boxes of trade books, one for each grade K–5, in English and Spanish, and one box containing your Reviewer Binders.

As you begin the process of organizing your materials, please refer to the inventory checklist found inside each box as well as within your Reviewer Binder.

Digital review materials

In order to access your digital review materials, you’ll need to log in to our platform using your unique login credentials found on a Digital Review Credential flyer inside of your Reviewer Binder. Once you have located the flyer:

  • Click the orange button below to access the platform.
  • Click “Log in with Amplify.”
  • Enter the username and password provided on your Digital Review Credential flyer.
Digital Access

Navigation tips

Before you get started, please review these important functionality notes:

Criteria Map and Standards Maps must be opened on Microsoft Word on your desktop to function as intended. If you open the documents without Microsoft Word on your desktop, citations will be cut off at the bottom of most tables within the document.

Many of our citations are deep-links to PDFs, meaning they will take you to the right page or the first page in the sequence for the citation in question. To ensure this functionality works, please disable any PDF-viewing extensions or plug-ins such as Adobe Acrobat Pro Browser Extension.

[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades K–5

[Reviewer program navigation video] Grade 6

Click here for additional information on navigating the program for grade 6.

Category 1: English Language Arts (ELA) and English Language Development (ELD) content/alignment to standards

Evaluation Criteria Map

Linked below is the Evaluation Criteria Map. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Evaluation Criteria Map.

ELA Standards Maps

The links below provide the Standards Maps for Amplify California Language Arts for each grade level.

ELD Standards Maps

Category 2: Program organization

Amplify California Language Arts’ biliteracy program is a comprehensive curriculum provides a full year of evidence-based instruction for each grade level, with both integrated and designated English Language Development instruction designed to give multilingual/English learners the tools to thrive. Amplify’s biliteracy program for grades K–6 includes:

  • Core English language arts instruction: Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) California (grades K–5) and Amplify ELA California (grade 6) covering knowledge building and foundational skills.
    • Provides upper grade foundational skills instruction for grades 3–6.
  • Core Spanish language arts instruction: Amplify Caminos California, a fully parallel SLA program that works in tandem with English core instruction across all grades.
    • Provides upper grade foundational skills instruction for grades 3–6.
  • Designated English Language Development: Language Studio California is the designated English Language Development companion that directly aligns with and supports core English instruction. 
  • Newcomer Support: Amplify California Language Arts Newcomer Support to facilitate instruction for students who are new to both English and the United States.

Program structure

Amplify’s California Language Arts programs are built on what the research shows: Strong readers need both word recognition and language comprehension. Our comprehensive curriculum suite follows the Simple View of Reading bringing together foundational skills and knowledge building to deliver instruction grounded in the Science of Reading.

This model is integral to the structure of the Amplify biliteracy program, which directly aligns with the CA CCSS ELA and ELD standards by combining rigorous decoding and skills instruction with research-based knowledge and language development instruction. In its early grades, the Amplify biliteracy program uses a two-strand structure—Skills/Lectoescritura and Knowledge/Conocimiento—to effectively address this learning challenge while meeting standards expectations for both language development and academic content mastery.

Diagram with three orange squares labeled: "Language comprehension," "Word recognition," and "Skilled reading," connected by multiplication and equals signs, with Spanish headings above each square.

[Reviewer highlight video] Program organization for Category 2

[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades K–2

[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 3–5

[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grade 6

Amplify Caminos California lessons are designed to allow all students time to work toward learning objectives, including peer collaboration and discussion. Since each lesson activity is aligned to subsequent activities, students’ understanding and analysis develops progressively throughout the lesson.

Each lesson follows a predictable structure with clearly marked components, beginning with warm-up routines, progressing through explicit instruction with guided practice, and concluding with independent application activities. The program provides detailed teacher language, including question stems and discussion prompts, ensuring clear and consistent delivery of instruction.

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify Caminos California empower teachers to deliver effective instruction and keep students engaged with the following resources:

  • Teacher Guides
  • Assessment Guides
  • Authentic texts and trade books
  • Knowledge Image Cards
  • Knowledge Flip Books
  • Remediation and intervention resources
  • Decodable readers
  • Student Readers and novels
  • Student Activity Books
  • Dedicated ELD support with Language Studio California
  • Poet’s Journals
  • eReaders
  • Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs
  • Instructional routine modeling videos
  • Assignable Practice Games
  • On-demand professional development

Amplify ELA California students stay engaged with the following resources:

  • Teacher Guides that include:
    • Detailed lesson plans
    • Standards alignment and exit tickets
    • Real-time differentiation strategies
    • Robust reporting
  • Student Editions that include:
    • High-quality narrative and informational texts
    • Videos, audio supports, and digital experiences that capture their attention
    • Personal Writing Journal to keep all student writing in one place
  • Dedicated ELD support with Language Studio California
  • Trade books

Core literacy philosophy

Support every learner. Meet all learning needs with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that brings together universal screening, scaffolded core instruction, support for multilingual/English learners, and data-driven intervention to ensure every student gets what they need to succeed.

Deliver consistent foundational skills instruction. Daily explicit, systematic skills instruction in grades K–2, with targeted yet flexible support for students still building decoding confidence in grades 3–6, ensures mastery of essential reading foundations.

Build lasting knowledge across all grades. Through coherently sequenced, content-rich instruction that revisits key vocabulary and concepts with increasing complexity, students build meaningful connections that deepen their vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Strengthen reading through writing at every level. Regular writing instruction grounded in the Science of Writing supports reading comprehension, improves sentence-level writing, and provides the foundation for high-quality composition. As students progress through the upper grades, they engage in increasingly complex analytical tasks—synthesizing ideas, drawing generalizations, and interpreting multiple textual layers through both focused quick-writes and comprehensive essays. 

Foster oral language development. Structured opportunities for academic conversation and evidence-based dialogue build students’ ability to express complex ideas with precision and allow them to participate confidently in classroom discussions.

Measure growth with comprehensive assessments. Assessments range from in-the-moment checks for understanding to summative assessments that measure progress toward skills mastery and standards proficiency, providing the data needed to drive targeted instruction.

Scope and sequence

Below you can view the scope and sequence documents for each grade level. 

Routines

Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California include several structured instructional routines that provide predictable patterns for both teachers and students:

Discussion and collaboration routines:

  • Turn and Talk: Partners discuss text-specific content using sentence starters and frames
  • Think-Pair-Share: Students engage in individual thinking, partner discussion, and whole-class sharing
  • Partner reading: Students sit shoulder-to-shoulder, taking turns reading and listening

Foundational Skills routines:

  • Sound-spelling review: Warm-up activities that reinforce phonics patterns
  • Oral blending warm-ups: Teacher-guided practice progressing to independent application
  • Finger-tapping: Techniques for blending sounds
  • Chaining activities: Students manipulate letters to transform one word into another
  • Word Work: Daily short activities focused on domain-specific and academic vocabulary

Knowledge-building routines:

  • Teacher modeling: Demonstration of proper intonation, expression, and pacing
  • Choral reading: Whole-class reading practice
  • Partner reading: Paired fluency practice

Close reading routines

The program includes carefully structured close reading activities that guide students through multiple encounters with complex texts. These routines help students develop deeper comprehension through systematic analysis and discussion.

Each routine includes comprehensive instructional guides with clear-cut directions for implementation, straightforward explanations of concepts, and suggestions for discussion.

Cross-Linguistic Transfer routines

The Cross-Linguistic Transfer (CLT) routines are easy-to-implement, 10–15 minute mini-lessons designed to help bridge English and Spanish literacy and language development. These structured routines are organized by grade bands for K–2, grades 3–5 and grade 6, covering five skill areas:

  • Oral language
  • Reading
  • Vocabulary
  • Language
  • Writing

[Reviewer highlight video] Amplify’s program alignment to Cross-Linguistic Transfer criteria

Designated English Language Development materials

Language Studio California is a K–8 content-based companion for English language learners. Built on Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California’s carefully sequenced Knowledge Domains, it combines engaging content knowledge with targeted supports and research-based strategies to help students move swiftly toward language proficiency. This program includes:

  • Real-world content to provide authentic opportunities to practice reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
  • Scaffolding strategies and differentiated instruction to offer targeted support along five English proficiency levels.
  • Progress monitoring tools to help teachers provide consistent and effective support.
  • Teacher Guides that:
    • Provide impactful progress monitoring tools including formative and summative assessments, and Language Proficiency Assessment rubrics.
    • Offer varied differentiation strategies including Support, Challenge, and Access supports in each lesson segment.
    • Are organized into thoughtful lesson segments—Talk Time, Building Background, On Stage and more—that make learning objectives concrete.
  • Activities that:
    • Expand on domain knowledge from core content and read-alouds and prompt collaborative conversation to practice oral fluency.
    • Support hands-on language activities to promote authentic interaction in the classroom.
    • Help students bridge experiences and knowledge with images, vocabulary activities, graphic organizers, anticipation guides, writing space, and more.

Category 3: Assessments

Systematic MTSS alignment

In alignment with the additional 2025 Guidance 3.1.a, the assessment systems align with MTSS tiers, including universal screening, diagnostic assessments for students demonstrating a need for additional support, and progress monitoring tools that complement California’s required reading difficulties screening schedule per SB 114.

Tier 1:
Universal/ differentiated support		Tier 2: 
Supplemental/ targeted
support		Tier 3: 
Intensified/ intensive
support
Core instruction assessments





Frequency of administration		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments

Daily, Weekly, Monthly		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments

Daily, Weekly, Monthly		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments

Daily, Weekly, Monthly
Universal screening assessments

Frequency of administration		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura


3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura


3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura


3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY
Formal progress monitoring assessments


Frequency of administration		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura



3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura



Monthly		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura



Bi-weekly
Informal progress monitoring assessments




Frequency of administration		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California core assessments

Daily		Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments



When linked to a lesson in the toolkit		Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments



When linked to a lesson in the toolkit
Diagnostic assessment







Frequency of administration		Amplify skill diagnostic assessment


Amplify Spanish skill diagnostic assessment

Optional after universal screening assessment is administered		Amplify skill diagnostic assessment


Amplify Spanish skill diagnostic assessment

After universal screening assessment is administered

Universal assessment system

Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition (K–8) and mCLASS Lectura (K–6) are universal and dyslexia screening assessments that should be administered three times per year (BOY, MOY, and EOY) to all students. The assessments evaluate student literacy risk, determine progress toward grade-level goals, and indicate the level of instructional  support a student may need. Beginning-of-year screenings require adequate instructional time before administration, particularly in grades K–1, while mid-year and end-of-year assessments evaluate instructional effectiveness and guide tier placement adjustments. These screenings also identify students at risk for dyslexia. Universal screening provides essential data for targeting instruction and measuring instructional system effectiveness.

Core instruction assessments

Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California provide a comprehensive suite of assessments for grades K–6 that range from low-stakes, informal formative assessments to more formal summative assessments. These assessments incorporate a variety of methods and question types, including multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, and oral and written responses.

Formative assessments:

  • Checks for Understanding: Incorporated into each lesson segment throughout daily instruction. Quick pulse-checks that provide immediate feedback during lesson delivery (grades K–5). 
  • Daily formative assessments: Highlighted moments within each lesson for teachers to plan to track mastery of Primary Focus objectives and standards of each lesson to get a clear snapshot of individual and whole-class progress (grades K–5). 
  • Activity pages: Completed as part of lessons and can be used to assess lesson content understanding through various formats (grades K–5).
  • Exit Tickets: Located at the end of lessons, these provide a quick gauge of students’ ability to meet the lesson’s focus standards (grade 6).  
  • Writing Prompts: Prompts integrated throughout lessons during writing activities that provide skill snapshots within lessons and tracks patterns of skill development over time (grade 6).
  • Independent reading activities (Solos): At the end of every lesson, students complete an independent reading activity (“Solo”) with reading questions that are scored to measure comprehension (grade 6).

Summative assessments:

  • Skills end-of-unit assessments (grades K–2) 
  • Knowledge end-of-domain assessments (grades K–2) 
  • End-of-unit assessments (grades 3–5) 
  • Unit essays: A culminating end-of-unit set of lessons that guide students through crafting an essay with a rubric to score mastery of writing skills (grade 6)
  • Unit reading assessments: Auto-scored responses and two constructed response items evaluate comprehension, content understanding, and reading skills using the passages students read during the unit (grade 6)

Performance assessments

Student Performance Assessments are multi-day assessments administered in Grades K–5 at the beginning, middle, and end of year to help teachers gauge student mastery of grade-level Core content. These assessments provide critical data to help teachers set targeted instructional goals and monitor individual and class-wide progress towards core objectives.

Progress monitoring

Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition and mCLASS Lectura provide formal progress monitoring in the discrete skills that are indicative of reading growth and predictive of overall success to provide the most instructionally meaningful information to teachers.

Informal progress monitoring tools can be found within the Intervention Toolkit, including materials for teachers to record, track, and evaluate student progress.

Diagnostic assessment

Interventions within Amplify’s literacy programs are informed by a skill diagnostic assessment that provides detailed data on foundational literacy skill deficits. The Amplify Skill Diagnostic Assessment and Amplify Spanish Skill Diagnostic assessment serve as critical tools in this process, administered specifically to students identified as at risk for reading difficulty through universal screening assessments—particularly those demonstrating mCLASS DIBELS 8th Edition or mCLASS Lectura composite scores in the Well Below or Below Benchmark ranges. These diagnostic assessments provide teachers with the precise skills to begin intervention and remediation.

Category 4: Universal Access

Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California are developed using the Universal Design for Learning framework to proactively ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

Universal Design for Learning

Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California incorporate opportunities for engagement, representation, action, and expression based on the guidelines of Universal Design for Learning.

  • Multiple Means of Engagement: The programs incorporate interesting and motivating ways for students to interact with information and content. The Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students. Scaffolding for students with various levels of need is incorporated into the design of each lesson.
  • Multiple Means of Representation: The programs provide multiple means of presenting content to maximize student understanding. This includes digital component files that allow for a range of presentations of images and text to support learning. Amplify provides access to universal supports such as point-of-use audio for all core texts, embedded definitions for critical vocabulary, and glossaries in multiple languages. The programs include clarification on language found throughout the program, with sidebars that include support on transition words and syntax, and illustrations to help students understand the concepts they are learning.
  • Multiple Means of Action and Expression: The programs include a range of methods for all students, including Multilingual/English Learners, to navigate and demonstrate learning. This includes physical actions, a range of methods for response, appropriate tools for composition, and varied scaffolding. Lessons provide multiple ways for students to interact with text, allowing their brains to process the language through distinct pathways. Activities harness multiple learning modes, using media tools, digital apps, and a variety of visual and physical experiences to strategically support and enhance student learning.
  • Accessibility: Universal access features include visual aids, enlarged materials, physical objects, and multiple learning modalities through activities like Push & Say and Wiggle Cards. The Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students.

Embedded differentiation

Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California provide built-in differentiation strategies in every lesson for all students.

  • Pre-teaching supports include mini-lessons on:
    • Core vocabulary building
    • Core connections
    • Essential background information building
    • What Have We Already Learned?/What Do We Already Know?
  • Differentiated Support for Core Instruction tables, located in the overview of each K–2 Skills Teacher Guide, provide a list of specific opportunities for reteaching and additional support in each lesson based on skill.
  • Support and Challenge Sidebars in lesson margins offer educators immediate guidance in implementing point-of-use differentiation techniques.
  • Flexible Grouping within lessons provides opportunities for teachers to facilitate small groups, partners, or individualized support based on students’ needs. In the Skills Strand, teachers receive specific guidance for differentiated small group instruction, with targeted support and activities outlined for both Group 1 (students needing additional support) and Group 2 (on-level students) based on data. 
  • Amplify ELA California and Amplify Caminos California provide point-of-use supports embedded within key core lesson activities with six levels of differentiation. The goal of these supports is to fully enable access to grade-level content for all students, including students with disabilities, English learners, and students ready for an additional level of challenge.
  • The Universal Access section of Advance Preparation in each lesson includes varied strategies to ensure all students can access and engage in each lesson.
  • Frequent use of graphic organizers and visual supports in lessons provide opportunities for differentiation based on need. The program also includes a variety of technological supports, such as eReaders with audio.
  • Extension opportunities are suggested throughout lessons, often embedded in writing tasks, which include prompts to use more complex and descriptive vocabulary, figurative language,  multi-clause and complex sentences, and  informational text characteristics.

Assessment-driven MTSS resources

  • The K–6 Intervention Toolkit is available online and provides easy-to-use resources that assist teachers in filling gaps in students’ reading skills, with activities to support print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and other key skills.
  • Fluency packets (Grades 2–6)
  • Foundational Skills Intervention Program for Grades 3–6 support students who would benefit from direct and explicit intervention instruction in the full continuum of foundational skills in the upper grades
  • Flexible Instructional Time including:
    • Pausing Points built into the curriculum that provide teachers with dedicated time to address specific student needs through targeted reteaching, remediation, practice, and extension activities 
    • Pausing Point activities designed to support multilingual/English learners’ competence and confidence through differentiated whole-group, small-group, or individual instruction
  • Boost Reading and Boost Lectura are student-led digital intervention programs that follow the scope and sequences of Amplify CKLA California and Amplify Caminos California respectively, to reinforce the same foundational skills taught in core instruction. It integrates easily into daily routines, while the robust data provided by mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition offers a detailed view of how students progress across all instructional tiers.

Category 5: Instructional Planning and Teacher Support

Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, and Amplify ELA California teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with various print and digital resources. The program provides comprehensive planning and support materials designed to help teachers prepare for and execute lessons effectively and fulfill the requirements of Category 5.

Implementation supports across K–6

Planning and preparation resources

  • Unit Overviews that provide important background and context for the texts students will read, including highlighted elements within the text and guidance for how students will work with those elements
  • Sub-unit Overviews (Grade 6) that provide an overview of Lesson Objectives and reading and writing assignments, as well as a list of any projections, multimedia, or digital apps that can be projected from the teacher’s included digital license
  • Lesson-by-lesson preparation checklists (Grade 6) accompanying each Sub-unit Overview
  • Lesson Briefs for each individual lesson providing important background and context
  • Content knowledge materials regarding topics that students will examine

Point-of-use instructional guidance

  • Teacher Editions that feature insets of the same text and activity instructions as the corresponding Student Edition, wrapping teacher instruction around these materials
  • Activity guidance at point of use
  • Lesson standards clearly called out
  • Discussion suggestions embedded in lessons
  • Differentiation tips at point of use
  • Detailed Instructional Guides in each activity that include sequencing and grouping suggestions, tips for facilitating discussion, possible student responses and exemplars
  • On-the-Fly supports (Grade 6)—quick call-outs to the identifying features of “on track” and “needs support” students accompanied by short models of student guidance to foster strong performance

Multimedia and digital support

  • Teacher tip videos provide modeling and guidance for implementing key foundational skills routines within the program
  • Digital platform access where teachers can access printable PDFs of differentiated support materials for multilingual/English learners and students struggling to read, including translated Unit Background and Context documents and Text Previews
  • Teacher Dashboard and reporting tools provide real-time visibility into student progress and work for immediate instructional response

Caregiver supports

Communication and overview resources

  • Caregiver Hub available in English and Spanish that provides an overview of the curriculum
  • Caregiver Letters for each K–2 Knowledge Domain and unit in Grades 3–5 that provide an overview of the content, the skills students learn, as well as practical methods that continue the learning and knowledge building at home
  • Unit-specific Caregiver Letters (Grade 6) that provide detailed information regarding what students will read and learn in each unit, including conversation starters that allow caregivers to ask questions and discuss specific aspects of a unit with their student
  • Welcome letters that explain the assessment and placement process while inviting parent involvement and offering support
  • Editable Home-School Communication letters available in English and Spanish
  • Editable Progress Reports for teachers to update parents and guardians on what their child is learning

Content and learning support materials

  • Unit Background and Context documents that provide an introduction and overview to the unit’s topic and themes, available in English and Spanish
  • Text Previews that provide a brief introduction to formative, independent reading assignments (called Solos in Grade 6), available in English and Spanish
  • Unit Overview and Support documents (Grade 6) designed for caregivers that provide information about important questions, assignments, and key aspects of the unit texts, available in English and Spanish
  • Conversation starters included in Knowledge Strand Caregiver Letters to discuss domain topics at home

Home practice and extension activities

  • Take-Home pages in the Skills Strand that include copies of decodable passages, enabling students to share their reading progress with families and continue practicing their skills outside of school
  • Take-Home Letters in the Skills Strand that provide specific guidance for parents to support skills practice at home, such as sound-sorting activities, with detailed instructions and materials for home practice activities
  • Take-Home pages in the Knowledge Strand that provide suggested activities families can do together to reinforce and extend learning beyond the classroom
  • Games and activities on Take-Home Pages that extend classroom instruction, including all the materials and instruction necessary to help families assist students in a fun and engaging way
  • Digital access to decodable texts through the Amplify Caregiver Hub, allowing students to practice their reading skills both in class and at home
  • Weekly spelling lists and directions to decoding activities that can be practiced at home

¡El futuro es bilingüe! | The future is bilingual!

Pave the path to biliteracy with Amplify Caminos 3rd
Edition—a K–5 Spanish language arts program grounded in the Science of Reading and aligned with Amplify CKLA. It builds deep content knowledge and foundational skills through daily opportunities to read, write, and speak in Spanish.

Coming soon: Early release begins in the 2026–27 school year

Illustration of a brown bear cub standing on grass near flowers and water, with a speech bubble that says "o-so," designed to support foundational skills in science of reading instruction.

Built for biliteracy success

Amplify Caminos isn’t just a translation of English instruction; it’s an authentic Spanish language arts program designed for Spanish literacy development. Flexible across transitional, dual language, and immersion programs, it pairs with Amplify CKLA to deliver a complete, research-based K–5 biliteracy solution.

Our approach

Guided by our core biliteracy principles, Amplify Caminos delivers instruction that’s structured, intentional, and aligned with how Spanish language learning develops.

Rooted in biliteracy research

At the heart of the Science of Reading is the Simple View of Reading: language comprehension x word recognition = skilled reading. Amplify Caminos and CKLA support both from day one—starting with two-strand instruction in grades K–2 and moving to an integrated approach in grades 3–5.

A chart showing that foundational skills like language comprehension and word recognition together lead to skilled reading, with grade levels and terms in English and Spanish—ideal for a Spanish language arts curriculum like Amplify Caminos.
Diagram showing steps to learn the word "gato": hear and say /a/, read "gato," divide into syllables "ga-to," and write the word, emphasizing foundational skills often taught in bilingual programs.

Foundational skills built for Spanish

Reading fluency starts with a sounds-first approach—beginning with the most common vowels and consonants before moving to syllables and words. In grades K–2, Lectoescritura lessons develop decoding with 100% decodable readers. In grades 3–5, foundational skills are woven into content-rich lessons.

Knowledge that sticks

Topic-based instruction across science, social studies, literature, and the arts helps students develop the knowledge they need to understand complex texts. Amplify Caminos and CKLA follow the Core Knowledge Sequence with aligned—but not identical—topics for consistent Tier 1 instruction in both languages.

Illustration of a cactus, macaw, and fish representing topics for grades 1, 3, and 5: habitats, animal classification, and ocean ecosystems in the context of the Amplify Caminos Spanish language arts curriculum.
A_Website_Caminos_3E_081325_M7

Stories that reflect and connect

From 100% decodable readers in grades K–2 to authentic poetry and novel studies in grades 3–5, each selection is either written in Spanish or transadapted to reflect students’ language, culture, and lived experiences.

Aligned, not identical

Amplify Caminos mirrors Amplify CKLA with intentional unit-level alignment and authentic Spanish content where it matters most. The result? A seamless biliteracy path that honors each language and promotes cross-linguistic transfer.

Four illustrated educational book covers are displayed; two focus on geography, and two feature novels—one in Spanish and one in English—each with colorful designs, showcasing the Spanish language arts curriculum Amplify Caminos.
Four young children sit on a classroom floor, two with their hands raised, participating in an activity. Shelves of books and educational posters highlight the classroom’s focus on bilingual programs in the background.

Reach every learner, every day

Built-in scaffolds, multilingual supports, and small-group guidance help teachers reach students who need more support—and those who are ready for a challenge. Amplify Caminos and CKLA make it easy to differentiate in the moment and keep every student growing.

Celebrate bilingualism

Bilingualism strengthens brains and bridges cultures. Amplify Caminos and CKLA honor bilingual identities and support academic growth in both Spanish and English.

Three children's books in Spanish, a digital vocabulary activity for the word "húmedo," and an illustrated dog playing soccer on a laptop screen with "¡Hola!" and "Hello!" speech bubbles—perfect for building foundational skills with Amplify Caminos.

A complete biliteracy suite

One system. Two languages. Every learner.

Unite core instruction, assessment, and intervention—aligned across Spanish and English, grounded in the Science of Reading, and built to support every student within your MTSS framework.

  • Instruct with Amplify Caminos + Amplify CKLA: Partnered programs build knowledge and skills—with shared structure and distinct content where it matters.
  • Screen with mCLASS® Lectura + DIBELS® 8th Edition: The only screener with a dual-language report that connects student strengths across Spanish and English.
  • Practice with Boost Lectura + Boost Reading: Digital, student-led intervention that adapts to each learner—reinforcing core skills in both languages.
  • Grow with Amplify professional development: Science of Reading and biliteracy-focused training—plus real educator communities to grow and learn together.

Maximize bilingual education with Amplify PD.

Amplify Caminos offers targeted professional development (PD) to help educators deliver bilingual education effectively. Our sessions provide strategies and insights to support biliteracy and maximize student engagement.

Explore Amplify Caminos PD

What’s included

Explore the tools, texts, and tech that power great Spanish language arts instruction.

A laptop displays an illustrated children's story. Surrounding it are three children's books with animal and nature themes, highlighting foundational skills in reading, and an illustrated monkey with a baby.
Two educational book covers for Amplify Caminos: one featuring a scrapbook, sports gear, and craft materials, and another with a line drawing of a sea turtle and fish on green—perfect for Spanish language arts curriculum.

High-quality teacher materials

Teacher Guides, biliteracy implementation support, assessments, and lesson screens

A Spanish language arts curriculum set includes a worksheet, the book "Para llegar al mar" featuring a rabbit, a flashcard with the word "gato" and its syllables, plus a cartoon cat—perfect for bilingual programs.

Immersive student resources

Decodables, authentic and transadapted texts, activity books, and multisensory phonics tools

A laptop displays the words "Amplify classroom" on its screen, with abstract shapes in the background—highlighting tools for building foundational skills in literacy.

Robust digital platform

eBooks, interactive tools, teacher resources, and on-demand professional development with support for dual language implementation

Explore more programs based on the Science of Reading

All of the programs in our literacy suite are designed to support and complement each other. Learn more about our related programs:

Amplify CKLA

The leading K–5 Science of Reading literacy program that integrates foundational…

mCLASS Lectura

Amplify’s mCLASS® Lectura is a K–6 Spanish and English literacy assessment desig…

Boost Lectura

Boost Lectura is a spanish literacy instruction program based on the Science of…

See all programs

S3-03: Instructional strategies for integrating science and literacy

A graphic with the text "Science Connections" and "Amplify" features colorful circles and curved lines on a dark gray background.

We’re continuing our investigations around science and literacy with Doug Fisher, Ph.D., professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University. We talk about the importance of integrating science and literacy, as well as practical guidance for teachers who want to unite the two disciplines in their own classrooms.

Listen as we discuss how science and literacy can be powerful allies and specific strategy areas to focus on when integrating the two disciplines. And don’t forget to grab your Science Connections study guide to track your learning and find additional resources!

We hope you enjoy this episode and explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page!

DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT

Douglas Fisher (00:00):

It’s not that you have to become a reading specialist to integrate literacy into science. It’s how our brains work.

Eric Cross (00:10):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. This season, we’re making the case for our favorite underdog, which of course is science. Each episode we’re showing how science can be better utilized in the classroom, and making the case for why it’s so important to do so. In our last episode, we examined the evidence showing that science and English instruction can support each other. And now on this episode, we want to give you some more strategies for really making that a reality in your own home or classroom or community. So to help me, I’m joined on this episode by Dr. Douglas Fisher, Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University. Dr. Fisher is actually someone who has conducted literacy training at my own school, so I’m excited to be able to share some of his wisdom with all of you. Oh, and just a heads up, Dr. Fisher dropped some gems about the ways teachers can integrate literacy and science in their classrooms. So you may want to have a notepad. Ready. And now here’s my conversation with Dr. Douglas Fisher.

Eric Cross (01:12):

Well, Doug, thank you for your time and for being willing to come and talk about literacy and science. I know you’re busy, all over the place, and so I was super-excited that we were able to lock you in and talk about this. And, on this episode, we’re gonna talk about the ways that science and literacy can support each other. And one of the reasons why I’m really excited for you is because you said some really key things for me as a science teacher, when you talked about literacy and supporting students. That just resonated so deeply in me. And I was like, “I need more Doug!” Because we’re on that same frequency. And I know it’s a subject that you’ve spent a lot of time writing about. So can you tell us a little bit about how this became an area of interest or a passion for you? Just literacy, and all of the work that you’ve put into it?

Douglas Fisher (01:54):

Yeah. So I’ve wanted to be a teacher for a really long time. And I went to San Diego State as an undergraduate, and I was taking English class and we were assigned topics. You know, like, you’ll do an assignment, you’ll write a paper for this English class. And I got the topic “illiteracy,” and I was a freshman at San Diego State reading all of these things about adults who don’t read very well or not at all. And I ended up writing my very first college essay on illiteracy — at the time, you know, called illiteracy, at the time. And so I got super interested in this. And so as I moved through college and into my teaching career, literacy became a really important thing for me to think about, because it’s the gatekeeper. You know, you can be taken advantage of, if you’re not very literate. People can use vocabulary against you, if you’re not very literate. We know that people who have higher levels of literacy have better health outcomes. They have better lifespans, longer lifespans. I mean, there’s just — literacy impacts so much more than “Are you reading your fourth-grade textbook?” It really has lifelong implications.

Eric Cross (03:01):

That part that you said about being taken advantage of … I just got a flyer in the mail yesterday. It was one of these mailers that looked like it was an authentic debt-reduction type of thing, but it was really just like a marketing email. If you read the fine print at the very bottom, it had all of this jargon about “This is a paid, you know, for-profit company.” But when you look at it, it had official stamps all over it. And I could imagine if someone’s receiving that, that probably fools a lot of people. Is that kinda like what you’re talking about, like being taken advantage of?

Douglas Fisher (03:28):

Yes. I had a student turn 18, got a letter from a “credit card company” that was offering her daily compounding interest. And if you don’t know what that means — at 23 percent! — if you dunno what that means, you are gonna be a victim. Literacy really influences a lot of our life. It’s also how our brain works. We have a language-based system in our brain. We read, write, speak, listen, and view. And the things we learn, we learn through speaking, reading, writing, listening, and viewing. From what we know, we are the only species that has an external storage mechanism. Like, we have the ability to store complex information outside of our body, in the form of notes. We can type them. We can write them. And we can then go back and retrieve that information, that complex orthographic information later. And it means the same thing. We can say we have a storage system and we’ve been doing this for a really long time. Way back to, you know, hieroglyphics and messages on cave walls. And throughout the ages of humans learning, how to store information that they can re-access again later. That’s become a super-complicated system. It’s how computers operate. And we send messages to each other and we text each other and we write things down, and we’re really good at putting ideas, information out there. Now, if it’s just speaking and listening, then we can forget it. We can say, “No, you said this,” or “I said that.” But when it’s written, and it’s print literacy, you know, it’s the orthographics there, you can go back to the same message and over and over again. Now, you might change the interpretation of it, but the message is still there.

Eric Cross (05:16):

Right. And that is such a key element, at least of modern education, is this written element of it. It’s what many schools live and die by. They’re quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed by it. It’s public. They can see it. And so there’s this heavy emphasis. And why do you think science and literacy can be powerful allies together?

Douglas Fisher (05:38):

Awesome. Well, it’s hard to learn science if you’re not literate.

Eric Cross (05:42):

This is true.

Douglas Fisher (05:42):

But that’s a one-way direction. And yes, science teachers and scientists do a lot of reading, writing, speaking, and listening and viewing. They use the five literacy processes all the time. When we interview scientists, they spend a lot of their time reading the work of other scientists and writing their findings, writing grant proposals, presenting at conferences, you know. So a huge part of the work of a scientist is not just at a bench conducting experiments. But even if you’re conducting experiments, you’re using your literacy processes to think about what you’re seeing in your experiment. So that’s a one-way direction. And I do think literacy has an influence on science. But since science goes the other way, it influences literacy. As you learn more and you understand more about the world, your background knowledge grows, your vocabulary grows, you become more literate in those different areas. And how you think. So if I’m learning about life science; I’m learning how the world works in a more, biologic physical world. And that knowledge helps me think about when I’m reading a novel, and there’s an appeal to some science knowledge or a concept that gets played with, you know, perhaps time-space continuums … well, if I don’t have the science knowledge of how I think the world works, it’s hard for me to understand what this author is doing. So it does go both ways. They feed each other. And the more literate we become, the more complex science information we can understand. ‘Cause our background knowledge and our vocabulary influence how much we understand about what we read. And as we access more complex science information, it starts to change the way we think about other things in our world.

Eric Cross (07:23):

There was a couple of things that you said in that, but one of the first things that kind of perked my ears is when you said grant proposals. Because I have friends that are scientists — and this is one of the things that when I was in school, they don’t talk about — but how much of their research is reliant upon getting funding —

Douglas Fisher (07:37):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

Eric Cross (07:38):

— which you don’t think about if you’re becoming a chemist or a physicist or a biologist or working in the field, is that that funding, coming from the NSF or anywhere else. And sometimes students ask in class like, “Why am I writing so much? Like, I want to go into science!” Or “I wanna do this!” And this is a real-life example of how the writing could actually apply, in addition to all of the things of collecting data and conclusions and results. But that grant proposal thing just really perked my ears, yeah.

Douglas Fisher (08:01):

And if you can’t write a grant proposal, your ideas and experiments are not gonna get funded. And if you can’t write a strong proposal, that compellingly convinces your readers to fund you, you’re not gonna get funded. But then once you get the grant, you have to write publications. You have to share your work with other people. Make PowerPoint presentations and write journal articles or books or whatever. So it’s a cycle that literacy influences the things we do, including the things we do in science.

Eric Cross (08:31):

Now to get in maybe some data, if you were trying to convince someone that like this happy marriage can exist, what would be like your number one piece of evidence to support this, this back and forth of supporting each other?

Douglas Fisher (08:44):

Awesome. So the quote I’ll often say — and this is from studies from more than two decades ago now — but in general, in high school science, students are introduced to 3000 unfamiliar words, 3000. Each year! Because there are words that are used in a scientific way that are used commonly in other places. And there are discipline-specific words. So 3000 words a year in high school science. The Spanish 1 textbook only has 1500 words in it. So science teachers have double the academic-language vocabulary demand that a typical introductory world-language class has. So just the vocabulary alone should say to us, literacy is gonna be important if you’re gonna learn science. And if you don’t understand these technical words, and you don’t understand the way science uses this particular word in this particular way… . When you say the word “process,” it means something very specific In science. “Division” — cellular division is not the way we think about it in mathematics; there’s a similar concept, but cellular division is different than dividing numbers. And those are words that get used in multiple areas. Then you have all these technical terms that you have to be able to use, to understand the concepts. To share the concepts. To talk to other people. Whether you’re in, you know, fifth grade and talking science, or you’re a university professor, there’s a shared language, appropriate for our grade level, that we have shared meanings of.

Eric Cross (10:22):

And we’re essentially … what I’m hearing you say is … most of the people that are listening to this are science teachers. We’re we’re also language teachers. In a sense.

Douglas Fisher (10:29):

So my frustration is when people say, “Every teacher’s a teacher of reading.” And I don’t like that. I’ve written against that phrase. I don’t think all teachers are teachers of reading, any more than all teachers are teachers of chemistry. Or all teachers are teachers of algebra. But what I will say is the human brain learns through language. And all of us — every teacher that I’ve ever met understands that language is important in my class. If my students don’t have strong listening skills and speaking skills; reading, writing, and viewing skills; I’m gonna have a hard time getting them to learn things. If I can help them grow their speaking, listening, reading, writing, and viewing in my content area, I’m gonna do a service for my learning of my subject and also their more broad literacy development.

Eric Cross (11:16):

  1. So, at a high level, what does it look like to integrate science and literacy? We’ve done education for the last, what, hundred years?

Douglas Fisher (11:24):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>

Eric Cross (11:25):

—kind of pretty similarly, right? Kind of siloed way. What does this look like at the 30,000-foot level? You’re a professor, department chair. Run schools. Speak everywhere. Like, when you think about this from that high level, what does it look like?

Douglas Fisher (11:39):

A high level? Every time I meet with students in a science class, you know, biology or fifth grade or whatever? They should be reading, they should be writing, they should be speaking and listening. Every class. So what print do you want them to access? And it can be a primary source document, it can be an article, it can be from a textbook. Are they reading something? Are they writing to you? Because writing is thinking. If they are writing, they are thinking. As soon as their brain goes somewhere else, they stop writing. The pen won’t move or the fingers don’t type. And then speaking and listening, of course, is the dynamic of our classes. So every day we should see some amount of reading, writing, speaking, and listening, viewing in our classes. That’s at a high level. There are some generic things that seem to work across the literacy. So, learning how to take notes. Focusing on vocabulary. Using graphic organizers. These are generic things that as educators we can use in our classes. Then there’s more specialized things. So, scientists and science teachers think differently than historians and literary critics and art critics. So scientists, if you look at the disciplinary literacy work, there’s a whole body of research where they interview and study high-end experts in their field: chemistry, physics, biology, et cetera. And there are some characteristics that were more disciplined, specific. Scientists like cause and effect relationships. They look for them when they’re reading. They like sourcing information. “Where this come from?” “What’s the history of this idea?” Scientists have a long view in terms of time. Historians have a shorter view of time. English teachers have even shorter view of time. Scientists tend to think in long periods of time. And so all of that influences how a scientist reads and how we should apprentice young people after they get past the generic “I know how to take notes. I know how to study my vocabulary. I know how to do summary writing for my teacher in my notebooks and things,” there’s some generic tools. Once we get past those, we need to be looking at specifically how do people in science use literacy.

Eric Cross (13:52):

I’ve never had my thought process of reading deconstructed just now, but we just described how scientists read. I was like, “Yeah, that’s pretty much how I read, right there.” I also like how you said how we should apprentice young people. And I feel like you as the literacy guy, you chose that word very specifically, as far as apprenticing young people. That is a view, I think, that’s really important to hold. ‘Cause that’s what we’re doing essentially … is, if we’re doing what we should be doing, we are apprenticing these young people.

Douglas Fisher (14:18):

Yes.

Eric Cross (14:18):

And helping them develop. Now, let’s imagine there’s a listener out there and they’re interested in getting better at integrating science and literacy instruction. They want to start somewhere. Before we dive in, do you have any initial words of encouragement for the person who’s like, “Everything is like a priority right now,” in their classroom or in their world?

Douglas Fisher (14:37):

Yeah. So I’ll talk about elementary for just a moment. When we’re reading informational texts in our literacy block, we should be reading information that is aligned to what kids need to learn in science and history in, in that grade level. Why are we reading things that are gonna be in conflict with what they’re gonna learn in science later that day in fourth grade, for example? So when we look at our standards, our expectations, what is it that third graders need to know in history, science, mathematics, language arts? And when we’re reading text and we’re learning to apply our reading strategies during our literacy block, why aren’t we reading topics that build our background knowledge for our science time? So we’re seeing some synergy there. We should be looking at life cycles in grades that are appropriate for life cycles and knowing there’s more to life cycles than the frog and the plant or the seed. There are all kinds of life cycles. And we call ’em life cycles for a reason. That’s a general concept. Now in science, we’re looking at this particular lifecycle right now. And so that’s a high level. If we could get more connection to the content standards during our literacy blocks, it would be very good. When we talk about the time at which we call “science” in the day, in more of the K–8 continuum, the science needs to include some primary source documents. Some real things that students are reading. Read about a scientist; read about a scientist’s discovery; read about what they discovered. So that we’re building our background knowledge. So when we go to do things, activities, labs, simulations, we have background knowledge and we understand what we’re experiencing. It can’t be like—I watched this awesome lesson on lenses and the teacher had all these different lenses in the room and the students came in and they were brand new. They don’t know anything. They were picking ’em up. They’re exploring them. They’re trying to figure out, and they’re trying to come up with theories about what this is and how it works. And then the teacher gave them a reading, a short reading, on refraction of light. And they read this thing. And the clarity that they had about what these lenses must do, well! All of a sudden they’re putting them up to the lights! They’re asking if they can go get the lights out of the storage unit! ‘Cause there’s — and they’re shining different lights through the lenses to see what happens to the light. Because that little bit of reading turned some focus on for the students. And it allowed them to take what I’m thinking about, what I’m trying to figure out, how this thing works in another direction. That’s the power of using literacy in our classes.

Eric Cross (17:20):

And what I’m hearing essentially is transfer across disciplines, across content areas, ultimately. And in an elementary school classroom, would it be fair to say, probably the teacher has more autonomy to be able to do that, since they’re teaching all the subjects? But secondary, logistically, planning and those types of things … from what you’ve seen, is it fair to say this kind of needs to be like a top-down, full vertical alignment, to teach like this?

Douglas Fisher (17:45):

I think that would be awesome to do that. But if I’m a sixth grade English Language Arts teacher and I’m working with my sixth grade science teacher, the conversation should be, “What units are you teaching?” Because I’m choosing informational text. My job is to teach them how to find central ideas. My job is to teach them how to find the details in the text. My job is to have them make a claim and support that claim with evidence. The stuff I use is generic. Yes, we do read some literature and some narratives, but we also read about 50% of the text in English around informational text. So if I can help you and accomplish my standards as well, fantastic. So let’s have this conversation and say, “Oh, this is what you’re teaching in science in the next three weeks? I’m gonna choose some texts and we’re gonna analyze ’em for central idea. We’re gonna analyze ’em for details. We’re gonna, for mood or tone or whatever that we’re teaching. And by the way, I’m building background knowledge. So when they come to you, they know some stuff about what you’re going to be teaching next.” So I don’t think it’s impossible to say teams of teachers could come together and say, “What do we believe that our students need to know and learn and be able to do? And then how do we choose things that are gonna help them accomplish exactly that?”

Eric Cross (19:01):

And that’s empowering. Because that’s one thing that we can control maybe is this East-West, peer-to-peer, different content areas. A system may not be able to change as quickly, but I can definitely go talk to my English team or math team and check in and kind of see, “Hey, where do we have overlap in that?” And I know the times that I’ve accidentally had overlap with the teams, it’s super-exciting. And the students have been more bought in! Because it’s like, we’ve done something on the human microbiome and we’ve talked about genetics and all these different things, and then when they read The Giver, or they read some book about genetics, they have all this knowledge. And they’re excited. And they talk about colorblindness or they come to my class and they’re like, “Hey, we read about this!” It’s almost like they saw a magic trick, the fact that these things linked up. And the engagement has been so much higher when it’s the same content in different classes, but through different lenses. At least, that’s what I’ve seen in my years of teaching.

Douglas Fisher (19:54):

I saw a lesson on space junk that was so cool. Middle-school students learning space junk. And the history teacher had a part of it, science teacher had a part of it, English Language Arts teacher had a part of it. And these students, I mean, you watch them look up all the time, ’cause there’s space junk up there. Where’d it come from? Why is it there? What are the politics of this? How do we clean it up? I mean, it was just so interesting to watch them when the teachers came together. And the teachers met their standards in this couple-week-long space-junk exploration. Investigation was met. Politics was met. All these different things. Economy. You know, how much does it cost to clean up this problem? So there’s really cool opportunities when teachers come together and realize we can work together and improve the literacy and learning of our students.

Eric Cross (20:50):

Absolutely. So before this recording, we picked your brain a bit. And I know that there were three specific strategy areas that you wanted to touch on. And one of those — which is kind of coming back to the 3000-words language teachers — was vocabulary. So what are the opportunities that you see, as far as the way of educators to approach vocabulary? Because, you know, there’s a lot. We got a lot of it. The 3000 words.

Douglas Fisher (21:14):

Yeah. There’s a lot of it. So the worry is, we make a vocabulary list and have students look up the words in definitional kinds of things. That’s not really gonna help. Students need to be using the words. They need to be using the words in their conversations, in their writing, in how they think about your content in science. So vocabulary is a huge predictor of whether or not you understand things. Vocabulary is also a pretty good predictor if you can read on grade level. So when we think about vocabulary, there’s something called word solving. You show students a piece of text and you’re reading it, you’re sharing your thinking, and you say, “Oh, here’s a context clue!” Or “I know this prefix or suffix or root!” And in science, a lot of the words are prefixed, suffixed, or root words. We tend to add things together with a lot of prefixes and suffixes and have roots and bases in science. So we can help students think about, “Oh, what does geo- mean? We already know what geo- means here. It means the same thing in this word. Let’s apply that knowledge.” So word solving is part of it, showing students how we think about words that we might not know. The second is more direct instruction of vocabulary. As students encounter the words, we work on what it means, how we say it. We practice it a few times. The process is called orthographic mapping. It’s kind of a scientific idea here. But you have the sound and the recognition of by-the-word, by sight, and what it means. And your brain starts to automatically recognize that word in the future. So I don’t have to slow down, disrupt my fluency, and try to figure out what the word is saying. ‘Cause I’ve seen it enough. I’ve heard it pronounced enough, I’ve pronounced it enough, and I know what it means. So teachers should be saying, “What words in sixth grade science, what words in third grade science, do my students really need to know?” And I’m gonna have them encounter those words over and over. I’m gonna have them use the words. I’m gonna have them see the words. I’m gonna have them say the words. I’m gonna say the word and we’re gonna be over and over with these terms, so that students incorporate them into their normal view of, “These are the things I know about the world.” By the way, when they go to read that next thing, and they understand “geology,” you know, for sixth graders, for example, they know how to say it. They don’t stumble on it. And it activates a whole bunch of memories in their brains. “This is what geology is.” There are branches of geology, there’s physical geology, there’s all this thinking that activates as they read.

Eric Cross (23:35):

There was a practice that I participated in and am trying to incorporate — I don’t know what the name of it is. But essentially what happened was we were dissecting a flower. And the instructor had us name parts of the flower. But we got to come up with our own names for it.

Douglas Fisher (23:49):

Ah.

Eric Cross (23:50):

So, for instance, the stamen we call “the fuzzy Cheeto.” And we all used our own words and then everything was legitimized. And so we went through and learned the whole activity using our own vocab words. But then, in the end, after we presented and talked about it, then the words, the actual academic language was attached to our word. And we were able to say, “OK, the fuzzy Cheeto is the stamen,” and this, this, this, and this. But it was such an interesting practice, because it kind of legitimized all of our definitions. But we weren’t stumbling on these long Latin terms and things like that. Is there a name for that? Or. … ?

Douglas Fisher (24:29):

Yes. I don’t know the name for that. I think it’s really smart. So here’s what I would say about that, is: we don’t learn words, we learn concepts. Words are labels for our concepts. So what that teacher did for you was allow you to develop concept, a concept knowledge. “There’s a part of this plant, it goes like this, we’re gonna call it fuzzy Cheeto. Now I have this concept. And look, it occurred in all these plants. And those people called it that and that other group called it that. We called it a fuzzy Cheeto. Here’s the part of it.” And then the concept is in your brains. And the teacher said, “It’s really called stamen.” And it’s an instant transfer, because you already had the concept. What we often see is students are trying to learn a really hard academic word and the concept for the word at the same time. And so it slows down the whole process. And there’s higher levels of forgetting. Because human beings, we don’t learn words; we learn concepts. If you don’t have the concept, if I gave you a word out of the blue that you’ve never seen, never heard, and a week from now I asked you to remember it, you probably would not, because it didn’t register. It wasn’t part of your schema. You didn’t have a way to organize the information. You don’t have a concept. So that teacher? It’s a great idea. Got you to develop concept knowledge. And then said, “Here’s a real label for it: What some other people called it when they had the chance to come up with their own names.”

Eric Cross (25:50):

Shout out to my teacher, who was—

Douglas Fisher (25:51):

Right.

Eric Cross (25:52):

It was learned then. It was a great practice. And the fact that you’re right, like, I just mean from my own personal experience, I agree that learning concepts versus complicated words. And it’s interesting that you said higher levels of forgetfulness, you know. And you often hear that complaint about it: “Students forget! Students forget!” But this complex topic and this complex word that’s new to me, and I have to remember both of those things.

Douglas Fisher (26:12):

That’s right.

Eric Cross (26:13):

And the other neat thing that it did, is it actually honored the background and like the founts of knowledge of all the different groups in the classroom. You just said something about “this group called it this and this group called it this,” and so by letting different groups share all of those names, now we’re starting to build these kind of interesting connections. That’s at least what I remember experiencing. And so this, even this practice of this approach is very layered, beyond just kind of generating new knowledge of things. So I appreciate that aspect of it. Now another area that you mentioned was complex text.

Douglas Fisher (26:41):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (26:42):

And how we can get students into complex text. So what can we do there?

Douglas Fisher (26:46):

I think science is an ideal place to get students reading things that are hard for them. And I do believe that some parts of school should be a struggle. Not all day, every day. But there should be doses of struggle, which are good for our brains. And these complex pieces of texts that don’t give up their meanings easily allow students to go back and reread the text and maybe mark the text and talk to peers about the text and answer questions with their groups. And the whole point of complex text is to say, “We persevere through it. We may not understand it fully on our first read. But we go back and we might underline, we might highlight. We might write some margin notes. Our teacher might say, ‘What did this author mean here?’ And we go back and look at that part and we take it apart. What do we think about that? And we talk to each other. It’s showing that when we read things, we work to understand. We work through our thinking, often in the presence of other people. And our understanding grows as we go into the text over and over and over again.” So I said geology earlier. There’s about a two-page article on “what is geology” that sixth graders often read. And some kids find it super boring. It’s a once-read, “OK, geology, I don’t really understand it. There’s a bunch of words in here that I don’t understand.” But if you go back to it a few times and you start taking apart, “What are the branches of geology? Oh, I’m gonna go reread that.” How are these two branches related to each other?” “What are the subtypes of each branch of geology?” “How do geologists do their work?” You start asking questions where students are going back into the text. You spend a little bit of time. Now, the introduction to geology, the students know so much more. So whatever you do next— video experiments, whatever—they have a frame of reference, because of that deep, complex read. It’s probably better than simply telling them, “Here’s the information.”

Eric Cross (28:45):

Right. And I even feel like as an educator, when I reflect on my own learning in the classroom, and then looking at it through the perspective of an educator <laugh>, you find this difference between how you were taught and then what the data says good teaching is.

Douglas Fisher (28:59):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Eric Cross (29:00):

It’s so easy to slide back into how you were taught!

Douglas Fisher (29:02):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (29:02):

Even though, you know, you mentally assent to, “This is the best way. This is the data shows.” And you find yourself kind of sliding back at times.

Douglas Fisher (29:10):

Yep. And there’s good evidence to support what you just said, that most people teach the way they experienced school. And it is very hard to change that. And people have studied this. And it’s very hard to change that. Because it worked for us. And we have an n of 1, and it worked for us. Now, remember, there were a whole bunch of other kids in the class that it may not have worked for. And we chose to be in school the rest of our lives, and some of your peers did not choose to be in school the rest of their lives. In fact, some of them hated school and found no redeeming qualities of their experience. So just because it worked for us in a case of one, n of 1, doesn’t mean it worked for all of the kids, or even the majority of them.

Eric Cross (29:57):

Very well said. It’s that, what is that, the survivor bias? Survivorship bias? Where you were the one that made it. But you don’t think about all the other folks. ‘Cause we’re thinking about ourselves.

Douglas Fisher (30:05):

That’s right.

Eric Cross (30:06):

Great case for empathy too, is thinking about the people left and right. Because my friends are like, “I hated science.” And I say, “Who hurt you? Like, what did they do? It’s so amazing, so much fun!”

Douglas Fisher (30:16):

“What happened to you? Science is the coolest. Right? It’s so amazing!”

Eric Cross (30:21):

But I also had a unique experience in seventh grade with my teacher who did some of these things, and made it accessible for so many of us, in opening opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. But you’re absolutely right. That was my story. That wasn’t the story of everybody that was around me. And I think that’s really important. Now, I know this is also a big one for you, but I wanna talk about writing. What are the opportunities that you see in terms of writing specifically?

Douglas Fisher (30:51):

So would love it if science teachers had short and longer writing tasks in the science time. Of course, you can integrate some of the science writing, the longer ones, in the English language arts time, especially if you’re the elementary teacher and you can have control of the whole day. But I said this earlier; I’ll say it again. Writing is thinking. While you are writing, there’s nothing else you can do but think about what you are writing. Your brain cannot do something else. So if a science teacher wants to know, do their students really understand the concepts? Have them write. Now some of the shorter ones, I like something called “given word” or “generative sentences”: “I’m gonna give you a word: CELL. C-e-l-l. We’re in science. I want you to write the word ‘cell,’ c-e-l-l, in the third position of a sentence. So it’s gonna go word, word, cell, and then more words.” You could also say, “I want the sentence longer than seven words,” or whatever. But the key is, I’m telling you where I want the word. You will know instantly if your students have a sense of what the word “cell” means in the context of science. If they write “my cell phone,” they don’t get it. If they write about spreadsheet cells or jail cells or whatever, they didn’t get it. But if they talk to you about plant cells and animal cells and the components of those cells, and then once they have that sentence down, you can say to them, “Now write three or four more sentences that connect to that sentence.” It’s super simple. So whatever concepts you’re teaching, put ’em in a specific position. Now you don’t have to only put it in the third position. You can say the first position, the fifth position, the fourth position. But it forces them to think about what they know about the word and then how to construct a sentence for you. That’s a very simple way to get some writing from your students that helps you think about what they understand. Other kinds of writing, you can have quick writes, you can have exit-slip writes. There’s something in the research space called the muddiest part, where halfway through the lesson you have them write so far what has been the least understood or the most confusing part of this lesson. And they do a quick write, right there, at the muddiest part. And as a teacher, you flip through these and you start to say, “Oh, these are the points that are confusing to my students.” So if 80% of them all have the same thing, I gotta reteach that. If these five got, “This is the muddiest part,” If these five thought, “This is the muddiest part,” these seven, “I thought this was the muddiest part,” what do I need to do? Because it’s gonna be hard to move forward if this is their area of confusion. There are also all kinds of writing prompts that have a little bit longer. My favorite one is RAFT. What’s your Role? Who’s your Audience? What’s the Format? And what’s the Topic we’re writing about? Super flexible writing prompt. When you teach something, we don’t want students to only think they write to their teacher. So your role is an atom. You are writing to the other atoms. What do you wanna write about? What’s the topic? What’s the format of it? Is it a love letter? Is it a text message? Is it … so we, we mix it up with students in saying, how do they show some knowledge through a prompt that we give them? And then of course, longer pieces as they get older. More opinion pieces through fifth grade. More claims and arguments starting in sixth grade. So that they’re starting to see, “I have to use the evidence from things I’ve learned, read, listened to, watched, and construct something: an opinion, an argument where I back it up with reasons or evidence.” And those longer pieces, you know, less frequently. The shorter pieces, pretty regularly. So the teacher sees the thinking of the students.

Eric Cross (34:29):

When you were speaking about these really creative writing prompts, there were specific students coming into mind, that were coming into mind … they’re, they’re great science students, but they also have this really strong artsy side drawing, creative writing, and things like that. And when you said something about atoms talking to each other, it elicited, in my brain, certain students that would really love this aspect of creativity in the sciences. And it’s not how we’re typically trained as science teachers, to kind of incorporate this, like you said. A book of props. But I’m imagining, like, as a science teacher, if I took this, this would be a great way to reach more students to be able to show what they know, in a way that might resonate with their own intrinsic “Oh, I get to write creatively!” So I was kind of writing furiously as you were sharing all that information there.

Douglas Fisher (35:12):

So here, I’ll give you another example for elementary people. Again, with RAFT. There’s a book called Water Dance. It’s a pretty popular book for elementary teachers. It’s really about the life cycle of water. For example, you are a single drop of water. You are writing to the land. The format is a letter. And you’re explaining your journey. Now, if they can do this, they’re essentially explaining to you the cycle of water. But you got it in a way that people are now, “Oh, I’m a drop of water. So it’s me. My perspective. Where do I go from? Where do I start?” Because you can start anywhere in the cycle, right? My drop could have started in the clouds. My drop could have started in the ground. My drop could have started in the lake. But it has to show you the journey. So there are many ways of showing you the right answers.

Eric Cross (36:02):

And that’s using the RAFT protocol.

Douglas Fisher (36:04):

That’s RAFT: Role, Audience, Format, Topic. It’s been around 20 or 30 years.

Eric Cross (36:09):

You just gave the name to something a teacher shared in our podcast community, Science Connections: The Community, on Facebook. Teacher shared a Google slide deck and on it were just three slides. And the role that the student had to have is they had to show, then tell, the story of a journey of a piece of salmon being eaten, a piece of starch from pasta being eaten, and then an air molecule in a child’s bedroom. And they had to give the path of travel and the experience from the mouth and then breaking down into protein and all those kinds of things. And this teacher shared it and I wish I knew the teacher’s name because I wanna give ’em credit, but they shared it. And so I used it with my students and then had ’em read aloud their stories and dramatize it. And they were so into it!

Douglas Fisher (36:49):

So cool.

Eric Cross (36:50):

But through it, I was able to see that they understood different parts of the body. They understood cell respiration. The whole thing. And it was fun! To watch them get so into this creative writing. And now I know the name of it. That’s been 30 years they were using RAFT. So you just talked a bit about complex texts and writing. And before we go, I wanted to circle back to something that you said, because I think it’s important, and if you could elaborate on it a little bit, about the value of struggle. Can you talk more about that?

Douglas Fisher (37:21):

Sure. I do believe in a lot of the U.S. we’re in an anti-struggle era of education. And it predates Covid. I think it made it worse during Covid. We front load too much. We pre-teach too much. We reduce struggle. We quote, “over-differentiate” for students. And there’s value in struggle. The phrase, “productive struggle” — if you haven’t heard it, Google productive struggle — it’s an interesting concept, that we actually learn more when we engage in this productive struggle. Now, productive struggle originally came from the math world, and it was this idea that it’s worth struggling through things to learn from it, that you’re likely to get it wrong, and then there was productive success. And there are times when we want students to experience success and we make sure we put things in place for productive success. But there are times where we want them to struggle through a concept. ‘Cause it feels pretty amazing when you get on the other side, when you know you struggled and you get to the other side. If you think about the things, listeners, think about the things in your life where you struggled through it and you are most proud of what you accomplished. I want students to have that. I don’t wanna eliminate scaffolding, eliminate differentiation. But I do want some regular doses of struggle. So if you look at the scaffolding, we have a couple choices. We have front-end scaffolds, distributed scaffolds, and back-end scaffolds. Right now we mostly use front-end scaffolds: We pre-teach, we tell students words in advance, that kind of stuff. But what if we refrained from only using front-end scaffolds, and we use more distributed scaffolds, when they encounter. So there’s a difference between “just in case” and “just in time” support for students. So we tend to plan on the “in advance, here are all the things we’re gonna do to remove the struggle before students encounter the struggle.” What if instead we said, “Let them encounter some struggle. Here’s the supports we’re gonna provide. We’re gonna watch; we’re gonna remove those scaffolds, and allow them to have an experience of success, where they realize, ‘I did it. I got it.’” Every science teacher I’ve ever worked with, when they do an experiment or a lab or simulation, they are looking for productive struggle. They don’t tell the answers in advance. They don’t tell if the answers are right. That’s your data. What does your data tell you? I mean, this is what you do. But then the other part of your day when you move into, like, reading, you don’t do that. You fall into the trap of removing struggle. And so allow them to grapple with ideas. Allow them to wonder what words mean. Allow them to say, “I’m not getting this, teacher! It’s really frustrating!” And you say, “Yeah, this is really hard. This is why we’re doing it at school. ‘Cause it’s really hard. If it was easy, I’d have you do it at home. But we’re doing it here, ’cause it’s really hard and it’s OK not to get it at first.” And create a place where errors are seen as opportunities to learn, and struggling through ideas and clarifying your own thinking and arguing with other people to reach an agreement or reach a place where we agree to disagree is part of the power of learning.

Eric Cross (40:38):

There’s a teacher, who I took this from. My master teacher when I was student teaching. And she said that there’s no such thing as failure in science, just data. And I took that same mantra. And I resonate with what you said about how science teachers, all of us, hold onto that productive struggle, because it’s part of being a scientist. It’s part of the experiments. That genuine “aha” moment. Or it didn’t work out? That’s great! That’s totally fine! Let’s write about it and let’s take photos and let’s publish it and let’s be scientists. That’s totally true. As we wrap up, Dr. Fisher, is there any final message that you have to listeners about bringing science and literacy together? I know you speak everywhere, but for everyone that’s listening, if you can put out your encouragement or message or suggestion … you’ve given so many great tips and practical applications. But, any final thoughts on the subject?

Douglas Fisher (41:32):

I think many science teachers are intimidated because they think they have to be reading teachers. And there’s a knowledge base to reading. And some teachers are reading teachers and science teachers, and I don’t wanna dismiss that. But it’s not that you have to become a reading specialist to integrate literacy into science. It’s how our brains work. And so as you think about the way in which you are learning and the ways in which you want your students to learn, what role does language play? What role does speaking, listening, reading, writing, viewing, play in your class? And then provide opportunities for students to do those five things each time you meet with them.

Eric Cross (42:12):

Dr. Fisher, thank you so much for being here and for your encouragement, and sharing your wisdom and experience. And then personally serving my city, here in San Diego, and my students, when they make it to your high school and ultimately the alma mater of San Diego State University.

Douglas Fisher (42:30):

That’s right.

Eric Cross (42:31):

Yeah. We really, really appreciate you in serving all kids and lifting the bar and making things more equitable for all students. And encouraging teachers. So thank you.

Douglas Fisher (42:39):

Thank you very much.

Eric Cross (42:42):

Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Dr. Douglas Fisher, Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University. Check out the show notes for links to some of Doug’s work, including the book he co-authored titled Reading and Writing in Science: Tools to Develop Disciplinary Literacy. Please remember to subscribe to Science Connections so that you can catch every episode in this exciting third season. And while you’re there, we’d really appreciate it if you can leave us a review. It’ll help more listeners to find the show. Also, if you haven’t already, please be sure to join our Facebook group, Science Connections: The Community. Next time on the show, we’re going to continue exploring the happy marriage between science and literacy instruction.

Speaker  (43:26):

I had this moment of realization I felt a few months ago: I’m like, if I don’t teach them how to use the AI as a tool, as a collaborator, then they’re gonna graduate into a world where they lose out to people who do know how to do that.

Eric Cross (43:39):

That’s next time on Science Connections. Thanks so much for listening.

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What Dr. Douglas Fisher says about science

“There are really cool opportunities when teachers come together and realize we can work together to improve the literacy and learning of all our students.”

– Dr. Doug Fisher

Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership, San Diego State University

Meet the guest

Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is professor and chair of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and a leader at Health Sciences High & Middle College having been an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. He is the recipient of an International Reading Association William S. Grey citation of merit, an Exemplary Leader award from the Conference on English Leadership of NCTE, as well as a Christa McAuliffe award for excellence in teacher education. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, differentiated instruction, and curriculum design as well as books, such as The Restorative Practices Playbook, PLC+: Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design, Building Equity, and Better Learning Through Structured Teaching.

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About Science Connections

Welcome to Science Connections! Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So…how do we help kids figure that out? We will bring on educators, scientists, and more to discuss the importance of high-quality science instruction. In this episode, hear from our host Eric Cross about his work engaging students as a K-8 science teacher. 

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S1-08: The importance of risk-taking in the science classroom, a conversation with Valeria Rodriguez

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In this episode, our host Eric Cross sits down with Miami-based educator Valeria Rodriguez. Valeria shares her journey of serving in the Peace Corps, working a corporate job, and eventually finding her passion as a middle-school science teacher. Listen in as Valeria explains how sketchnoting, a form of note-taking that utilizes illustrations, encourages student choice and creativity in her classroom. Eric and Valeria also discuss the importance of risk-taking within the science classroom, and how their own mistakes can be crucial in modeling resilience for students. Lastly, Valeria shares experiences she had with several teachers who inspired her throughout her career. Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.

Download Transcript

Valeria Rodriguez (00:00):

There’s so many things that drawing to me makes an essential connection to. It tells me no matter what, I can continue placing lines on my paper and creating the image I want. Some people will say they messed up the drawing. You know what? They gave it character.

Eric Cross (00:19):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Valeria Rodriguez. Valeria is a science educator, instructional technologist, and illustrator, who is currently part of a steam team where she teaches third through fifth graders in Miami, Florida. Valeria has presented and led workshops at education conferences like NSTA, ISTI, and SXSWEdu. In this episode, we discuss how she uses real-world projects to make lessons more meaningful, and why teaching students how to sketchnote increases their conceptual understanding in science. I hope you enjoy this pun-filled conversation with Valeria Rodriguez.

New Speaker (00:58):

Now you’re in Miami and you have a biology background. We’re like kindred spirits. Like we do the same thing. I teach biology here in San Diego at a middle school called Albert Einstein Academy. So I’m in a seventh grade classroom teaching life science.

Valeria Rodriguez (01:11):

That’s so cool. That’s how I started.

Eric Cross (01:13):

Is it?

Valeria Rodriguez (01:13):

Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I started teaching middle school science for seven years, doing life science in my biology background.

Eric Cross (01:20):

How’d you get started? Like where did you kind of begin?

Valeria Rodriguez (01:22):

Well, I went to UF for undergrad as a runner, and I thought I was gonna go to the Olympics, but you know, running in college is hard. And you quickly like realize a path as a full-time athlete is really hard. And one of the days that I was having one of those, like “come Jesus moments” of what am I gonna do with my life, I walked by a sign that said life is calling. And I’m like, okay, <laugh>

Eric Cross (01:52):

You literally had a sign.

Valeria Rodriguez (01:53):

There was a sign. So I was like, I’m reading the sign. I’m following the arrows. And it was for the Peace Corps. And so I went to this meeting and everything that I’ve ever done student government, athletics school education, my backgroundmy family’s from Columbia–everything in that meeting came together and they’re like, we need all these skills. And I’m like, I have those. Those are my skills. And they’re like every Peace Corps volunteer teaches. And so I went in as an agriculture volunteer to Panama because of my major and my background in biology. And while I was in the Peace Corps doing the work, I was teaching at the local school. And I realized that the most sustainable way to create any change is through education. When I came back, I was like, well, what do you do if your first job in the world is in the Peace Corps? Like my background was, you know, managing a machete in a field and teaching second through eighth grade in one classroom, on a chalkboard, you know, in English and in Spanish, while teaching the teacher and the students. So I found that going into teaching allowed me to put some of those skills, that wide array of skills that I had collected until that moment, into practice. And it allowed me to do the arts, do the running, do the science, do the connecting with the community in one place here in the states.

Eric Cross (03:34):

I don’t know if I’m just romanticizing, but you were in Panama and you were doing this amazing teaching. I don’t know. Do you compare it to teaching now in the classroom? Is there anything that ever like makes you wish that you were kind of in that environment again? Or are you kind of, do you like the more kind of technology side of things?

Valeria Rodriguez (03:48):

I tell my students all the time that I miss it, because when I was in Panama, I was in Licencia. They looked at me like this, all knowing being. If they couldn’t come to class because the kids literally had to work, they would bring me their assignment, like run it to me and then run back to their parents. Like, “I had to turn it in, but I have to go to work.” And I’m like, oh my gosh. And like here, sometimes I feel like, you know, I have to negotiate and convince my students to want to give me their work. And maybe it’s because we take a lot of things for granted. I mean, I didn’t have running water in my community. Here, you know, we have everything. I miss how we appreciated — like, my parents would send suitcases of materials for me to hand out to my students, like color and stuff, notebooks, things like that — and the kids would like, hold that notebook, like pristine and here sometimes my students aren’t as careful with materials. And I’m like, why are you breaking the crayon box? <Laugh>

Eric Cross (04:54):

I’m thinking about that. Just even just bringing pens and crayons and how that’s valued. And then a culture that’s built around esteeming teachers, and you’re this essential member of the community — and you feel that. It’s palpable.

Valeria Rodriguez (05:08):

Yeah. And here, sometimes I ask students like, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And you get all sorts of answers, but in my community, it’s gonna sound funny, but they were like, we wanna be a teacher. Like, that means that we would know a lot of stuff and they would put their hair up in a bun, ‘cause I always have it in a bun, and they would write stuff when they were playing and they would act me out <laugh> and I’m like, do I, do I do that? <Laugh> I genuinely got a very rich experience in the time that I was there. And what I learned the most was how to try to not do as much, it’s like a lesson that I’m still trying to learn because like I’m here with the U.S. Mentality of go, go, go.

Valeria Rodriguez (05:58):

And they’re like, but we already did, you know, two things like now we stop. And I’m like, but, but why? And they’re like, you can do that tomorrow. And I’m like, but no, like we’re gonna run out of time. For me. It was a lot of struggle of like slow down. And as a teacher, I feel like I’m always like on the treadmill at a thousand speed. And sometimes I have to tell myself like slow down, be in this moment, like a parent texted me today that her daughter was walking with her dad and said, daddy, let’s talk about the layers of the soil. And I was like, I need to stop right now and acknowledge that this happened. She’s in third grade and she’s asking her dad, you know, she could ask him about anything, and she’s asking him about soil. That’s essential for everything. And we don’t even think about soil here. Like my community had tons of erosion and every year there were less and less crops being able to be produced. We’re not talking about that here. And yet, my student asked her dad here in Miami, <laugh> about soil. And that conversation happened because of our class.

Eric Cross (07:03):

And you allowed yourself to be present and experience and feel that that communication came to you.

Valeria Rodriguez (07:09):

Yeah. We put so much stuff out there and we don’t know where it lands. If it lands on dirt or soil, <laugh>

Eric Cross (07:16):

There you go. I like it. Yeah. Bringing it back. But you’re, I think you’re what you’re saying. Resonates with a lot of educators that’ll be listening to this is that there’s so much that you do. And there’s even times when we do get the feedback, there might be a letter or a card or something, but like, to your point, like we look to the next thing instead of stopping, being present and allowing yourself to absorb it. I think I need to put that up on my, like on my wall, like this, just be present. Now you came back and then you went into the classroom here and you started off teaching science.

Valeria Rodriguez (07:46):

I didn’t go straight into the classroom. I knew that I wanted to continue teaching. But I wasn’t back here in Miami. When I moved back, I moved to Austin. And I ended up getting married and there, I started teaching Spanish as a second language like corporate classes. And I was kind of like tiptoeing around, like, do you dive into education? ‘Cause The idea of a teacher here is very different than the teacher idea that I had while in the peace Corps. So he, a lot of people were like, you can do so many things. Why would you teach? And I was like insulted <laugh>. I was like, wait, what do you mean? Like even to this day, I’ve started a blog post, maybe 20 times with that statement because people all the time are like, you’re so talented. Why do you teach? And it drives me crazy because it makes me feel like they’re looking down on my choice <laugh> but I came to terms with it that it’s just like a societal thing. Cause of that quote, like those who can’t do teach. And I was like, let me let this go.

Eric Cross (09:01):

I find though that educators who come in as a second career, come in with a, a, a variety of skill sets that I, I think you can only get when you’re outside of academia. I mean, you can, you can develop them, you know, going kind of K12 education college and then into the classroom. But those soft skills, the business skills, a lot of those things you really develop. And it’s funny ‘cause your, your story almost sounds like some of the people that I know that work in big tech firms, they have this eclectic story and then now they’re, you know, working for Google or Facebook or something, but that actually was a as set to them because they are able to see the world through multiple perspectives. And I’m hearing kind of a distinguish between art of teaching and the science of teaching. Like you had the, maybe the art connecting ideas, these things, and then the science, like the quote unquote like formal teaching. Okay. That had to get built on later. Like am I hearing that right?

Valeria Rodriguez (09:55):

Yeah. The that’s what rocks I’m teaching the rock cycle right now. So I’m, I’m under a lot of heat and pressure <laugh>

Eric Cross (10:02):

We got the funds, we got the funds rolling. All right. All right. So bringing in the, so the, the art side or the science side we have, and then we just have this amazing illustrator. Now you mentioned your website and we’re gonna post it somewhere, but just so we have it here to, and you say, what is your website where all your majors and sketch notes can be found,

Valeria Rodriguez (10:21):

Www dot Valia, sketches.com.

Eric Cross (10:23):

Okay. So folks that are listening, if you wanna check out the art, there’s some awesome stuff on there, as well as Twitter and Instagram. And we’ll make sure we have it handles in the, the bio of the podcast and the notes. Your art’s amazing. I looked, I checked it. I saw inauguration. I saw astronauts. I saw all kinds of different things. How do you use that in the classroom

Valeria Rodriguez (10:45):

To draw connections? The ones? So what I do is I airplay my iPad onto the board. And sometimes as I’m talking, I’ll draw things, draw things I’m saying, or assignments I’ll sketch out different ideas, or maybe like the schedule I’ll have an icon of some sort that represents things. I use it for everything and anything, because just the way that I tell my students that science is everywhere. I, we don’t realize how programmed we are to use images to for, for information they’re in the street. Bathroom signs, we see the zoom little link, like the image, the icon of zoom. And we know that it’s a call the apps. You know, our phone doesn’t have the words for everything that we’re opening. We just have a list of images that represent information. So we’re programs for this. And all I’m doing is showing my students how we’re programmed for it because we’re so used to seeing images, to represent things that we’re taking it for granted again.

Valeria Rodriguez (12:03):

And sometimes my students will like, I’ll write something and I ask them, make your own visual vocabulary. So I give them the word of the definition for every unit, the younger ones, I give them the definition they have to plug in the word and an image, the older ones, I give them the word they have to plug in the definition and an image. But I don’t tell them what to draw because they need to create an image that will help them to remember the definition. Not me. I tell them, I wrote the list. I know the words, you’re the one that needs to think of something that’s going to help you to remember this. You need to draw a connection to this information. Like I use it and I mess up all the time. And I, I scratch things out because I feel that my students or the student that I’ve had in general are risk averse.

Valeria Rodriguez (12:57):

They don’t want to make mistakes. And drawing is one of those things that it taught me that it’s okay to make mistakes. Like people won’t buy commit to buying houses or they won’t commit to things because they’re gonna make a, I’m like, you can sell the house. You can move again. I mean, I’ve lived in a lot of cities. I’ve been married, divorce, gone out with people. It’s worked out it hasn’t you know, there’s, there’s so many things that drawing to me makes an essential connection to <affirmative> that it tells me no matter what I can continue placing lines on my paper and creating the image I want. And if a line doesn’t necessarily go in the direction, I want it to, I can continue shaping it so that the overall image is in the direction I want. And I can look past those line here and there that some people will say they messed up the drawing. You know what? They gave it character. I, I cycle and I have scars everywhere. They give me character and I keep writing. The overall image in my head is I’m a cyclist, not I’m banged up. <Laugh>

Eric Cross (14:14):

I feel like there’s so much to mind in what you just said. This was like a mini-Ted talk. And I couldn’t write fast enough because there were so many gems of the things that you said, but let me say something worse. And this is I’m gonna be surface with this because, and it’s your fault because you got me thinking in puns and you said, take it for granted. And I said, take it for granted because you’re talking about the rock cycle. So that’s what I heard way back. Anyways, you have your students creating what, but it’s low tech, which is really cool because a lot of times we think of creating content and it’s kind of high tech, but they’re creating something. And this is for us, like as biology folks, like you’re using kind of like this neuroscience that exists about students, creating an art to help them learn.

Eric Cross (14:55):

And this is something that I, I feel gets missed a lot in. When we talk about the quote unquote, the formal teacher training is the element of how creating an art can actually lead to improved learning in the classroom. It’s something you have to go to like a conference to kind of go and see or something, but it’s not as, it’s not as pervasive everywhere. And that thing about risk averse. I feel like I, you spoke to my own life. What I see ‘cause with my own seventh graders, I see the same fear or anxiety when I ask them to draw. As I do, when I ask them to give me a hypothesis about a phenomenon that I’m gonna teach and I say, it’s okay to be wrong, but I see them drift to the Chromebook and want to Google it. You know what you just said about just try it and you can always change and giving character, I feel like is just a great message for everybody to hear

Valeria Rodriguez (15:48):

Today. Students made fossil, right? ‘Cause They’re learning about rocks and we made using plaster, but then I put the green screen up and not only did they make it and they excavated them, but then we put it on the green screen. And they’re like all of a sudden at a dig site,

Eric Cross (16:04):

What I’m seeing right now for those of you who are listening is, is students who are on, is this on IMO?

Valeria Rodriguez (16:10):

This is on we video

Eric Cross (16:12):

Video and they’re holding up fossils that they made. But in the background, because there was a green screen, there’s an overlay of like a, a rock dig site. So the students legitimately look like they’re paleontologists or something somewhere.

Valeria Rodriguez (16:24):

Exactly. And so it’s, it’s not just creating lines, right? The sketching transfers to so much be because even the want, not wanting to make a mistake with their fossil. One of the kids today, when he took off the, the Plato, ‘cause we put the Plato at the base. Then we put in either a shell or some sort of artifact that they were going to fossilize. And then we put in the plaster when he took off the Plato, a piece broke off and everybody’s like, I can’t believe you broke your fossil. And I’m like, not the first. Okay. Do you know how many of these guys and girls have been out there? And all of a sudden they find a dinosaur bone and they’re walking and they fall. And this fossil that took billions of years is all of a sudden broken. I’m like this selfie, the original selfies, these animals died in commitment to their selfies.

Valeria Rodriguez (17:19):

And here you are dropping the bone. So they were all laughing, but it was to go away from the fact that, oh my God, you broke it. You made a mistake. You drew the wrong line. You asked the wrong question. Like no big deal. Keep digging, shout out to the teachers that try doing the projects that they have. They don’t feel completely comfortable with or you know, that they take risks doing. Because even though in theory, it’s like suggested and schools want that or communities want that when it comes down to it, people also expect us to do things at work. But part of our job is also taking risks. Like we did a tethered weather balloon launch the other day because we couldn’t get approval to release the weather balloon in the atmosphere since we’re near an airport. And it was too short of a time.

Valeria Rodriguez (18:14):

And I remember a parent said, oh, you’re not releasing the balloon. And I was like, well, this is a lot of work too. <Laugh> we, you know, we’re, we’re doing the tethered launch. This is a hard project. So the other day when I heard that comment, like 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 <laugh> or you know, a YouTube video. It’s it’s the, the fact that we’re continuing to push. And so I wanna like really thank the teachers that keep trying to do the hard things that aren’t like tried and tested because it’s scary. Yeah.

Eric Cross (18:57):

Yeah. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for them to have adults that they see in positions of authority or that they respect or admire model failure. And I don’t mean failure in the, like the negative pejorative sense, but like things just not working out and then seeing how you respond to it, ‘cause you’re modeling, taking a risk. But like with real stakes, it’s authentic. I had students swab the campus and we put it in auger dishes and Petri sealed it up and then let it grow room temperature, but we kept it you know, cool enough at 75 degrees. So it wouldn’t be able to survive any, anything pathogenic. And then students, you know, I took pictures of them and then showed them the results. So the students never interacted with it and some things grew and some things didn’t, it was mostly, you know, fungi and some bacteria, but I showed them like, how come mine didn’t grow? And I was like, well, you know, it could have been how we swabbed. It could have been some things don’t grow the temperature, we kept it at, but some of the experiments didn’t yield the cool results. And that was okay. But I front loaded the expectation so that if everything did go great, sweet, but managing expectation, I found really helps to mitigate the pressure.

Valeria Rodriguez (20:01):

Yeah. Well another project that we’ve participated in is growing beyond earth where we’re planting seeds that contribute to like a huge set of data for cultivars that are being considered for growth on the international space station. And my students are like, well, you know, we just have six little pots, like what is this? And I’m like, yeah, we have two little seeds in each of these pots. And we are one data set in like hundreds of data sets that they’re collecting. But we are contributing two research on the international space station. You don’t have to be the next bill gates or the next, you know, Steve jobs. Like everyone thinks they’re gonna be the next big thing. Like you can also be a seed. That’s part of a really big project and that is okay. Like everyone can’t be the next big thing

Eric Cross (20:48):

And the other. And the other thing, I think what Gladwell talks about this in outliers and there’s another book called bounce, but a lot of the people that we see is successful or famous, we don’t realize that their background and their exposure to things was one of the things that led them there, both jobs and gates had access, you know, gates had access at, at the university of Washington to like one of the first computers and then jobs at, at Hewlett Packard. The story go goes on and on, but we don’t see the lineage of some of these people and where they come from. We just see the end result. You just see LeBron James winning a championship or something. We just want the, the end result the, the glory, but not the sweat that it takes to get there. They don’t, we don’t really see that as much, which leads me to like the next thing I wanted to ask you is how do you, and I kind of saw it just now, but how do you engage your kids in the classroom?

Valeria Rodriguez (21:36):

Well, I think I’m funny. Some of them don’t do

Eric Cross (21:38):

They like the puns

Valeria Rodriguez (21:39):

<Laugh> some of them do. And some of them don’t get them. They get them later. And I see when they get it, I like to engage them by bringing in real people, real examples of things, real research when possible. Right. I can’t put them in a real dig site. So the green screen helps me do that. But one of my students yesterday, other day before was like, you have such cool friends because I’ll say, oh, one of my friends does blah, blah, blah. Or, or, oh, when we go to Kennedy space center, we’re gonna, you know, talk to one of my friends. Who’s doing research on, you know, chilies in space and they’re like, wow, your friends are so cool. And I took that moment to tell them, be mindful of the people that you collect as friends in your life, like make good choices, surround yourself with awesome people, people so that you can share ideas. Like you connect with friends who you inspire you to do more. I try to engage them by giving them examples of things that people around me are doing that connect to what we’re doing. Do

Eric Cross (22:43):

You, do you explicitly or intentionally teach soft skills or is it just something that you just kind of organically do natural or are you mindful about making sure that you’re doing that

Valeria Rodriguez (22:52):

A hundred percent? You have to be explicit about it with amplify? Actually, we, we did a poster for incorporating social, emotional skills and other soft skills into the classroom because sometimes we just like other things like writing and, and reading, you know, we silo all these things in education and the school counselor, can’t be the one to deal with everything. You know, you have to deal with things as they surface. And sometimes my kids ha are frustrated because I ask them to think I don’t have yes or no answers. I have, you know, we are gonna launch a high altitude weather balloon. We don’t know how high it’s gonna go. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. We don’t, we don’t know if we’re gonna find it when the <laugh>, when the balloon bursts and it lands in the ocean, are we gonna find it? Is the GPS tracker gonna work?

Valeria Rodriguez (23:47):

Are we gonna lose all that money? I don’t know, but we have to do all the steps and find out. But with kids, they don’t have the skills yet. And I can’t wait for the counselor to come in and talk about handle the frustration that they’re feeling over. Not knowing the correct question to ask, because by the time they go meet with her, the moments pass, I have to stop and say, Hey, like check in with, with what you’re doing. It’s okay to be frustrated. You can’t take it out on a classmate. You can’t take it out on me.

Eric Cross (24:14):

So you were, you, you were intentional about teaching these skills to your students and you had the relationship. So it makes sense that you were the one to bring it across ‘cause you see them more than anybody does. You know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve imagined. Teaching is for a long time. It’s been okay, you’re the science content expert. You’re the English expert, but so much as teaching evolves, there are these skills or like EQ emotional intelligence that you kind of have to have kind of coming in. Because like those moments, like no having the presence of mind to stop and why a young person through identifying how they feel, why, where it came from. Those aren’t always covered in those aren’t really covered in your methods classes when you’re in college, getting your, your degree or something. Now when you’re you’re sketch noting and for teachers who are, or one, could you just maybe give like a brief explanation of sketch, noting for somebody who may not be familiar with it, like how I was sketch any different than just drawing a picture randomly or something.

Valeria Rodriguez (25:10):

Okay. So you’re creating visual summaries. You’re using text and images combined in different ways to take notes. And before you know how we had like these shorthand things that the squiggly meant an indent and something else meant something else. And we had these lists of things when they would edit our papers, that represented things. It’s kind of like that for your brain. So you’re making a list of maybe icons or small sketches that represent things for you. So as you’re taking notes, you hear things. And when people talk now and they, they say, you know, I’m on the fence about this. Like I literally see a fence. And when they’re talking, I write the note, it’s almost like a T toe with pointy tops and I put a stick figure on top of it. And so later when I look at it, I think, oh, that’s right. My friend is on the fence about that decision

Eric Cross (26:08):

For a new teacher or even a, a, a experienced teacher. That’s interested in sketch noting, where, where would you recommend? They start like the structurize? Like, do you give creative freedom? Are they doing this paper and pencil vocabulary words? Are they up? Like, what are some just kind of maybe three basic things to kind of get started for someone who was just curious about it.

Valeria Rodriguez (26:29):

So it has to be simple because if it requires a lot of energy to go in, then you’re gonna be more hesitant to do it. For example, I wouldn’t start summarizing a video because it’s moving really fast or a live presentation is really hard. So with students, I would start with here’s a paragraph, make a visual summary of it, or here’s a vocabulary list, make an image to represent each word. Then you would move into, well, you know, here’s a unit summarize the three main topics in unit. Then you can move onto like a little YouTube video. That’s like 10 minutes a Ted talk, make a visual summary of the Ted talk because they can pause it.

Eric Cross (27:11):

Mm. Okay.

Valeria Rodriguez (27:13):

The hardest thing is live presentations, ‘cause in conversations you can say, oh, can you say that again? Sketch, noting. You start seeing how people organize or don’t their thoughts when they speak. Because when you start writing things down and all the information is about one thing and then like two blue ORPS about something else. You’re like, wow, that was really unbalanced. So then when you start teaching, you tell them what you’re gonna tell them, you tell them and then you tell them what you told them. So they can check that they put the notes in the right places and you tell them what you’re gonna tell. So they can prep the pathway that they’re gonna set up their notes and I have to be explicit. And I have to say like, I’m gonna talk about the rock cycle. So if I were you, I would put, you know, these four boxes. Oh, but there’s three types of rocks. See? I’m like, yeah, but magma. So let’s put it in the cycle, you know? And, and then I’m like, if I were you, I would put an arrow from here to here because this is how, you know, after erosion and then, you know, heat and pressure. But then it connects like this. So the arrows are gonna help me to remember the directions

Eric Cross (28:13):

As we wind down. There’s there’s one question I wanna ask you there, you are bringing together this science, the, the art, the social, emotional learning, the relationships with your students outside content, like there’s so many different things that you bring in the classroom that is clearly gonna make you a memorable educator for your kids. It just, it’s just, I’m just listening to your learning environment. And it’s so rich who is one teacher that really expired you. So

Valeria Rodriguez (28:38):

There’s a few people that stand out overall. I had very encouraging teachers. I had that one teacher that didn’t like my drawing <laugh> she also stands out <laugh>

Eric Cross (28:49):

We have those too.

Valeria Rodriguez (28:49):

Yeah. So I have colleagues that stand out to me that inspire me every day to like keep trying. And then I had a teacher in high school who I actually work with her daughter now at the school that I work at. And I didn’t even know her mom would make us write almost the whole class. And it was world history. And I remember hearing her say when she was talking about the Roman empire that it fell because it reached more than it can grab. So it kept extending too far out. And I heard that, like I think about, yes, I can keep reaching for things in education and reaching for things in my classroom. But I have to come back to like, what can I hold? I don’t wanna reach further than what I can hold. And yes, I have to believe in myself. And I tell my students to believe in themselves,

Eric Cross (29:38):

I’m in this, I’m in this sketch noting mindset. Because when you said what Ms. Brown shared with you, I thought of a hand reaching out, but then things kind of slipping through it. And I another hand with like a fist right next to it. So even in our conversation here last hour, I I’m thinking in pictures now. And so I’m like, if I can do it, they can do it. Like if you know, ‘cause I am just not the person who spends a lot of time committing to draw. Because a lot of times when I was that student who tried to draw and we get frustrated and look around and now I feel like this is, I wanna try this again. I wanna share this with my students and encourage them. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I look forward to continuing to see the sketch notes that you do. And maybe I’ll, I’ll show you one of mine. Like eventually I don’t know if you can see that there that’s my stick figures. Those of you who are listening right now, I drew, I was drawing stick figures and taking notes while Blair was dropping all of this, these like gems and wisdom in here. So

Valeria Rodriguez (30:31):

Maybe we can do a challenge that once people hear this podcast, they can tag us somehow in the sketch note that they create I’m in. So we see what they a take from it. Because that’s the other thing about sketch noting, you think you’re emphasizing something and all of a sudden people are walking away with something else that resonated to them. And you’re like, wow. And here I was thinking that this was what we were talking about. And this is what really jumped out at them.

Eric Cross (30:57):

Your kids are lucky that you’re in front of them, not just because of how you teach, but how you access all of these different parts of their creativity and their thinking and apply, integrate all of these soft skills and social, emotional skills and just life skills and your experience connecting them to the outside world. They, and like you said, and how we started, you know, where you started in Panama, the students realized what you represent and what you meant to them. And I feel like your students, when they get older, they may not realize it in the time, but as they get older and reflect back, they’ll be telling stories about you. So yeah. Thanks for making time and thanks for being here.

Valeria Rodriguez (31:34):

Well thank you too, ‘cause I know you’re in the classroom and making time to do other things outside the classroom. Isn’t always easy, but it’s what keeps us going in different ways.

Eric Cross (31:49):

Thanks so much for joining me in Valer today. We wanna hear more about you. If you have any great lessons or ways to keep student engagement high, please email us@stemamplifycom.wpengine.com. That’s TM five.com. Make sure to click, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and join our brand new Facebook group science connections, the community for some extra content.

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What Valeria Rodriguez says about science

“I use [sketchnoting] and I mess up all the time…because I feel that my students don’t want to make mistakes, and drawing is one of those things that taught me that it’s okay to make mistakes.”

– Valeria Rodriguez

Educator, Instructional technologist, and Graphic facilitator

Meet the guest

Valeria is an educator, instructional technologist, graphic facilitator, and dreamer. She currently works as a Science teacher as part of a STEAM Team in Miami, Florida teaching third through fifth graders as a free-lance graphic facilitator. She loves to connect with passionate educators she meets around the country. Valeria has presented and led workshops at educational conferences like SXSWEdu, ISTE, NSTA, NSTA STEM Forum, SHIFTinEDU, FAST, FCIS, and SEEC. When she is not teaching or sketching, Valeria can be found adventuring with her family around the world, training for triathlons, and creating opportunities to empower kids in all kinds of communities. 

You can check Valeria’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter & Instagram.

Valeria-Rodriguez_Headshot-LP

About Science Connections

Welcome to Science Connections! Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So…how do we help kids figure that out? We will bring on educators, scientists, and more to discuss the importance of high-quality science instruction. In this episode, hear from our host Eric Cross about his work engaging students as a K-8 science teacher. Listen here!

You might also like:

AS_Podcast-S1E08-Valeria-Rodriguez_Cover

Find Valeria!

Learn more about Valeria’s work and illustrations.

Two boys working on a laptop in a classroom, surrounded by other students and desks. They are smiling and writing on notebooks, appearing focused on the task.

Free poster!

Download a free poster to help students piece together their inner scientist.

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Free download!

Help support metacogntive skills for your students!

Amplify CKLA for Georgia

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Nevada ELA Review for grades K–5

Thank you for taking the time to review Amplify’s core ELA program for K–5.

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is a cutting-edge and effective core ELA program for students in grades K–5. It was developed in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation, was specifically designed to help teachers implement Science of Reading principles, and features proven evidence-based instructional practices.

Getting started

On this site, you’ll find a variety of resources designed to support your review and evaluation of the program. Before you start scrolling, watch the video below to learn about CKLA’s alignment to Nevada’s literacy initiatives as well as where to find key program resources.

Curriculum background

Pedagogical overview

In the video below, Amplify’s Chief Academic Officer Susan Lambert shares the big picture of CKLA, and explains why it was created and the impact it’s making across the country.

Program overview

In the video below, learn about CKLA’s structure and materials, as well the research behind the curriculum.

Program features

Built out of the latest research in the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA delivers explicit instruction in both foundational literacy skills (systematic phonics, decoding, and fluency) and background knowledge in grades K–2 with an integrated approach to explicit instruction in grades 3–5.

Review this Science of Reading toolkit to learn more about the Science of Reading best practices integrated throughout CKLA.

Great reading instruction starts with helping kids develop great decoding skills. By building a solid foundation of phonological awareness and phonics, reading the words on the page becomes automatic so that comprehension and critical thinking can happen. Our instruction is supported by:

  • Step-by-step lessons with multisensory approaches, clear lesson objectives, and embedded formative assessments.
  • Decodable books and student readers with ebook and audiobook versions that feature engaging plots and relatable characters.
  • An engaging sound library with fun songs and videos that develop phonological awareness.
  • An interactive Vocab App featuring engaging activities with immediate feedback and automated, customized instruction based on student performance.

Students build grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves. Our instruction is supported by:

  • Knowledge builders that provide a quick overview of each domain with its key ideas.
  • Interactive Read-Alouds designed to build knowledge and vocabulary.
  • Content-rich anchor texts that support students as they tackle increasingly complex text and sharpen their analytical skills.
  • Social and emotional learning paired with lessons in civic responsibility.

Amplify CKLA provides built-in differentiation strategies in every lesson for all students,
including supports for ELLs.

  • Access supports for ELLs—Integrated ELD supports in each lesson segment
    for ELLs are specific to students’ mastery of the lesson’s objectives.
  • Support and Challenge for all learners—Lessons include Support and Challenge suggestions that provide assistance or opportunities for more advanced work toward the goal of the lesson. These supports are suitable for all learners, including ELLs.
  • 30 minutes of Additional Support in every Skills lesson–In the Skills Strand, every lesson concludes with an Additional Support section of recommendations for 30 minutes of extended instruction and activities, directly aligned to the skills taught in the lesson to assist students who need more support in mastering the lesson’s objectives.
  • Intervention Toolkit–The Intervention Toolkit provides easy-to-use resources to assist teachers in filling gaps in students’ foundational skills. Teachers will find of hundreds of activities to support phonics, fluency, comprehension, handwriting, and other key skills.

The slides-based Amplify CKLA digital experience enhances instruction while saving you time. Everything you need is all in one place, making it easier than ever to plan lessons, present digital content, and review student work.

  • Simplify planning and instruction–Teachers have access to ready-to-use and customizable lesson presentation slides, complete with all the prompts from the print Teacher Guide embedded in the teacher view. As teachers deliver each lesson, students can engage with the content in one cohesive
    experience—through Activity Books, slides, digital components, videos, Student Readers, and more.
  • Interactive student activities–Through the Student Home, students can easily access digital lessons with slides, Activity Pages, ebooks, videos, and other interactive resources from one simple dashboard.
  • Your teacher command center–You’re provided with the tools you need to ensure a productive digital experience that’s personalized to meet your students’ needs. This includes a teacher home from which to launch and track lessons, LMS integrations such as Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams, and other customizations based on classroom needs.
  • Get real-time insights into your students’ work–The innovative live review tool enables you to keep an eye on students drawing, recording audio, uploading and capturing images, and typing or writing in pre-placed text boxes in their Activity Pages.

Curriculum review

Digital experience overview

In the video below, learn about CKLA’s digital tools for teachers and students across both classroom and asynchronous environments.

Digital navigation walkthrough

Physical materials walkthrough

Curriculum implementation

See our Science of Reading solutions in action! Click here to see a real example of how one Ohio district is implementing and educating their K–8 community on the Science of Reading as a response to Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement Initiative.

Access the program

Explore as a teacher

Before logging in, watch this brief video on navigating the CKLA Teacher Resource Site.

Ready to explore as a teacher? Follow these instructions:

  • Click the CKLA Teacher Resource Site button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter the username: t1.nvk5@tryamplify.net
  • Enter the password: AmplifyNumber1
  • Click the CKLA Teacher Resource icon
  • Select a grade level
CKLA Teacher Resource Site

Explore as a student

Before logging in, watch this brief video on navigating the CKLA Student Hub.

Ready to explore as a student? Follow these instructions:

  • Click the CKLA Teacher Resource Site button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter the username: s1.nvk5@tryamplify.net
  • Enter the password: AmplifyNumber1
  • Click the CKLA Teacher Resource icon
  • Select a grade level
CKLA Student Hub

Check out these additional resources

Nevada submission resources:

CKLA review resources:

Welcome, Ohio educators!

Thank you for taking the time to review Amplify’s CKLA resources for K–5.

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is an effective core literacy resource for students in grades K–5 and is aligned to Ohio’s Rule for Phonics. CKLA was developed in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation and was specifically designed to help teachers implement proven evidence-based instructional practices.

Click here for correlations to the Ohio Learning Standards for English Language Arts.

Click here to view Amplify CKLA’s Alignment to Ohio’s “Shifting to the Science of Reading” Framework.

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Recognized Quality

Amplify CKLA is one of only a few high-quality, knowledge-building literacy curricula recognized by the Knowledge Matters campaign. Our shared message: Background knowledge is essential to literacy and learning.

A diagram showing "Knowledge x Skills = Amplify CKLA," with Knowledge as language comprehension, Skills as word recognition, and Amplify CKLA as skilled reading. Knowledge Matters badge included.

Independently and rigorously reviewed

Amplify CKLA not only received an all-green rating from the rigorous evaluators at EdReports, but it was also recently recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign as a literacy program that excels in building knowledge.

Read our EdReports review Read our Knowledge Matters review

Intentional knowledge-building

The Science of Reading reveals knowledge as an essential pillar of reading comprehension and lifelong literacy. Hear from author Natalie Wexler and CKLA customers on edWebinar about the importance of knowledge-building in reading instruction.

Hear from Natalie Wexler edWebinar Links

Designed for Ohio

We know there are several different paths you can take when implementing a Science of Reading program in your district:

  • Prekindergarten
  • K-2 Core No Foundational Skills
  • K-2 Supplemental Foundational Skills
  • K-2 Core Comprehensive English Language Arts
  • 3-5 English Language Arts

To learn how Amplify CKLA supports each one of these paths, click here.

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A man in a suit reads a book to a group of young children seated on a colorful rug in a classroom with a large clock displayed on a screen.

PreKindergarten

Amplify CKLA PreK easily fits into any class routine, with 45 minutes of interac…

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K-2 Core No Foundational Skills

The most extensive and robust knowledge-building sequence that builds within and…

A collection of educational books, workbooks, flashcards, and teaching materials with red and white covers displayed on a white background.

K-2 Supplemental Foundational Skills

Amplify CKLA Skills is a comprehensive foundational skills program offering expl…

A collection of educational workbooks, activity books, and other printed learning materials arranged neatly on a white surface.

K-2 Core Comprehensive English Language Arts

In grades K–2, students complete one lesson that builds foundational reading ski…

A collection of educational books, workbooks, and cards displayed in front of a box labeled “Eureka!” with various illustrations and diagrams on the covers.

3-5 English Language Arts

In Amplify CKLA grades 3–5, lessons begin to combine skills and knowledge with i…

Program Overview

Amplify CKLA is a core ELA program for grades K–5 that delivers:

  • A unique research-based approach truly built on the Science of Reading.
  • A combination of explicit foundational skills with meaningful knowledge building.
  • Embedded support and differentiation that gets all students reading grade-level texts together.
  • Opportunities for students to see the strengths and experiences that all people share while also celebrating each others’ unique identities and experiences.
  • Authentic Spanish language arts instruction with Amplify Caminos.

Amplify CKLA for Grades K–2

After watching the K–2 video below, scroll down to learn even more, download resources, and access a demo.

Amplify CKLA for Grades 3–5

After watching the 3–5 video below, scroll down to learn even more, download resources, and access a demo.

How it works

Amplify CKLA teaches both foundational skills and background knowledge in K–2 and combines them in 3–5, as required by the science of reading.

  • In grades K–2, students complete one full lesson that builds foundational reading skills, as well as one full lesson that builds background knowledge.
  • In grades 3–5, student complete one integrated lesson that combines skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater writing emphasis.
Download CKLA Program Guide
A flowchart showing word recognition and language comprehension strands intertwining to form skilled reading, with progression labeled as increasingly automatic and strategic.

Rich topics

Amplify CKLA builds knowledge coherently across subjects and grades.

Students make connections from year-to-year by exploring grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves.

Illustration showing diverse cultural representations: two native american figures, a bear in a forest, and a medieval european woman, all set against colorful abstract backgrounds.

Units by grade

Take a closer look at the topics students explore.

New! Knowledge Research Units

Explore our newly added Knowledge Research units.

Skills by grade

Take a closer look at the skills students develop.

Diverse text

Amplify CKLA puts a variety of texts in the hands of students every day to build and strengthen background knowledge and vocabulary, listening and reading comprehension, and decoding and fluency skills.

More than that, we ensure the texts students read represent the world around them. With a diverse range of authors, topics, and characters, all students have ample access to both windows and mirrors. Our texts include:

  • authentic books.
  • authentic text passages.
  • student readers.
  • novel guides (grades 3–5).

Grade K Text List

Grade 1 Text List

Grade 2 Text List

Grade 3 Text List

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Grade 4 Text List

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Grade 5 Text List

Aligned to LETRS and Orton Gillingham

Amplify CKLA aligns with the instructional principles recommended by Orton Gillingham and LETRS.

  • Structured–Concepts are taught through consistent routines
  • Sequential–Concepts are taught in a logical, well-planned sequence
  • Systematic–Phonemes are taught from simplest to most complex
  • Explicit–Decoding and encoding concepts are taught directly and explicitly
  • Multi-sensory–Instruction is delivered through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile pathways
  • Cumulative–Concepts are applied in decodable, connected texts with constant review and reinforcement
Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for K–2

Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for 3–5

Universal access

We believe we have a responsibility to provide literacy instruction that gives every student the same opportunity to succeed and excel.

We know that early reading affects achievement throughout school and beyond—well into college and career. Yet most literacy programs continue to fall short of supporting early literacy success. That’s why we’re so proud that CKLA is helping close the reading gap between students within diverse communities.

A boy with glasses smiles while reading a book, with illustrated objects like a telescope, gourd, and cartoon insect in the background.
Un grupo de jóvenes estudiantes se sientan muy juntos y miran atentamente hacia arriba. Algunos de los niños visten atuendos coloridos, incluida una niña con un hijab azul. Parecen estar en un salón de clases.

Grades K–2: Supporting all learners

Un grupo de niños sentados alrededor de un escritorio, sonriendo y riendo mientras miran una computadora portátil. Un adulto está cerca y también sonríe.

Grades 3–5: Supporting all learners

Complete curriculum

A strong literacy program is not just about a reading program or an assessment tool: it brings together curriculum, instruction, regular practice, intervention, and assessments.

Amplify has brought these components together in our early literacy suite of curriculum, ensure that you have what you need for multi-tiered support.

Un adulto y un niño se sientan en una mesa y usan juntos una tableta. El adulto viste un top floral amarillo y el niño, vestido con un traje azul marino y blanco, señala la pantalla.

CKLA and mCLASS

CKLA connects to our comprehensive diagnostic universal screener called mCLASS.

Dos niñas están sentadas en una mesa, mirando juntas la pantalla de una computadora portátil en un salón de clases. Al fondo se ven estanterías con libros y materiales de clase.

CKLA and Boost Reading

CKLA connects to our adaptive reading practice program called Boost Reading.

Un grupo de niños sentados alrededor de un escritorio, sonriendo y riendo mientras miran una computadora portátil. Un adulto está cerca y también sonríe.

CKLA and Language Studio

CKLA aligns with Language Studio–our ELD companion program for grades K–5.

CKLA and Writing Studio

CKLA aligns with Writing Studio–our writing companion program for grades K–5.

Science of Reading Resources

Watching students learn to read: magic. Knowing how they get there: science.

As you consider your next core ELA program, it’s critically important to understand what the Science of Reading really means and what it tells us about how to teach more effectively. Unlike other programs, Amplify CKLA was built upon these insights and practices, making it easier for teachers to implement this proven approach.

Explore Science of Reading Handbook
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Access demo

Ready to explore on your own? Follow the instructions below to access your demo account.

Explore the CKLA Teacher Digital Site

First, watch the quick navigation video to the right. Then follow the directions below:

  • Click the CKLA Teacher Digital Site button
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: t1.cklareviewohio@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-cklareviewohio
  • Select the desired grade level
Access CKLA Teacher Digital Site

Explore the CKLA Student Digital Site

To access the student digital site follow the directions below:

  • Click the CKLA Student Digital Site button
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: s1.cklareviewohio@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-cklareviewohio
  • From the Home page, scroll down to the robot and “Click to go to the Hub“
  • From the Hub, click the Grade button to select the grade.
Access CKLA Student Digital Site

Welcome, Minnesota educators!

Thank you for taking the time to review Amplify’s CKLA resources for K–5.

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is an effective core literacy resource for students in grades K–5. CKLA was developed in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation and was specifically designed to help teachers implement proven evidence-based instructional practices. CKLA is all green on EdReports- read the full review on EdReports.org.

Click here for correlations to the Minnesota Learning Standards.

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Virtual presentations

Amplify CKLA for Grades K–2

Amplify CKLA for Grades 3–5

About CKLA

Amplify CKLA is a core ELA program for grades K–5 that delivers:

  • A combination of explicit foundational skills with meaningful knowledge-building.
  • Embedded support and differentiation that get all students reading grade-level texts together.
  • Opportunities for students to see the strengths and experiences that all people share while celebrating each others’ unique identities and experiences.
  • Authentic Spanish language arts instruction with Amplify Caminos.
A young girl with a braid smiles while leaning on a desk, with whimsical illustrations of a bear, buildings, and plants in the background.

Program effectiveness

How it Works

Amplify CKLA teaches both foundational skills and background knowledge in grades K–2 and combines them in 3–5.

  • In grades K–2, students complete one full lesson that builds foundational reading skills and one full lesson that builds background knowledge.
  • In grades 3–5, students complete one integrated lesson combining skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater emphasis on writing
Illustration of ancient civilizations featuring pyramids, a pharaoh’s head, farmers plowing with oxen, animals, and traditional structures under a sunny sky.

CKLA Program Guide

Illustration showing a person painting by a window, bees and a grasshopper among sunflowers, a pyramid, and two children floating on a globe with books and planets.

Caminos Program Guide

Cover of a booklet titled "Assessment sampler Grades K–5" with colorful illustrations of animals, a woman, and nature at the bottom.

Assessment

What students Explore

Amplify CKLA builds knowledge coherently across subjects and grades.

Students make connections from year to year by exploring grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves.

Download the at-a-glance resources below to learn more.

What students read

Amplify CKLA puts a variety of texts in the hands of students every day to build and strengthen background knowledge and vocabulary, listening and reading comprehension, and decoding and fluency skills.

A comprehensive approach to literacy instruction requires students to have a wide range of text experiences, including reading, listening, discussing, and writing. Check out our text complexity guide to learn more by clicking here. Most questions, tasks, and assignments in CKLA materials are text-dependent. See how we use questioning and analysis skills to help students understand text in CKLA here.

More than that, we ensure the texts students read represent the world around them. With a diverse range of authors, topics, and characters, all students have ample access to both windows and mirrors. Our texts include the following:

  • Authentic books
  • Authentic text passages
  • Student Readers
  • Novel Guides (grades 3–5)

Download a list of K-5 student texts.

Six children's book covers arranged in two rows, featuring colorful illustrations of animals, people, and nature. Titles include "Rain Player," "A More Perfect Union," and "The Busy Body Book.

Supports LETRS

Amplify CKLA aligns with the instructional principles recommended by LETRS.

  • Structured: Concepts are taught through consistent routines.
  • Sequential: Concepts are taught in a logical, well-planned sequence.
  • Systematic: Phonemes are taught from simplest to most complex.
  • Explicit: Decoding and encoding concepts are taught directly and explicitly.
  • Multi-sensory: Instruction is delivered through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile pathways.
  • Cumulative: Concepts are applied in decodable, connected texts with constant review and reinforcement.
Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for K–2

Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for 3–5

Title page with the text: "Crosswalk for Core Knowledge Language Arts and LETRS Suggested Scope and Sequence," with some headings in orange and gray.

Amplify CKLA and LTRS Crosswalk

A comprehensive and cohesive solution

A strong literacy program is more than a reading program or an assessment tool: it combines curriculum, instruction, regular practice, intervention, and assessments.

Amplify has brought these components together in our early literacy curriculum suite to ensure you have what you need for multi-tiered support.

Infographic describing a cycle of K–5 literacy solutions: mCLASS screening, Amplify CKLA instruction, digital and staff-led interventions, and professional development within an early literacy suite grounded in the science of reading.
A teacher using a tablet alongside a student

CKLA and mCLASS®

CKLA aligns with our mCLASS® with DIBELS 8th Edition, Amplify’s comprehens…

Two young girls, one with braided hair and the other with blonde hair, smiling and looking at a laptop screen in a classroom.

CKLA and Boost Reading

Boost Reading provides literacy acceleration and remediation for your students.

Trial Access

Ready to explore on your own? Follow the instructions below to access your demo account.

Explore CKLA’s digital site:

Go to my.amplify.com
Select Log in with Amplify
Teacher login: t1.mde-mn@demo.tryamplify.net
Password: Amplify1-mde-mn
Select the CKLA icon and your desired grade level

Screenshot of the CKLA curriculum webpage displaying a list of materials, including Activity Book, Teacher Guide, Answer Key, and other educational resources.

Additional Resources

Check out the information below to learn more about Amplify CKLA and see how Amplify CKLA is impacting classrooms all over the country.

Welcome, K–5 Atlanta Public Schools!

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Amplify CKLA

To view this protected page, enter the password below:



Welcome, K–8 Program 2 reviewers!

We’re honored to introduce you to Amplify California Language Arts. We’re confident you’ll find this comprehensive program to be a powerful tool for bringing the vision of the California ELA/ELD Framework to life in classrooms across the state.

Please start with the video on the right to learn how to navigate the program and access key features referenced within our submission. Below you’ll find additional resources to support your review.

Your review samples

We’re excited for you to begin your review of Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) California and Amplify ELA California, Language Studio California for grades K–8. Physical and digital review materials will vary by grade level.

Reviewer Binders (K–8)

Your physical samples should have arrived in grade-specific boxes with three Reviewer Binders.

  • The first binder will contain logistical program review information and the printed Evaluation Criteria Map.
  • The second binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades K–4.
  • The third binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades 5–8.

Physical samples (K–5)

You can expect to receive 15 boxes of physical materials for your review. As you begin the process of organizing your materials, please refer to the inventory checklist found inside each box as well as within your Reviewer Binder. Please note you will not receive any physical samples for grades 6–8 ELA or Language Studio for grades K-8. Your review of the program for grades 6–8 ELA and Language Studio for grades K-8 will be entirely digital.

Digital samples

In order to access your digital samples, you’ll need to log in to our platform using your unique login credentials found on a Digital Review Credential flyer inside of your Reviewer Binder. Once you have located the flyer:

  • Click the orange button below to access the platform.
  • Click “Log in with Amplify.”
  • Enter the username and password provided on your Digital Review Credential flyer.
Digital Access

Navigation tips

Before you get started, please review these important functionality notes:

Criteria Map and Standards Maps must be opened on Microsoft Word on your desktop to function as intended. If you open the documents without Microsoft Word on your desktop, citations will be cut off at the bottom of most tables within the document.

Many of our citations are deep-links to PDFs, meaning they will take you to the right page or the first page in the sequence for the citation in question. To ensure this functionality works, please disable any PDF-viewing extensions or plug-ins such as Adobe Acrobat Pro Browser Extension.

[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades K–5

[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades 6–8

Click here for additional information on navigating the digital materials for grades 6–8.

Category 1: English Language Arts (ELA) and English Language Development (ELD) Content/Alignment to Standards

Evaluation Criteria Map

Linked below is the Evaluation Criteria Map for grades K–8. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Evaluation Criteria Map.

ELA Standards Maps

The links below provide the Standards Maps for Amplify California Language Arts for each grade level. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Standards Maps.

ELD Standards Maps

Category 2: Program Organization

The Amplify California Language Arts Program 2 submission includes Amplify CKLA California for Grades K–5, Amplify ELA California for Grades 6–8, and Amplify Language Studio California for Grades K–8. This comprehensive curriculum provides a full year of evidence-based instruction for each grade level, with both integrated and designated English Language Development instruction designed to give English learners the tools to thrive.

Program structure

Amplify’s California Language Arts programs are built on what the research shows: Strong readers need both word recognition and language comprehension. Our comprehensive curriculum suite follows the Simple View of Reading and The Reading Rope–bringing together foundational skills and knowledge building to deliver instruction grounded in the Science of Reading.

Flowchart illustrating skilled reading as the product of language comprehension and word recognition, grounded in the science of reading.
Diagram illustrating the interplay between language comprehension and word recognition in reading, as seen in early literacy stages. It highlights pathways through knowledge, vocabulary, and sentence understanding, reflecting principles from the CKLA reading program.

Each lesson follows a predictable structure with clearly marked components, beginning with warm-up routines, progressing through explicit instruction with guided practice, and concluding with independent application activities. The program provides detailed teacher language, including question stems and discussion prompts, ensuring clear and consistent delivery of instruction.

[Reviewer highlight video] Program organization for Category 2

[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades K–2

[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 3–5

[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 6–8

Amplify CKLA California empowers teachers to deliver effective instruction and keeps students engaged with with the following resources:

  • Teacher Guides
  • Assessment Guides
  • Authentic texts and trade books
  • Knowledge Image Cards
  • Knowledge Flip Books
  • Remediation and intervention resources
  • Decodable readers
  • Student Readers and novels
  • Student Activity Books
  • Dedicated ELD support with Language Studio California
  • Poet’s Journals
  • eReaders
  • Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs
  • Instructional routine modeling videos
  • Assignable Practice Games
  • On-demand professional development

Amplify ELA California students stay engaged with the following resources:

  • Teacher Guides that include:
    • Detailed lesson plans
    • Standards alignment and exit tickets
    • Real-time differentiation strategies
    • Robust reporting
  • Student Editions that include:
    • High-quality narrative and informational texts
    • Videos, audio supports, and digital experiences that capture their attention
    • Personal Writing Journal to keep all student writing in one place
  • Dedicated ELD support with Language Studio California
  • Trade Books

Core literacy philosophy

Support every learner. Meet all learning needs with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that brings together universal screening, scaffolded core instruction, support for English learners, and data-driven intervention to ensure every student gets what they need to succeed.

Provide intentional ELD support. Honor students’ linguistic assets while building academic English through both integrated and designated instruction.

Deliver consistent foundational skills instruction. Daily explicit, systematic skills instruction in grades K–2, with targeted yet flexible support for students still building decoding confidence in grades 3–8, ensures mastery of essential reading foundations.

Build lasting knowledge across all grades. Through coherently sequenced, content-rich instruction that revisits key vocabulary and concepts with increasing complexity, students build meaningful connections that deepen their vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Strengthen reading through writing at every level. Regular writing instruction grounded in the Science of Writing supports reading comprehension, improves sentence-level writing, and provides the foundation for high-quality composition. As students progress through the upper grades, they engage in increasingly complex analytical tasks—synthesizing ideas, drawing generalizations, and interpreting multiple textual layers through both focused quick-writes and comprehensive essays. 

Foster oral language development. Structured opportunities for academic conversation and evidence-based dialogue build students’ ability to express complex ideas with precision and allow them to participate confidently in classroom discussions.

Measure growth with comprehensive assessments. Assessments range from in-the-moment checks for understanding to summative assessments that measure progress toward skills mastery and standards proficiency, providing the data needed to drive targeted instruction.

Scope and sequence

Below you can view the scope and sequence for each grade level. 

Routines

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California include several structured instructional routines that provide predictable patterns for both teachers and students:

Discussion and collaboration routines:

  • Turn and Talk: Partners discuss text-specific content using sentence starters and frames
  • Think-Pair-Share: Students engage in individual thinking, partner discussion, and whole-class sharing
  • Partner reading: Students sit shoulder-to-shoulder, taking turns reading and listening

Foundational Skills routines:

  • Sound-spelling review: Warm-up activities that reinforce phonics patterns
  • Oral blending warm-ups: Teacher-guided practice progressing to independent application
  • Finger-tapping: Techniques for blending sounds
  • Chaining activities: Students manipulate letters to transform one word into another
  • Word Work: Daily short activities focused on domain-specific and academic vocabulary

Knowledge-Building Routines:

  • Teacher modeling: Demonstration of proper intonation, expression, and pacing
  • Choral reading: Whole-class reading practice
  • Partner reading: Paired fluency practice

Close reading routines

The program includes carefully structured close reading activities that guide students through multiple encounters with complex texts. These routines help students develop deeper comprehension through systematic analysis and discussion.

Each routine includes comprehensive instructional guides with clear-cut directions for implementation, straightforward explanations of concepts, and suggestions for discussion.

Designated English Language Development materials

Language Studio California is a K–8 content-based companion for English language learners. Built on Amplify CKLA California’s and Amplify ELA California’s carefully sequenced Knowledge Domains and units, it combines engaging content knowledge with targeted supports and research-based strategies to help students move swiftly toward language proficiency. This program includes:

  • Real-world content to provide authentic opportunities to practice reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
  • Scaffolding strategies and differentiated instruction to offer targeted support along with five English proficiency levels.
  • Progress-monitoring tools to help teachers provide consistent and effective support.
  • Teacher Guides that:
    • Provide impactful progress monitoring tools including formative and summative assessments and Language Proficiency Assessment rubrics.
    • Offer varied differentiation strategies including Support, Challenge, and Access Supports in each lesson segment.
    • Are organized into thoughtful lesson segments—Talk Time, Building Background, On Stage and more—that make learning objectives concrete.
  • Activities that:
    • Expand on domain knowledge from core content and read-alouds and prompt collaborative conversation to practice oral fluency.
    • Support hands-on language activities to promote authentic interaction in the classroom.
    • Help students bridge experiences and knowledge with images, vocabulary activities, graphic organizers, anticipation guides, writing space, and more.

Category 3: Assessments

Systematic MTSS alignment

In alignment with the additional 2025 Guidance 3.1.a, the assessment systems align with MTSS tiers, including universal screening, diagnostic assessments for students demonstrating a need for additional support, and progress monitoring tools that complement the California’s required universal screening schedule per SB 114.

Tier 1:
Universal/ differentiated support		Tier 2: 
Supplemental/ targeted support		Tier 3: 
Intensified/ intensive support
Core instruction assessments





Frequency of administration		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments

Daily, Weekly, Monthly		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments

Daily, Weekly, Monthly		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California assessments

Daily, Weekly, Monthly
Universal screening assessments

Frequency of administration		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura


3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura


3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura


3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY
Formal progress monitoring assessments

Frequency of administration		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura



3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura



Monthly		mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura



Bi-weekly
Informal progress monitoring assessments




Frequency of administration		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify Caminos California, Amplify ELA California core assessments

Daily		Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments




When linked to a lesson in the toolkit		Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments




When linked to a lesson in the toolkit
Diagnostic assessment






Frequency of administration		Amplify skill diagnostic assessment

Amplify Spanish skill diagnostic assessment

Optional after universal screening assessment is administered		Amplify skill diagnostic assessment

Amplify Spanish skill diagnostic assessment

After universal screening assessment is administered

Universal assessment system

Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition and mCLASS Lectura are universal and dyslexia screening assessments that should be administered three times per year (BOY, MOY and EOY) to all students. The assessments evaluate student literacy risk, determine progress toward grade-level goals, and indicate the level of instructional  support a student may need. Beginning-of-year screenings require adequate instructional time before administration, particularly in grades K–1, while mid-year and end-of-year assessments evaluate instructional effectiveness and guide tier placement adjustments. These screenings also identify students at risk for dyslexia. Universal screening provides essential data for targeting instruction and measuring instructional system effectiveness.

Core instruction assessments

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California provide a comprehensive suite of assessments for Grades K–8 that range from low-stakes, informal formative assessments to more formal summative assessments. These assessments incorporate a variety of methods and question types, including multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, and oral and written responses.

Formative assessments:

  • Checks for Understanding: Incorporated into each lesson segment throughout daily instruction. Quick pulse-checks that provide immediate feedback during lesson delivery (grades K–5). 
  • Daily formative assessments: Highlighted moments within each lesson for teachers to plan to track mastery of Primary Focus objectives and standards of each lesson to get a clear snapshot of individual and whole-class progress (grades K–5). 
  • Activity pages: Completed as part of lessons and can be used to assess lesson content understanding through various formats (grades K–5).
  • Exit Tickets: Located at the end of lessons, these provide a quick gauge of students’ ability to meet the lesson’s focus standards (grades 6–8).  
  • Writing Prompts: Prompts integrated throughout lessons during writing activities that provide skill snapshots within lessons and tracks patterns of skill development over time (grades 6–8).
  • Independent reading activities (Solos): At the end of every lesson, students complete an independent reading activity (“solo”) with reading questions that are scored to measure comprehension (grades 6–8).

Summative assessments:

  • Skills end-of-unit assessments (grades K–2) 
  • Knowledge end-of-domain assessments (grades K–2) 
  • End-of-unit assessments (grades 3–5) 
  • Unit essays: A culminating end-of-unit set of lessons that guide students through crafting an essay with a rubric to score mastery of writing skills (grades 6–8)
  • Unit Reading Assessments: Auto-scored responses and two constructed response items evaluate comprehension, content understanding, and reading skills using the passages students read during the unit (grades 6–8)

Performance Assessments

Student Performance Assessments are multi-day assessments administered in Grades K-5 at the beginning, middle, and end of year to help teachers gauge student mastery of grade-level Core content. These assessments provide critical data to help teachers set targeted instructional goals and monitor individual and class-wide progress towards core objectives.

Progress monitoring

Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition and mCLASS Lectura provide formal progress monitoring in the discrete skills that are indicative of reading growth and predictive of overall success to provide the most instructionally meaningful information to teachers.

Informal progress monitoring tools can be found within the Intervention Toolkit, including materials for teachers to record, track, and evaluate student progress.

Diagnostic assessment

Interventions within Amplify’s literacy programs are informed by a skill diagnostic assessment that provides detailed data on foundational literacy skill deficits. The Amplify Skill Diagnostic Assessment and Amplify Spanish Skill Diagnostic assessment serve as critical tools in this process, administered specifically to students identified as at risk for reading difficulty through universal screening assessments—particularly those demonstrating mCLASS DIBELS 8th Edition or mCLASS Lectura composite scores in the Well Below or Below Benchmark ranges. These diagnostic assessments provide teachers with the precise skills to begin intervention and remediation.

Category 4: Universal Access

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California were built on the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and reviewed by CAST, a nonprofit education research and development organization. The program is developed using the Universal Design for Learning framework to proactively ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

Universal Design for Learning

The programs incorporate opportunities for engagement, representation, action, and expression based on the guidelines of Universal Design for Learning.

  • Multiple Means of Engagement: The programs incorporate interesting and motivating ways for students to interact with information and content. In Amplify CKLA California, the Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students. Scaffolding for students with various levels of need is incorporated into the design of each lesson.
  • Multiple Means of Representation: The programs provide multiple means of presenting content to maximize student understanding. This includes digital component files that allow for a range of presentations of images and text to support learning. Amplify provides access to universal supports such as point-of-use audio for all core texts, embedded definitions for critical vocabulary, and glossaries in multiple languages. Amplify CKLA California includes clarification on language found throughout the program, with sidebars that include support on transition words and syntax, and illustrations to help students understand the concepts they are learning.
  • Multiple Means of Action and Expression: The programs include a range of methods for all students, including English Learners, to navigate and demonstrate learning. This includes physical actions, a range of methods for response, appropriate tools for composition, and varied scaffolding. In Amplify ELA California, lessons provide multiple ways for students to interact with text, allowing their brains to process the language through distinct pathways. Activities harness multiple learning modes, using media tools, digital apps, and a variety of visual and physical experiences to strategically support and enhance student learning.
  • Accessibility: Universal access features include visual aids, enlarged materials, physical objects, and multiple learning modalities through activities like Push & Say and Wiggle Cards. The Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students.

Embedded differentiation

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California provide built-in differentiation strategies in every lesson for all students.

Throughout the Teacher Guides, point-of-use Differentiation icons provide targeted instructional strategies and supports. These icons indicate specific guidance for advanced learners, students who need additional support, and English learners, allowing teachers to easily identify and implement appropriate scaffolds and extensions during instruction. In addition, teachers are provided with recommendations for resources to use with each group of students.

  • Pre-teaching supports include mini-lessons on:
    • Core vocabulary words
    • Core Connections
    • Essential Background Information or Terms
    • What Have We Already Learned/What Do We Already Know?
  • Differentiated Support for Core Instruction tables, located in the overview of each K–2 Skills Teacher Guide, provide a list of specific opportunities for reteaching and additional support in each lesson based on skill.
  • Support and Challenge Sidebars in lesson margins offer educators immediate guidance in implementing point-of-use differentiation techniques.
  • Flexible Grouping within lessons provides opportunities for teachers to facilitate small groups, partners, or individualized support based on students’ needs. In the Skills Strand, teachers receive specific guidance for differentiated small-group instruction, with targeted support and activities outlined for both Group 1 (students needing additional support) and Group 2 (on-level students) based on data. 
  • Amplify ELA California provides point-of-use supports embedded within key core lesson activities with six levels of differentiation. The goal of these supports is to fully enable access to grade-level content for all students, including students with disabilities, English learners, and students ready for an additional level of challenge.
  • The Universal Access section of Advance Preparation in each lesson includes varied strategies to ensure all students can access and engage in each lesson.
  • Frequent use of graphic organizers and visual supports in lessons provide opportunities for differentiation based on need. The program also includes a variety of technological supports, such as eReaders with audio.
  • Extension opportunities are suggested throughout lessons, often embedded in writing tasks, which include prompts to use more complex and descriptive vocabulary, figurative language,  multi-clause and complex sentences, and  informational text characteristics.

Assessment-Driven MTSS resources

  • The K–8 Intervention Toolkit is available online and provides easy-to-use resources that assist teachers in filling gaps in students’ reading skills, with activities to support print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and other key skills
  • Fluency Packets (Grades 2–5)
  • Foundational Skills Intervention Program for Grades 3–8 support students who would benefit from direct and explicit intervention instruction in the full continuum of foundational skills in the upper grades
  • Flexible Instructional Time including:
    • Pausing Points built into the curriculum that provide teachers with dedicated time to address specific student needs through targeted reteaching, remediation, practice, and extension activities 
    • Pausing Point activities designed to support English learners’ competence and confidence through differentiated whole-group, small-group, or individual instruction
  • Boost Reading is a K–5 student-led digital intervention program. Boost Reading follows Amplify CKLA California’s scope and sequence to reinforce the same foundational skills taught in core instruction. It integrates easily into daily routines, while the robust data provided by mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition offers a detailed view of how students progress across all instructional tiers.

Category 5: Instructional Planning and Teacher Support

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with various print and digital resources. The program provides comprehensive planning and support materials designed to help teachers prepare for and execute lessons effectively and fulfill the requirements of Category 5.

Implementation supports across K–8

Planning and preparation resources

  • Unit Overviews that provide important background and context for the texts students will read, including highlighted elements within the text and guidance for how students will work with those elements
  • Sub-unit Overviews (Grades 6–8) that provide an overview of Lesson Objectives and reading and writing assignments, as well as a list of any projections, multimedia, or digital apps that can be projected from the teacher’s included digital license
  • Lesson-by-lesson preparation checklists (Grades 6–8) accompanying each Sub-unit Overview
  • Lesson Briefs for each individual lesson providing important background and context
  • Content knowledge materials regarding topics that students will examine

Point-of-use instructional guidance

  • Teacher Editions that feature insets of the same text and activity instructions as the corresponding Student Edition, wrapping teacher instruction around these materials
  • Activity guidance at point of use
  • Lesson standards clearly called out
  • Discussion suggestions embedded in lessons
  • Differentiation tips at point of use
  • Detailed Instructional Guides in each activity that include sequencing and grouping suggestions, tips for facilitating discussion, possible student responses and exemplars
  • Student Supports in all core lessons that provide teachers with targeted supports in daily core instruction, addressing which might serve the student best in the moment—support, strengthen, stretch—with additional call-outs for newcomers

Multimedia and digital support

  • Teacher tip videos provide modeling and guidance for implementing key foundational skills routines within the program
  • Digital platform access where teachers can access printable PDFs of differentiated support materials for English learners and students struggling with reading, including translated Unit Background and Context documents and Text Previews
  • Teacher dashboard and reporting tools (Grade 6–8) provide real-time visibility into student progress and work for immediate instructional response

Caregiver supports

Communication and overview resources

  • Caregiver Hub available in English and Spanish that provides an overview of the curriculum
  • Caregiver Letters for each K–2 Knowledge Domain and unit in Grades 3–5 that provide an overview of the content, the skills students learn, as well as practical methods that continue the learning and knowledge building at home
  • Unit-specific Caregiver Letters (Grades 6–8) that provide detailed information regarding what students will read and learn in each unit, including conversation starters that allow caregivers to ask questions and discuss specific aspects of a unit with their student
  • Welcome letters that explain the assessment and placement process while inviting parent involvement and offering support
  • Editable Home-School Communication letters available in English and Spanish
  • Editable Progress Reports for teachers to update parents and guardians on what their child is learning

Content and learning support materials

  • Unit Background and Context documents that provide an introduction and overview to the unit’s topic and themes, available in English and Spanish
  • Text Previews that provide a brief introduction to formative, independent reading assignments (called Solos in Grades 6–8), available in English and Spanish
  • Unit Overview and Support documents (Grades 6–8) designed for caregivers that provide information about important questions, assignments, and key aspects of the unit texts, available in English and Spanish
  • Conversation starters included in Knowledge Strand Caregiver Letters to discuss domain topics at home

Home practice and extension activities

  • Take-Home pages in the Skills Strand that include copies of decodable passages, enabling students to share their reading progress with families and continue practicing their skills outside of school
  • Take-Home Letters in the Skills Strand that provide specific guidance for parents to support skills practice at home, such as sound-sorting activities, with detailed instructions and materials for home practice activities
  • Take-Home pages in the Knowledge Strand that provide suggested activities families can do together to reinforce and extend learning beyond the classroom
  • Games and activities on take-home pages that extend classroom instruction, including all the materials and instruction necessary to help families assist students in a fun and engaging way
  • Digital access to decodable texts through the Amplify Caregiver Hub, allowing students to practice their reading skills both in class and at home
  • Weekly spelling lists and directions to decoding activities that can be practiced at home

Teach your students to think critically about everything they read.

Amplify’s middle school literacy programs were designed to prepare students in grades 6–8 for high school and beyond by immersing them in complex texts and teaching them to think for themselves about everything they read. Learn more about Amplify ELA (our core English language arts curriculum) and Boost Close Reading (our supplemental reading program).

Teacher in classroom using the Amplify English language arts middle school literacy suite
image of Amplify ELA English language arts curriculum digital and print materials

Amplify ELA

Amplify ELA is a blended English language arts curriculum designed for grades 6–8. With Amplify ELA, students learn to tackle any complex text and make observations, grapple with interesting ideas, and build connections.

Explore more

Boost Close Reading

Boost Close Reading is an immersive supplemental reading program that engages students with an interactive graphic novel. Through high-interest storytelling and guided instruction, students build their close reading skills.

Explore more
image of student using Boost Close Reading middle school supplemental curriculum on laptop

Ready to learn more about our middle school suite?

Fill out this form, and we’ll be in touch with you shortly.

Explore more programs based on the Science of Reading.

Our early literacy suite programs based on the Science of Reading are designed to support and complement each other. Learn more about integrated programs below.

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Amplify CKLA

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is a language arts program for Grade…

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mCLASS

mCLASS is an assessment and instruction system that helps measure your child’s l…

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Boost Reading

Boost Reading provides your child with the opportunity to learn and practice lit…

See more

Welcome, K–8 Program 1 reviewers!

We’re honored to introduce you to Amplify California Language Arts. We’re confident you’ll find this comprehensive program to be a powerful tool for bringing the vision of the California ELA Framework to life in classrooms across the state.

Please start with the video on the right to learn how to navigate the program and access key features referenced within our submission. Below you’ll find additional resources to support your review.

Your review samples

We’re excited for you to begin your review of Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) California and Amplify ELA California. Physical and digital review materials will vary by grade level.

Reviewer Binders (K–8)

Your physical samples should have arrived in grade-specific boxes with three Reviewer Binders.

  • The first binder will contain logistical program review information and the printed Evaluation Criteria Map.
  • The second binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades K–4.
  • The third binder will contain the printed Standards Maps for grades 5–8.

Physical samples (K–5)

You can expect to receive 15 boxes of physical materials for your review. As you begin the process of organizing your materials, please refer to the inventory checklist found inside each box as well as within your Reviewer Binder. Please note you will not receive any physical samples for grades 6–8. Your review of the program for grades 6–8 will be entirely digital.

Digital samples (K–8)

In order to access your digital samples, you’ll need to log in to our platform using your unique login credentials found on a Digital Review Credential flyer inside of your Reviewer Binder. Once you have located the flyer:

  • Click the orange button below to access the platform.
  • Click “Log in with Amplify.”
  • Enter the username and password provided on your Digital Review Credential flyer.
Digital Access

Navigation tips

Before you get started, please review these important functionality notes:

Criteria Map and Standards Maps must be opened on Microsoft Word on your desktop to function as intended. If you open the documents without Microsoft Word on your desktop, citations will be cut off at the bottom of most tables within the document.

Many of our citations are deep-links to PDFs, meaning they will take you to the right page or the first page in the sequence for the citation in question. To ensure this functionality works, please disable any PDF-viewing extensions or plug-ins such as Adobe Acrobat Pro Browser Extension.

[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades K–5

[Reviewer program navigation video] Grades 6–8

Click here for additional information on navigating the digital materials for grades 6–8.

Category 1: English Language Arts (ELA) and English Language Development (ELD) Content/Alignment to Standards

Evaluation Criteria Map

Linked below is the Evaluation Criteria Map for grades K–8. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Evaluation Criteria Map.

ELA Standards Maps

The links below provide the Standards Maps for Amplify California Core Language Arts for each grade level. Please note that you will need to be logged into the digital platform to access the links in the Standards Maps.

Category 2: Program Organization

The Amplify California Language Arts Program 1 submission includes Amplify CKLA California for Grades K–5 and Amplify ELA California for Grades 6–8. This comprehensive curriculum provides a full year of evidence-based instruction for each grade level, transitioning from foundational literacy to advanced text analysis.

Program structure

Amplify’s California Language Arts programs are built on what the research shows: Strong readers need both word recognition and language comprehension. Our comprehensive curriculum suite follows the Simple View of Reading and The Reading Rope–bringing together foundational skills and knowledge building to deliver instruction grounded in evidence-based literacy practices.

Flowchart illustrating skilled reading as the product of language comprehension and word recognition, grounded in the science of reading.
Diagram illustrating the interplay between language comprehension and word recognition in reading, as seen in early literacy stages. It highlights pathways through knowledge, vocabulary, and sentence understanding, reflecting principles from the CKLA reading program.

Each lesson follows a predictable structure with clearly marked components, beginning with warm-up routines, progressing through explicit instruction with guided practice, and concluding with independent application activities. The program provides detailed teacher language, including question stems and discussion prompts, ensuring clear and consistent delivery of instruction.

[Reviewer highlight video] Program organization for Category 2

[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades K–2

[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 3–5

[Reviewer highlight video] Program structure for grades 6–8

Amplify CKLA California empowers teachers to deliver effective instruction and keeps students engaged with the following resources:

  • Teacher Guides
  • Assessment Guides
  • Authentic texts and trade books
  • Knowledge Image Cards
  • Knowledge Flip Books
  • Remediation and intervention resources
  • Decodable readers
  • Student Readers and novels
  • Student Activity Books
  • Poet’s Journals
  • eReaders
  • Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs
  • Instructional routine modeling videos
  • Assignable Practice Games
  • On-demand professional development

Amplify ELA California students stay engaged with the following resources:

  • Teacher Guides that include:
    • Detailed lesson plans
    • Standards alignment and exit tickets
    • Real-time differentiation strategies
    • Robust reporting
  • Student Editions that include:
    • High-quality narrative and informational texts
    • Videos, audio supports, and digital experiences that capture their attention
    • Personal Writing Journal to keep all student writing in one place
  • Trade Books

Core literacy philosophy

Support every learner. Meet all learning needs with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that brings together universal screening, scaffolded core instruction, support for English learners, and data-driven intervention to ensure every student gets what they need to succeed.

Deliver consistent foundational skills instruction. Daily explicit, systematic skills instruction in grades K–2, with targeted yet flexible support for students still building decoding confidence in grades 3–8, ensures mastery of essential reading foundations.

Build lasting knowledge across all grades. Through coherently sequenced, content-rich instruction that revisits key vocabulary and concepts with increasing complexity, students build meaningful connections that deepen their vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Strengthen reading through writing at every level. Regular writing instruction grounded in the Science of Writing supports reading comprehension, improves sentence-level writing, and provides the foundation for high-quality composition. As students progress through the upper grades, they engage in increasingly complex analytical tasks—synthesizing ideas, drawing generalizations, and interpreting multiple textual layers through both focused quick-writes and comprehensive essays. 

Foster oral language development. Structured opportunities for academic conversation and evidence-based dialogue build students’ ability to express complex ideas with precision and allow them to participate confidently in classroom discussions.

Measure growth with comprehensive assessments. Assessments range from in-the-moment checks for understanding to summative assessments that measure progress toward skills mastery and standards proficiency, providing the data needed to drive targeted instruction.

Scope and sequence

Below you can view the scope and sequence for each grade level. 

Routines

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California include several structured instructional routines that provide predictable patterns for both teachers and students:

Discussion and collaboration routines:

  • Turn and Talk: Partners discuss text-specific content using sentence starters and frames
  • Think-Pair-Share: Students engage in individual thinking, partner discussion, and whole-class sharing
  • Partner reading: Students sit shoulder-to-shoulder, taking turns reading and listening

Foundational Skills routines:

  • Sound-spelling review: Warm-up activities that reinforce phonics patterns
  • Oral blending warm-ups: Teacher-guided practice progressing to independent application
  • Finger tapping: Techniques for blending sounds
  • Chaining activities: Students manipulate letters to transform one word into another
  • Word Work: Daily short activities focused on domain-specific and academic vocabulary

Knowledge-building routines:

  • Vocabulary preview: Introduction of new words before reading
  • Read-aloud procedures: Established routines for introducing and discussing complex texts
  • Text discussions: Structured comprehension conversations with scaffolded questioning

Fluency routines:

  • Teacher modeling: Demonstration of proper intonation, expression, and pacing
  • Choral reading: Whole-class reading practice
  • Partner reading: Paired fluency practice

Close reading routines

The program includes carefully structured close reading activities that guide students through multiple encounters with complex texts. These routines help students develop deeper comprehension through systematic analysis and discussion.

Each routine includes comprehensive instructional guides with clear-cut directions for implementation, straightforward explanations of concepts, and suggestions for discussion.

Category 3: Assessments

Systematic MTSS alignment

In alignment with the additional 2025 Guidance 3.1.a, the assessment systems align with MTSS tiers, including universal screening, diagnostic assessments for students demonstrating a need for additional support, and progress monitoring tools that complement California’s required universal screening schedule per SB 114.

Tier 1:
Universal/ differentiated support		Tier 2: 
Supplemental/ targeted support		Tier 3: 
Intensified/ intensive support
Core instruction assessments




Frequency of administration		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify ELA California assessments


Daily, Weekly, Monthly		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify ELA California assessments


Daily, Weekly, Monthly		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify ELA California assessments


Daily, Weekly, Monthly
Universal screening assessments

Frequency of administration		mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura

3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY		mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura

3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY		mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura

3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY
Formal progress monitoring assessments


Frequency of administration		mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura


3 times per year – BOY, MOY, EOY		mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura


Monthly		mCLASS DIBELS and mCLASS Lectura


Bi-weekly
Informal progress monitoring assessments



Frequency of administration		Amplify CKLA California, Amplify ELA California core assessments


Daily		Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments


When linked to a lesson in the toolkit		Intervention Toolkit progress monitoring assessments


When linked to a lesson in the toolkit
Diagnostic assessment



Frequency of administration		Amplify skill diagnostic assessment


Optional after universal screening assessment is administered
Amplify skill diagnostic assessment


After universal screening assessment is administered

Universal assessment system

Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition (K–8) and mCLASS Lectura (K–6) are universal and dyslexia screening assessments that should be administered three times per year (BOY, MOY and EOY) to all students. The assessments evaluate student literacy risk, determine progress toward grade-level goals, and indicate the level of instructional  support a student may need. Beginning-of-year screenings require adequate instructional time before administration, particularly in grades K–1, while mid-year and end-of-year assessments evaluate instructional effectiveness and guide tier placement adjustments. These screenings also identify students at risk for dyslexia. Universal screening provides essential data for targeting instruction and measuring instructional system effectiveness.

Core instruction assessments

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California provide a comprehensive suite of assessments for Grades K–8 that range from low-stakes, informal formative assessments to more formal summative assessments. These assessments incorporate a variety of methods and question types, including multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, and oral and written responses.

Formative assessments:

  • Checks for Understanding: Incorporated into each lesson segment throughout daily instruction. Quick pulse-checks that provide immediate feedback during lesson delivery (grades K–5). 
  • Daily formative assessments: Highlighted moments within each lesson for teachers to plan to track mastery of Primary Focus objectives and standards of each lesson to get a clear snapshot of individual and whole-class progress (grades K–5). 
  • Activity pages: Completed as part of lessons and can be used to assess lesson content understanding through various formats (grades K–5).
  • Exit Tickets: Located at the end of lessons, these provide a quick gauge of students’ ability to meet the lesson’s focus standards (grades 6–8).  
  • Writing Prompts: Prompts integrated throughout lessons during writing activities that provide skill snapshots within lessons and tracks patterns of skill development over time (grades 6–8).
  • Independent reading activities (Solos): At the end of every lesson, students complete an independent reading activity (“Solo”) with reading questions that are scored to measure comprehension (grades 6–8).

Summative assessments:

  • Skills end-of-unit assessments (grades K–2) 
  • Knowledge end-of-domain assessments (grades K–2) 
  • End-of-unit assessments (grades 3–5) 
  • Unit essays: A culminating end-of-unit set of lessons that guide students through crafting an essay with a rubric to score mastery of writing skills (grades 6–8)
  • Unit Reading Assessments: Auto-scored responses and two constructed response items evaluate comprehension, content understanding, and reading skills using the passages students read during the unit (grades 6–8)

Performance Assessments

Student Performance Assessments are multi-day assessments administered in Grades K–5 at the beginning, middle, and end of year to help teachers gauge student mastery of grade-level Core content. These assessments provide critical data to help teachers set targeted instructional goals and monitor individual and class-wide progress towards core objectives.

Progress monitoring

Amplify’s mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition and mCLASS Lectura provide formal progress monitoring in the discrete skills that are indicative of reading growth and predictive of overall success to provide the most instructionally meaningful information to teachers.


Informal progress monitoring tools can be found within the Intervention Toolkit, including materials for teachers to record, track, and evaluate student progress.

Diagnostic assessment

Interventions within Amplify’s literacy programs are informed by a skill diagnostic assessment that provides detailed data on foundational literacy skill deficits. The Amplify Skill Diagnostic Assessment and Amplify Spanish Skill Diagnostic assessment serve as critical tools in this process, administered specifically to students identified as at risk for reading difficulty through universal screening assessments—particularly those demonstrating mCLASS DIBELS 8th Edition or mCLASS Lectura composite scores in the Well Below or Below Benchmark ranges. These diagnostic assessments provide teachers with the precise skills to begin intervention and remediation.

Category 4: Universal Access

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California were built on the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and reviewed by CAST, a nonprofit education research and development organization. The program is developed using the Universal Design for Learning framework to proactively ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

Universal Design for Learning

The programs incorporate opportunities for engagement, representation, action, and expression based on the guidelines of Universal Design for Learning.

  • Multiple Means of Engagement: The programs incorporate interesting and motivating ways for students to interact with information and content. In Amplify CKLA California, the Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students. Scaffolding for students with various levels of need is incorporated into the design of each lesson.
  • Multiple Means of Representation: The programs provide multiple means of presenting content to maximize student understanding. This includes digital component files that allow for a range of presentations of images and text to support learning. Amplify provides access to universal supports such as point-of-use audio for all core texts, embedded definitions for critical vocabulary, and glossaries in multiple languages. Amplify CKLA California includes clarification on language found throughout the program, with sidebars that include support on transition words and syntax, and illustrations to help students understand the concepts they are learning.
  • Multiple Means of Action and Expression: The programs include a range of methods for all students, including English learners, to navigate and demonstrate learning. This includes physical actions, a range of methods for response, appropriate tools for composition, and varied scaffolding. In Amplify ELA California, lessons provide multiple ways for students to interact with text, allowing their brains to process the language through distinct pathways. Activities harness multiple learning modes, using media tools, digital apps, and a variety of visual and physical experiences to strategically support and enhance student learning.
  • Accessibility: Universal access features include visual aids, enlarged materials, physical objects, and multiple learning modalities through activities like Push & Say and Wiggle Cards. The Universal Access section in the introduction of each lesson provides specific lesson-level options based on the needs of individual classrooms and students.

Embedded differentiation

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California provide built-in differentiation strategies in every lesson for all students.

  • Pre-teaching supports include mini-lessons on:
    • Core vocabulary building
    • Core connections
    • Essential background information building
    • What Have We Already Learned?/What Do We Already Know?
  • Differentiated Support for Core Instruction tables, located in the overview of each K–2 Skills Teacher Guide, provide a list of specific opportunities for reteaching and additional support in each lesson based on skill.
  • Support and Challenge Sidebars in lesson margins offer educators immediate guidance in implementing point-of-use differentiation techniques.
  • Flexible Grouping within lessons provides opportunities for teachers to facilitate small groups, partners, or individualized support based on students’ needs. In the Skills Strand, teachers receive specific guidance for differentiated small-group instruction, with targeted support and activities outlined for both Group 1 (students needing additional support) and Group 2 (on-level students) based on data. 
  • Amplify ELA California provides point-of-use supports embedded within key core lesson activities with six levels of differentiation. The goal of these supports is to fully enable access to grade-level content for all students, including students with disabilities, English learners, and students ready for an additional level of challenge.
  • The Universal Access section of Advance Preparation in each lesson includes varied strategies to ensure all students can access and engage in each lesson.
  • Frequent use of graphic organizers and visual supports in lessons provide opportunities for differentiation based on need. The program also includes a variety of technological supports, such as eReaders with audio.
  • Extension opportunities are suggested throughout lessons, often embedded in writing tasks, which include prompts to use more complex and descriptive vocabulary, figurative language,  multi-clause and complex sentences, and  informational text characteristics.

Assessment-driven MTSS resources

  • The K–8 Intervention Toolkit is available online and provides easy-to-use resources that assist teachers in filling gaps in students’ reading skills, with activities to support print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and other key skills
  • Fluency Packets (Grades 2–5)
  • Foundational Skills Intervention Program for Grades 3–8 support students who would benefit from direct and explicit intervention instruction in the full continuum of foundational skills in the upper grades
  • Flexible Instructional Time including:
    • Pausing Points built into the curriculum that provide teachers with dedicated time to address specific student needs through targeted reteaching, remediation, practice, and extension activities 
    • Pausing Point activities designed to support English learners’ competence and confidence through differentiated whole-group, small-group, or individual instruction
  • Boost Reading is a K–5 student-led digital intervention program. Boost Reading follows Amplify CKLA California’s scope and sequence to reinforce the same foundational skills taught in core instruction. It integrates easily into daily routines, while the robust data provided by mCLASS® DIBELS® 8th Edition offers a detailed view of how students progress across all instructional tiers.

Category 5: Instructional Planning and Teacher Support

Amplify CKLA California and Amplify ELA California teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with various print and digital resources. The program provides comprehensive planning and support materials designed to help teachers prepare for and execute lessons effectively and fulfill the requirements of Category 5.

Implementation supports across K–8

Planning and preparation resources

  • Unit Overviews that provide important background and context for the texts students will read, including highlighted elements within the text and guidance for how students will work with those elements
  • Sub-unit Overviews (Grades 6–8) that provide an overview of Lesson Objectives and reading and writing assignments, as well as a list of any projections, multimedia, or digital apps that can be projected from the teacher’s included digital license
  • Lesson-by-lesson preparation checklists (Grades 6–8) accompanying each Sub-unit Overview
  • Lesson Briefs for each individual lesson providing important background and context
  • Content knowledge materials regarding topics that students will examine

Point-of-use instructional guidance

  • Teacher Editions that feature insets of the same text and activity instructions as the corresponding Student Edition, wrapping teacher instruction around these materials
  • Activity guidance at point of use
  • Lesson standards clearly called out
  • Discussion suggestions embedded in lessons
  • Differentiation tips at point of use
  • Detailed Instructional Guides in each activity that include sequencing and grouping suggestions, tips for facilitating discussion, possible student responses and exemplars
  • Student Supports in all core lessons provide teachers with targeted supports in daily core instruction, addressing which might serve the student best in the moment—support, strengthen, stretch—with additional call-outs for newcomers

Multimedia and digital support

  • Teacher tip videos provide modeling and guidance for implementing key foundational skills routines within the program
  • Digital platform access where teachers can access printable PDFs of differentiated support materials for English learners and readers struggling with text, including translated Unit Background and Context Documents and Text Previews
  • Teacher Dashboard and reporting tools (Grade 6–8) that provide real-time visibility into student progress and work for immediate instructional response

Caregiver supports

Communication and overview resources

  • Caregiver Hub available in English and Spanish that provides an overview of the curriculum
  • Caregiver Letters for each K–2 Knowledge Domain and unit in Grades 3–5 that provide an overview of the content, the skills students learn, as well as practical methods that continue the learning and knowledge building at home
  • Unit-specific Caregiver Letters (Grades 6–8) that provide detailed information regarding what students will read and learn in each unit, including conversation starters that allow caregivers to ask questions and discuss specific aspects of a unit with their student
  • Welcome letters that explain the assessment and placement process while inviting parent involvement and offering support
  • Editable Home-School Communication letters available in English and Spanish
  • Editable Progress Reports for teachers to update parents and guardians on what their child is learning

Content and learning support materials

  • Unit Background and Context documents that provide an introduction and overview to the unit’s topic and themes, available in English and Spanish
  • Text Previews that provide a brief introduction to formative, independent reading assignments (called Solos in Grades 6–8), available in English and Spanish
  • Unit Overview and Support documents (Grades 6–8) designed for caregivers that provide information about important questions, assignments, and key aspects of the unit texts, available in English and Spanish
  • Conversation starters included in Knowledge Strand Caregiver Letters to discuss domain topics at home

Home practice and extension activities

  • Take-Home pages in the Skills Strand that include copies of decodable passages, enabling students to share their reading progress with families and continue practicing their skills outside of school
  • Take-Home Letters in the Skills Strand that provide specific guidance for parents to support skills practice at home, such as sound-sorting activities, with detailed instructions and materials for home practice activities
  • Take-Home pages in the Knowledge Strand that provide suggested activities families can do together to reinforce and extend learning beyond the classroom
  • Games and activities on Take-Home Pages that extend classroom instruction, including all the materials and instruction necessary to help families assist students in a fun and engaging way
  • Digital access to decodable texts through the Amplify Caregiver Hub, allowing students to practice their reading skills both in class and at home
  • Weekly spelling lists and directions to decoding activities that can be practiced at home

What’s included in our Spanish language arts curriculum

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is available in both English and Spanish. Amplify Caminos al Conocimiento Esencial, our robust Spanish language arts companion for grades K–5, supports multiple teaching models, including dual language immersion and transitional classrooms.

A laptop screen displays a kindergarten instructional webpage in Spanish, showing lesson categories with illustrated thumbnails and navigation options.

Year at a glance

The program’s intentional Knowledge Sequence from K–5 connects knowledge and vocabulary within a grade level and across grade levels, for deeper reading comprehension and preparation for college, career, and life. Instead of “activating prior knowledge,” Amplify Caminos helps you build it in the classroom from day one, for every child, expanding each student’s knowledge base long before they transition to reading to learn.

Curriculum flowchart showing reading themes and activities from Kindergarten to Grade 5, organized by grade level and literary theme, with interconnected boxes for each topic.

Units & domains at a glance

Each Knowledge Domain in grades K–2 and Unit in grades 3–5 varies in the number of days based on instructional purpose. Just as with our top-rated Amplify CKLA program, the Amplify Caminos materials engage and delight young learners with resources that are both appealing and original.

Una mujer rubia con un vestido azul cuida ovejas blancas y negras, sosteniendo un bastón de pastor. Un cerdo vestido de azul corre y un hombre de negro toca el violín en una valla. Al fondo hay una casa.

Domain

Nursery Rhymes and Fables/Rimas y fábulas infantiles

Start learning about literature with these classic Mother Goose rhymes.

Ilustración de tres personas en un paisaje cubierto de hierba, una tratando de atrapar mariposas con una red, otra escondiéndose detrás de una escultura alta y frondosa de una mano y otra con binoculares.

Domain

The Five Senses/Los cinco sentidos

Learning about the body starts with learning about how we experience the world.

Una ilustración que representa a un gran lobo con sombrero de copa liderando un desfile de animales y personas con instrumentos musicales a través de un paisaje montañoso.

Domain

Stories/Cuentos

Learn about the parts of a book and some of the stories that go in one.

Una ilustración vibrante de una escena rural con colinas, una granja, una mariposa, un sol brillante, varias verduras como tomates y lechugas, y un gusano en el suelo.

Domain

Plants/Plantas

Discover the lifecycle of plants and the history of George Washington Carver.

Ilustración de una escena de granja que muestra un camión rojo que transporta verduras, campos de cultivo, vacas pastando en una colina, un granero y un molino de viento contra un cielo azul.

Domain

Farms/Granjas

Now we know how plants make their food… but what about animals?

Ilustración de un nativo remando en una canoa en un río con búfalos pastando en un campo, tipis al fondo y pájaros volando en el cielo bajo un sol brillante.

Domain

Native Americans/Los nativos americanos

Who were the first people in America? A look at the Lenape, Wampanoag, and Lakota Sioux.

Una ilustración muestra un rey y una reina en tronos, un castillo en un acantilado y una mujer con enanos cerca de un árbol. Cortinas rojas enmarcan la escena.

Domain

Kings and Queens/Reyes y reinas

To understand fairy tales, it’s best to first understand royalty.

Ilustración que muestra las cuatro estaciones: primavera con flores, verano con árboles verdes, otoño con hojas que caen e invierno con nieve y gente en trineo. Un niño lee debajo de un árbol.

Domain

Seasons and Weather/Las estaciones y el tiempo

The study of natural cycles continues with the weather and why it happens.

Un velero de madera con símbolos de cruz roja en sus velas navega cerca de una isla tropical con exuberante vegetación y palmeras. A lo lejos se ven otros dos barcos en el agua.

Domain

Columbus and the Pilgrims/Colón y los peregrinos

A look at the first contact between Europe and the Americas, and some of its results.

Una escena histórica muestra gente afuera de una gran mansión de estilo colonial con dos chimeneas. En primer plano se ve un carruaje tirado por caballos y a la izquierda se ve una casa más pequeña.

Domain

Colonial Towns and Townspeople/Las colonias y sus habitantes

Before the War for Independence, how did the town and country depend on one another?

Ilustración de personas clasificando materiales reciclables en un parque cerca de un río contaminado. Las fábricas emiten humo al fondo, mientras que las mariposas, las flores y los árboles están presentes en el primer plano.

Domain

Taking Care of the Earth/Cuidar el planeta Tierra

We only have one Earth—here are some ways to help care for it.

Ilustración del Monte Rushmore con los rostros tallados de cuatro presidentes de Estados Unidos. Un águila vuela en primer plano.

Domain

Presidents and American Symbols/Presidentes y símbolos de los Estados Unidos

Start learning about government through the lives of five presidents.

Una ilustración caprichosa que muestra animales de granja alrededor de una casa en un árbol junto a un río. Un zorro, un conejo y una oveja interactúan mientras la gente acampa junto a una fogata al fondo. Una araña cuelga del árbol.

Domain

Fables and Stories/Fábulas y cuentos

Learn some of the key elements of a story through classic fables.

Ilustración que presenta anatomía humana, actividades de estilo de vida saludable, profesionales médicos, símbolos dietéticos, una ambulancia y microorganismos, destacando la conexión entre salud, nutrición y ejercicio.

Domain

The Human Body/El cuerpo humano

What are germs? What are the organs? And what does it all have to do with health?

Una ilustración que presenta varias escenas de cuentos de hadas y folclore, incluida una calabaza grande, un tigre, Caperucita Roja, personas con atuendos tradicionales y una pagoda roja con una montaña de fondo.

Domain

Different Lands, Similar Stories/Tierras diferentes, cuentos similares

A world tour of storytelling, and the stories that stay the same across the world.

Ilustración que muestra el antiguo Egipto con pirámides, la Esfinge, agricultores arando un campo con bueyes y ganado pastando bajo un cielo soleado.

Domain

Early World Civilizations/Antiguas civilizaciones del mundo

Rivers, farming, writing, and laws: just what does it take to build a civilization?

Escena ilustrada de la antigua Mesoamérica con maíz, un río, agricultores y pirámides al fondo. En primer plano se ve a una persona con traje tradicional.

Domain

Early American Civilizations/Antiguas civilizaciones de América

What will we find in the great temples of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca civilizations?

Ilustración de la exploración espacial: se lanza un cohete, un astronauta se para cerca de un módulo de aterrizaje, una persona usa un telescopio y aparece un planeta distante con anillos sobre un fondo estrellado.

Domain

Astronomy/Astronomía

How the Earth relates to the moon, the sun, and the rest of the planets.

Dos paleontólogos en un paisaje volcánico examinan fósiles en primer plano, mientras un volcán emite humo y lava al fondo.

Domain

The History of the Earth/La historia de la Tierra

Just what lies beneath the Earth’s surface, and what can it teach us about the past?

Una escena de vida silvestre diversa que presenta un cactus del desierto con un pájaro, un conejo, elefantes, un león, un oso polar sobre el hielo y montañas distantes bajo un cielo nublado.

Domain

Animals and Habitats/Los animales y sus hábitats

A look at the connection between how animals live and where they make their homes.

Una princesa con un vestido rosa sostiene una rana junto a un arroyo con un castillo, árboles y gente al fondo. En primer plano camina un zorro con un sombrero con una pluma roja.

Domain

Fairy Tales/Cuentos de hadas

What do fairy tales have to teach us about how stories are told?

Ilustración que muestra una escena histórica con soldados, veleros y hombres con atuendo colonial discutiendo en el interior.

Domain

A New Nation: American Independence/Una nueva nación: la independencia de los Estados Unidos

The story of the birth of the United States out of the 13 Colonies.

Los pioneros con carros cubiertos y caballos señalan hacia un valle con tipis nativos, fogatas y humo elevándose. Un oso se encuentra sobre una roca y se ven montañas al fondo.

Domain

Frontier Explorers/Exploradores de la Frontera

The story of the journey west from the newborn U.S.A. to find the Pacific Ocean.

Un hombre con un hacha se encuentra entre paisajes exagerados con un castillo, un tren con humo, un buey azul y una persona con un mono observando la escena.

Domain

Fairy Tales and Tall Tales/Cuentos de hadas y cuentos exagerados

Learn about exaggeration and characterization on the frontier.

Ilustración de un paisaje vibrante que presenta diversos monumentos culturales, incluidos templos, palacios, pirámides, una escena de elefantes, montañas distantes y fuegos artificiales en el cielo.

Domain

Early Asian Civilizations/Antiguas civilizaciones de Asia

Tour the world of classical civilization, starting with India and China.

Ilustración que muestra la antigua Grecia con un anfiteatro, estatuas, soldados con armadura, un barco y un templo en una colina rodeada de vegetación.

Domain

Ancient Greek Civilization/La civilización griega antigua

The tour continues with the philosophy and politics of Greece.

Illustration of various mythological scenes including greek gods, a flying horse, and roman architecture under a sunny sky.

Domain

Greek Myths/Mitos griegos

Dive deep into the characters and storytelling of classic myths.

Ilustración de una batalla entre barcos británicos y estadounidenses cerca de un fuerte. El barco británico está a la izquierda con soldados, mientras que el barco estadounidense está a la derecha. La gente porta una gran bandera estadounidense en primer plano.

Domain

The War of 1812/La guerra de 1812

Learn about America’s “Second War for Independence.”

Un paisaje nevado con un zorro durmiendo en una madriguera, gente corriendo y andando en bicicleta por un sendero y árboles que muestran los cambios estacionales.

Domain

Cycles in Nature/Los ciclos de la naturaleza

Introducing the natural cycles that make our lives possible.

Ilustración de carros cubiertos tirados por caballos a lo largo de un sendero en el desierto, con un coyote aullando sobre una alta formación rocosa y un tren de vapor al fondo.

Domain

Westward Expansion/La expansión hacia el oeste

Why did pioneers go west? What happened to the people who were there?

Ilustración de un jardín vibrante con flores, abejas, mariposas, una oruga en una hoja, una crisálida y un apicultor que maneja una colmena junto a un estanque.

Domain

Insects/Los insectos

Lay the grounds for animal classification by looking at solitary and social insects.

Ilustración de una escena histórica con gente escuchando el discurso de un hombre en una plataforma. Al fondo se ve un río y una procesión de personas. En primer plano hay un documento de proclamación.

Domain

The U.S. Civil War/La Guerra Civil de los Estados Unidos

Begin to grapple with U.S. history’s central crisis over slavery.

Una escena en la que aparece una persona explicando un diagrama anatómico humano, otra persona haciendo ejercicio, una cadena de ADN, campos y un microscopio de fondo.

Domain

Human Body: Building Blocks and Nutrition/El cuerpo humano: componentes básicos y nutrición

A deeper dive into the digestive system and the nutrition process.

Un grupo diverso de personas se encuentra en un muelle con vistas a un bullicioso puerto con barcos y un gran barco, un avión volando por encima y la Estatua de la Libertad al fondo.

Domain

Immigration/La inmigración

Why did people immigrate to the United States, and what did they find here?

Women in early 20th-century clothing march with signs for voting rights and justice in front of a yellow bus labeled "Cleveland Ave.," making history that can inspire lessons in a K–2 language arts curriculum.

Domain

Fighting for a Cause/Luchar por una causa

How people can do extraordinary things to make the world better for everyone.

Dos ratones antropomórficos en un bote de remos, uno de ellos remando, navegan por un río tranquilo rodeado de exuberante vegetación y árboles. El ratón que rema lleva una chaqueta azul y el otro ratón parece conversar.

Unit 1

Classic Tales: The Wind in the Willows/Cuentos Clásicos: El viento en los sauces

A deep dive into character, theme, and POV in classic stories from around the world.

Ilustración de un jaguar, una garza, una rana roja, una tortuga y un pez en un paisaje vibrante con montañas y vegetación bajo un cielo soleado.

Unit 2

Animal Classification/La clasificación de los animales

How do we classify different animals by their appearance and behavior?

Ilustración de una figura humana que muestra la anatomía interna, incluidos el cerebro, los pulmones, el corazón, el sistema digestivo y una articulación de la cadera resaltada sobre un fondo degradado.

Unit 3

The Human Body: Systems and Senses/El cuerpo humano: sistemas y sentidos

Let’s take a closer look at how the skeleton, muscles, and nervous system all work.

Un ángel se arrodilla ante una mujer sentada en un sofá dorado encima de un templo en una noche estrellada. Unas escaleras conducen al templo en un paisaje montañoso.

Unit 4

The Ancient Roman Civilization/La civilización romana antigua

What is Rome’s greatest cultural contribution? In this unit, your students decide.

Ilustración de un perro saltando bajo un árbol, persiguiendo una abeja, con una mesa en primer plano sosteniendo una jarra y vasos de limonada. El sol brilla intensamente en el cielo.

Unit 5

Light and Sound/La luz y el sonido

The science behind all the ways we see and hear the world.

Un barco vikingo con una proa en forma de dragón navega en el océano bajo un cielo azul con nubes. El barco tiene una sola vela grande y varios escudos recubren sus costados.

Unit 6

The Viking Age/La era vikinga

An immersive narrative experience about what life was like in Viking communities.

Ilustración de una escena espacial con varios planetas y anillos sobre un fondo de estrellas. Dos planetas grandes dominan el primer plano y se ven planetas más pequeños al fondo.

Unit 7

Astronomy: Our Solar System and Beyond/Astronomía: nuestro sistema solar y más allá

More about our universe, including a writing project about daily life on a space station.

Una persona sentada en el borde de un acantilado con vistas a un vasto paisaje desértico con nubes arremolinadas en el cielo.

Unit 8

Native Americans: Regions and Cultures/Los nativos americanos: regiones y culturas

How did Native American nations change their way of life in different parts of the world?

Ilustración de un velero en el océano con la costa este de América del Norte visible a la izquierda.

Unit 9

Early Explorations of North America/La exploración europea de América del Norte

What was it like to sail to North America with the early European explorers?

Una pintura representa una escena del siglo XVII con colonos, un velero al fondo y un hombre conduciendo un carro tirado por caballos cargado de mercancías. Se ve a otras personas descargando y trabajando cerca.

Unit 10

Colonial America/La época colonial en los Estados Unidos

A study of the very different ways of life in the different pre-U.S. colonies.

Ilustración que muestra el ciclo de la vida: un esqueleto en el suelo, un pájaro posado en una cerca, otro pájaro en una planta y un ave rapaz más grande arriba, todos conectados por flechas circulares.

Unit 11

Ecology/Ecología

Students keep ecologist’s journals to learn about our world and how best to protect it.

Una mano alcanza una manzana verde en una rama. Cerca hay una brújula, un termómetro, un lápiz, notas musicales y un granero rojo sobre un paisaje cubierto de hierba.

Unit 1

Personal Narratives/Narrativas personales

Read stories of personal experience… and learn to reflect on your own.

Ilustración medieval que representa un grupo de figuras con armadura a la entrada de un alto castillo gris con puente levadizo, adornado con banderas y rodeado por un paisaje decorado y fondos ornamentados.

Unit 2

Empires in the Middle Ages/Los imperios en la Edad Media, parte 1 & Los imperios en la Edad Media, parte 2

Explore the medieval history of Europe and the Middle East.

Ilustración dorada de un dragón con alas sobre fondo beige, rodeado de diversos elementos decorativos como estrellas, hojas y estampados abstractos.

Unit 3

Poetry/Poesía

Study the poetry of many nations using licensed text anthologies, and begin to write your own.

Vintage styled illustrations of a microscope, an old telephone, and a clock on textured background with geometric patterns.

Unit 4

Eureka! Student Inventor/¡Eureka! Estudiante inventor

Transform the class into a lab for students to build and present inventions.

Formaciones rocosas en un paisaje desértico con capas vibrantes y arremolinadas de arenisca roja, naranja y amarilla bajo un cielo parcialmente nublado.

Unit 5

Geology/Geología

Plate tectonics, volcanoes, erosion: all the forces that shape the Earth.

Una imagen abstracta y colorida que representa varias formas geométricas de edificios sobre un fondo azul estampado.

Unit 6

Contemporary Fiction with excerpts from The House on Mango Street/Ficción Contemporánea con Fragmentos de La Casa en Mango Street

Explore The House on Mango Street… and write a book while doing it.

Cuadro que representa a un hombre y un niño tocando una gran campana en una torre, con espectadores al fondo y un cartel de "LIBERTAD" visible.

Unit 7

American Revolution/La Revolución estadounidense

Why did America seek independence? Let’s investigate the causes and effects.

Un pequeño bote de remos con tres personas navega por mares agitados mientras dos grandes barcos luchan al fondo, con humo y fuego visibles.

Unit 8

Treasure Island/La Isla del Tesoro

How dSeek the treasure of plot in this detailed study of a classic fiction adventure.

Unit 1

Personal Narratives/Narrativas personales

Through writing and sharing their writing, students begin to identify themselves as writers.

Unit 2

Early American Civilizations/Las primeras civilizaciones americanas

Students craft a codex to explain the rise and fall of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca people.

Dos jinetes medievales a caballo, uno de ellos con la espada en alto, avanzan por un terreno rocoso. El fondo presenta un paisaje brumoso bajo un tono violeta.

Unit 3

Poetry/Poesía

Students close read many forms of poetry… and learn to write them.

Collage ilustrado con un paraguas, un cuervo, un sextante náutico, estrellas, una luna creciente y una brújula sobre un fondo beige texturizado.

Unit 4

Adventures of Don Quixote/Las Aventuras de Don Quijote

Was Don Quixote right to fight the windmill? In this full-length novel study, students decide.

Unit 5

The Renaissance/El Renacimiento

Exploring the art and literature of the Renaissance through the works of its masters.

Tres hombres vestidos con ropa de época examinan una gran hoja de papel dentro de una imprenta. Un hombre parece llevar un delantal, mientras que otro señala el papel y el tercero observa de cerca.

Unit 6

The Reformation/La Reforma

How did the printing press transform the religion and society of Europe?

Patrón botánico morado y lila con hojas, plantas y formas abstractas, incluida una luna creciente y estrellas, sobre un fondo violeta oscuro.

Unit 7

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream/Sueño de Una Noche de Verano de William Shakespeare

Students enter the world of Shakespeare by reading, designing, and acting out his work.

Retrato en tonos sepia de una joven de pelo largo, con un collar de pedrería y un chal drapeado.

Unit 8

Native Americans/Los nativos americanos

How did the policies of the U.S. government impact Native American culture and lives?

Una lupa sobre documentos que contienen una pintura de paisaje de montañas, un dibujo con la etiqueta "Raptor Claw" y una nota adhesiva con la "Pista n.° 2". También se ven un sobre y una insignia exterior.

Unit 9

Chemical Matter/Química

Students use knowledge of chemistry to solve a mystery.

Print & digital components

The program includes instructional guidance and student materials for a year of instruction, with lessons and activities that keep students engaged every day.

Component

FORMAT

Knowledge (Conocimientos) Teacher Guides (K–2)

Knowledge Strand Teacher Guides contain Amplify CKLA’s cross-curricular read-alouds and application activities, all of which are standards-based to build mastery of content knowledge and literacy skills. There is one Teacher Guide per Knowledge Domain.

Print and digital

Knowledge Image Cards (K–2)

Amplify Caminos includes Image Cards for each Knowledge Domain to bring each topic to life through vivid visuals.

Print and digital

Knowledge Flip Books (K–2)

Projectable Flip Books are provided to accompany the read-alouds in each Knowledge Domain.

Digital

Teacher Guides (3–5)

Teacher Guides for grades 3–5 units are based on content-rich topics and incorporate reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in the context of background knowledge. There is one Teacher Guide per unit.

Print or digital

Teacher Resource Site (K–5)

The program includes a one-stop-shop website for lesson projections, digital versions of all Amplify Caminos materials, lesson planning resources, multimedia (such as eBooks), and more.

Digital

Professional Learning Site (K–5)

The Professional Learning site includes training materials, best practices, and other resources to develop program expertise. Access professional development anywhere, anytime.

Digital

Component

FORMAT

Knowledge (Conocimiento) Activity Books (K–2)

Activity Books provide students with the opportunity to deepen world and word knowledge by responding to text in a diversity of ways.

Print

Student Readers (3–5)

Student Readers serve as content-rich anchor texts for each unit. Units such as Poetry and Contemporary Fiction feature authentic texts originally written in Spanish.

Activity Books (3–5)

Activity Books in grades 3–5 provide daily opportunities for students to hone reading and writing skills within the context of each unit.

Print and digital

Explore more programs

Our programs are designed to support and complement one another. Learn more about our related programs.

Amplify CKLA Skills

Amplify CKLA Skills offers the explicit skills instruction needed in today’s cla…

See all programs

Welcome, Seattle Public Schools, to the next chapter in the Science of Reading, with Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) helps implement the Washington State K–12 Learning Standards for English Language Arts (Common Core State Standards) by translating the Science of Reading into manageable, engaging, and effective classroom practices. For more than a decade, Amplify CKLA has transformed classrooms nationwide with its intentional knowledge building and systematic skills instruction.

Scroll down to learn how Amplify CKLA is uniquely designed to help all your students make learning leaps in literacy.

Download Amplify CKLA Program Guide
An astronaut floats in space near the Moon, with a speech bubble displaying

Our approach

Improve outcomes with a program that’s built on a decade of research and meets the strongest Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Tier I criteria.

Diagram illustrating the Simple View of Reading model. It shows that skilled reading results from increasingly strategic language comprehension and increasingly automatic word recognition.

Grounded in the Science of Reading

As the original Science of Reading program, Amplify CKLA puts research into action with explicit, systematic foundational skills instruction and a proven knowledge-building sequence. In collaboration with education experts and practitioners, we provide powerful resources that deliver real results.

Success stories

Background knowledge drives results.

Amplify CKLA follows the Core Knowledge Sequence, a content-specific, cumulative, and coherent approach to knowledge building. This approach improves reading scores and closes achievement gaps by establishing a robust knowledge base that strengthens comprehension.

In Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition, we’ve enriched our Knowledge Sequence with a wider range of perspectives and high-quality texts in new and enhanced units.

See units and connections
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Build foundational skills for long-term success.

Students progress from simple to complex skill development starting with phonological and phonemic awareness. Instruction in Grades K–2 explicitly teaches the 150 spellings for the 44 sounds of English, following an intentional progression to ensure student success.

In our 3rd Edition, we’ve added dedicated Grade 3 foundational skills instruction that can either support core lessons or function as an intervention, based on student needs.

Skills by year

Daily writing deepens learning.

Grounded in the Science of Writing—the research on how kids learn to write—instruction is explicit, daily, and woven into the curriculum’s rich content. It covers both transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition (organizing ideas into narratives) with high-impact activities like sentence-level combining and expanding, and pre-writing exercises. Writing and reading instruction are integrated so students simultaneously strengthen their communication skills, comprehension, and confidence.

See the Simple View of Writing
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High-quality, diverse texts

Amplify CKLA students are immersed in a variety of texts—complex read-alouds, decodable chapter books, trade books, and content-rich readers—that reflect varied experiences and connect to learning goals.

Readers are 100% decodable for Grades K–2, empowering students to directly apply what they’ve learned. Novel Study units for Grades 3–5 offer a mix of contemporary and classic literature, and Culminating Research Units in every grade include a set of authentic texts and trade books.

See Research Unit trade books

Reach all learners with differentiated support.

Scaffolds and challenges, developed in collaboration with education experts, make content accessible to every student, including multilingual and English learners. With strategies embedded right in the curriculum, teachers can deliver in-the-moment, individualized instruction to meet diverse student needs.

For a dedicated English language development program aligned to Amplify CKLA, explore Language Studio.

View embedded support
Children sit on the floor in a classroom, some raising their hands, smiling and engaged. The lively atmosphere reflects the effectiveness of the k–5 literacy curriculum being implemented.

What’s included with Amplify CKLA

The comprehensive resources in Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition support effective literacy instruction in every classroom.

Download Amplify CKLA Components Guide

Download Amplify CKLA Writing Brochure

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Various educational materials, including textbooks, workbooks, a picture book, documents, and a laptop displaying a slide titled

Easy-to-use teacher materials

Amplify CKLA teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with the following print and digital resources:

  • Teacher Guides (K–5)
  • Assessment Guides (K–5)
  • Authentic texts and trade books (K–5)
  • Knowledge Image Cards (K–2)
  • Knowledge Flip Books (K–2, digital)
  • Ready-made and customizable Presentation Screens (K–5, digital)
  • Remediation and intervention resources (K–5)
  • On-demand professional development (K–5, digital)

Immersive Amplify CKLA student resources

Amplify CKLA students stay engaged with the following print and digital resources:

  • Decodable readers (K–2)
  • Student Readers and novels (3–5)
  • Student Activity Books (K–5)
  • Poet’s Journal (3–5)
  • eReaders (K–5, digital)
  • Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs (K–2, digital)
  • Skill-building practice games (K–5)
An open laptop displaying a poem and a person, alongside two educational booklets and a green butterfly, depicts the essence of a rich core knowledge language arts curriculum. The background includes simple graphic elements enhancing the scene.
A collection of six book covers including

Rich literary experiences

The array of high-quality, varied texts in Amplify CKLA connect to the curriculum, sparking students’ curiosity and empowering them to learn to read with confidence.

  • Trade Book Collections (K–5) inspire student research in each grade’s Culminating Research Unit.
  • Classic and contemporary literature (3–5) delight students in Novel Study Units.
  • Increasingly complex Student Readers (K–5) develop students’ literacy across grades.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources engage students with fun, varied approaches that promote mastery and build independence.

  • Chaining Folders and Small Letter Cards (K)
  • Read-Aloud Big Books (K–1)
  • Large Letter Cards (K–2)
  • Sound Cards (K–2)
  • Image Cards (K–3)
  • Blending Picture Cards (K)
  • Consonant and Vowel Code Posters and Spelling Cards (1–2)
  • Sound Library (K–2, digital)
Image includes various vowel sounds and combinations on flashcards and worksheets, along with a playful illustrated mammal, all part of a comprehensive literacy curriculum for elementary students.
A laptop displays a student screen showing a quiz question about word usage, part of a literacy curriculum for elementary students. Behind it, a computer monitor shows an assessment report interface. Abstract decorative elements are in the background.

All-in-one digital platform

Our comprehensive platform simplifies your day-to-day tasks and makes it easier to plan and deliver lessons.

  • Ready-made and customizable Presentation Screens
  • Auto-scored digital assessments
  • Standards-based reporting
  • Assignable skill-building games
  • Sound Library
  • eReaders

Professional development (PD)

Move beyond traditional program training with Amplify’s digital PD Library, designed to fully support your shift to the Science of Reading and Amplify CKLA. Deepen your understanding with:

  • Program and planning resources.
  • Model lesson videos from real classrooms.
  • Guidance on using Amplify’s literacy suite to provide multi-tiered support.
Two women are seated at a table with papers and a laptop. One woman is working on the literacy curriculum for elementary grades, while the other is smiling.
“Teachers love the ease of implementing the program, and students have fun while learning. Growth is evident in our data, and we have the support of Amplify experts who are available to answer questions and provide top-notch professional development.”

Bridget Vaughan, District K–8 Coordinator of ELA and Literacy

Quincy Public Schools, Massachusetts

Language Studio: Multilingual and English language learner support

Language Studio is Amplify CKLA’s dedicated K–5 program for multilingual and English language learners. Through daily 30-minute lessons, it strengthens reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills while reinforcing core instruction. This tailored support empowers students to confidently access grade-level content as they develop academic English.

A young girl immerses herself in the science of reading at a classroom desk, surrounded by peers and diverse educational materials.

Curriculum Maps

Curriculum Maps by Grade and Strand:

Amplify Caminos program overview

¡El futuro es bilingüe! | The future is bilingual!

Amplify Caminos is a research-based core curriculum essential for Spanish literacy and grounded in the Science of Reading.

View our Amplify Caminos Program Guide to learn our approach to foundational skills by year, view skills practice with student readers and writing, and understand how the program supports teachers in meeting the needs of all students with embedded differentiation.

Download Amplify Caminos Program Guide

Amplify Caminos offers a robust and authentic elementary Spanish language arts program for grades K–5 that promotes
biliteracy and helps teachers inspire students as they become confident readers, writers, and thinkers in Spanish.

Using the program’s two strands, Caminos Conocimiento and Caminos Lectoescritura, teachers develop student
comprehension in Spanish through a program rich in background knowledge and foundational skills activities. The texts students encounter include authentic Spanish literary works that honor Spanish language development and build deep content knowledge in social studies, science, literature, and the arts.

Amplify Caminos is designed to support a variety of bilingual and dual language instructional models to meet every student’s biliteracy needs. Combined with its English language partner, Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA), Amplify Caminos provides a comprehensive biliteracy solution.

A girl runs joyfully surrounded by a turtle, a soccer ball, an open book, and tropical scenery with a toucan and ancient ruins, with "¡Hola!" written above.
Illustration of the amplify caminos language comprehension model, featuring step-by-step progression from simple word recognition to skilled reading, with educational graphics and text excerpts.

Amplify Caminos delivers rich, authentic experiences.

With a robust digital experience and an expanding library of online materials, Amplify Caminos provides everything needed to support, challenge, and engage your students. From digital Teacher Guides to lesson projectables, the program includes all the tools needed to successfully deliver every lesson.

How Amplify Caminos works with Amplify CKLA

Through direct instruction, both Amplify Caminos and Amplify CKLA develop reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in their respective languages. Together, the programs empower educators to effectively foster biliteracy with:

  • Intentional knowledge building that connects topics throughout the program.
  • Increased metalinguistic awareness from students exploring the similarities and differences in each language while strengthening their knowledge across both.
  • Instruction with high-quality Spanish and English decodable readers that provide every student with opportunities to apply skills learned and grow competency in reading.
“There were other programs that claimed to be [based on the] Science of Reading, but no other vendor provided the suite of products together. We did not want to be picking from here, picking from there. [Amplify’s literacy suite] met our needs, because it aligned and provided us the best suite of products, hands down.”

Nicole Peterson, Principal, Midway Middle School

Sampson County Schools, North Carolina

Demo access

Explore the Amplify CKLA teacher digital resources.

First, watch the quick navigation video to the right. Then, follow the directions below.

  • Go to: learning.amplify.com or click the Access CKLA Teacher Digital button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter the following information:
    • Teacher username: t1.seattle_sd_ckla@demo.tryamplify.net
    • Teacher password: Amplify1-seattle_sd_ckla
    • Student username: s1.seattle_sd_ckla@demo.tryamplify.net
    • Student password: Amplify1-seattle_sd_ckla
  • Please note, these demo accounts expire on: February 26, 2026
  • Click the CKLA button.
  • Select your desired grade level from the Program drop down.
Access CKLA Teacher Digital

Follow the directions below to access the Student Resource Site:

  • Go to: learning.amplify.com or click the Access CKLA Student Digital button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter the following information:
    • Teacher username: t1.seattle_sd_ckla@demo.tryamplify.net
    • Teacher password: Amplify1-seattle_sd_ckla
    • Student username: s1.seattle_sd_ckla@demo.tryamplify.net
    • Student password: Amplify1-seattle_sd_ckla
  • Please note, these demo accounts expire on: February 26, 2026
  • From the main page, click the backpack in the top right corner.
  • Click on the grade level to select your desired grade.
Access CKLA Student Digital

Utah ELA Review for Grades PK–5

Thank you for taking the time to review Amplify’s core ELA program for PK–5. Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is a state-approved core ELA curriculum designated as a primary core program that fully meets the Science of Reading requirements outlined in SB 127.

Amplify CKLA, developed in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation, was designed to help teachers implement Science of Reading principles and evidence-based instructional practices. Scroll down to learn how CKLA is uniquely designed to help all your students make learning leaps in literacy.

Illustration of a diverse group of people engaged in creative activities, including a woman holding architectural plans and a young girl reading a book.

Step 1: Program Introduction

Welcome to Amplify CKLA! Before you dive into our materials, watch the video below to learn about the big picture behind Amplify CKLA’s pedagogy.

In this video, Susan Lambert (Chief Academic Officer and host of Science of Reading: The Podocast) shares why Amplify CKLA was created, how it is built on the Science of Reading, and the impact it’s making across the country.

Step 2: Program Overview

Amplify CKLA is different for a reason. Watch the overview video below to learn about these differences and why educators love them.

In this video, you’ll get an in-depth look at the program’s overall structure and organization, the design behind our proven lessons, and the materials included to support teaching and learning.

The Amplify CKLA Program Guide also provides an in-depth view of how Amplify CKLA works, how it’s structured, and why it’s uniquely capable of helping you bring reading instruction based on the Science of Reading to your classroom.

Evidence-based design

Amplify CKLA is rooted in Science of Reading research. Mirroring Scarborough’s Rope, Amplify CKLA delivers a combination of explicit foundational skills with meaningful knowledge-building.

  • In Grades PK–2, dedicated knowledge-building and explicit skills instruction are taught simultaneously through two distinct instructional strands.
  • In Grades 3–5, dedicated knowledge-building and explicit skills instruction are woven together and delivered through one integrated strand.
Scarborough's Rope

Grades K–2 Skills and Knowledge Strands
Every day students in Grades K–2 complete one full lesson that explicitly and systematically builds foundational reading skills in the Skills Strand, as well as one full lesson that builds robust background knowledge to access complex text in the Knowledge Strand. Through learning in each of these strands, students develop the early literacy skills necessary to help them become confident readers and build the context to understand what they’re reading.

Grades 3–5 Integrated Strand
In Grades 3–5, Knowledge and Skills are integrated in one set of instructional materials. Lessons begin to combine skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater writing emphasis. Students can then use their skills to go on their own independent reading adventures.

Key features

For each Amplify CKLA key feature below, click the drop down arrow to learn more.

Built out of the latest research in the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA delivers explicit instruction in both foundational literacy skills (systematic phonics, decoding, and fluency) and background knowledge in grades PK–2 with an integrated approach to explicit instruction in grades 3–5.

Review this Science of Reading toolkit to learn more about the Science of Reading best practices integrated throughout CKLA.

Amplify CKLA aligns with the instructional principles recommended by Orton Gillingham and LETRS.

  • Structured–Concepts are taught through consistent routines
  • Sequential–Concepts are taught in a logical, well-planned sequence
  • Systematic–Phonemes are taught from simplest to most complex
  • Explicit–Decoding and encoding concepts are taught directly and explicitly
  • Multi-sensory–Instruction is delivered through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile pathways
  • Cumulative–Concepts are applied in decodable, connected texts with constant review and reinforcement

Watch this video to learn more!

Additionally, great reading instruction starts with helping kids develop great decoding skills. Our instruction is supported by:

The Science of Reading reveals knowledge as an essential pillar of reading comprehension and lifelong literacy. Hear from author Natalie Wexler and CKLA customers on edWebinar about the importance of knowledge-building in reading instruction.

Hear from Natalie Wexlered
Webinar Links

Students build grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves. Our instruction is supported by:

  • Knowledge builders that provide a quick overview of each domain with its key ideas.
  • Interactive Read-Alouds designed to build knowledge and vocabulary.
  • Content-rich anchor texts that support students as they tackle increasingly complex text and sharpen their analytical skills.
  • Social and emotional learning paired with lessons in civic responsibility.

Amplify CKLA not only received an all-green rating from the rigorous evaluators at EdReports, but it was also recently recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign as a high-quality literacy program that excels in building knowledge. Our shared message: background knowledge is essential to literacy and learning.

Read our EdReports review
Read our Knowledge Matters review

Student-led reading practice should be purposeful and connected to the core. That’s why Amplify createdBoost Reading. As an optional add-on to Amplify CKLA, students have the opportunity to practice skills directly tied to the skills they’ve been working on during core reading time. Boost Reading also adapts to each student to address their personal gaps and bolsters foundational skills at a pace that supports their individual development.

Boost Reading’s collection of 40+ adaptive games target foundational reading skills and develops them in alignment with Science of Reading principles. Unlike other adaptive games, we ensure students:

  • Practice the right skills at the right time. Our embedded placement tool ensures students receive the content and skill practice most appropriate for their current reading level. From there, students move through our curriculum along their own learning pathway where they encounter personalized content tailored to their evolving skill and grade levels.
  • Progress along a pathway that adapts on multiple dimensions, not just one. For example, a student can work on early first-grade decoding in one game while building more advanced vocabulary knowledge in another.
  • Practice skills in tandem. For example, a student is never forced to master one skill area before proceeding to the next. Instead, we offer students that opportunity to work on multiple skills concurrently.
  • Feel supported with scaffolding, instruction, and practice that adapts based on student performance.
  • Stay engaged by giving them immediate and clear feedback. These results are never punitive. Instead our always-positive feedback is delivered in the context of the game world and is designed to motivate students to keep trying.

Click the buttons below to learn more:

Step 3: Program Resources

Easy-to-use print materials

Amplify CKLA’s easy-to-use materials bring foundational skills and knowledge to life in the classroom.

Download the Amplify CKLA Components guide to see components by grade and watch the print materials walkthrough below.

Engaging CKLA digital experience

The top-rated content of Amplify CKLA is now live with the digital experience that enhances instruction and saves time.

Two digital dashboards are displayed: one for teachers showing recommendations and a program list, and one for students showing to-do items and a lesson named Mount Olympus, Part II.

With the digital experience, everything is in one place, making it easier and more engaging than ever to plan lessons, present digital content, and review student work. Click the arrows below to learn more.

With the digital experience, teachers have access to ready-to-use and customizable lesson presentation slides, complete with all the prompts from the print Teacher Guide embedded in the teacher view. As teachers deliver each lesson, students can engage with the content in one cohesive experience—through these CKLA resources: Activity Books, slides, digital components, videos, Student Readers, and more.

The innovative live review tool found in the digital experience enables you to keep an eye on all of your students as they work on drawing, recording audio, uploading and capturing images, and typing or writing in pre-placed textboxes in their Activity Pages. This dynamic tool provides countless classroom management benefits, enabling you to spot and correct common mistakes as they’re happening, praise your students for thoughtful work, and identify students who are not engaged in the task at hand. Simply put, it will give you those valuable “eyes in the back of your head” you’ve warned your students about!

The digital experience integrates with various LMSs, allowing you and your students to access Amplify CKLA with the software you’re already comfortable using.

In the Amplify CKLA student digital experience, your students have one intuitive access point to fully engage with classroom instruction. Through the Student Home, students can easily access digital lessons with slides, Activity Pages, ebooks, videos, and other interactives from one simple dashboard. Students can draw, record audio, upload and capture images, and type or write in pre-placed text boxes in their Activity Pages.

CKLA review resources

Step 4: State Review Resources

Step 5: Program Access

Explore as a teacher

Before logging in, watch this brief video on navigating the CKLA Teacher Platform.

Ready to explore as a teacher? Follow these instructions:

  • Click the Amplify CKLA Teacher Platform button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter the teacher username: t1.utcklapk5@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter the teacher password: Amplify1-utcklapk5
  • Choose CKLA from the “Your Programs” menu on Educator Home.
  • Select a grade level from the drop-down menu at the top of the page.
Amplify CKLA Teacher Platform

Ready to explore as a Student? Follow these instructions:

  • Click the Amplify CKLA Teacher Platform button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter the student username: s1.utahcklapk5@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter the student password: Amplify1-utahcklapk5
Amplify CKLA Student Platform

Amplify CKLA usage & branding guidelines

Welcome to Amplify’s guidelines on using CKLA materials both under its Open Education Resource (OER) license (CC BY-NC-SA) and Amplify’s license to school districts. These guidelines apply to all variants of the CKLA program, including those not authored by Amplify. These guidelines address the following programs:

  • Amplify CKLA
  • Amplify Texas ELAR/SLAR
  • TEA’s K-5 RLA Literacy / SLAR program
  • TEA’s Bluebonnet Learning K-5 Reading Language Arts
  • CKF Core Knowledge Language Arts

Amplify is committed to supporting educators in using CKLA resources to enhance classroom learning while protecting the integrity of the CKLA program and Amplify’s exclusive rights.

Our goal is to encourage impactful, efficacious use of the program while providing clear guidelines on permissible and prohibited uses.

1. Amplify’s license and what it means

Amplify partnered with the Core Knowledge Foundation (CKF) to develop the Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum. You can learn more about this program and Amplify’s partnership with CKF here.

Amplify holds the exclusive commercial license to all CKLA content. In more than a decade of partnership, we have worked with CKF to enhance and supplement the program, now in its third edition nationally. Amplify licenses Amplify CKLA and Amplify ELAR/SLAR Texas to school districts, along with a full suite of assessment, intervention, and supplemental products, as well as professional development and coaching services. Learn more here.

As the exclusive commercial partner for CKLA, Amplify is the only organization permitted to use the materials commercially.

If your organization purchases CKLA materials from Amplify, you get the customary usage rights for those purchased materials specified in Amplify’s Customer Terms & Conditions.

2. Open Non-Commercial license

Some versions of the CKLA program are available under a Creative Commons NonCommercial license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This includes Amplify Texas ELAR/SLAR, TEA’s K–5 RLA Literacy / SLAR program, TEA’s Bluebonnet Learning K–5 Reading Language Arts and CKF Core Knowledge Language Arts.

CC BY-NC-SA is the OER license for these materials. The license allows users to share and adapt the materials, as long you follow these terms:

  • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
  • NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
  • ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under this same CC BY-NC-SA license.

Below we explain how Amplify and CKF apply these terms to common situations — which uses are permitted under the licenses, and which uses are prohibited or require a special permission or commercial arrangement.

Materials licensed under Creative Commons licenses are known as Open Education Resources (OER), and Amplify is proud to have been one of the earliest champions of OER materials in K-12. We believe that OER materials enable a widespread adoption of high quality materials and innovative adaptations by educators for their classrooms, alongside commercial versions that include a full suite of supports.

3. Permitted uses of CKLA content

In these guidelines, when we say “CKLA Content”, we are referring to all versions of the program that was based on the original content from CKF, both those under OER licenses and commercially licensed. Many uses by educators are permissible under either the commercial or OER license. The only difference is that your rights under the commercial license only last as long as that license is maintained by your school or district.

Amplify encourages educators to leverage CKLA Content to foster innovative and effective learning experiences. Below are uses that are permitted without any additional license, as long as you follow attribution guidelines and share-alike requirements.

Classroom Activities and Custom Materials. Educators may create supplementary activities, worksheets, lesson plans, and projects based on the CKLA Content for use within their classroom or school. For these purposes, educators may incorporate portions of the CKLA Content.

Sharing and Selling Materials based on CKLA Content. Educators may also share classroom activities and custom materials with other educators, including by selling the materials on sites like Teachers Pay Teachers. However, if these materials are sold, they may not include CKLA Content.

For any materials you create, you are required to follow our attribution and disclaimer guidelines below.

If you are unsure whether your planned use qualifies as “non-commercial” or is otherwise permitted by Amplify please reach out to us directly.

4. Restricted uses of CKLA program content

To protect the CKLA program’s value and respect Amplify’s exclusive commercial rights, certain uses of the CKLA content are prohibited without first obtaining a commercial license. Amplify reserves the right to enforce these restrictions to protect our rights.

No third party may embed, republish, or incorporate any portion of the CKLA content in products or services intended for sale, licensing, or other commercial purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include embedding CKLA content as a part of digital platforms, apps, or resources marketed to educators or the public, as well as using the content as an input or training data for such products.

This prohibition applies to all types of individuals and organizations (both for-profit and non-profit), and applies to both paid and free uses.

See “Commercial License and Partnerships” below for information on commercial arrangements.

4. Commercial licenses and partnerships

For those interested in using CKLA content in a way that may be commercial, Amplify offers various licensing options. These negotiated licenses allow approved partners to use the CKLA content within their commercial products under specific terms and conditions.

To inquire about a commercial license or discuss a partnership opportunity, please contact our partnerships team at partnerships@amplify.com.

5. Attribution and branding guidelines

Our trademarks are valuable assets of Amplify and its licensors, and we want to ensure our users and partners use them correctly. These trademarks include the Amplify, Core Knowledge Language Arts, and CKLA word marks and logos.
These marks and logos may only be used if you have an existing partnership with us, and you’ve reached out to Amplify to secure our approval to use them.

If you are creating materials based on CKLA Content in accordance with the guidelines above, you are required to include the following attribution in a reasonably perceptible location on each copy of those materials:

“These materials are based on Amplify CKLA but are not affiliated with, sponsored by, reviewed, approved, or endorsed by Amplify Education, Inc. or the Core Knowledge Foundation. ‘Amplify’, ‘CKLA’ and other marks are the property of Amplify Education, Inc. and its licensors.”

Why these guidelines matter

Amplify’s goal is to support educational access to high-quality curriculum resources while protecting the intellectual property and integrity of the CKLA program. By adhering to these guidelines, you help ensure that CKLA remains an accessible and respected resource for educators while supporting its continued improvement.

For additional questions on using the program, or if you need further clarification on any of these points, please contact us.

Welcome, Tigard-Tualatin School District, to the next chapter in the Science of Reading, with Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is approved by the Oregon Department of Education. 

Truly built on the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA helps Oregon teachers implement the Oregon English Language Arts and Literacy Standards by translating the science of reading into manageable, engaging, and effective classroom practices. For more than a decade, Amplify CKLA has transformed classrooms nationwide with its intentional knowledge building and systematic skills instruction.

Scroll down to learn how CKLA is uniquely designed to help all your students make learning leaps in literacy.

Download CKLA Program Guide
An astronaut floats in space near the Moon, with a speech bubble displaying

Our approach

Improve outcomes with a program that’s built on a decade of research and meets the strongest ESSA Tier I criteria.

Diagram illustrating the Simple View of Reading model, depicting language comprehension and word recognition pathways converging into skilled reading, with processes becoming increasingly strategic and automatic—a foundational concept in literacy curriculum for elementary education.

Grounded in the Science of Reading

As the original Science of Reading program, Amplify CKLA puts research into action with explicit, systematic foundational skills instruction and a proven knowledge-building sequence. In collaboration with education experts and practitioners, we provide powerful resources that deliver real results.

Success stories

Background knowledge drives results

Amplify CKLA follows the Core Knowledge Sequence, a content-specific, cumulative, and coherent approach to knowledge building. This approach improves reading scores and closes achievement gaps by establishing a robust knowledge base that strengthens comprehension.

In Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition, we’ve enriched our Knowledge Sequence with a wider range of perspectives and high-quality texts in new and enhanced units.

See units and connections
An illustrated person in a yellow shirt looks at a colorful map of Puerto Rico. Above them are two educational posters about world geography and animals, integrating elements from the k–5 literacy curriculum to enhance learning experiences.
An infographic showing the steps to pronounce

Build foundational skills for long-term success.

Students progress from simple to complex skill development starting with phonological and phonemic awareness. Instruction in Grades K–2 explicitly teaches the 150 spellings for the 44 sounds of English, following an intentional progression to ensure student success.

In our 3rd Edition, we’ve added dedicated Grade 3 foundational skills instruction that can either support core lessons or function as an intervention, based on student needs.

Skills by year

Daily writing deepens learning.

Grounded in the Science of Writing—the research on how kids learn to write—instruction is explicit, daily, and woven into the curriculum’s rich content. It covers both transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition (organizing ideas into narratives) with high-impact activities like sentence-level combining and expanding, and pre-writing exercises. Writing and reading instruction are integrated so students simultaneously strengthen their communication skills, comprehension, and confidence.

See the Simple View of Writing
A child in a green shirt smiles while writing in a notebook at a classroom desk, engaged in their k–5 literacy curriculum, with another student visible in the background.
An open laptop displaying a children's story titled

High-quality, diverse texts

Amplify CKLA students are immersed in a variety of texts—complex read-alouds, decodable chapter books, trade books, and content-rich readers—that reflect varied experiences and connect to learning goals.

Readers are 100% decodable for Grades K–2, empowering students to directly apply what they’ve learned. Novel Study units for Grades 3–5 offer a mix of contemporary and classic literature, and Culminating Research Units in every grade include a set of authentic texts and trade books.

See Research Unit trade books

Reach all learners with differentiated support.

Scaffolds and challenges, developed in collaboration with education experts, make content accessible to every student—including multilingual and English learners. With strategies embedded right in the curriculum, teachers can deliver in-the-moment, individualized instruction to meet diverse student needs.

For a dedicated English language development program aligned to Amplify CKLA, explore Language Studio.

View embedded support
Children sit on the floor in a classroom, some raising their hands, smiling and engaged. The lively atmosphere reflects the effectiveness of the k–5 literacy curriculum being implemented.

What’s included with Amplify CKLA

The comprehensive resources in Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition support effective literacy instruction in every classroom.

Download CKLA Components Guide
Download CKLA Writing Brochure
Image of a laptop displaying an assessment report, surrounded by books about astronomy, an illustration of the moon, and a
Various educational materials, including textbooks, workbooks, a picture book, documents, and a laptop displaying a slide titled

Easy-to-use teacher materials

Amplify CKLA teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with the following print and digital resources:

  • Teacher Guides (K–5)
  • Assessment Guides (K–5)
  • Authentic texts and trade books (K–5)
  • Knowledge Image Cards (K–2)
  • Knowledge Flip Books (K–2, digital)
  • Ready-made and customizable Presentation Screens (K–5, digital)
  • Remediation and intervention resources (K–5)
  • On-demand professional development (K–5, digital)

Immersive Amplify CKLA student resources

Amplify CKLA students stay engaged with the following print and digital resources:

  • Decodable readers (K–2)
  • Student Readers and novels (3–5)
  • Student Activity Books (K–5)
  • Poet’s Journal (3–5)
  • eReaders (K–5, digital)
  • Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs (K–2, digital)
  • Skill-building practice games (K–5)
An open laptop displaying a poem and a person, alongside two educational booklets and a green butterfly, depicts the essence of a rich core knowledge language arts curriculum. The background includes simple graphic elements enhancing the scene.
A collection of six book covers including

Rich literary experiences

All the high-quality, diverse texts in Amplify CKLA connect to the curriculum, fostering your students’ curiosity and helping them learn to read with confidence.

  • Trade Book Collections (K–5) inspire student research in each grade’s Culminating Research Unit.
  • Classic and contemporary literature (3–5) delight students in Novel Study Units.
  • Increasingly complex Student Readers (K–5) develop students’ literacy across grades.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources engage students with fun, varied approaches that promote mastery and build independence.

  • Chaining Folders and Small Letter Cards (K)
  • Read-Aloud Big Books (K–1)
  • Large Letter Cards (K–2)
  • Sound Cards (K–2)
  • Image Cards (K–3)
  • Blending Picture Cards (K)
  • Consonant and Vowel Code Posters and Spelling Cards (1–2)
  • Sound Library (K–2, digital)
Image includes various vowel sounds and combinations on flashcards and worksheets, along with a playful illustrated mammal, all part of a comprehensive literacy curriculum for elementary students.
A laptop displays a student screen showing a quiz question about word usage, part of a literacy curriculum for elementary students. Behind it, a computer monitor shows an assessment report interface. Abstract decorative elements are in the background.

All-in-one digital platform

Our comprehensive platform simplifies your day-to-day tasks and makes it easier to plan and deliver lessons.

  • Ready-made and customizable Presentation Screens
  • Auto-scored digital assessments
  • Standards-based reporting
  • Assignable skill-building games
  • Sound Library
  • eReaders

Professional development

Move beyond traditional program training with Amplify’s digital PD Library, designed to fully support your shift to the Science of Reading and Amplify CKLA. Deepen your understanding with:

  • Program and planning resources
  • Model lesson videos from real classrooms
  • Guidance on using Amplify’s literacy suite to provide multi-tiered support
Two women are seated at a table with papers and a laptop. One woman is working on the literacy curriculum for elementary grades, while the other is smiling.
“Teachers love the ease of implementing the program, and students have fun while learning. Growth is evident in our data, and we have the support of Amplify experts who are available to answer questions and provide top-notch professional development.”

Bridget Vaughan, District K–8 Coordinator of ELA and Literacy

Quincy Public Schools, Massachusetts

Language Studio: Multilingual and English language learner support

Language Studio is Amplify CKLA’s dedicated K–5 program for multilingual and English language learners. Through daily 30-minute lessons, it strengthens reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills while reinforcing core instruction. This tailored support empowers students to confidently access grade-level content as they develop academic English.

A young girl immerses herself in the science of reading at a classroom desk, surrounded by peers and diverse educational materials.

Curriculum Maps

Amplify CKLA serves

150,000+

Classrooms

4,000,000+

Students

50

U.S. States and D.C.

Amplify Caminos program overview

¡El futuro es bilingüe! | The future is bilingual!

Amplify Caminos is a research-based core curriculum essential for Spanish literacy and grounded in the Science of Reading.

View our Caminos Program Guide to find our approach to foundational skills by year, skills practice with student readers and writing, and how Caminos supports teachers meeting the needs of all students with embedded differentiation.

Download Caminos Program Guide

Amplify Caminos offers a robust and authentic elementary Spanish language arts program for grades K–5 that promotes
biliteracy and helps teachers inspire students as they become confident readers, writers, and thinkers in Spanish.

Using the program’s two strands, Caminos Conocimiento and Caminos Lectoescritura, teachers develop student
comprehension in Spanish through a program rich in background knowledge and foundational skills activities. The texts students encounter include authentic Spanish literature that honor Spanish language development and build diverse content knowledge in social studies, science, literature, and the arts.

Amplify Caminos is designed to support a variety of bilingual and dual language instructional models to meet your student’s biliteracy needs. Combined with its English language partner, Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA), Amplify Caminos provides a comprehensive biliteracy solution.

Ilustración de un niño alegre participando en el programa de lectura de CKLA, jugando fútbol junto a un libro abierto, con una tortuga, un loro y un exuberante paisaje tropical rodeándolos. La palabra "
Illustration of the amplify caminos language comprehension model, featuring step-by-step progression from simple word recognition to skilled reading, with educational graphics and text excerpts.

Amplify Caminos delivers rich, authentic experiences.

With a robust digital experience and expanding library of online materials, Amplify Caminos provides everything needed to support, challenge, and engage your students. From digital Teacher Guides to lesson projectables, we provide all the tools needed to successfully deliver every lesson.

How Amplify Caminos works with Amplify CKLA

Through direct instruction, both Amplify Caminos and Amplify CKLA develop reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in their respective languages. Together, the programs empower educators to effectively foster biliteracy with:

  • Intentional knowledge building that connects topics throughout the program.
  • Increased metalinguistic awareness from students exploring the similarities and differences in each language while strengthening their knowledge across both.
  • Equitable instruction using high-quality Spanish and English decodable readers that provide students with opportunities to apply skills learned, and foster each students’ growing competency in reading.
“There were other programs that claimed to be [based on the] Science of Reading, but no other vendor provided the suite of products together. We did not want to be picking from here, picking from there. [Amplify’s literacy suite] met our needs, because it aligned and provided us the best suite of products, hands down.”

Nicole Peterson, Principal, Midway Middle School

Sampson County Schools, North Carolina

Demo Access

Explore the CKLA Teacher Digital Resources

First, watch the quick navigation video to the right. Then, follow the directions below.

  • Go to: learning.amplify.com or click the Access CKLA Teacher Digital button below
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: t1.ttsd_ckla_caminos@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-ttsd_ckla_caminos
  • Click the CKLA button
  • Select your desired grade level from the Program drop down
Access CKLA Teacher Digital

Follow the directions below to access the Student Resource Site:

  • Go to: learning.amplify.com or click the Access CKLA Student Digital button below
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: s1.ttsd_ckla_caminos@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-ttsd_ckla_caminos
  • From the main page, click the backpack in the top right corner.
  • Click on the grade level to select your desired grade.
Access CKLA Student Digital
Illustration of diverse activities: a girl with arms outstretched among birds, an ancient temple, a child reading, and sketches and letters on a sandy layer.

Amplify CKLA 2nd Edition Pilot Packs

Pilot educator,

This is the beginning of the Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) 2nd Edition journey in your classroom! Making this important, evidence-based shift shows your commitment and dedication to your students. We truly appreciate the work you’re doing and are here to help you along the way.

We know it can be overwhelming to start a new curriculum, but we’re here to help! Within this site, you’ll find resources to help you get started before your implementation training, including a materials checklist, unit and domain summaries, support videos, and more! These tools will support your 6–12 weeks of core literacy instruction with Amplify CKLA. We hope this site is helpful in getting you started with your pilot.

Thank you for all you do,

—The Amplify CKLA team

Get started

To get started with your new pilot of Amplify CKLA, you’ll first want to review the following:

You may also find these documents helpful as you begin your pilot:

CKLA_PilotPackMicrosite_MaterialsModule_Hero_112822-01

Pilot Pack components checklist

Below you’ll find the Amplify CKLA Pilot Pack components you should have received in your shipment, outlined by grade level and teacher/student materials. Please click your grade-level teacher materials and student materials to review the list and ensure that you received all of the materials.

An orange workbook cover featuring a ladybug illustration, part of "Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts." The text "Skills 5" is shown at the bottom.

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 5 Teacher Guide

Orange book cover for "Skills 6" from Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts, featuring outlined hands and items like hats and pants. Subtext: Teacher Guide, TK Masterscripts.

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 6 Teacher Guide

Orange language arts workbook cover with a white shower sketch, water drops, and the word "Skills 7" at the bottom. Drawings include fish, bird, and words like "bath," "th," "finch," and "splash.

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 7 Teacher Guide

Book cover titled "Ox and Man" shows people running with an ox on a green hillside.

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 5 Big Book: Ox and Man

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 6 Big Book: Kit

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 7 Big Book: Seth

Kindergarten_small-letter-cards

Teacher materials

Skills Small Letter Card Set

Teacher materials

Skills Large Letter Cards

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 2 Teacher Guide: The 5 Senses

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 3 Teacher Guide: Stories

Colorful illustration of a lush hillside with a variety of plants and a house in the background, titled "knowledge 4 plants" for a kindergarten workbook.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 4 Teacher Guide: Plants

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 2 Image Cards: The 5 Senses

Cover of "knowledge 3" kindergarten image cards featuring a colorful illustration of children and animals engaging with storybook characters in a fantasy setting.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 3 Image Cards: Stories

Illustration on a book cover showing various plants, a garden, and a red house, under a bright sun, titled "knowledge 4 - plants" for kindergarten level.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 4 Image Cards: Plants

Illustration of children exploring giant sensory organs in a vibrant landscape, representing the five senses in a playful educational setting.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 2 Flip Book: The 5 Senses

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 3 Flip Book: Stories

Illustration on a book cover showing various plants, a garden, and a red house, under a bright sun, titled "knowledge 4 - plants" for kindergarten level.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 4 Flip Book: Plants

Back cover of an amplify core knowledge language arts pilot sample card deck, with qr code and isbn, featuring education-themed illustrations.

Teacher materials

Sound Cards Sampler

Educational poster titled "sound posters" for kindergarten, featuring various illustrations like a boat, globe, and animals on a red background with a qr code on the bottom right.

Teacher materials

Sound Posters Sampler

Student materials

Skills Unit 6 Reader: Kit

Student materials

Skills Unit 7 Reader: Seth

Student materials

Skills Unit 5 Activity Book

Student materials

Skills Unit 6 Activity Book

Student materials

Skills Unit 7 Activity Book

Student materials

Chaining Folder

Book cover titled "look at the", marked as a "pilot sample" with educational doodles on a red background, labeled "picture reader" for "kindergarten" skills.

Student materials

Picture Reader Sampler

Educational book cover titled "amplify core knowledge language arts" featuring colorful illustrations of animals, fruits, and plants across four seasonal themes.

Student materials

Knowledge Domains 2, 3, and 4 Sampler

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 2 Teacher Guide

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 3 Teacher Guide

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 4 Teacher Guide

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 2 Big Book: Gran

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 3 Big Book: Fables

Teacher materials

Skills Vowel Code Flip Book

Teacher materials

Skills Large Letter Cards

A grade 1 spelling cards booklet titled "core knowledge language arts" from the center for early reading-amplify, featuring educational symbols like a pencil and sun on a orange cover.

Teacher materials

Skills Spelling Cards

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 2 Teacher Guide: The Human Body

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 3 Teacher Guide: Different Lands, Similar Stories

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 5 Teacher Guide: Early American Civilizations

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 2 Image Cards: The Human Body

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 3 Image Cards: Different Lands, Similar Stories

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 5 Image Cards: Early American Civilizations

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 2 Flip Book: The Human Body

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 3 Flip Book: Different Lands, Similar Stories

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 5 Flip Book: Early American Civilizations

Illustration of a grandmother embracing two children, with a house labeled "gran" in the background, surrounded by foliage.

Student materials

Skills Unit 2 Reader: Gran

Student materials

Skills Unit 3 Reader: Fables

Illustration of various animals, including a puffin, deer, fox, otter, and others, on a green background with the title "the green fern zoo.

Student materials

Skills Unit 4 Reader: The Green Fern Zoo

Student materials

Skills Unit 2 Activity Book

Student materials

Skills Unit 3 Activity Book

Student materials

Skills Unit 4 Activity Book

Student materials

Skills Individual Code Chart

Illustration of a colorful educational book cover titled "amplify core knowledge language arts" for grade 1, featuring diverse thematic circles like farming, space, and cultures.

Student materials

Knowledge Domains 2, 3, and 5 Sampler

Green book cover titled "Skills 2," showing a white outline drawing of a mole above the word "mole." Background features doodles and words like "bite" and "bat.

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 2 Teacher Guide

Bright green cover of a textbook titled "Skills 3," featuring a graduation cap illustration. The text mentions "Core Knowledge Language Arts" and "Grade 2 Teacher Guide.

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 3 Teacher Guide

Green educational worksheet displaying a large letter "V" surrounded by various illustrations representing words starting with "V," such as a volcano and violin.

Teacher materials

Skills Vowel Code Flip Book

A green educational workbook cover titled "Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts," featuring a large white letter 'C' and doodles of animals and objects in the background.

Teacher materials

Skills Consonant Code Flip Book

Cover of "Core Knowledge Language Arts: Spelling Cards, Grade 2" featuring symbols like an eye, lightbulb, key, paw, and letters on a green background.

Teacher materials

Skills Spelling Cards

Cover illustration of a book titled "Knowledge 1: Fairy Tales and Tall Tales." Shows a giant lumberjack, castle, fish, and a person facing the scene, surrounded by trees and a river.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 1 Teacher Guide: Fairy Tales and Tall Tales

Cover of a book titled "Knowledge 4, Greek Myths," showing illustrations of mythical figures, creatures, and landscapes under a sunny sky.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 4 Teacher Guide: Greek Myths

Illustrated book cover showing a garden scene with butterflies, insects, flowers, and greenery under a blue sky. Title reads "Knowledge 8: Insects" from the Core Knowledge Language Arts series.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 8 Teacher Guide: Insects

Illustrated book cover featuring Greek mythological characters, including a lion-headed figure and an archer, with a landscape of mythical creatures and structures in the background.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 4 Image Cards: Greek Myths

Colorful illustration of a natural scene with insects, flowers, and a pond on a book cover titled "Knowledge 8 Insects" for Grade 2 language arts.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 8 Image Cards: Insects

Illustration of a giant lumberjack with an axe, a cow, and people on a castle wall, in a colorful storybook design. Titled "Knowledge 1: Fairy Tales and Tall Tales.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 1 Flip Book: Fairy Tales and Tall Tales

Illustration of Greek mythology featuring Artemis aiming a bow, a Minotaur in a labyrinth, and mythical symbols. Labeled "Knowledge 4 Greek Myths" for a language arts program.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 4 Flip Book: Greek Myths

Colorful illustration of a garden with flowers, a beehive, butterflies, bees, and a beekeeper by a pond. The book is titled "Knowledge 8: Insects" for Grade 2 Language Arts.

Teacher materials

Knowledge Domain 4 Image Cards: Greek Myths

Illustrated book cover titled "Bedtime Tales" showing a man sitting on a bed with two children, one boy and one girl, leaning against him. Colorful patterns are in the background.

Student materials

Skills Unit 2 Reader: Bedtime Tales

Children play jump rope on a basketball court near a park. The words "Kids Excel" are on the image.

Student materials

Skills Unit 3 Reader: Kids Excel

A workbook cover featuring a stylized illustration of a mole, labeled "mole" and "oe." It includes sketches of a bed, clock, and letters. Title: "Skills 2 Activity Book, Grade 2.

Student materials

Skills Unit 2 Activity Book

Image of a green activity book cover titled "Skills 3" with a graduation cap illustration and various educational doodles in the background.

Teacher materials

Skills Unit 3 Activity Book

A chart featuring various hand-drawn doodles, including a sailboat, dog, hat, bell, and cooking pot, used for language arts.

Student materials

Skills Individual Code Chart

Cover of a Grade 2 activity book titled "Knowledge" by Amplify, featuring colorful illustrations of myths and folktales, including "Kite" and "Why the Sky Is Far Away.

Student materials

Knowledge Domains 1, 4, and 8 Sampler

Illustrated book cover titled "Unit 2 Animal Classification," featuring a leopard, frog, turtle, crane, rocks, and foliage under a partly cloudy sky.

Teacher materials

Unit 2 Teacher Guide: Animal Classification

Cover of a textbook titled "Unit 5: Light and Sound" featuring an illustration of a bouncing cow and various objects like a tree and lemon slices on a table.

Teacher materials

Unit 5 Teacher Guide: Light and Sound

Book cover titled "Unit 3: Native American Regions and Cultures" with an illustration of a desert landscape and sky designs.

Teacher materials

Unit 8 Teacher Guide: Native Americans: Regions and Culture

Illustrated cover depicting a dog chasing a bee under a tree with a sun and lens flare in the background. Text reads "Unit 5, Light and Sound, Image Cards, Grade 3" with Amplify logo.

Teacher materials

Unit 5 Image Cards: Light and Sound

Book cover with a stylized illustration of a person in a rocky landscape under a cloudy sky. Text reads: "Unit 8 Native Americans: Regions and Cultures, Image Cards, Grade 2.

Teacher materials

Unit 8 Image Cards: Native Americans: Regions and Cultures

Colorful illustration of various animals including a jaguar, heron, frog, turtle, and fish in a natural setting, featured on the cover of an educational material titled "Rattenborough’s Guide to Animals.

Student materials

Unit 2 Reader: Rattenborough’s Guide to Animals

Cover of "Adventures in Light and Sound," Unit 5 Reader by Amplify, showing illustrations of a dog jumping near a tree, with abstract shapes and colors in the background.

Student materials

Unit 5 Reader: Adventures in Light and Sound

Book cover featuring a landscape painting of cliffs under a cloudy sky, labeled "Unit 8: Native American Stories," with "Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts" at the top.

Student materials

Unit 8 Reader: Native American Stories

Illustrated book cover featuring a leopard, frog, turtle, crane, and jewel-like objects in a natural setting. Title reads "Unit 2 Animal Classification, Grade 3.

Teacher materials

Unit 2 Activity Book: Animal Classification

Illustrated cover of an educational book titled "Unit 5: Light and Sound" for Grade 1, depicting a tree, playing squirrels, a sun, and large glasses on a white table.

Student materials

Unit 5 Activity Book: Light and Sound

Cover of a book titled "Unit 8: Native Americans: Regions and Cultures," featuring an illustration of a person walking through a desert landscape.

Student materials

Unit 8 Activity Book: Native Americans: Regions and Cultures

Cover of a Unit 3 Poetry workbook featuring gold illustrations of mythical creatures and designs on a brown background.

Teacher materials

Unit 3 Teacher Guide: Poetry

A geology textbook cover with an image of wavy, layered rock formations. The text on the cover reads "Unit 5 Geology.

Teacher materials

Unit 5 Teacher Guide: Geology

Cover of "Unit 7: American Revolution" shows people in colonial attire ringing a large bell indoors.

Teacher materials

Unit 7 Teacher Guide: American Revolution

A journal cover titled "Poet's Journal" for Grade 6, Unit 2. The design includes brown illustrations of a sun, dinosaur, leaves, and other decorative elements on a tan background.

Student materials

Unit 3 Poet’s Journal

Textbook cover titled "Unit 5: Geology: The Changing Earth" featuring a photo of wave-like rock formations with layered patterns.

Student materials

Unit 5 Reader: Geology: The Changing Earth

Illustration of colonial people and a large bell, with text: "Unit 7 American Revolution: The Road to Independence.

Student materials

Unit 7 Reader: American Revolution: The Road to Independence

Textbook cover titled "Unit 5: Geology" featuring a photo of layered rock formations with swirling patterns and vivid colors.

Student materials

Unit 5 Activity Book: Geology

Illustration of people ringing a large bell in a historical setting, with men, women, and a child present. Text on the cover reads "Unit 7 American Revolution" for Grade 4.

Student materials

Unit 7 Activity Book: American Revolution

Textbook cover titled "Unit 2: Early American Civilizations" with an illustrated figure in red, white, and green, adorned with feathers and holding a staff.

Teacher materials

Unit 2 Teacher Guide: Early American Civilizations

Book cover featuring illustrations of an umbrella, microscope, compass, bird, and stars. Label indicates Unit 3 on poetry for 5th-grade language arts.

Teacher materials

Unit 3 Teacher Guide: Poetry

Cover of a workbook titled "Adventures of Don Quixote," featuring an illustration of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on horseback under a crescent moon.

Teacher materials

Unit 4 Teacher Guide: The Adventures of Don Quixote

Textbook cover titled "Unit 2: Early American Civilizations: Maya, Aztec, and Inca," featuring colorful illustration of a figure in traditional attire.

Student materials

Unit 2 Reader: Early American Civilization

Cover of "Poet's Journal," Grade 6, Unit 5. Features illustrations of an umbrella, crow, book, key, and a telescope against a brown background. Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts at top.

Student materials

Unit 3 Poet’s Journal

Cover of "Adventures of Don Quixote" by Argentina Palacios, Dover Children's Thrift Classics. It features an illustration of Don Quixote and his horse near windmills.

Student materials

Unit 4 Reader: The Adventures of Don Quixote (trade book)

Cover of a Grade 5 activity book titled "Unit 2: Early American Civilizations" features a colorful illustration of an Aztec-style figure.

Student materials

Unit 2 Activity Book: Early American Civilization

Cover illustration of "Adventures of Don Quixote" from Unit 4, featuring Don Quixote on horseback with a spear, under a crescent moon, in a vintage purple-toned style.

Student materials

Unit 4 Activity Book: The Adventures of Don Quixote

Access the Amplify CKLA digital experience

You will receive your teacher demo account login information from your sales representative.

Contact us

Contact your account executive to sign up for implementation training.

Illustration of a woman with architectural plans, a child reading a book, and sketches of diverse people, symbolizing creativity and learning.

Welcome, Florida K–5 educators!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) Florida is the program built on the latest Science of Reading research. Using a fundamentally different approach to language arts, Amplify CKLA Florida sequences deep content knowledge with research-based foundational skills.

Amplify CKLA Florida Program Guide

Built on the science of reading

The cornerstones of reading comprehension in Florida assert that foundational instruction matters; knowledge matters; and curriculum matters. Amplify CKLA Florida is built on the Science of Reading. To support you before your review, we put together a Science of Reading Toolkit that will provide some insight into the research behind the Science of Reading. It will also show why we designed Amplify CKLA for Florida educators to mirror this critical research.

Listen to the podcast
Promotional graphic for "science of reading: the podcast" featuring text alongside colorful, diagonal lines with education-related words.
Illustration depicting two overlapping learning curves labeled "knowledge" and "skills," with stages like "vocabulary," "connections," and "words" leading to integration in an online language arts curriculum.

Foundational instruction matters

Amplify CKLA Florida’s first design principle is a research-based, explicit, and systematic approach to foundational skills that gets real results.

  • Explicit.
  • Learning isn’t left to chance. All 44 sounds and their 150 spellings in the English language are taught, practiced, and mastered, with ample opportunity for students to encounter each sound-spelling in diverse settings.
  • Sequential.
  • By moving in a sequence from easier to more complex in phonics and foundational reading skills, students master concepts before moving forward and gradually become more independent.
  • Rewarding
  • Learning to read should be fun. Decodable chapter books that feature dynamic plots and characters make kids want to read more. The engaging stories feature children who discover fossils, a grandmother who flies hang gliders, and more.

Knowledge matters

Amplify CKLA Florida’s second design principle is that reading comprehension depends more on relevant background knowledge than on mastery of reading strategies. Knowledge builds on knowledge.

Our approach to building background knowledge is based on three pillars often overlooked in other programs. It is:

  • Content-specific.
    Clearly outlined content objectives are specific and support the development of knowledge in history, science, literature, culture, and the arts.
  • Cumulative.
    Topics and vocabulary connect within and across grades, allowing students to extend knowledge and revisit topics in increasing depth in later grades.
  • Coherent.
    When curriculum is fragmentary and disconnected, students face repetitions as well as gaps that can hinder learning. An intentional design ensures the curriculum fits together as a whole.
  • Amplify and ReadWorks have partnered to provide Amplify CKLA Florida classrooms a way to expand knowledge in connected yet varied ways.
    • ReadWorks
      • Login Credentials for ReadWorks
        Username:  t.floridackla@tryamplify.net
        Password: FLReviewer
Three children looking at an open book

Curriculum matters

Amplify CKLA was built on the science of reading research to meet the all standards in a vertically and horizontally aligned, coherent, and cumulative knowledge-based curriculum. To encourage a broader view of literacy, our intentional design embraces history, art, science, music and other disciplines to ensure that all West Virginia students have a level playing field. 

What’s included

Amplify CKLA provides engaging print and multimedia materials—accessible from anywhere—that are designed to provide a robust, literacy-rich foundation in every classroom.

Proven high-quality teacher materials

Teacher supports include research-based lessons that integrate foundational literacy skills and cross-curricular content knowledge.

A collection of colorful educational books, including a shakespeare activity book and various teacher's guides, displayed with subjects like language arts and skills.
A laptop displaying a cartoon of a character running along a path, next to images of a historical architectural drawing and a person practicing calligraphy.

Student materials

Engaging student resources include dynamic decodable chapter books and content-rich, cross-curricular Readers.

Digital resources

Access the program’s online resources anywhere, anytime, from any device.

  • Digital Hub
  • Knowledge Builder animated videos (example from Grade 2)
  • Sound Library songs and videos (examples from Kindergarten)
  • eReader
  • Vocabulary App
  • Recorded Read-Alouds
  • Professional development website
  • Real-time program support via email, live chat, and phone
Screen capture of the amplify ckla portal home page displaying vibrant icons for theater, sounds, and library, with a welcoming message "hello student!" for a 2nd grader.
Close-up of a woman's lower face speaking, with a speech bubble saying "let's say it together!" and abstract shapes in the background.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources give students the opportunity to practice key skills using diverse, fun approaches that build independence.

  • Large and Small Letter Cards
  • Spelling Cards
  • Chaining Folders
  • Digital Big Books

Florida Resources

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Professional learning

Amplify employs a national cohort of more than 50 ELA facilitators, all of whom have experience as former classroom teachers and many of whom are former school and/or district leaders. Our professional learning team has decades of experience working with large districts across the nation. Amplify has experience supporting district launches over multiple years and has partnered with districts of all sizes nationwide. We partner deeply with districts and tailor professional learning to their unique needs.

Amplify CKLA Florida Implementation Guide

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WV CKLA

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New York

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Frequently asked questions

Still have questions? We have answers. Check out the following FAQ.

Overview

  • Amplify CKLA is based on research showing that closing the background knowledge gap is necessary for supporting the literacy development of all students. To that end, Amplify CKLA teaches literacy through the lens of cross-curricular domains in science, history, literature, and culture. It was developed in response to research that shows the critical impact of background knowledge on reading comprehension and college- and career-readiness.
  • The program also reflects the latest early reading research showing the importance of explicit foundational skills instruction. The program develops students’ foundational literacy skills through a systematic scope and sequence with a focus on phonics.

Our research-based language arts curriculum is built on findings showing that higher-level reading comprehension depends on both automatic, fluent decoding and background knowledge. Combining well-established findings from the field of early literacy research with classroom-based feedback, Amplify CKLA ensures that children will learn to listen, speak, read, and write confidently and proficiently. For more information, view the Amplify CKLA Research Guide.

Amplify CKLA is a PreK–5 program. While the PreK and K–2 materials respect the important differences between early childhood education and formal schooling, the Grades 3–5 materials ensure a smooth transition to the academic rigors of middle school.

PreK

The focus in PreK is to maintain a developmentally appropriate early childhood setting; the structures, routines, and activities are engaging and children receive a solid foundation for future language arts instruction.

K–2

The focus in K–2 is developing fluent reading and writing skills, and enhancing language comprehension by building background knowledge and vocabulary. This is accomplished through two strands: the Skills Strand and the Knowledge Strand.

The Skills Strand focuses on decoding, encoding, grammar, handwriting, and the writing process, and it contains decodable chapter books for students to practice just-learned sound-spellings.

The Knowledge Strand builds background knowledge and vocabulary through carefully sequenced read-alouds and complex texts. Teachers read aloud stories that are more complex than the text students can decode on their own, enabling children to engage with complex texts and build background knowledge of a variety of connected topics in history, science, literature, and the arts.

3–5

In Grades 3–5, students are still focused on building reading and writing skills as well as knowledge and vocabulary, but the program no longer has two strands. The various lessons in each unit include read-alouds; whole-group, small-group, and partner reading; close reading; literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension questions; vocabulary; grammar; writing; morphology and spelling (10–15 words per week); and unit assessments.

Program design

The Skills strand provides intentional and systematic support in building decoding skills. The lessons support learning related to phonemic awareness, sound-letter patterns (or spelling patterns), decoding (both in explicit lessons and with engaging decodable texts), writing mechanics, and writing structure and processes, for 60 minutes daily.

The Knowledge Strand develops young children’s language and background knowledge. By exposing children to rich and complex texts through daily read-alouds, engaging in text-based and analytic discussions of the text and content, and building connections from the text to the work of the classroom through extension activities, the Knowledge Strand provides daily, extensive (60 minutes) broadening and deepening of children’s oral language and comprehension.

Teaching the Skills Strand and Knowledge Strand in parallel helps students avoid cognitive overload and acquire advanced, complex vocabulary in the Knowledge Strand—in essence, reading to learn from day one—while becoming expert decoders in the Skills Strand. The program is designed to bring these two strands together in grades 3–5, as foundational skills and higher-level comprehension and meaning-making gradually intertwine.

The CKLA program takes a comprehensive approach to teaching the code of the English language in the Skills strand. While the English language has only 26 letters, these letters combine to create 150 spelling patterns that represent 44 sounds of language. In most reading programs, children are explicitly taught only a fraction of this information and must glean the rest from ad hoc and incidental exposure to these spelling patterns through text. CKLA focuses on explicitly teaching each of the 44 sounds and the 150 ways that these sounds are represented (via letters and letter combinations). This comprehensive approach assures educators that children have the knowledge they need to address any text and any word.

The Knowledge Strand reflects the fact that knowledge, comprehension, and vocabulary are intimately related. The materials are designed to provide children sustained time on a variety of domains (bodies of knowledge) through shared read-alouds and discussions. This coherent organization of content is critical to building knowledge, inferring new vocabulary, and enabling comprehension. The content-rich, intentionally sequenced nature of the read-alouds within the Knowledge Strand creates the optimal context for incidental and explicit vocabulary-learning opportunities. After the read-aloud, children analyze the text through interactive discussion questions, engage in activities that foster their comprehension of complex sentences and ideas, and extend the ideas of the read-aloud into other activities in the classroom. In this way, the lessons create rich, academically oriented, oral language experiences that promote both receptive and expressive language skills.

Amplify CKLA embeds a variety of diagnostic and classroom assessments into the program materials.

There are curriculum-based assessments of both foundational skills and content knowledge, placement assessments in Grades 1 and 2 for the Skills Strand, and end-of-year Skills Strand assessments in Grades K–3. These assessments are built into the units of instruction/domains within the Teacher Guides. In Grades 4–5, there are beginning-of-year assessments, frequent spelling assessments, and comprehensive unit assessments.

Formative Assessments are integrated into every lesson, allowing teachers to understand exactly how students are doing on meeting lesson goals and standards-based objectives.

Writing in multiple genres is taught through a process that builds from three highly scaffolded steps to seven flexible steps.
In addition to explicit lessons in handwriting, spelling, and grammar, writing is taught throughout K–5. Instruction begins with a three-step writing process: plan, draft, and edit. The process is reinforced as each new writing genre is addressed. Each genre is taught through a gradual reduction in scaffolding over a set of six lessons that includes teacher modeling, group practice, independent practice, and independent application. This systematic approach allows for continued support and predictable learning as children progress in their knowledge of text types and complexity of writing. By Grade 3, students have worked their way up to a five-step writing process: planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Beginning in Grade 4, the writing process expands to seven components: planning, drafting, sharing, evaluating, revising, and editing (and the optional component of publishing). An important change between the writing process in Grades 3–5 is that the writing process is no longer conceptualized as a series of scaffolded, linear steps that students follow in a set sequence. Rather, students move back and forth between components of the writing process in a flexible manner, similar to the process that mature and experienced writers follow. In addition to specific writing lessons, there are numerous writing opportunities for students throughout the curriculum.

Alignment to the CCSS

Fully implementing the Common Core Standards requires some shifts in prevailing instructional approaches. For early grades language arts, these shifts can be summarized as (1) balancing fiction and nonfiction text, (2) building knowledge, (3) supporting students’ capacity to learn from increasingly complex texts, (4) giving text-based answers, (5) writing from sources, and (6) explicitly supporting the acquisition of academic vocabulary. The following sections document the primary ways that Amplify CKLA meets the demands of these shifts.

  1. The amount of nonfiction gradually increases, reaching the 50-50 balance of fiction and nonfiction by grade 3.
  2. Read-alouds in the Knowledge Strand are designed according to the latest research to build knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, the arts, and more.
  3. The texts in both the Knowledge Strand and the Skills strand increase in complexity as the program progresses within and across grades.
  4. In the Skills Strand, the language and knowledge demands of the texts increase, but remain decodable based on the aspects of the code that have been taught to date.
  5. Both strands engage students in appropriate means of providing text-based answers—orally, pictorially, and eventually in writing.
  6. Together, the Skills and Knowledge Strands enable students to read and digest various sources and then write by drawing on those sources.
  7. In both strands of the program, Amplify CKLA teaches children the process of using the text as a springboard for understanding.
  8. The Knowledge Strand offers repeated exposures to academic vocabulary through authentic texts and explicit word instruction.

Materials

PreK

  • Teacher Guides, Student Activity Pages, 3–4 Trade Books per domain, Flip Books, Image Cards, Transition and Center Cards, Nursery Rhymes and Songs Posters, and a Big Book (Classic Tales)

Grades K–2

  • Knowledge Strand: Teacher Guides, Flip Books, Student Activity Books, Image Cards, and online resources including supplemental lessons
  • Skills Strand: Teacher Guides, Activity Books, Student Readers, Big Books, Letter Cards, Spelling Cards, Individual Code Sheets, Code and Chaining Resources (Vowel/Consonant Code Flip Books, Student Chaining Folders), Blending Cards, and online resources including differentiation and remediation guides

Grades 3–5

  • Teacher Guides, Student Readers, Activity Books, Poet’s Journal, Writer’s Journal, Core Quests (The Viking Age in Grade 3, Eureka: Student Inventor in Grade 4 and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in grade 5) and Writing Quests (The Contraption in Grade 4, The Robot in Grade 5)

K–5 Core Knowledge Language Arts Program – K–5 Literacy Curriculum | Amplify

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What’s included in our PreK language arts curriculum

Through its research-based structure, Amplify CKLA for PreK provides developmentally appropriate instruction and activities that do more than lay the groundwork for foundational skills. Uniquely, this preschool language arts curriculum offers content knowledge, recognizing research that shows true literacy also requires background knowledge in history, science, art and literature.

Choose Level

K–23–5PreK

Year at a glance

Amplify CKLA PreK is a comprehensive English Language Arts curriculum designed to prepare young children academically, socially, and emotionally for later reading success by building foundational language and literacy skills. The program provides a flexible 45 minutes of interactive instruction.

Domains at a glance

Each domain in Amplify CKLA PreK provides explicit, systematic support for developing language, literacy, and content knowledge, incorporating developmentally appropriate routines and trade books to provide a robust, literacy-rich environment for young learners.

Domain 1

All About Me

Routines used throughout the year are introduced. Students learn nursery rhymes and songs with movements connected to the topic.

Skills: Students identify environmental noises, distinguish sounds, make rhymes, and learn that words are written in print. Students begin pre-writing activities.

Domain 2

Families and Communities

Students learn about families, celebrations and traditions, and people who work and play in their community.

Skills: Students focus on rhyme awareness and creating rhymes, recognizing syllables (parts) of spoken words, and continue handwriting practice.

Domain 3

Animals

This domain focuses on different types of animals, their basic needs, how they protect themselves, and other concepts.

Skills: Students identify beginning sounds in spoken words and are introduced to the sound and “sound picture” for the letter ‘m’.

Domain 4

Plants

Students learn how plants live and grow and are introduced to the idea of cycles, a concept they will study in subsequent years.

Skills: Students learn and practice the sounds and sound pictures for three new letters, and orally blend two-sound words.

Domain 5

Habitats

Building on previous domains about plants and animals, students learn more about elements that make up a habitat and explore different habitats.

Skills: Phonemic awareness is a central factor in this domain as students blend and segment three-sound words. Students learn four new sounds.

Interspersed Domain

Classic Tales

Students are introduced to traditional stories and fables that have been favorites among children for generations.

Interspersed Domain

Important People in American History

Students engage in read-alouds and engaging activities that deepen their understanding about important Americans who have changed or are changing how we live today.

Print & digital components

The program includes instructional guidance and student materials for a year of instruction, with lessons and activities that keep students engaged every day.

Component

FORMAT

Teacher materials

Teacher Guides (one per domain) include all instruction and a variety of assessment tools at point-of-use to support progress-monitoring.

Print

Classroom materials

Rich resources for each domain include Flip Books, Image Cards, and Transition and Center Cards. The program also provides 3-4 Trade Books per domain, Nursery Rhyme and Songs Posters, and a Big Book for the Classic Tales domain.

Print

Component

FORMAT

Activity Pages

Student resources are provided for classroom and home that reinforce content and skills through a direct application of newly taught material.

Print

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What’s included in our grades K–2 language arts curriculum

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is a comprehensive early literacy curriculum, grounded in the Science of Reading. The K–2 curriculum sequences deep content knowledge-building with research-based foundational skills. With Amplify CKLA, you’ll have the instruction and guidance of proven, evidence-based practices to help all of your students become strong readers, writers, and thinkers.

Choose Level

K–23–5PreK

Year at a glance

The Amplify CKLA curriculum is modeled after proven research in early literacy that supports a two-strand approach to literacy instruction in the early years. With this approach, students in Grades K–2 complete one full lesson per day that builds foundational reading skills in the Skills Strand, as well as one full lesson that builds background knowledge in the Knowledge Strand. The deep content knowledge is sequenced together with research-based foundational skills in Grades K–2 so that students develop the early literacy skills necessary to help them become confident readers, as well as build the context to understand what they’re reading. 

In Grades 3–5, lessons combine skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater emphasis on writing. Students start to use their skills to go on their own independent reading adventures, further opening up their worlds.

Units & domains at a glance

The number of days to complete each Skills Unit and Knowledge Domain varies based on instructional purpose.

Knowledge Domain 1

Nursery Rhymes and Fables

Well-known fables introduce students to new vocabulary, build phonological awareness, and prompt discussion of character, virtues, and behavior.

Number of Lessons: 12

Knowledge Domain 2

The Five Senses

Students explore how they learn about the world using their five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

Number of Lessons: 8

Knowledge Domain 3

Stories

Students develop an awareness of language and recurring themes in children’s literature, including classic stories, trickster tales, and fiction from other cultures.

Number of Lessons: 10

Knowledge Domain 4

Plants

Read-aloud texts introduce students to basic knowledge of ecology, parts of plants, how plants grow, and the interdependence of all living things.

Number of Lessons: 11

Knowledge Domain 5

Farms

Students identify several farm animals and crops and contrast how plants make their food with how animals get their food.

Number of Lessons: 9

Knowledge Domain 6

Native Americans

Students explore cultures of three Native American groups, as well as how conditions in different geographical regions influence their ways of life.

Number of Lessons: 8

Knowledge Domain 7

Kings and Queens

Students listen to read-aloud texts, both fiction and nonfiction, about kings, queens, and royal families, which build students’ understanding of royal customs.

Number of Lessons: 8

Knowledge Domain 8

Seasons and Weather

This is an introduction to weather and the seasons, where students learn that regions of Earth experience different characteristic weather patterns throughout the year.

Number of Lessons: 8

Knowledge Domain 9

Columbus and the Pilgrims

A look at the first contact between Europe and the Americas and some of its results.

Number of Lessons: 9

Knowledge Domain 10

Colonial Towns and Townspeople

Students are introduced to the early history of the United States as they explore what life was like for people in colonial times.

Number of Lessons: 10

Knowledge Domain 11

Taking Care of the Earth

Students are introduced to the importance of environmental awareness and conservation as they become familiar with the earth’s natural resources.

Number of Lessons: 10

Knowledge Domain 12

Presidents and American Symbols

Students learn about the legacies of five famous presidents, several national symbols, the branches of government, the role of the president, and elections.

Number of Lessons: 9

Skills Unit 1

Students build phonological awareness through environmental noises, words within sentences, and sounds within words. They learn basic strokes used to form letters.

Skills Unit 2

Students learn how to blend syllables together to form multisyllabic words. They orally produce two- and three-sound words by blending sounds.

Skills Unit 3

Students learn eight new sounds and practice blending them into words. They learn how to write letters that represent the new sounds.

Skills Unit 4

With oral language games, chaining exercises, and shared reading, students practice blending eight new sounds into words and writing the sound-letter correspondences.

Skills Unit 5

Eight new sounds are introduced, including a spelling alternative for /k/. Students continue to practice previously learned sound-letter correspondences.

Skills Unit 6

Students are introduced to consonant clusters, letter names, and rhyming words. Students begin to read text independently using decodable Student Readers.

Skills Unit 7

Students learn about various digraphs. Students practice blending and segmenting the sounds through phonemic awareness and phonics activities, chaining exercises, and reading.

Skills Unit 8

This unit introduces students to double-letter spellings for consonant sounds, as well as seven new high-frequency Tricky Words.

Skills Unit 9

Students practice writing uppercase letters and learn 17 new Tricky Words. Students answer comprehension questions about stories in the Student Reader.

Skills Unit 10

Students learn the basic code spelling for the five long vowel sounds. Students are administered a cumulative end-of-year assessment.

Knowledge Domain 1

Fables and Stories

Students are introduced to fables and stories, increase vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, and become familiar with the key elements of a story.

Number of Lessons: 10

Knowledge Domain 2

The Human Body

Students are introduced to the systems of the human body, care of the body, germs and disease, vaccines, and keys to good health.

Number of Lessons: 10

Knowledge Domain 3

Different Lands, Similar Stories

Students encounter cultures from around the world as they explore the ways in which folktales from different lands treat similar themes or characters.

Number of Lessons: 9

Knowledge Domain 4

Early World Civilizations

Students explore Mesopotamia and Egypt and learn about the importance of rivers, farming, writing, laws, art, and beliefs.

Number of Lessons: 16

Knowledge Domain 5

Early American Civilizations

Students compare and contrast key features of the early civilizations of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca, and explore the development of cities.

Number of Lessons: 11

Knowledge Domain 6

Astronomy

In this introduction to the solar system, students learn about Earth in relation to the moon, other planets, the sun, and the stars.

Number of Lessons: 9

Knowledge Domain 7

The History of the Earth

Students learn about the geographical features of Earth’s surface, the layers of the earth, rocks and minerals, volcanoes, geysers, fossils, and dinosaurs.

Number of Lessons: 8

Knowledge Domain 8

Animals and Habitats

Students focus on the interconnectedness of living things as they learn what a habitat is and explore specific types of habitats.

Number of Lessons: 9

Knowledge Domain 9

Fairy Tales

Students learn about the Brothers Grimm, identify common elements of fairy tales, make interpretations, and compare and contrast different tales.

Number of Lessons: 9

Knowledge Domain 10

A New Nation: American Independence

Students are introduced to important historical figures and events in the story of how the 13 colonies became an independent nation.

Number of Lessons: 12

Knowledge Domain 11

Frontier Explorers

Students are introduced to exploration of the American West, its key figures, and how colonists spread westward, including their interactions with native peoples.

Number of Lessons: 11

Skills Unit 1

Unit 1 provides a review of the sounds/spellings taught in the CKLA Kindergarten curriculum. Teachers administer the beginning-of-year assessment.

Skills Unit 2

Students read and write words with long vowel spellings and learn new Tricky Words. The unit also includes grammar lessons on nouns.

Skills Unit 3

Work continues on vowel sounds and their spellings. Grammar focus is on verbs and verb tense. Formal instruction in the writing process begins.

Skills Unit 4

Students work with /r/-controlled vowel sounds. Students practice segmenting two-syllable words. Adjectives are introduced as students practice descriptive writing.

Skills Unit 5

Students work with spelling alternatives for sounds. Students also learn to identify sentence types. They plan, draft, and edit opinion letters.

Skills Unit 6

Students continue to work with several spelling alternatives for sounds. Students review nouns and pronouns. They plan, draft, and edit personal narratives.

Skills Unit 7

Students focus on spelling alternatives for sounds. Students plan, draft, and edit an informative/explanatory text. Students are administered an end-of-year assessment.

Knowledge Domain 1

Fairy Tales and Tall Tales

Students consider characteristic elements of fairy tales and tall tales and consider problems faced by the characters and lessons each story conveys.

Number of Lessons: 8

Knowledge Domain 2

Early Asian Civilizations

Students are introduced to Asia, specifically India and China. In addition, students are introduced to related folktales and poetry.

Number of Lessons: 14

Knowledge Domain 3

Ancient Greek Civilization

Students explore the civilization of ancient Greece, which lives on in many ways—in our language, government, art, architecture, the Olympics, and more.

Number of Lessons: 12

Knowledge Domain 4

Greek Myths

Building on the Ancient Greek Civilization domain, students explore common characteristics and story elements of several well-known Greek myths and mythical characters.

Number of Lessons: 10

Knowledge Domain 5

The War of 1812

Students are introduced to major figures and events in the War of 1812, sometimes called America’s “second war for independence.”

Number of Lessons: 8

Knowledge Domain 6

Cycles in Nature

Students are introduced to natural cycles that make life on Earth possible, such as seasonal cycles, life cycles, and the water cycle.

Number of Lessons: 9

Knowledge Domain 7

Westward Expansion

Students are introduced to an important period in the history of the United States—the time of westward expansion during the 1800s.

Number of Lessons: 9

Knowledge Domain 8

Insects

Students learn about the helpful and harmful characteristics of insects, insect life cycles, and social insects such as bees and ants.

Number of Lessons: 8

Knowledge Domain 9

The U.S. Civil War

Students learn about the controversy between the North and the South over slavery and about key historical figures during that time.

Number of Lessons: 11

Knowledge Domain 10

Human Body: Building Blocks and Nutrition

Students learn about the human body, including body systems, good nutrition, keys to good health, and the advances in microbiology made by Anton van Leeuwenhoek.

Number of Lessons: 9

Knowledge Domain 11

Immigration

Students explore the idea of e pluribus unum and the importance of immigration in the history of the United States.

Number of Lessons: 10

Women in early 20th-century clothing march with signs for voting rights and justice in front of a yellow bus labeled "Cleveland Ave.," making history that can inspire lessons in a K–2 language arts curriculum.

Knowledge Domain 12

Fighting for a Cause

Students explore the connection between ideas and actions, and see how people can do extraordinary things to change the dominant ideas and actions of an entire nation.

Number of Lessons: 9

Un contorno simplificado de un gato saltando para atrapar una mariposa, sobre un fondo verde con varias ilustraciones relacionadas con gatos y palabras como "saltar" y "leche".

Skills Unit 1

Sound-spellings with an emphasis on consonant sounds, one- and two-syllable words, and Tricky Words are reviewed. The beginning-of-year assessment is administered.

Ilustración de un animal verde sobre un fondo verde con varios objetos delineados como una cama, un conejo, una nube y sonidos fonéticos.

Skills Unit 2

The unit focus is on various sound-spellings and words with one- and two-syllables. Students begin the writing process, writing narratives and opinions.

Fondo verde con el contorno blanco de un birrete de graduación en el centro, rodeado de varios garabatos educativos y relacionados con logros, como un trofeo, una cinta y una portería de fútbol.

Skills Unit 3

Practice with spelling alternatives continues. Grammar focuses on capitalization, quotation marks, ending punctuation, and common and proper nouns. Students write personal narratives.

Ilustración de un paisaje urbano con varios símbolos que incluyen un tren subterráneo, una panadería, la Estatua de la Libertad y carteles que dicen "ahora contratando" y "ciudad/ee" sobre un fondo verde.

Skills Unit 4

Students practice a range of spelling alternatives. Students practice persuasive writing as part of a friendly letter. Students learn more about nouns and verbs.

Skills Unit 5

Students practice chunking sounds as they read multisyllabic words. Grammar work includes adjectives, subjects, and predicates. Writing includes rewriting a story ending.

Skills Unit 6

Students review advanced phonics and grammar skills. Students are introduced to expository/report writing. Students take an end-of-year assessment.

Program components

The program includes instructional guidance and student materials for a year of instruction, with lessons and activities that keep students engaged every day.

Component

FORMAT

Knowledge Strand Teacher Guide

Knowledge Strand Teacher Guides contain Amplify CKLA’s cross-curricular read-alouds and application activities, all of which are standards-based to build mastery of content knowledge and literacy skills. There is one Teacher Guide per Knowledge Domain.

Print or digital

Knowledge classroom materials

Amplify CKLA includes oversized Flip Books and smaller Image Cards that bring each topic to life through vivid visuals.

Print or digital

Skills Strand Teacher Guide

Amplify CKLA Skills Strand Teacher Guides include comprehensive research-based instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, print concepts, the alphabetic principle, grammar, writing mechanics, comprehension, spelling, and other critical foundational literacy skills.

Print or digital

Hands-on Skills ancillaries

Dynamic classroom materials include student Chaining Folders, Small and Large Letter Cards, Spelling Cards, Sound Cards, Big Books, Vowel and Consonant Code Flip Books, Code Charts, and more.

Print or digital

Assessment and Remediation Guide

The unit-by-unit Assessment and Remediation Guide provides thousands of pages of activities for reteaching, differentiation, and additional practice.

Print or digital

Digital experience

The Amplify CKLA digital experience delivers ready-made, customizable, slides-based lesson presentations to enhance instruction and save time. Everything needed to plan and present high-quality, engaging early literacy instruction is in one convenient place.

Digital

Component

FORMAT

Knowledge Strand Activity Books

Knowledge Strand Activity Books provide students with the opportunity to deepen world and word knowledge by responding to text in a diversity of ways.

Print

Skills Strand Student Reader

Unique decodable Student Readers provide direct practice with just-learned sound-spelling patterns, using compelling stories and characters to integrate phonics and comprehension.

Print

Skills Strand Activity book

Skills Strand Activity Books support the program’s connected approach to reading and writing, providing ample opportunities to respond to text while building core skills.

Print

Digital experience

The Amplify CKLA digital experience delivers ready-made, customizable, slides-based lesson presentations to enhance instruction and save time. Everything needed to plan and present high-quality, engaging early literacy instruction is in one convenient place.

Digital

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Welcome, Salem-Keizer School District, to the next chapter in the Science of Reading, with Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is approved by the Oregon Department of Education. 

Truly built on the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA helps Oregon teachers implement the Oregon English Language Arts and Literacy Standards by translating the science of reading into manageable, engaging, and effective classroom practices. For more than a decade, Amplify CKLA has transformed classrooms nationwide with its intentional knowledge building and systematic skills instruction.

Scroll down to learn how CKLA is uniquely designed to help all your students make learning leaps in literacy.

Download CKLA Program Guide
An astronaut floats in space near the Moon, with a speech bubble displaying

Our approach

Improve outcomes with a program that’s built on a decade of research and meets the strongest ESSA Tier I criteria.

Diagram illustrating the Simple View of Reading model, depicting language comprehension and word recognition pathways converging into skilled reading, with processes becoming increasingly strategic and automatic—a foundational concept in literacy curriculum for elementary education.

Grounded in the Science of Reading

As the original Science of Reading program, Amplify CKLA puts research into action with explicit, systematic foundational skills instruction and a proven knowledge-building sequence. In collaboration with education experts and practitioners, we provide powerful resources that deliver real results.

Success stories

Background knowledge drives results

Amplify CKLA follows the Core Knowledge Sequence, a content-specific, cumulative, and coherent approach to knowledge building. This approach improves reading scores and closes achievement gaps by establishing a robust knowledge base that strengthens comprehension.

In Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition, we’ve enriched our Knowledge Sequence with a wider range of perspectives and high-quality texts in new and enhanced units.

See units and connections
An illustrated person in a yellow shirt looks at a colorful map of Puerto Rico. Above them are two educational posters about world geography and animals, integrating elements from the k–5 literacy curriculum to enhance learning experiences.
An infographic showing the steps to pronounce

Build foundational skills for long-term success.

Students progress from simple to complex skill development starting with phonological and phonemic awareness. Instruction in Grades K–2 explicitly teaches the 150 spellings for the 44 sounds of English, following an intentional progression to ensure student success.

In our 3rd Edition, we’ve added dedicated Grade 3 foundational skills instruction that can either support core lessons or function as an intervention, based on student needs.

Skills by year

Daily writing deepens learning.

Grounded in the Science of Writing—the research on how kids learn to write—instruction is explicit, daily, and woven into the curriculum’s rich content. It covers both transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition (organizing ideas into narratives) with high-impact activities like sentence-level combining and expanding, and pre-writing exercises. Writing and reading instruction are integrated so students simultaneously strengthen their communication skills, comprehension, and confidence.

See the Simple View of Writing
A child in a green shirt smiles while writing in a notebook at a classroom desk, engaged in their k–5 literacy curriculum, with another student visible in the background.
An open laptop displaying a children's story titled

High-quality, diverse texts

Amplify CKLA students are immersed in a variety of texts—complex read-alouds, decodable chapter books, trade books, and content-rich readers—that reflect varied experiences and connect to learning goals.

Readers are 100% decodable for Grades K–2, empowering students to directly apply what they’ve learned. Novel Study units for Grades 3–5 offer a mix of contemporary and classic literature, and Culminating Research Units in every grade include a set of authentic texts and trade books.

See Research Unit trade books

Reach all learners with differentiated support.

Scaffolds and challenges, developed in collaboration with education experts, make content accessible to every student—including multilingual and English learners. With strategies embedded right in the curriculum, teachers can deliver in-the-moment, individualized instruction to meet diverse student needs.

For a dedicated English language development program aligned to Amplify CKLA, explore Language Studio.

View embedded support
Children sit on the floor in a classroom, some raising their hands, smiling and engaged. The lively atmosphere reflects the effectiveness of the k–5 literacy curriculum being implemented.

What’s included with Amplify CKLA

The comprehensive resources in Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition support effective literacy instruction in every classroom.

Download CKLA Components Guide
Download CKLA Writing Brochure
Image of a laptop displaying an assessment report, surrounded by books about astronomy, an illustration of the moon, and a
Various educational materials, including textbooks, workbooks, a picture book, documents, and a laptop displaying a slide titled

Easy-to-use teacher materials

Amplify CKLA teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with the following print and digital resources:

  • Teacher Guides (K–5)
  • Assessment Guides (K–5)
  • Authentic texts and trade books (K–5)
  • Knowledge Image Cards (K–2)
  • Knowledge Flip Books (K–2, digital)
  • Ready-made and customizable Presentation Screens (K–5, digital)
  • Remediation and intervention resources (K–5)
  • On-demand professional development (K–5, digital)

Immersive Amplify CKLA student resources

Amplify CKLA students stay engaged with the following print and digital resources:

  • Decodable readers (K–2)
  • Student Readers and novels (3–5)
  • Student Activity Books (K–5)
  • Poet’s Journal (3–5)
  • eReaders (K–5, digital)
  • Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs (K–2, digital)
  • Skill-building practice games (K–5)
An open laptop displaying a poem and a person, alongside two educational booklets and a green butterfly, depicts the essence of a rich core knowledge language arts curriculum. The background includes simple graphic elements enhancing the scene.
A collection of six book covers including

Rich literary experiences

All the high-quality, diverse texts in Amplify CKLA connect to the curriculum, fostering your students’ curiosity and helping them learn to read with confidence.

  • Trade Book Collections (K–5) inspire student research in each grade’s Culminating Research Unit.
  • Classic and contemporary literature (3–5) delight students in Novel Study Units.
  • Increasingly complex Student Readers (K–5) develop students’ literacy across grades.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources engage students with fun, varied approaches that promote mastery and build independence.

  • Chaining Folders and Small Letter Cards (K)
  • Read-Aloud Big Books (K–1)
  • Large Letter Cards (K–2)
  • Sound Cards (K–2)
  • Image Cards (K–3)
  • Blending Picture Cards (K)
  • Consonant and Vowel Code Posters and Spelling Cards (1–2)
  • Sound Library (K–2, digital)
Image includes various vowel sounds and combinations on flashcards and worksheets, along with a playful illustrated mammal, all part of a comprehensive literacy curriculum for elementary students.
A laptop displays a student screen showing a quiz question about word usage, part of a literacy curriculum for elementary students. Behind it, a computer monitor shows an assessment report interface. Abstract decorative elements are in the background.

All-in-one digital platform

Our comprehensive platform simplifies your day-to-day tasks and makes it easier to plan and deliver lessons.

  • Ready-made and customizable Presentation Screens
  • Auto-scored digital assessments
  • Standards-based reporting
  • Assignable skill-building games
  • Sound Library
  • eReaders

Professional development

Move beyond traditional program training with Amplify’s digital PD Library, designed to fully support your shift to the Science of Reading and Amplify CKLA. Deepen your understanding with:

  • Program and planning resources
  • Model lesson videos from real classrooms
  • Guidance on using Amplify’s literacy suite to provide multi-tiered support
Two women are seated at a table with papers and a laptop. One woman is working on the literacy curriculum for elementary grades, while the other is smiling.
“Teachers love the ease of implementing the program, and students have fun while learning. Growth is evident in our data, and we have the support of Amplify experts who are available to answer questions and provide top-notch professional development.”

Bridget Vaughan, District K–8 Coordinator of ELA and Literacy

Quincy Public Schools, Massachusetts

Language Studio: Multilingual and English language learner support

Language Studio is Amplify CKLA’s dedicated K–5 program for multilingual and English language learners. Through daily 30-minute lessons, it strengthens reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills while reinforcing core instruction. This tailored support empowers students to confidently access grade-level content as they develop academic English.

A young girl immerses herself in the science of reading at a classroom desk, surrounded by peers and diverse educational materials.

Curriculum Maps

Amplify CKLA serves

150,000+

Classrooms

4,000,000+

Students

50

U.S. States and D.C.

Amplify Caminos program overview

¡El futuro es bilingüe! | The future is bilingual!

Amplify Caminos is a research-based core curriculum essential for Spanish literacy and grounded in the Science of Reading.

View our Caminos Program Guide to find our approach to foundational skills by year, skills practice with student readers and writing, and how Caminos supports teachers meeting the needs of all students with embedded differentiation.

Download Caminos Program Guide

Amplify Caminos offers a robust and authentic elementary Spanish language arts program for grades K–5 that promotes
biliteracy and helps teachers inspire students as they become confident readers, writers, and thinkers in Spanish.

Amplify Caminos offers a robust and authentic elementary Spanish language arts program for grades K–5 that promotes
biliteracy and helps teachers inspire students as they become confident readers, writers, and thinkers in Spanish.

View the video below to learn more about Amplify Caminos. 

Ilustración de un niño alegre participando en el programa de lectura de CKLA, jugando fútbol junto a un libro abierto, con una tortuga, un loro y un exuberante paisaje tropical rodeándolos. La palabra "

Using the program’s two strands, Caminos Conocimiento and Caminos Lectoescritura, teachers develop student
comprehension in Spanish through a program rich in background knowledge and foundational skills activities. The texts students encounter include authentic Spanish literature that honor Spanish language development and build diverse content knowledge in social studies, science, literature, and the arts.

Amplify Caminos is designed to support a variety of bilingual and dual language instructional models to meet your student’s biliteracy needs. Combined with its English language partner, Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA), Amplify Caminos provides a comprehensive biliteracy solution.

Illustration of the amplify caminos language comprehension model, featuring step-by-step progression from simple word recognition to skilled reading, with educational graphics and text excerpts.

Amplify Caminos delivers rich, authentic experiences.

With a robust digital experience and expanding library of online materials, Amplify Caminos provides everything needed to support, challenge, and engage your students. From digital Teacher Guides to lesson projectables, we provide all the tools needed to successfully deliver every lesson.

How Amplify Caminos works with Amplify CKLA

Through direct instruction, both Amplify Caminos and Amplify CKLA develop reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in their respective languages. Together, the programs empower educators to effectively foster biliteracy with:

  • Intentional knowledge building that connects topics throughout the program.
  • Increased metalinguistic awareness from students exploring the similarities and differences in each language while strengthening their knowledge across both.
  • Equitable instruction using high-quality Spanish and English decodable readers that provide students with opportunities to apply skills learned, and foster each students’ growing competency in reading.
“There were other programs that claimed to be [based on the] Science of Reading, but no other vendor provided the suite of products together. We did not want to be picking from here, picking from there. [Amplify’s literacy suite] met our needs, because it aligned and provided us the best suite of products, hands down.”

Nicole Peterson, Principal, Midway Middle School

Sampson County Schools, North Carolina

Demo Access

Explore the CKLA Teacher Digital Resources

First, watch the quick navigation video to the right. Then, follow the directions below.

  • Go to: learning.amplify.com or click the Access CKLA Teacher Digital button below
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: t1.salem_keizer_3e_cam@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-salem_keizer_3e_cam
  • Click the CKLA button
  • Select your desired grade level from the Program drop down
Access CKLA Teacher Digital

Follow the directions below to access the Student Resource Site:

  • Go to: learning.amplify.com or click the Access CKLA Student Digital button below
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: s1.salem_keizer_3e_cam@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-salem_keizer_3e_cam
  • From the main page, click the backpack in the top right corner.
  • Click on the grade level to select your desired grade.
Access CKLA Student Digital

Welcome, San Francisco Reviewers!

To view this protected page, enter the password below:



Remote & hybrid learning

Rich, engaging content is at the center of Amplify CKLA instruction. Students build subject area knowledge in history, science, literature, and the arts by learning to read and write. We have built new resources to make our high-quality preK–5 program easy to use in remote or hybrid settings during the 2020–2021 school year.

Supporting back to school 2021–2022

As students return to school this fall, Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) will be offering resources to help you flexibly transition from the physical classroom to at-home learning as needed. This includes a new digital Hub for students to access videos, readers, and an interactive Vocab App from anywhere, and the Foundational Skills Boost to help students fill in gaps from spring 2020.

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) will be offering resources to help you flexibly transition from the physical classroom to at-home learning as needed. This includes a new digital Hub for students to access videos, readers, and an interactive Vocab App from anywhere, and the Foundational Skills Boost to help students fill in gaps from spring 2020.

Foundational Skills Boost website

To address foundational skills instruction missed during COVID-19 school closures, we are providing a free resource for educators and parents. This new website includes video-based instruction for students in Grades 1–3, covering the last nine weeks of the previous school year to give students the boost they need. The video-based, self-guided lessons pull from Amplify CKLA instructional resources and are designed for students to complete independently, either at home or in the classroom. Access it here!

The site features:

  • Video lessons targeting phonemic awareness and phonics
  • Decodable readers for practice
  • Optional teacher-led small group activities
  • Family resources for additional practice
  • A planner for educators and caregivers to track students’ progress.

Scope and Sequences: These documents show the scope and sequence of the Foundational Skills Boost.

These documents show how Foundational Skills Boost aligns with the Amplify CKLA grade-level curriculum. If you’re using Amplify CKLA, download the PDFs below to use with Foundational Skills Boost.

Back-to-school instructional recommendations

  • Begin grade-level instruction with Unit 1 in every grade, utilizing recommended instructional minutes.
  • In grades 1–3, CKLA instruction begins with review from the previous year.
  • For grades 4–5, you may choose the optional novel guide unit to start the school year.
  • For grades 1–3, we recommend you schedule an additional 30-minute instructional block for unfinished foundational skills instruction from spring 2020. We will offer the Foundational Skills Boost for use during this block.

New back-to-school features for remote and hybrid learning

Recorded daily Read-Alouds

Teachers and students will have access to video recordings of all K–2 Knowledge Read-Alouds with pictures from the Flip Books.

Digital Hub for students and teachers

Students can now access materials that support K–5 instruction from anywhere, including student Readers in an audio-enabled eReader. Teachers will find multimedia resources on the Hub and digital versions of all instructional components on the Teacher Resource Site.

Parent access

Parents will now have access to important student resources via the digital Hub. We will have a parent login available and a letter in both English and Spanish that explains how to use the resources.

Skills at home

Grade-level foundational skills guidance for parents includes instructions and materials to teach and practice grade-level phonics at home. Resources include sound videos, Readers, and a how-to video with editable instructions that teachers can customize to meet individual classroom needs.

How to use Amplify CKLA during remote learning

We’ve developed a variety of resources to ensure you have the tools you need to support students in developing foundational skills and building background knowledge—no matter where learning is happening. On the following pages, you’ll find information on using Amplify CKLA for extended periods of remote learning, both in situations where students have access to technology and those where technology is limited.

For remote learning with access to technology at home, we recommend teacher-led virtual lessons for daily Skills Strand lessons in K–2 and daily lessons in 3–5, while students access application activities, recorded Knowledge Strand Read-Alouds, and the Foundational Skills Boost online. In the Student Hub, students will have access to K–2 Skills Strand components such as student Readers and the Sound Library, K–2 Knowledge components like Knowledge Builders, and the 3–5 Vocab App.

Grade level Instructional resources
Kindergarten
  • Skills units: Teacher-led instruction, digital Hub (Sound Library and Readers starting in Unit 6)
  • Knowledge domains: digital Hub (Knowledge Builder video) and recorded daily Read-Alouds
  • Amplify Reading for independent, student-driven skill Practice
Grades 1–2
  • Foundational Skills Boost website for daily lessons
  • Skills units: Teacher-led instruction, Student Hub (Sound Library and student Reader), Activity Books
  • Knowledge domains: Student Hub (Knowledge Builder video), recorded daily Read-Alouds, Activity Books (Word documents)
  • Amplify Reading for independent, student-driven skill Practice
Grade 3
  • Foundational Skills Boost website for daily lessons
  • Units: Teacher-led instruction, Student Hub (Readers, Vocab App), Activity Books (Word documents)
  • Amplify Reading for independent, student-driven skill practice
Grades 4–5
  • Units: Teacher-led instruction, Student Hub (Readers, Vocab App), Activity Books (Word documents)
  • Novel guides: Optional
  • Amplify Reading for independent, student-driven skill practice

Amplify CKLA’s resources ensure students can continue learning at home. If students have limited access to technology, Activity Books and student Readers can be sent home with editable family letters. If students have access to a smartphone, K–2 Knowledge Strand recorded Read-Alouds are mobile friendly, as are Student Readers and other multimedia on the Hub.

Grades K–2 sample daily schedule

Foundational skills lesson

Teacher-led virtual Skills lesson on Zoom or a similar platform

Independent skills practice

Students use the Hub to practice sound-spellings in the eReader, using the audio as additional support. Then, they complete an activity page.

Independent Knowledge Read-Aloud

Students engage with the daily recorded Read-Aloud

Knowledge discussion and application

Teacher-led virtual knowledge discussion and application

Foundational Skills Boost

For students in grades 1–2, we recommend setting aside an additional 30 minutes for Foundational Skills Boost lessons covering unfinished instruction from the previous year. Foundational Skills Boost lessons are video modules that students can complete on their own at home.

laptop icon

Grades 3–5 sample daily schedule

Young girl wearing glasses and pink headphones looks at a laptop screen while sitting at a desk in a classroom, participating in a Remote Learning Language Arts Program.

Daily lesson and discussion

Teacher-led virtual lesson on Zoom or a similar platform

Reading and writing application

Students use the Hub to access the eReader, using the audio as additional support. Students complete daily application activities online.

Independent vocabulary practice

Students work on vocabulary in the Vocab App on the Hub.

Optional novel study (grades 4–5)

Teacher-led virtual discussion in conjunction with independent reading and writing

Foundational Skills Boost

For students in grade 3, we recommend setting aside an additional 30 minutes for Foundational Skills Boost lessons covering unfinished instruction from the previous year. Foundational Skills Boost lessons are video modules that students can complete on their own at home.

laptop icon

Resources for remote learning with limited student access to technology

Grade level Instructional resources
Kindergarten
  • Skills units: Activity Books that include home support for families
  • Knowledge domains: Mobile-friendly recorded daily Read-Alouds
Grades 1–2
  • Skills units: Student Readers, Activity Books that include home support for families
  • Knowledge domains: Mobile-friendly recorded daily Read-Alouds
  • Foundational Skills Boost: Take-home support
Grade 3
  • Student Readers, Activity Books for independent practice
  • Foundational Skills Boost: Take-home support
Grades 4–5
  • Student Readers, Activity Books for independent practice
  • Optional: Novel guides

How to use Amplify CKLA during hybrid learning

We know that back to school will look different for every district. You may be considering staggered schedules or alternating between remote and in-person days. Amplify CKLA’s resources for hybrid learning ensure that students continue to develop critical foundational skills both in the classroom and at home.

Resources for hybrid learning with student access to technology

Grade level Remote days In-person days
Kindergarten
  • Skills Strand in the Hub: Independent activities and practice with Student Readers (starting with Unit 6) and Sound Library
  • Knowledge Strand: Daily recorded Read-Aloud
  • Digital or print activity pages
  • Amplify Reading for independent, student-driven skill practice
  • Skills Strand units: Daily lessons
  • Knowledge Strand domains: Daily lessons
Grades 1–2
  • Foundational Skills Boost module
  • Skills Strand in the Hub: Independent activities and practice with student Readers (starting with Unit 6) and Sound Library
  • Knowledge Strand: Daily recorded Read-Aloud
  • Digital or print activity pages
  • Amplify Reading for independent, student-driven skill practice
  • Skills units: Daily lessons
  • Knowledge domains: Daily lessons
Grade 3
  • Foundational Skills Boost module
  • Student Hub: Student Reader, Vocab App
  • Digital or print activity pages
  • Amplify Reading for independent, student-driven skill practice
  • Units: Daily lessons
Grades 4–5
  • Student Hub: Student Reader, Vocab App
  • Digital or print activity pages
  • Novel guide independent reading and writing
  • Amplify Reading for independent, student-driven skill practice
  • Units: Daily lessons
  • Novel guide discussion

We understand that access to technology is a significant barrier for many of our students. Amplify CKLA’s resources ensure students are able to continue to develop their skills in any learning environment. Following is a plan for maximizing both in-person and remote days when students have limited access to technology.

Grade level Remote days In-person days
Kindergarten
  • Student Readers (starting in Unit 6)
  • Skills Activity Books with take-home support
  • Daily recorded Read-Aloud (mobile friendly)
  • Knowledge Activity Books
  • Skills units: Daily lessons
  • Knowledge domains: Daily lessons
Grades 1–2
  • Student Readers
  • Skills Activity Books with take-home support
  • Daily recorded Read-Aloud (mobile friendly)
  • Knowledge Activity Books
  • Skills units: Daily lessons
  • Knowledge domains: Daily lessons
Grade 3
  • Foundational Skills Boost: Take-home support
  • Student Readers
  • Activity Books
  • Foundational Skills Boost
    modules
  • Units: Daily lessons
Grades 4–5
  • Student Readers
  • Activity Books
  • Novel guide independent reading and writing
  • Units: Daily lessons
  • Novel guide discussion

Committed to reading equity

We believe that all students have the right to read complex texts and engage in rich classroom discussions. They should also see themselves reflected and experience new worlds through reading.

This commitment guides our text selection, unique artwork, and dedication to reaching every student where they are.

A student with curly hair reads a book in a classroom, while other students are visible in the background, sitting at desks.

Text selection

Texts in the Amplify ELA curriculum cover a wide range of topics, themes, and genres, with differentiated supports that ensure that all students can work through each reading and lesson. Taken as a whole, the texts show students a diverse picture of the world, while fostering a lifelong love of reading.

Illustration of diverse people and landscapes, featuring native designs, botanical elements, and a silhouetted airplane against a script background.
A painted scene shows a blue sky with scattered white dots resembling stars and red clouds, against a backdrop of dark and light color gradients.

In the Liberty & Equality unit, students reflect on the harrowing journeys and avenues to freedom that enslaved African-Americans were forced to forge.

Character & Conflict

Students read A Raisin in the Sun, a play that focuses on the impact of poverty and racial tensions on family relationships and identity within an African-American family.

Summer of the Mariposas

In the Summer of the Mariposas unit, students dive into a retelling of the Odyssey through a contemporary Hispanic lens as they explore sibling and extended-family relationships.

A pencil sketch of an airplane is shown on a textured background with orange and yellow watercolor paint.

In the Perspectives and Narrative unit, students explore a coming of age moment for an adolescent daughter of immigrant parents.

Red Scarf Girl

In the Red Scarf Girl and Narrative unit, students learn about a key historic moment in Asian and world history, while making connections to relatable themes like authority figures imposing rules on children, and family and peer loyalties standing at odds.

Mysteries & Investigations

In the Mysteries & Investigations unit, many of the texts present an ethnically and culturally diverse group of characters, including many pre-teen or teen protagonists rebelling against authority, navigating their relationships with their peers and families, and figuring out their unique identities.

Created with diverse perspectives

With our new illustrations, time spent in our classrooms will feel relevant and relatable to every student. We’ve brought together an art team with unique perspectives and visual styles so that their diversity can shine along with the
complex texts in our curriculum, and illuminate their relationship with our literature. Everyone deserves to see themselves as the hero of a story. It is our hope that our students will find themselves within our program, and will be ever more curious in their learning, and engaged in their reading.

https://youtu.be/_FLV_Le7Zoc
A person sits at a desk with art supplies, flowers, and plants, speaking on camera. An orange play button overlays the image, indicating a video. A colorful artwork hangs on the wall behind them.
Paige Womack

Dive into the world of Mysteries &
Investigations with Dr. Womack,
the illustrator who may have once
become a scientist…

A person sits on a couch in a room decorated with colorful artwork and a wooden sculpture; a play button icon is overlaid at the center.
Tre McClendon

Meet Tre, a seeker and traveller that became homies Fredrick Douglass through illustrating his narrative for our program…

A woman with long dark hair in a red top sits indoors near a window with yellow flowers and colorful decorations; a play button overlay is at the center.
Jackie Pierson

There’s no one way to be a maker, and Jackie certainly has made a lot of things. Check out the weird and mysterious world of her miniatures…

A person with curly hair and hoop earrings speaks indoors, with colorful posters and decorations visible in the background. An orange play button overlays the image.
Elizabeth Dantzler

She’s been drawing characters and comics ever since middle school. Now see the drama of Edel’s work in the mythos of the Greeks…

A woman stands in front of a wall covered with colorful artwork. An orange play button icon is overlaid on the center of the image.
Caroline Hadilaksono

Travel through countries and narratives with Caroline, as she shares her delicate watercolors for illustrating the hero’s journey…

A man with short brown hair and a beard sits at a desk near a window, with artwork displayed on the wall behind him. An orange play button is centered over the image.
Patrick Mahony

The haunting work that Patrick creates will leave you feeling a sense of melancholy and longing, but not without hope for the future…

A woman in a red blazer sits in an office with open books and art prints on the wall. An orange play button is overlaid in the center of the image.
Edel Ferri

She’s been drawing characters and comics ever since middle school. Now see the drama of Edel’s work in the mythos of the Greeks…

A man in a light blue shirt speaks while seated in a creative workspace with colorful artwork and sketches displayed on the wall behind him.
Eddie Pena

As a latino American, Eddie is an illustrator, a father, and a teacher. He is working in collaboration with Poetry in America to use his heritage as inspiration…

A woman sits in front of a wall covered with colorful educational posters, partially obscured by a large play button icon in the center.
Tory Novikova

Listen to a word from Tory, the Art Director at Amplify, on how the vision
was set for the project and how she brought the team together that would get to illustrate ELA…

Fanart

Here is a library of all the inspiring art that our beloved fans have submitted for our program. Do you or your students have a favorite literary character from our program? Send us your fanart to be shared with our community here!

Enter contest
A collage of various portrait illustrations and drawings, including stylized faces, historical figures, animals, and astronauts, in both color and black and white.

Meet the Illustrator Edel Ferri

We believe that all students have the right to read complex texts and engage in rich classroom discussions. They should also see themselves reflected and experience new worlds through reading.

This commitment guides our text selection, unique artwork, and dedication to reaching every student where they are.

A woman in a red blazer and floral blouse speaking during an interview, with illustrations and photos in background. play button icon overlay.
Young woman in a red blazer smiling at camera, holding a purple tumbler, seated at a desk with sketches on the wall behind her.

What is your name and pronoun?
Edel, she/her

What would we never be able to know about you, just by looking at you?
I have an extensive knowledge of reef aquariums. I also do a really good Jerry Seinfeld impression.

Where are you from?
I currently live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Throughout my life I’ve found myself constantly drifting between New York and New Jersey. I would spend many summers in the city as a child, as well as swimming and building sandcastles on the Jersey shore.

What is illustration?
Hm! The term itself is pretty expansive and ever changing, so this is a tough one. On a personal level, illustration is what happens when art meets narrative. It can take many forms: comics, editorial, storyboarding.

How does that differ from “fine art”?
Oof. I could write an entire book on this. For the sake of brevity, I would say that my main take would be that the line between illustration years that the terms could be interchangeable at this point.

Were you making art as a kid?
I’ve been drawing as long as I could hold a pencil in my hand. In many ways it was an escape, thinking up characters in my head, creating worlds where anything was possible. I continue to do that to this day.

Was your environment—your family, friends, teachers—supportive of your interest in art?
Growing up, I was mostly told to stop by many adults and even some of my peers, but I’m glad I didn’t. I am very thankful to have had close friends and parents that understood that art is what made me feel whole, and encouraged me to continue.

Illustration of a stylized white hand casting a spider web, followed by an animated warrior character wielding a spear.

The illustrating of: The Space Race

What is this unit about?
This unit has absolutely revived that wonder and fascination in me. It’s about the technological competition that took place between two superpowers, the United States and the USSR, to get human beings into space. There’s something so inspiring about the space race, ethics; the fact that our different societies were constantly looking to the future with such hope. That all feels so distant now.

How did you relate to the subject matter?
When I was a kid I was extremely fascinated by astronomy, I remember in particular buying an
atlas-sized book on nebulae, thinking that they were the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

A hand holds a postcard reading "Greetings from Mars" with an image of a Mars rover on a rocky surface; simple sky elements are in the background.
Four illustrated panels show animals in space helmets floating progressively farther from a broken spaceship, ending with them drifting in open space against a starry background.
A sequence of four images shows a satellite with antennas orbiting Earth, progressing from a rough sketch to a detailed, colored rendering.

Lleve el mundo a los estudiantes con un plan de estudios de alfabetización comprobado de PreK a 5.º grado

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) es el plan de estudios líder en alfabetización temprana basado en la Ciencia de la lectura. Mediante la combinación del desarrollo de conocimientos y de destrezas fundamentales a partir de la investigación, nuestra instrucción orienta a los educadores en el desarrollo de lectores, escritores y pensadores capaces.
Con una poderosa plataforma en línea y un plan de estudios paralelo de lengua y literatura en español, Amplify CKLA ofrece una solución integral para educadores y estudiantes de PreK a 5.º grado. For English version, please click here.

Solicitar muestras

Los resultados son fruto del conocimiento previo

El plan de estudios de alfabetización de Amplify CKLA de PreK a 5.º grado equipa a los estudiantes con un rico conocimiento que se construye intencionalmente para inspirar curiosidad e impulsar resultados. Explore las investigaciónes que revelan la eficacia del plan de estudios basado en el conocimiento, así como el logro de Amplify CKLA como intervención educativa de conformidad con la ESSA (nivel 1 de evidencia fuerte).

Amplify CKLA serves

38,000+

Salones de clase

2,700,000+

Estudiantes

50

Estados de EE. UU. y D.C.

Revisado de forma independiente y rigurosa

Amplify CKLA se encuentra entre los pocos planes de estudio que es tanto reconocido por la campaña Knowledge Matters (por su excelencia en construir conocimiento intencionalmente) y como calificado verde en EdReports, obteniendo puntuaciones verdes en todos los criterios.

Leer la reseña en EdReports

Ilustración que muestra una "campaña de alfabetización temprana" con niños participando en actividades educativas y de lectura en diferentes carteles.

Nuestro enfoque

Basado en la Ciencia de la lectura y siguiendo el principio de Core Knowledge, el plan de estudios Amplify CKLA para PreK a 5.º grado combina conocimientos de contenido ricos y diversos en historia, ciencias, literatura y artes con una instrucción sistemática de destrezas fundamentales basada en la investigación.

Basado en la Ciencia de la lectura

Como la primera casa editorial en crear un plan de estudios basado en la Ciencia de la lectura, ponemos la investigación en acción con una instrucción explícita y sistemática de destrezas fundamentales junto con una secuencia comprobada de construcción de conocimientos. En colaboración con expertos y profesionales de la educación, proporcionamos recursos poderosos que generan resultados reales. Explore nuestras historias de éxito de Ciencia de la lectura.

Desarrolla destrezas fundamentales con instrucción explícita y sistemática

El alcance y la secuencia basados en la investigación de Amplify CKLA progresan desde el desarrollo de destrezas simples hasta el más complejo, comenzando con la conciencia fonológica y fonémica. La instrucción le guía en la enseñanza explícita de las 150 ortografías de los 44 sonidos del inglés, con una progresión intencional y una revisión de las destrezas para preparar a sus estudiantes para el éxito.

Adopta una metodología demostrada de adquisición de conocimientos

Siguiendo la Core Knowledge Sequence, un enfoque coherente, acumulativo y de contenido específico para desarrollar conocimientos, los estudiantes profundizan y hacen conexiones entre áreas de contenido para construir una base de conocimientos sólida que les permita comprender textos complejos. Vea cómo se ha demostrado que el plan de estudios Core Knowledge mejora los puntajes de lectura y elimina las brechas en el rendimiento.

Creado en colaboración con la Core Knowledge Foundation

Amplify CKLA es el líder en materiales educativos de alta calidad para lengua y literatura de primaria, creado en colaboración con la Core Knowledge Foundation para ayudar a los estudiantes a desarrollar con eficacia un conocimiento profundo del contenido y destrezas fundamentales.

CONOCER MÁS SOBRE LA CORE KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION

Cultivar la alfabetización bilingüe con programas paralelos en inglés y español

Amplify Caminos es el compañero perfecto en lengua y literatura del idioma español para Amplify CKLA. Los programas alineados combinan un rico conocimiento del contenido con una instrucción sistemática de destrezas fundamentales basada en la Ciencia de la lectura que sigue los principios de alfabetización bilingüe, y respalda múltiples modelos de enseñanza.

CONOCER MÁS SOBRE AMPLIFY CAMINOS

Estudio de eficacia de Amplify CKLA

Evidencia de conformidad con la ESSA (nivel 1): la adquisición de
conocimientos con Amplify CKLA mejora los logros.

Descargar ahora

Qué se incluye

El programa proporciona atractivos materiales impresos y multimedia diseñados para construir una base sólida y rica en lectoescritura en todos los salones de clase.

CoreELD y complementos

Materiales de alta calidad para los maestros

Los maestros de Amplify CKLA brindan instrucción de manera eficaz con recursos impresos y digitales, que incluyen:

  • Guías para el maestro con diferenciación integrada.
  • Evaluaciones formales e informales.
  • Diapositivas de lecciones listas para usar y personalizables.
  • Libros comerciales y Guías literarias.
  • Recursos docentes y desarrollo profesional a pedido.

Recursos inmersivos para estudiantes

Los estudiantes de Amplify CKLA se mantienen interesados con una amplia gama de recursos impresos y digitales, que incluyen:

  • Descodificables originales y Libros grandes de lectura en voz alta (K a 2.º grado), Libros de lectura (3.er a 5.º grados) y libros comerciales (K a 5.º grado).
  • Cuadernos de actividades para estudiantes con evaluaciones integradas (K a 5.º grado).
  • Unidades de investigación para investigaciones independientes desarrollados en torno a un libro comercial (K a 5.º grado).
  • Diario del poeta y Diario del escritor (libros de lectura con espacio para escribir para 4.º y 5.º grados).
  • Misiones de conocimiento para apoyar el aprendizaje inmersivo basado en problemas en los grados 3.º a 5.º.

Materiales prácticos de fonética

La fonética multisensorial y los recursos de destrezas fundamentales ayudan a los estudiantes a practicar destrezas clave utilizando enfoques divertidos y variados que desarrollan la independencia.

  • Carpetas para la práctica de ortografía (K).
  • Tarjetas de letras (K a 2.º grado).
  • Tarjetas de sílabas (K a 2.º grado).
  • Tarjetas de imágenes (K a 3.er grado).
  • Tarjetas de combinación de imágenes (K).
  • Rotafolios de códigos de consonantes y vocales (1.er y 2.º grados).
  • Biblioteca de sonido digital exclusiva.

Experiencia digital robusta

Los recursos para maestros y estudiantes de Amplify CKLA están disponibles a través de una plataforma de experiencia digital que mejora la instrucción y le ahorra tiempo. Con todo lo que necesita en un solo lugar, puede planificar lecciones, presentar contenido y revisar el trabajo de los estudiantes de manera eficaz.

  • Presentaciones de lecciones con diapositivas listas para usar y personalizables.
  • Herramienta dinámica para estudiantes con revisión en vivo.
  • Experiencia interactiva y amigable para los estudiantes.
  • Integración LMS.
  • Videos animados de Desarrollo de conocimiento
  • Lecturas en voz alta grabadas.
  • Sitio web de desarrollo profesional.
  • Apoyo al programa en tiempo real por correo electrónico, chat en vivo y teléfono.

Programa para estudiantes del idioma inglés

Language Studio, diseñado para Amplify CKLA, brinda instrucción diaria alineada con WIDA para que los estudiantes del idioma inglés profundicen su inglés académico.

Programa de exploración de escritura

Writing Studio, un complemento único para Amplify CKLA, ofrece una inmersión profunda en la redacción de información, narrativa y opinión para formar escritores fuertes y apasionados.

Covers of four "Writing Studio Teacher Guide" books for different grades, featuring educational icons in orange, purple, blue, and teal color schemes.
Todo los materiales

Explore otros programas basados en la Ciencia de la lectura

Todos los programas de nuestro paquete de alfabetización están diseñados para que se respalden y complementen entre sí. Aprenda más sobre nuestros programas relacionados:

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Language Studio, an English Learners companion to the Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® curriculum, recognized by WIDA Prime V2

Language Studio is a supplemental companion program to Amplify’s Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA™) elementary reading curriculum that is currently being used in thousands of schools across the country.

Language Studio was created to reflect the importance of deep, sustained development of background knowledge and connected vocabulary for English learners. The program provides thirty minutes of daily English Language Development instruction that can be delivered flexibly by primary classroom teachers and dedicated ESL teachers. Pulling from research-based principles to build academic language, Language Studio supports English Learners by differentiating instruction across five English proficiency levels.

WIDA is a consortium of more than 30 states dedicated to advancing academic language development and achievement of English Learners. The WIDA PRIME V2 correlation tool allows educators to make informed decisions on instructional materials by determining whether they meet WIDA Standards. The standards include scaffolding supports for students, linguistically and developmentally appropriate grade-level content, and opportunities for higher order thinking skills. Language Studio’s review indicates that it meets each and every one of the standards.

“At Amplify, we are committed to providing groundbreaking literacy and language offerings built on evidence. Language Studio is a unique approach that focuses on teaching language skills through content based instruction. We are pleased that the quality of our work is reflected in the WIDA Prime V2 correlation,” said Larry Berger, Amplify’s Chief Executive Officer.

About Amplify

Amplify’s digital products for English language arts, math, and science are leading the way in data-driven instruction and setting the standard for next-generation curriculum. A full suite of proven early literacy products helps build strong foundations for student achievement. Amplify has brought mobile assessments, instructional analytics, and riveting, rigorous curriculum to thousands of schools. To date, Amplify has supported more than 200,000 educators and 3 million students in all 50 states. For more information, please visit www.amplify.com.

Contact: media@amplify.com

More News

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Amplify’s research-backed, curiosity-driven math program receives all-green scores across all three EdReport gateways

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Slow but steady progress: new Amplify data show why middle-of-year literacy screening matters 

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See All News

Welcome, Tennessee educators!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is the Tennessee program built on the Science of Reading research. Using a fundamentally different approach to language arts, CKLA sequences deep content knowledge with research-based foundational skills.

Children attentively watch something; one child wears a blue shirt and others are visible in the background. Illustrations include reading, a city with a bridge, and a figure resembling Poseidon.

High quality instructional materials

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) has been approved by the state of Tennessee.

Outline map of tennessee with the state name superimposed in a simple font.

All-green on EdReports

EdReports, an independent curriculum review nonprofit, rates curriculum on three gateways: Text Quality, Building Knowledge, and Usability. Amplify CKLA earned a green rating in all three.

Read the review on EdReports.

Illustration of a child dressed as a superhero surrounded by three colorful children's books titled "the green fern zoo," "CKLA fables," and an educational game interface.

Science of Reading

Tennessee has an initiative to get 75 percent of the state’s third graders proficient by 2025. This Science of Reading toolkit will provide some insight into the research behind the Science of Reading and tools to help you support your students as they become proficient readers.

Imagen de un conjunto de herramientas titulado "La ciencia de la lectura" con el texto "Cinco conocimientos que puedes empezar a utilizar hoy". Una ilustración muestra a una niña sosteniendo cintas etiquetadas con estrategias de lectura.

Science of Reading

Promotional graphic for "science of reading: the podcast" featuring text alongside colorful, diagonal lines with education-related words.

Science of Reading

Case study

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Read Impact Brochure

Program overview

Amplify CKLA inspires curiosity and drives results, empowering all students with rich background knowledge. See what schools are saying about our knowledge-based curriculum.

Background Knowledge drives results for Tennessee students

Our approach to building background knowledge is based on three pillars often overlooked in other curricula. It is:

  • Content-specific.
    Clearly-outlined content objectives are specific and support the development of knowledge in history, science, literature, culture, and the arts.
  • Cumulative.
    Topics and vocabulary connect within and across grades, allowing students to extend knowledge and revisit topics in increasing depth in later grades.
  • Coherent.
    When curriculum is fragmentary and disconnected, students face repetitions as well as gaps that can hinder learning. An intentional
    design ensures the curriculum fits together as a whole.

Foundational skills instruction that makes a difference

Amplify CKLA’s second design principle is a research-based approach to foundational skills that gets real results.

  • Explicit.
    Learning isn’t left to chance. All 44 sounds and their 150 spellings in the English language are taught, practiced, and mastered, with ample opportunity to encounter each sound-spelling in diverse settings.
  • Sequential.
    By moving in a sequence from easier to more complex in phonics and foundational reading skills, students master concepts before moving forward and gradually become more independent
  • Rewarding.
    Learning to read should be fun. Decodabe chapter-books that feature dynamic plots and characters make kids want to read more. Engaging stories include children who discover fossils and a grandmother who flies hang gliders.
Illustration of two strands: one for language comprehension with components like knowledge and vocabulary, and another for word recognition with elements like sounds and letters, intertwining.

Materials

The program provides engaging print and multimedia materials designed to provide a robust literacy-rich foundation in every classroom.

Teacher Materials

Research-based lessons integrate foundational literacy skills and cross-curricular content knowledge.

  • Teacher Guides
  • Projectable lesson components
  • Quests for the Core for Grades 3–5 (immersive, problem-based learning)
Grade 6 Unit 4 Eureka! Teacher Guide
Cover of a Grade 3 activity book titled "Unit 9: Early Explorations of North America" featuring a map and a sailing ship.

Student materials

Engaging student resources include dynamic decodable chapter books and content-rich, cross-curricular Readers.

  • Student Readers
  • Activity Books
  • Formative Assessments
  • Poet’s Journal and Writer’s Journal (write-in Readers for Grades 4–5)

Multimedia resources

Access the program’s online resources anywhere, anytime, from any device.

  • Teacher and student materials
  • Knowledge Builder animated videos
  • Sound Library songs and videos
  • Differentiation and enrichment guides
  • Real-time program support via email, live chat, and phone
  • Professional learning videos, webinars, and self-driven modules
A laptop screen displays the Amplify CKLA website with options to select grades Pre-K to 3.
Illustration of educational items including a notebook, pencil, basketball, trophy, school bus, magnifying glass, graduation cap, light bulb, ribbon, globe, pencils, and laptop.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources give students the opportunity to practice key skills using diverse, fun approaches that build independence.

  • Big Books
  • Large and Small Letter Cards
  • Spelling Cards
  • Vowel and Consonant Code Flip Books
  • Chaining Folders
“This has been the single most powerful curriculum implementation I have seen in my 16 years of education. ”

Deanna Zarichansky

Assistant Principal, Trousdale County Elementary School, Hartsville, TN

Amplify CKLA In Action

Take a peek inside a classroom, spotlight experiences on knowledge and foundational skills and hear fellow educators and students discuss the power of Amplify CKLA

See Amplify in Action

Resources

A teacher and a young student focus on a book during a classroom lesson, with educational posters visible in the background.

CKLA Tennessee Curriculum Maps

A young boy reading aloud from a book to a female classmate inside a classroom.

CKLA Tennessee Correlations

A male teacher in a red shirt explaining a lesson to a focused young female student in a classroom. other students are in the background.

ELA Correlations

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Impact Brochure

Contacts

A smiling woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, wearing an orange blouse and gold earrings, against a light background.

Chasity O’Quinn
Account Executive for East Tennessee
coquinn@amplify.com
(865) 599-5101

Portrait of a smiling woman with short brown hair, wearing glasses, a black blouse, and a pearl necklace against a maroon background.

Ann Patterson
Account Executive for West Tennessee
apatterson@amplify.com
(704) 813-7757

Welcome, Idaho science reviewers!

To view this protected page, enter the password below:



Welcome, Program 6 reviewers, to Amplify CKLA California Transitional Kindergarten!

We’re honored to introduce you to Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) California Transitional Kindergarten (TK). We’re confident you’ll find this comprehensive program to be a powerful tool for bringing the vision of the California ELA/ELD Framework and the California Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations (PTKLF) to life in classrooms across the state.

Please start with the video on the right to learn how to navigate the program and access key features referenced within our submission. Below you’ll find additional resources to support your review.

Your review samples

Print samples

You will receive three boxes of physical samples as part of your review. Box 1 will contain your Reviewer Binder. This binder contains logistical information and printed copies of the Evaluation Criteria Map and Foundations Alignment Map. Boxes 2 and 3 will contain physical samples. As you begin the process of organizing your materials, please refer to the inventory checklist found inside each box as well as within your Reviewer Binder.

Digital samples

In order to access your digital samples, you’ll need to log in to our platform using your unique login credentials found on a Digital Access Flyer inside of your Reviewer Binder. Once you have located the flyer:

  • Click the orange button below to access the platform.
  • Click “Log in with Amplify.”
  • Enter the username and password provided on your Digital Review Credential flyer.
Digital Access

Navigation tips

Before you get started, please review these important functionality notes:

Criteria Map and Standards Maps must be opened on Microsoft Word on your desktop to function as intended. If you open the documents without Microsoft Word on your desktop, citations will be cut off at the bottom of most tables within the document.

Many of our citations are deep-links to PDFs, meaning they will take you to the right page or the first page in the sequence for the citation in question. To ensure this functionality works, please disable any PDF-viewing extensions or plug-ins such as Adobe Acrobat Pro Browser Extension.

[Reviewer navigation video] Amplify CKLA California TK

Category 1: English Language Arts (ELA) content/alignment with Foundations

Alignment documents

The links below provide the alignment documents for Amplify CKLA California Transitional Kindergarten.

Category 2: Program Organization

Program structure

Amplify CKLA California Transitional Kindergarten is a comprehensive English language arts curriculum designed to prepare young children for later reading success by building foundational language and literacy skills. Amplify CKLA California TK materials and instruction provide explicit, systematic support for developing young children’s language, literacy, and content knowledge within the context of developmentally-appropriate early childhood settings, incorporating and reflecting the key themes and practices of the CA PTKLF and Framework.

[Reviewer highlight video] Program organization

The flexible pacing recommendations of the program provide teachers with options to decide how best to keep students engaged while completing Amplify CKLA California Transitional Kindergarten instruction (e.g., wiggle breaks, hands-on participation, singing songs, brain breaks, etc.).

[Reviewer highlight video] Lesson organization

The literacy skills, vocabulary, and content knowledge developed in Amplify CKLA California Transitional Kindergarten are explicitly designed to provide a foundation for the skills and content taught in TK classrooms. The teacher-directed and student-led activities in Amplify CKLA California Transitional Kindergarten reflect all strands of the CA PTKLF foundational language sub-domains:

  • Listening and speaking
  • Foundational literacy skills
  • Reading and writing

Amplify CKLA California TK domains of instruction are carefully chosen and sequenced to build prerequisite knowledge so that students can use that knowledge as they assimilate new, more complex information. The seven domains in Amplify CKLA California Transitional Kindergarten are:

  • Important People in American History
  • All About Me
  • Families and Communities
  • Classic Tales
  • Plants
  • Animals
  • Habitats

Amplify CKLA California TK empowers teachers to deliver effective instruction and keeps students engaged with with the following resources:

  • Teacher Guides
  • Flip Books
  • Image Cards
  • Center Cards
  • Activity Pages and Take-Home Pages
  • Nursery Rhymes and Songs Posters
  • Big Book: Classic Tales
  • Trade Books

Activities are play-based, engaging, challenging, and adaptive for the full range of TK learners. Teacher materials also support teachers and aides in facilitating activities, establishing routines, and identifying effective procedures.

Scope and sequence

Click here to view the scope and sequence for Amplify CKLA California Transitional Kindergarten. 

Category 3: Assessments

Amplify CKLA California TK assessments are designed to provide a snapshot of whether or not each student is mastering specific Core Content and Language Arts Objectives. The program incorporates multiple methods of assessing what students know and are able to do in each domain. Methods of assessments include:

  • Observational/anecdotal assessments.
  • Reteaching moments with aligned progress monitoring.
  • Portfolio Collections (student work samples).
  • Task assessments.
  • Developmental progression monitoring.

Amplify CKLA California TK provides tools to facilitate collecting, analyzing, and sharing data on student progress and development. These include:

  • Ready-made data collection forms with scoring guidelines (Not Yet, Progressing, Ready).
  • Caregiver communication letters.

[Reviewer highlight video] Program alignment to Category 3

Category 4: Universal Access

Amplify CKLA California Transitional Kindergarten materials provide students with a range of skills and abilities, with opportunities for participation across all contexts of differentiated instruction in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language.

Examples include the following:

  • Teacher Guides feature sidebar differentiation tips.
  • Classroom routines, such as taking attendance, rely on both visual and verbal prompts that can be individually tailored to students’ needs.
  • Small-group activities often include suggested rounds of play that increase with difficulty and give teachers the choice to move forward to increase the level of challenge or repeat levels of play that prove challenging.
  • Extension activities involve materials that can be adapted to scaffold students in a variety of ways; teachers can provide more or less structure and input depending on the needs of the students.
  • Differentiation supports grounded in UDL include visuals, realia, multimodal instruction, and other materials relevant to all students.

Category 5: Instructional Planning and Teacher Support

Amplify CKLA California TK empowers teachers to deliver effective instruction with various resources. The program provides comprehensive planning and support materials designed to help teachers prepare for and execute lessons effectively and fulfill the requirements of Category 5.

Teacher materials

Planning and preparation resources

Each Teacher Guide contains all the information needed for each day of instruction. The following sections are included in each Teacher Guide:

  • Assessments
  • Introduction
  • Learning Centers
  • Transitions
  • Starting the Day
  • Skills Instruction
  • Listening & Learning Instruction
  • Pausing Points

The Domain Calendar shows the titles of activities and read-alouds taught on each day of instruction throughout the entire domain during the three main contexts for instruction:

  • Starting the Day
  • Skills
  • Listening & Learning

Caregiver supports

The home-school connection letter template provides an easy way to share important information and set expectations with caregivers at the beginning of the school year.

Caregiver letters suggest ways parents and caregivers can support and reinforce learning at home through everyday activities. They also include high-quality texts and nursery rhymes and songs that parents can use to support students’ learning.

Welcome to Amplify California Language Arts

Amplify California Language Arts programs are designed to meet the California Framework and the California Common Core State Standards for Language Arts. Scroll down and click to view the grade-level student materials in each program.

TK–8 student materials

Note: For review of digital materials go to learning.amplify.com, click “Log in with Amplify” and enter the username and password provided.

Note: For review of digital materials go to learning.amplify.com, click “Log in with Amplify” and enter the username and password provided.

Note: For review of digital materials go to learning.amplify.com, click “Log in with Amplify” and enter the username and password provided.

Note: For review of digital materials go to learning.amplify.com, click “Log in with Amplify” and enter the username and password provided.

Note: For review of digital materials go to learning.amplify.com, click “Log in with Amplify” and enter the username and password provided.

Note: For review of digital materials go to learning.amplify.com, click “Log in with Amplify” and enter the username and password provided.

Note: For review of digital materials go to learning.amplify.com, click “Log in with Amplify” and enter the username and password provided.

Note: For review of digital materials go to learning.amplify.com, click “Log in with Amplify” and enter the username and password provided.

Note: For review of digital materials go to learning.amplify.com, click “Log in with Amplify” and enter the username and password provided.

Bring the world to students with a proven PreK–5 literacy curriculum

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is the leading early literacy curriculum grounded in the Science of Reading. By combining knowledge-building and research-based foundational skills, our instruction guides educators in developing strong readers, writers, and thinkers.

With a powerful online platform and a parallel Spanish language arts curriculum, Amplify CKLA provides a comprehensive solution for PreK–5 educators and students. Para la versión en español, haga clic aquí.

Request samples

Background knowledge drives results

The Amplify CKLA PreK–5 literacy curriculum equips students with rich knowledge that intentionally builds to inspire curiosity and drive results. Explore research revealing the power of our knowledge-based curriculum including a study that meets qualifications for ESSA Tier I: Strong Evidence.

Amplify CKLA serves

38,000+

Classrooms

2,700,000+

Students

50

U.S. States and D.C.

Independently and rigorously reviewed

Amplify CKLA is among the few curricula that is both recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign—for its excellence in intentionally building knowledge—and rated all-green on EdReports, earning green scores across all gateways.

Read the review on EdReports.

Educational campaign collage featuring children engaging in reading and research, with posters and books displayed, emphasizing the "core knowledge language arts" campaign.

Our approach

Grounded in the Science of Reading and following the Core Knowledge approach, the Amplify CKLA PreK–5 curriculum combines rich, diverse content knowledge in history, science, literature, and the arts with systematic, research-based foundational skills instruction.

Grounded in the Science of Reading

As the first publisher to build a curriculum based on the Science of Reading, we put research into action with explicit systematic foundational skills instruction alongside a proven knowledge-building sequence. In collaboration with education experts and practitioners, we provide powerful resources that drive real results. Explore our Science of Reading success stories.

Diagram illustrating the interplay between language comprehension and word recognition in reading, as seen in early literacy stages. It highlights pathways through knowledge, vocabulary, and sentence understanding, reflecting principles from the CKLA reading program.
Diagrama ilustrativo que muestra la progresión de la alfabetización temprana desde sonidos básicos hasta fonemas complejos con círculos etiquetados y flechas de conexión.

Developing foundational skills with explicit, systematic instruction

Amplify CKLA’s research-based scope and sequence progresses from simple to more complex skill development, starting with phonological and phonemic awareness. Instruction guides you in explicitly teaching the 150 spellings for the 44 sounds of English, with an intentional progression and review of skills to set your students up for success.

Following a proven knowledge-building approach

Following the Core Knowledge Sequence–a content-specific, cumulative, and coherent approach to building knowledge–students dig deeper and make connections across content areas to build a robust knowledge base for comprehending complex texts. See how the Core Knowledge curriculum is proven to improve reading scores and eliminate achievement gaps.

Three connected circular diagrams showing educational progression: "plants in kindergarten" with colorful garden graphics, "ecology in grade 3" depicting nature and animals, and "K–5 literacy curriculum in grade

Built in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation

Amplify CKLA is the premier high-quality instructional materials offering for elementary language arts, built in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation to help students effectively develop deep content knowledge and foundational skills.

Learn more about the Core Knowledge Foundation

Cultivating biliteracy with parallel English and Spanish programs

Amplify Caminos is the perfect Spanish language arts partner to Amplify CKLA. The aligned programs combine rich content knowledge with systematic foundational skills instruction grounded in the Science of Reading that follows biliteracy principles, and supports multiple teaching models.

Learn more about Amplify Caminos

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Learning to read

Free guide with the latest research on the Science of Reading

Download now

What’s included

The program provides engaging print and multimedia materials designed to build a robust literacy-rich foundation in every classroom.

CoreELD and Companions

High-quality teacher materials

Amplify CKLA teachers effectively deliver instruction with print and digital resources, including:

  • Teacher Guides with embedded differentiation.
  • Formal and informal assessments.
  • Ready-made and customizable lesson slides.
  • Trade books and Novel Guides.
  • Teacher resources and on-demand professional development.

Immersive student resources

Amplify CKLA students stay engaged with a variety of print and digital resources, including:

  • Original decodables and read-aloud Big Books (K–2), Student Readers (3–5), and trade books (K–5).
  • Student Activity Books with embedded assessments (K–5).
  • Research units for independent research built around a trade book (K–5).
  • Poet’s Journal and Writer’s Journal (write-in student readers for Grades 4–5).
  • Quests for the Core to support immersive, problem-based learning in Grades 3–5.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources help students practice key skills using fun, varied approaches that build independence.

  • Chaining Folder (K)
  • Letter Cards (K–2)
  • Syllable Cards (K–2)
  • Image Cards (K–3)
  • Blending Picture Cards (K)
  • Consonant and Vowel Code Flip Books (1–2)
  • Exclusive digital Sound Library

Robust digital experience

Amplify CKLA teacher and student resources are available through a digital experience platform that enhances instruction and saves you time. With everything you need in one place, you can effectively plan lessons, present content, and review student work.

  • Ready-made yet customizable lesson presentation slide decks
  • Dynamic live-review student tool
  • Interactive and student-friendly experience
  • LMS integration
  • Knowledge Builder animated videos
  • Recorded Read-Alouds
  • Professional development website
  • Real-time program support via email, live chat, and phone
Four colorful educational books are displayed against a black background. Each cover has tools like pencils, papers, and letters representing various school subjects.

English Language Learner program

Language Studio, designed for Amplify CKLA, provides WIDA-aligned daily instruction for English Language Learners to deepen their academic English.

Writing explorations program

A unique companion for Amplify CKLA, Writing Studio provides a deep dive into informational, narrative, and opinion writing to build strong, passionate writers.

Covers of four "Writing Studio Teacher Guide" books for different grades, featuring educational icons in orange, purple, blue, and teal color schemes.
All materials

Explore more programs based on the Science of Reading.

All of the programs in our literacy suite are designed to support and complement each other. Learn more about our related programs:

Collage of school activities: cartoon scientist, children engaging in early literacy, mythical creature, and cityscape.

Amplify Caminos-arch

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Boost Reading

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Welcome to Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition, Utah Reviewers!

We’re excited to share everything you need to review Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition, our K–5 core literacy program. On this site, you’ll find a comprehensive collection of resources and overviews to get you started, as well as a range of materials to explore the program, including Teacher Guides, Activity Books, Student Readers, and more, organized by grade and unit.

Please note that the files on this site are static representations of the high-quality materials you’ll review on the digital platform.

Reviewer resources

Access key materials designed to support your review of Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition.

Digital platform access

Amplify CKLA’s all-in-one platform offers essential tools that streamline instruction for teachers and engage students with meaningful content.

In order to access your digital materials, you’ll need to log into our platform using your unique login credentials found on the Start Here flyer inside of your Reviewer Binder. Once you have located the flyer:

  • Click the orange button below to access the platform.
  • Click “Log in with Amplify.”
  • Enter the username and password provided on your Start Here flyer.
Digital Access

The video below will provide you with instructions on how to access and navigate the digital platform.

Teachers can plan and deliver lessons efficiently, while students can access assignments, assessments, and fun practice games within the CKLA digital platform. The digital experience includes:

Presentation Screens
Deliver interactive lessons with ready-made, customizable slides for every lesson.

Auto-scored digital assessments
Assess vocabulary, comprehension, and knowledge development at the end of each K–2 Knowledge and 3–5 Integrated Unit.

Standards-based reports
Identify strengths and growth areas for individuals, small groups, or your entire class. Interactive dashboards offer detailed results from assessments and activities.

Skill-building practice games
Engage students with interactive games that reinforce concepts and make learning fun. Powered by Boost Reading™, these games align with lessons and provide real-time feedback.

eReader
Students access texts, take notes, and use audio-enabled eReaders to enhance their reading experience.

Sound Library
Students watch articulation videos and listen to songs for each sound to support phonological awareness.

Vocab App
Helps students in Grades 3–5 practice Amplify CKLA Tier 2 vocabulary words with fun, interactive games.

Intervention Toolkit
Offers user-friendly resources designed to aid educators in identifying and addressing deficiencies in students’ foundation skills.

Kindergarten

Explore all available resources for Kindergarten, organized by strand and unit.

Knowledge Strand

Unit 1: Star Light, Star Bright: Nursery Rhymes and Fables

Unit 2: See, Hear, Smell, Taste, Touch: The Five Senses

Unit 3: Underdogs and Heroes: Stories

Unit 4: See How They Grow: Plants

Unit 5: Moo, Cluck, Oink: Farms

Unit 6: Deep Roots: Introduction to Native American Cultures

Unit 7: All Around the World: Geography

Unit 8 (Choice): Royal Tales: Monarchs

Unit 8 (Choice): National Icons: Presidents and American Symbols

Unit 9 (Choice): Our Planet: Taking Care of the Earth

Unit 9 (Choice): Rain and Rainbows: Seasons and Weather

Unit 10: Shaped by Nature: Art and the World Around Us

Skills Strand

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Unit 7

Unit 8

Unit 9

Grade 1

Explore all available resources for Grade 1, organized by strand and unit.

Knowledge Strand

Unit 1: The Moral of the Story: Fables and Tales

Unit 2: From Nose to Toes: How Your Body Works

Unit 3: Common Threads: Different Lands, Similar Stories

Unit 4: Reach for the Stars: Astronomy

Unit 5: Charting the World: Geography

Unit 6: A World of Homes: Animals and Habitats

Unit 7: A New Nation: American Independence

Unit 8 (Choice): Once Upon a Time: Fairy Tales

Unit 8 (Choice): Our Planet: The History of the Earth

Unit 9 (Choice): From Babylon to the Nile: Early World Civilizations

Unit 9 (Choice): Early Americas: Maya, Aztec, and Inca

Unit 10: Adventure Stories: Tales from the Edge

Skills Strand

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Unit 7

Ancillary Components

  

Grade 2

Explore all available resources for Grade 2, organized by strand and unit.

Knowledge Strand

Unit 1: Fortunes and Feats: Fairy Tales and Tall Tales

Unit 2: The Birthplace of Democracy: Ancient Greece

Unit 3: Legends and Heroes: Greek Myths

Unit 4: Our Planet: Cycles in Nature

Unit 5: Butterflies, Bees, and Beetles: Insects

Unit 6: A House Divided: The American Civil War

Unit 7: Sounds and Stanzas: Poetry

Unit 8 (Choice): Journeys to America: Immigration

Unit 8 (Choice): Making a Difference: Creating Change

Unit 9 (Choice): Building Blocks: All About Nutrition

Unit 9 (Choice): Early Asian Civilizations: India and China

Unit 10: Taking Flight: The Age of Aviation

Skills Strand

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Ancillary Components

    

Grade 3

Explore all available resources for Grade 3, organized by unit.

Core Units

Unit 1: Timeless Tales: Classic Stories

Unit 2: Fur, Fins, and Feathers: Animal Classification

Unit 3: Rhythm and Rhyme: Poetry

Unit 4: Rise and Fall: Ancient Rome

Unit 5: Our Solar System and Beyond: Astronomy

Unit 6: Regions and Cultures: Native Americans

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: Charlotte’s Web

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: Stella Díaz Has Something to Say

Unit 8 (Choice): Systems and Senses: The Human Body

Unit 8 (Choice): From Glow to Echo: Light and Sound

Unit 9: From Blues to Bebop: All That Jazz

  

Supplemental Skills

Grade 3 Skills resources are included in core classroom kits, although the instruction isn’t required for Grade 3 standards coverage.

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

  

Grade 4

Explore all available resources for Grade 4, organized by unit.

Unit 1: My Story, My Voice: Personal Narratives

Unit 2: Knights and Castles: Europe’s Middle Ages

Unit 3: Meaning and Metaphor: Poetry

Unit 4: Eureka! Student Inventor

Unit 5: Our Planet: Geology

Unit 6: Road to Independence: The American Revolution

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Season of Styx Malone

Unit 8 (Choice): Crafting Stories: A World of Tales

Unit 8 (Choice): Adventure on the High Seas: Treasure Island

Unit 9: Inspiration and Ingenuity: American Innovation

  

Grade 5

Explore all available resources for Grade 5, organized by unit.

Unit 1: In My Own Words: Personal Narratives

Unit 2: Early Americas: Maya, Aztec, and Inca

Unit 3: Visions in Verse: Poetry

Unit 4: A Knight’s Tale: Don Quixote

Unit 5: The Deep Blue World: Oceans

Unit 6: Cultures and Histories: Native Americans

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Phantom Tollbooth

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Science of Breakable Things

Unit 8 (Choice): Arts and Culture: The Renaissance

Unit 8 (Choice): Through the Forest: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Unit 9: Building Up the World: Global Architecture

Welcome to the Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition program review site!

We’re excited to share everything you need to review Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition, our K–5 core literacy program. On this site, you’ll find a range of materials, including Teacher Guides, Activity Books, and Student Readers, organized by grade and unit.

Please note that the files on this site are static representations of the high-quality materials you’ll receive with your purchase.

We hope you find the site helpful! If you have any questions, please reach out to your Amplify representative.

Reviewer resources

Access key materials designed to support your review of Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition.

Kindergarten

Explore all available resources for Kindergarten, organized by strand and unit.

Knowledge Strand

Unit 1: Star Light, Star Bright: Nursery Rhymes and Fables

Unit 2: See, Hear, Smell, Taste, Touch: The Five Senses

Unit 3: Underdogs and Heroes: Stories

Unit 4: See How They Grow: Plants

Unit 5: Moo, Cluck, Oink: Farms

Unit 6: Deep Roots: Introduction to Native American Cultures

Unit 7: All Around the World: Geography

Unit 8 (Choice): Royal Tales: Monarchs

Unit 8 (Choice): National Icons: Presidents and American Symbols

Unit 9 (Choice): Our Planet: Taking Care of the Earth

Unit 9 (Choice): Rain and Rainbows: Seasons and Weather

Unit 10: Shaped by Nature: Art and the World Around Us

Skills Strand

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Unit 7

Unit 8

Unit 9

Unit 10

Ancillary Components

  

Grade 1

Explore all available resources for Grade 1, organized by strand and unit.

Knowledge Strand

Unit 1: The Moral of the Story: Fables and Tales

Unit 2: From Nose to Toes: How Your Body Works

Unit 3: Common Threads: Different Lands, Similar Stories

Unit 4: Reach for the Stars: Astronomy

Unit 5: Charting the World: Geography

Unit 6: A World of Homes: Animals and Habitats

Unit 7: A New Nation: American Independence

Unit 8 (Choice): Once Upon a Time: Fairy Tales

Unit 8 (Choice): Our Planet: The History of the Earth

Unit 9 (Choice): From Babylon to the Nile: Early World Civilizations

Unit 9 (Choice): Early Americas: Maya, Aztec, and Inca

Unit 10: Adventure Stories: Tales from the Edge

Skills Strand

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Unit 7

Ancillary Components

  

Grade 2

Explore all available resources for Grade 2, organized by strand and unit.

Knowledge Strand

Unit 1: Fortunes and Feats: Fairy Tales and Tall Tales

Unit 2: The Birthplace of Democracy: Ancient Greece

Unit 3: Legends and Heroes: Greek Myths

Unit 4: Our Planet: Cycles in Nature

Unit 5: Butterflies, Bees, and Beetles: Insects

Unit 6: A House Divided: The American Civil War

Unit 7: Sounds and Stanzas: Poetry

Unit 8 (Choice): Journeys to America: Immigration

Unit 8 (Choice): Making a Difference: Creating Change

Unit 9 (Choice): Building Blocks: All About Nutrition

Unit 9 (Choice): Early Asian Civilizations: India and China

Unit 10: Taking Flight: The Age of Aviation

Skills Strand

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Ancillary Components

    

Grade 3

Explore all available resources for Grade 3, organized by unit.

Core Units

Unit 1: Timeless Tales: Classic Stories

Unit 2: Fur, Fins, and Feathers: Animal Classification

Unit 3: Rhythm and Rhyme: Poetry

Unit 4: Rise and Fall: Ancient Rome

Unit 5: Our Solar System and Beyond: Astronomy

Unit 6: Regions and Cultures: Native Americans

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: Charlotte’s Web

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: Stella Díaz Has Something to Say

Unit 8 (Choice): Systems and Senses: The Human Body

Unit 8 (Choice): From Glow to Echo: Light and Sound

Unit 9: From Blues to Bebop: All That Jazz

  

Supplemental Skills

Grade 3 Skills resources are included in core classroom kits, although the instruction isn’t required for Grade 3 standards coverage.

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

    

Grade 4

Explore all available resources for Grade 4, organized by unit.

Unit 1: My Story, My Voice: Personal Narratives

Unit 2: Knights and Castles: Europe’s Middle Ages

Unit 3: Meaning and Metaphor: Poetry

Unit 4: Eureka! Student Inventor

Unit 5: Our Planet: Geology

Unit 6: Road to Independence: The American Revolution

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Season of Styx Malone

Unit 8 (Choice): Crafting Stories: A World of Tales

Unit 8 (Choice): Adventure on the High Seas: Treasure Island

Unit 9: Inspiration and Ingenuity: American Innovation

Grade 5

Explore all available resources for Grade 5, organized by unit.

Unit 1: In My Own Words: Personal Narratives

Unit 2: Early Americas: Maya, Aztec, and Inca

Unit 3: Visions in Verse: Poetry

Unit 4: A Knight’s Tale: Don Quixote

Unit 5: The Deep Blue World: Oceans

Unit 6: Cultures and Histories: Native Americans

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Phantom Tollbooth

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Science of Breakable Things

Unit 8 (Choice): Arts and Culture: The Renaissance

Unit 8 (Choice): Through the Forest: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Unit 9: Building Up the World: Global Architecture

  

Digital platform

Amplify CKLA’s all-in-one platform offers essential tools that streamline instruction for teachers and engage students with meaningful content. Teachers can plan and deliver lessons efficiently, while students can access assignments, assessments, and fun practice games.

A digital interface showing an assessment report on a monitor and a multiple-choice question on a tablet screen. Both screens display educational content from Amplify's assessment tools, providing personalized learning for multilingual learners.

Presentation Screens
Deliver interactive lessons with ready-made, customizable slides for every lesson.

Auto-scored digital assessments
Assess vocabulary, comprehension, and knowledge development at the end of each K–2 Knowledge and 3–5 Integrated Unit.

Standards-based reports
Identify strengths and growth areas for individuals, small groups, or your entire class. Interactive dashboards offer detailed results from assessments and activities.

Skill-building practice games
Engage students with interactive games that reinforce concepts and make learning fun. Powered by Boost Reading™, these games align with lessons and provide real-time feedback.

eReader
Students access texts, take notes, and use audio-enabled eReaders to enhance their reading experience.

Sound Library
Students watch articulation videos and listen to songs for each sound to support phonological awareness.

Vocab App
Helps students in Grades 3–5 practice Amplify CKLA Tier 2 vocabulary words with fun, interactive games.

Intervention Toolkit
Offers user-friendly resources designed to aid educators in identifying and addressing deficiencies in students’ foundation skills.

Connecticut K-5 ELA: Explore Amplify CKLA (English) and Caminos (Spanish)

Thank you for visiting Amplify’s Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) and Caminos website designed exclusively for you. We are very excited for you to further explore Amplify CKLA and Amplify Caminos and discover more about our proven, phonics-based literacy programs in English and Spanish.  Begin your journey with the Introduction below and explore Amplify CKLA and Caminos.

Introduction

We are excited for you to see how Amplify CKLA and Amplify Caminos provide parallel, high-quality resources in both English and Spanish for all students and multilingual learners across NYC! Both programs are flexible, offering stand-alone foundational skills instruction as well as comprehensive core English Language Arts.

Amplify CKLA Skills and Caminos Lectoescritura are entirely built on the latest reading science and provide comprehensive instruction in all foundational reading skills. These programs feature:

  • Phonological awareness, phonics, and word recognition
  • Strong, systematic sound-first instruction to support students in learning to decode
  • Language skills, including conventions, spelling, and grammar
  • Reading comprehension
  • Writing instruction

CKLA and Caminos for grades K–2 provides a two-strand approach – the first strand is the Foundational Skills Strand (as described above) and the second is the Knowledge Strand, in which students build rich background knowledge through multidisciplinary Read-Alouds in both English and Spanish. Additionally, in Grades 3-5, CKLA and Caminos take an Integrated Approach, meaning everything is focused on rich worldly context. 

We highly encourage you to check out the Grades K-2 Knowledge Strand section of the website and the 3-5 Integrated Approach section to explore these components further, gain access to the engaging, worldly, and diverse texts students and teachers are using in their classrooms daily, and discover so much more!

Access the program

Every day in the CKLA/Caminos classroom, students will practice their existing reading skills while stretching themselves toward new goals. In K–2, each day includes dedicated skills time to help you give students a solid foundation. In the upper grades, skills instruction becomes integrated with Knowledge lessons, and students engage with increasingly complex content-rich texts and writing activities.

Start with the sound

All instruction starts with phonological awareness, which research has shown to benefit the greatest number of students.

Students begin by learning to recognize sounds, as well as to articulate them.

Build to the phoneme

All instruction starts with phonological awareness, which research has shown to benefit the greatest number of students. Students begin by learning to recognize sounds, as well as to articulate them.

Crack the code

Once students can recognize sounds, they learn to form the corresponding letter codes. CKLA starts by teaching the sound-spellings that appear most frequently in English, which lets your students read and write as many words as possible, as soon as possible.

Grow in complexity

The lessons continue to challenge students as they progress, introducing complications like multisyllabic words, “tricky words,” and homophones. In each case, students encounter complications as they become ready for them.

While students are learning how to read, Knowledge Domains give them authentic and engaging reasons to read. Students will use their skills to explore domains that relate to storytelling, science, and the history of our world as seen through the eyes of many different groups. With these domains, you’ll bring the world to your students, showing them how reading can become an exciting, rewarding, and useful part of their lives.

Build connections and context

Each CKLA/Caminos Knowledge Domain gives students a base of vocabulary and concepts, building on what they’ve learned in previous domains. This helps students make connections within and across grades, building a base of background knowledge that will help them navigate new and more complex texts.

Listen and understand

Students learn to listen and understand before they learn to read. By delivering knowledge through classroom Read-Alouds, we teach students the key comprehension skills they’ll use throughout their reading lives.

Emphasis on interactivity

We emphasize interactions with students, challenging them and encouraging them to think about the material rather than simply receive it. Each lesson includes many options for formative assessment and immediate adjustment to your class’s needs.

Assess what’s important

End-of-domain digital assessments for Knowledge Domains are fully voice acted, ensuring that each student’s comprehension skills are being authentically tested. This not only helps build student test-taking confidence, but also gives you a more accurate picture of your class.

Step 1: Watch this video walkthrough of the CKLA/Caminos Teacher Resource Site.

Step 2: Explore the Teacher Resource Site.

  • Click the CKLA/Caminos Teacher Resource button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter your teacher username: t.nyc-ckla-caminosK2@tryamplify.net
  • Enter your password: AmplifyNumber1
  • Toggle to access either English and Spanish
Access CKLA/Caminos Teacher Resource Site

Step 3: Watch this video walkthrough of the CKLA/Caminos Student Hub.

Step 4: Explore the CKLA/Caminos Student Hub for Grades K-2.

  • Click the CKLA/Caminos Student Hub button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter your student username: s.nyc-ckla-caminosK2@tryamplify.net
  • Enter your password: AmplifyNumber1
  • Select a grade level.
Access CKLA/Caminos Student Hub

By grades 3–5, students have mastered the basics of decoding and are hungry to use what they’ve learned to reach out to the world. Although Read-Alouds remain an important part of lessons, students are also encouraged to practice independent reading starting in grade 3—striking a balance between strong teacher support and developing their autonomy and confidence as readers.

Writing and Language

As students progress from K–2, writing activities start to emphasize analysis, creativity, and independent thinking about the material students are learning.

Core Quests: Transforming the classroom

Each of the levels in grades 3–5 contains a Core Quest. In these special
units, all the normal rules of the classroom change, and students engage
with language in surprising new ways. Here in this grade 5 example, they
learn to love the dense Shakespearian language of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream through imagery, close reading, and performance.

Step 1: Watch this video walkthrough of the CKLA/Caminos Teacher Resource Site.

Step 2: Explore the CKLA/Caminos Teacher Resource Site for Grades 3-5.

  • Click the CKLA/Caminos Teacher Resource button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter your teacher username: t.nyc-ckla-caminos35@tryamplify.net
  • Enter your password: AmplifyNumber1
  • Toggle to access either English and Spanish
Access CKLA/Caminos Teacher Resource Site

Step 3: Watch this video walkthrough of the CKLA/Caminos Student Hub.

Step 4: Explore the CKLA/Caminos Student Hub for Grades 3-5.

  • Click the CKLA/Caminos Student Hub button below.
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter your student username: s.nyc-ckla-caminos35@tryamplify.net
  • Enter your password: AmplifyNumber1
  • Select a grade level.
Access CKLA/Caminos Student Hub

Key program features

The student body of our country has been changing, and it’s changing fast. Over 10% K-12 students are english language learners who speak other languages. This skews heavily to primary grades with 15-16% in grades K-3.  In 2021-2022, New York City Public Schools enrolled over 147,000 English language learners across K-12 or about 14% of students.  Over 52% of those students are in elementary schools across the district with 23% in grades K-3. 

Amplify Caminos uses spiral learning to reinforce every student’s ability to develop skills like reading, writing, speaking, and listening in Spanish that can be transferred to English. As students engage with their lessons, they explore the similarities and differences in grammar, vocabulary, writing, and language use between Spanish and English. This bridge helps students learning two languages to strengthen their knowledge in both. 

Through cross-curricular content, students explore units that relate to storytelling, science, and the history of our world in a holistic and thoughtful way. With these units, you’ll bring the world to your students, showing them how reading can become an exciting, rewarding, and useful part of their lives.

Amplify Caminos al Conocimiento Esencial, a Spanish language arts program for Grades K–5 that will inspire and engage your students to become confident readers, writers, and thinkers.

It is designed to support any biliteracy model, including English as a Second Language (ESL), transitional bilingual programs, dual language strands, and Spanish immersion programs.

When used in tandem with Amplify CKLA, Amplify Caminos provides an one-to-one English and Spanish solution.

Built out of the latest research in the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA delivers explicit instruction in both foundational literacy skills (systematic phonics, decoding, and fluency) and background knowledge in grades K–2 with an integrated approach to explicit instruction in grades 3–5.

Review this Science of Reading Toolkit to learn more about the Science of Reading best practices integrated throughout CKLA.

Great reading instruction starts with helping kids develop great decoding skills. By building a solid foundation of phonological awareness and phonics, reading the words on the page becomes automatic so that comprehension and critical thinking can happen.

Our instruction is supported by:

  • Step-by-step lessons with multisensory approaches, clear lesson objectives, and embedded formative assessments.
  • Decodable books and student readers with ebook and audiobook versions that feature engaging plots and relatable characters.
  • An engaging sound library with fun songs and videos that develop phonological awareness.
  • An interactive Vocab App featuring engaging activities with immediate feedback and automated, customized instruction based on student performance.

Students build grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves.

Our instruction is supported by:

  • Knowledge builders that provide a quick overview of each domain with its key ideas.
  • Interactive read-alouds designed to build knowledge and vocabulary.
  • Content-rich anchor texts that support students as they tackle increasingly complex text and sharpen their analytical skills.
  • Social and emotional learning paired with lessons in civic responsibility.

From the printed page to the screen, we bring foundational skills and knowledge of the world to your young learners, and make the transition from classroom to home learning seamless.

Download the Amplify CKLA Components Guide to see components by grade.

Additional materials to support your review

Welcome Texas Home Learning Users!

Note: This site is no longer being actively updated. To access the latest 2021-22 Elementary Literacy Program instructional materials, please visit my.amplify.com. 

If you have any questions, please reach out to texashomelearning@tea.texas.gov

Grade K

Skills Unit 1

Skills Unit 2

Skills Unit 3

Skills Unit 4

Knowledge 1: Nursery Rhymes and Fables

Knowledge 2: The Five Senses

Knowledge 3: Stories: Fairy Tales and Folktales

Knowledge 4: Plants: How Do They Grow?

Conocimiento 1: Rimas y fábulas infantiles

Conocimiento 2: Los cinco sentidos

Conocimiento 3: Cuentos: cuentos de hadas y cuentos populares

Conocimiento 4: Plantas: ¿cómo crecen?

Grade 1

Skills Unit 1

Skills Unit 2

Skills Unit 3

Skills Unit 4

Knowledge 1: Fables and Stories

Knowledge 2: The Human Body

Knowledge 3: Different Lands, Similar Stories

Knowledge 4: Different Lands, Similar Stories

Conocimiento 1: Fábulas y cuentos

Conocimiento 2: El cuerpo humano

Conocimiento 3: Tierras diferentes, cuentos similares

Conocimiento 4: Antiguas civilizaciones de América

Grade 2

Skills Unit 1

Skills Unit 2

Skills Unit 3

Skills Unit 4

Knowledge 1: Fairy Tales and Tall Tales

Knowledge 2: The Ancient Greek Civilization

Knowledge 3: Stories from Mount Olympus

Knowledge 4: The War of 1812

Conocimiento 1: Cuentos de hadas y cuentos exagerados

Conocimiento 2: La civilización griega antigua

Conocimiento 3: Historias del monte Olimpo

Conocimiento 4: La guerra de 1812

Grade 3

Unit 1: Classic Tales: The Wind in the Willows

Unit 2: Scales, Feathers, and Fur: Animal Classification

Unit 3: The Human Body: Systems and Senses

Unit 4: The Ancient Roman Civilization

Unidad 1: Cuentos clásicos: El viento en los sauces

Unidad 2: Escamas, plumas y pelaje: la clasificación de los animales

Unidad 3: El cuerpo humano: sistemas y sentidos

Unidad 4: El cuerpo humano: sistemas y sentidos

Grade 4

Unit 1: Personal Narratives: My Story, My Voice

Unit 2: Eureka! The Art of Invention

Unit 3: Contemporary Fiction: Mi Calle, Tu Calle

Unit 4: American Revolution: Building a Nation

Unidad 1: Narrativas personales: mi historia, mi voz

Unidad 2: ¡Eureka! El arte de la invención

Unidad 3: Ficción contemporánea: mi calle, tu calle

Unidad 4: La Revolución estadounidense: construir una nación

Grade 5

Unit 1: Personal Narratives: Let Me Tell You a Story

Unit 2: The Renaissance: Art and Culture

Unit 3: Early American Civilizations: Myths, Pyramids, and Kings

Unit 4: Don Quixote: A Hopeful Knight’s Tale

Unidad 1: Narrativas personales: déjame contarte una historia

Unidad 2: El Renacimiento: arte y cultura

Unidad 3: Las primeras civilizaciones americanas: mitos, pirámides y reyes

Unidad 4: Don Quijote: la historia de un caballero optimista

Coming Soon!

Amplify K–6 ELA programs for Fairfax County

Welcome, Fairfax County Reviewers! 

Thank you for exploring our evidence-based K–6 programs built on the Science of Reading and aligned to Virginia standards and Fairfax County’s learning model. 

Amplify CKLA for Grades K–5 and Amplify ELA for Grade 6 intentionally build knowledge alongside skills and are aligned within and across grades. Meaningful learning experiences for students pair with powerful instructional support for teachers to drive results. 

The following resources will support your review. These include clips of Amplify programs in action; details about key features of the curriculum; and research on the real-world successes of schools, districts, and states who’ve partnered with Amplify.

Amplify CKLA for Grades K–5

Introduction to Amplify CKLA

We’re excited for you to see how Amplify CKLA provides high-quality resources to support literacy instruction for all students! This program is flexible, offering stand-alone foundational skills instruction as well as the program core English Language Arts.

Amplify CKLA Skills is built on the latest reading science and provides comprehensive instruction in all foundational reading skills, featuring:

  • Phonological awareness, phonics, and word recognition.
  • Strong, systematic sound-first instruction to support students in learning to decode.
  • Language skills, including conventions, spelling, and grammar.
  • Reading comprehension.
  • Writing instruction.

CKLA for Grades K–2 provides a two-strand approach. The first is the Foundational Skills Strand (as described above) and the second is the Knowledge Strand, in which students build rich background knowledge through multidisciplinary read-alouds. CKLA takes an Integrated approach in Grades 3–5, in which lesson sequencing is especially focused on rich, worldly content. 

We encourage you to check out the K–2 Knowledge Strand and 3–5 Integrated approach sections of this site to explore the components further and gain access to the engaging and diverse texts students and teachers are using in their classrooms every day!

K–2 Skills Strand

In the CKLA classroom, students practice reading while stretching themselves toward higher goals. In K–2, daily dedicated skills time gives students a solid foundation, while the upper grades integrate this instruction with knowledge lessons in which students engage with increasingly complex, content-rich texts and writing activities.

Start with the sound

All instruction starts with phonological awareness, which research has shown to benefit the greatest number of students. Students begin by learning to recognize sounds, as well as to articulate them.

Build to the phoneme

Over time, students build up their awareness of phonemes. We give teachers a variety of tools, including multisensory gestures, to help kids develop this awareness.

Crack the code

Once students can recognize sounds, they learn to form the corresponding letter codes. CKLA starts by teaching the sound-spellings that appear most frequently in English, which lets your students read and write as many words as possible, as soon as possible.

Grow in complexity

The lessons continue to challenge students as they progress, introducing complications like multisyllabic words, “tricky words,” and homophones. In each case, students encounter more complicated words as they become ready for them.

K–2 Knowledge Strand

While students are learning how to read, Knowledge Domains give them authentic and engaging reasons to read. Students will use their skills to explore domains that relate to storytelling, science, and the history of our world as seen through the eyes of many different groups. With these domains, you’ll bring the world to your students, showing them how reading can become an exciting, rewarding, and useful part of their lives.

Build connections and context

Each CKLA Knowledge Domain gives students a base of vocabulary and concepts, building on what they’ve learned in previous domains. This helps students make connections within and across grades, building a base of background knowledge that will help them navigate new and more complex texts.

Listen and understand

Students learn to listen and understand before they learn to read. By delivering knowledge through classroom read-alouds, Amplify CKLA teaches students the key comprehension skills they’ll use throughout their reading lives.

Emphasis on interactivity

Amplify CKLA prioritizes interactions between students, which challenge and encourage them to think about the material rather than simply receive it. Each lesson includes several opportunities and options for formative assessment and immediate adjustment to the needs of both the class and the individual students.

Assess what’s important

The end-of-domain digital assessments that follow Knowledge Domains are fully voice-acted, ensuring that each student’s comprehension skills are authentically tested. This not only builds students’ test-taking confidence, but gives you a more accurate picture of your class.

3–5 Integrated approach

By Grades 3–5, students have mastered the basics of decoding and are eager to use what they’ve learned to reach out to the world. Although read-alouds remain an important part of lessons, students are also encouraged to practice independent reading starting in Grade 3, developing their autonomy and confidence as readers alongside strong teacher support.

Writing and language

As students progress from K–2, writing activities start to emphasize analysis, creativity, and independent thinking about lesson materials.

Core Quests: Transforming the classroom

Each of the units in Grades 3–5 contain a Core Quest—a special unit in which all the rules of the classroom change as students engage with language in surprising new ways. In Grade 5, for example, students learn to love the dense Shakespearian language of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” through imagery, close reading, and performance.

Key CKLA features

Built out of the latest research in the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA delivers explicit instruction in both foundational literacy skills (systematic phonics, decoding, and fluency) and background knowledge in Grades K–2, with an integrated approach to explicit instruction in Grades 3–5.

Review this Science of Reading Toolkit to learn more about the Science of Reading best practices integrated throughout CKLA.

Great reading instruction starts with great decoding skills. When students build a solid foundation of phonological awareness and phonics, reading the words on the page becomes automatic so that comprehension and critical thinking can happen.

Our instruction is supported by:

  • Step-by-step lessons with multisensory approaches, clear lesson objectives, and embedded formative assessments.
  • Unmatched, 100% decodable books and student readers that feature engaging plots and relatable characters.
  • An engaging sound library with fun songs and videos that develop phonological awareness.

Students build grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves.

Our instruction is supported by:

  • Knowledge builders that provide a quick overview of each domain with its key ideas.
  • Interactive read-alouds designed to build knowledge and vocabulary.
  • Content-rich anchor texts that support students as they tackle increasingly complex text and sharpen their analytical skills.

From the printed page to the screen, we bring foundational skills and knowledge of the world to your young learners, and make the transition from classroom to home learning seamless.

Download the Amplify CKLA Components Guide to see components by grade.

Amplify Caminos is an equitable Spanish language arts program for Grades K–5 that will engage your students and inspire them to become confident readers, writers, and thinkers.

Designed to support any biliteracy model (including ESL, transitional bilingual, dual language, and Spanish immersion), Amplify Caminos can be used in tandem with Amplify CKLA to provide a fully equitable, one-to-one English and Spanish solution.

Amplify ELA for Grade 6

Amplify ELA is a blended English language arts curriculum designed specifically to prepare middle school students for high school and beyond. This interactive core curriculum brings complex texts to life with lively classroom discussions and meaningful digital experiences in which students grapple with interesting ideas and find relevance for themselves.

Amplify ELA’s built-in 100-Day Pathway outlines required content for each grade level, while providing teachers time and space to teach the supplemental lessons and activities they love.

The program has received an all-green rating on EdReports—read the review.

Amplify ELA delivers:

  • A unique research-based approach designed to get all students reading grade-level text together.
  • An instructional design that inspires students to read more deeply, write more vividly, and think more critically.
  • A rich combination of dynamic texts, lively discussions, and interactive Quests that engages and inspires middle school students.

EdReports and Knowledge Matters Campaign

Amplify CKLA for Grades K–5 is among the few elementary core curricula to be both rated all green on EdReports (earning green scores across all gateways) and recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign for its excellence in intentionally building knowledge. Amplify ELA for grade 6 also earned all-green scores on EdReports.

Access FCPS reviewer platform

To experience Amplify’s K–6 ELA programs for FCPS, complete the following steps.

Access your teacher demo account:

  1. Access the reviewer site.
  2. Select Log in with Amplify.
  3. Enter your teacher username: t1.fcps-demo@demo.tryamplify.net  
  4. Enter your password: Amplify1-fcps-demo

Access your student demo account:

  1. Access the reviewer site.
  2. Select Log in with Amplify.
  3. Enter your student username: s1.fcps-demo@demo.tryamplify.net 
  4. Enter your password: Amplify1-fcps-demo

VA correlations

CKLA Kindergarten correlation
CKLA Grade 1 correlation
CKLA Grade 2 correlation
CKLA Grade 3 correlation
CKLA Grade 4 correlation
CKLA Grade 5 correlation

Additional reviewer resources

Amplify CKLA Program Guide (Grades K–5)
Amplify ELA Program Guide (Grade 6)
Amplify biliteracy and Science of Reading principles
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility
Text complexity
Trade books
Amplify CKLA meets Virginia Literacy Act (VLA) requirements

Get in touch

To learn more, contact Michael Kasloff at mkasloff@amplify.com.

Amplify CKLA and ELA Elementary Language Arts Curriculum Adoption

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Beaver County School District

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What is Amplify CKLA?

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is a language arts program for Grades PreK-5 that was developed in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation and specifically designed to help you implement structured literacy and Science of Reading best practices.

The program combines a multi-sensory approach to phonics with rich texts carefully sequenced to build content knowledge—so that students learn to read and read to learn at the same time. 

Every day in Grades PreK–2, students complete one full lesson that builds foundational reading skills, as well as one full lesson that builds background knowledge. In Grades 3–5, students start to master the skills of reading, further opening up their worlds.

Illustrative circles depicting educational stages from prek to grade 5, each showing children engaged in age-appropriate activities or learning themes.

CKLA in Action

There’s no better way to understand the power of Amplify CKLA than seeing it in action. Watch Ms. Lehman’s second graders in the video below as they learn how to decode and spell words with the long /ā/ sound.

CKLA Overview Video

Unit Overviews

Below are quick overviews of the units your student will be working through in their grade throughout the year. Next to each unit are downloadable guides which provide a more in-depth look at the content covered and how you can help your student advance their understanding of the topics.

Kindergarten Knowledge Curriculum 

Kindergarten Skills Curriculum

Grade 1 Knowledge Curriculum

Grade 1 Skills Curriculum

Grade 2 Knowledge Curriculum

Grade 2 Skills Curriculum

Grade 3 Curriculum Overview

Grade 4 Curriculum Overview

Grade 5 Curriculum Overview

Materials overview

Amplify CKLA is a blended program, which means your student will be interacting with both print and digital materials.

Print materials

Student Readers

These readers are uniquely designed to provide intensive practice while reading simple but authentic stories. All readers are also available as ebooks and audiobooks on the teacher resource site, which caregivers can now access.

In grades K-2, these readers are chapter books that allow students to practice just-learned sound-spellings within an authentic reading experience that incorporates compelling plots and interesting characters.

Children's book covers and pages displayed, featuring diverse characters and themes like sharing and adventure, labeled "grade k.

In grades 3-5, readers develop close reading and other literacy skills through a selection of diverse, content-rich literary and informational texts.

Grade 1 reading materials featuring illustrated children, a "Snapshots" cover, two open storybooks showing kids and activities, and a page about a holiday with text and drawings.
Open educational book for grade 2, showing illustrations and text about a chicken nugget story and the war of 1812.

Student Activity Books

Part of the daily lessons, these activity pages ask students to respond to the text they’ve read and apply skills and knowledge. They also include assessments that track students’ skills development, to which teachers have access.

Digital materials

CKLA Hub for grades K–5

We are excited to announce that students will be able to access multimedia resources and engage in a new digital experience on the CKLA Hub. Unlike ever before, students can access digital resources independently from anywhere, taking full advantage of the instructional multimedia experiences that Amplify CKLA has to offer. Students can access the Hub at home, in the classroom, and on the go, making it ideal for remote learning. It’s compatible with laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, and desktops—we’ve also optimized it for mobile devices.

Knowledge Builder videos for grades K–2

Each Knowledge Domain starts with a Knowledge Builder video: a short, fun, animated story that enriches the lesson and motivates students with new characters, places, and concepts.

Recorded daily read-alouds for grades K–2

Teachers and students will have access to video recordings of all K–2 Knowledge Read-Alouds with pictures from the Flip Books.

Cover image for "Cycles in Nature" by Amplify CKLA. Features illustrations of a dinosaur, plant, wagon, book, fish, cat on desk, and various nature-related items against a pink background.

Sound Library for grades K-2

The Sound Library uses audio sounds, catchy songs, and animated articulation videos to help students learn and master sounds.

A webpage titled "Sound Library" displays search bar and sound cards for different phonemes, each with example words and buttons for sound, video, and song.

Foundational Skills Boost for grades 1–3

Designed for grades 1–3, these video-based, self-guided lessons target critical foundational skills from the previous year’s instruction in order to fill in any gaps. They offer approximately nine weeks of instruction organized as daily lessons, with additional teacher-led small-group activities and family resources.

A chocolate chip cookie in a glass of milk, a person speaking, a speech bubble saying “Let’s say it together!”, and two illustrated eyes on a green background.

Vocab App for grades 3-5

The Vocabulary App is designed for independent practice with vocabulary. Students can use the Vocabulary App for game-like activities that challenge them.

Screenshot of the Amplify Vocab App webpage, showing interactive vocabulary tools for students in grades 3-5, with a "Launch App" button and navigation menu at the top.

Quests for grades 3–5

Each of the grade levels in 3–5 contains a Core Quest. In these special units, all the normal rules of the classroom change, and students engage with language in surprising new ways. For example, in grade 5, they learn to love the dense Shakespearian language of A Midsummer Night’s Dream through imagery, close reading, and performance.

A collage showing illustrated cards of Titania, Puck, and Athens, a lesson on performing Shakespeare, and two photos of actors performing on stage.

Home-school connection

We’ve developed a set of resources for caregivers to use with their students that includes instructions and materials to teach and practice grade-level phonics at home. Resources include sound videos, Readers, and a how-to video with editable instructions that caregivers can customize to meet individual student needs.

Parent and child at home working on sofa

Additional materials to support your review

Welcome, Indiana Department of Education!

Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition builds on the principles and instruction of previous editions to provide better-than-ever support for teaching and learning. The focus continues on delivering evidence-based instruction across a system of multi-tiered supports aligned with the Science of Reading and Writing.

We’re excited to share this site, where you’ll find a range of materials and literacy tools including Reviewer Resources and Teaching Materials (Teacher Guides, Activity Books, and Student Readers) organized by grade and unit.

We welcome your thoughts and questions!

An astronaut floats in space near the Moon, with a speech bubble displaying

Reviewer resources

Overview and program resources:

Alignment and scope and sequence:

Curriculum maps by grade:

Kindergarten

Explore all available resources for Kindergarten, organized by strand and unit.

Knowledge Strand

Unit 1: Star Light, Star Bright: Nursery Rhymes and Fables

Unit 2: See, Hear, Smell, Taste, Touch: The Five Senses

Unit 3: Underdogs and Heroes: Stories

Unit 4: See How They Grow: Plants

Unit 5: Moo, Cluck, Oink: Farms

Unit 6: Deep Roots: Introduction to Native American Cultures

Unit 7: All Around the World: Geography

Unit 8 (Choice): Royal Tales: Monarchs

Unit 8 (Choice): National Icons: Presidents and American Symbols

Unit 9 (Choice): Our Planet: Taking Care of the Earth

Unit 9 (Choice): Rain and Rainbows: Seasons and Weather

Unit 10: Shaped by Nature: Art and the World Around Us

Skills Strand

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Unit 7

Unit 8

Unit 9

Unit 10

Ancillary Components

Grade 1

Explore all available resources for Grade 1, organized by strand and unit.

Knowledge Strand

Unit 1: The Moral of the Story: Fables and Tales

Unit 2: From Nose to Toes: How Your Body Works

Unit 3: Common Threads: Different Lands, Similar Stories

Unit 4: Reach for the Stars: Astronomy

Unit 5: Charting the World: Geography

Unit 6: A World of Homes: Animals and Habitats

Unit 7: A New Nation: American Independence

Unit 8 (Choice): Once Upon a Time: Fairy Tales

Unit 8 (Choice): Our Planet: The History of the Earth

Unit 9 (Choice): From Babylon to the Nile: Early World Civilizations

Unit 9 (Choice): Early Americas: Maya, Aztec, and Inca

Unit 10: Adventure Stories: Tales from the Edge

Skills Strand

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Unit 7

Ancillary Components

Grade 2

Explore all available resources for Grade 2, organized by strand and unit.

Knowledge Strand

Unit 1: Fortunes and Feats: Fairy Tales and Tall Tales

Unit 2: The Birthplace of Democracy: Ancient Greece

Unit 3: Legends and Heroes: Greek Myths

Unit 4: Our Planet: Cycles in Nature

Unit 5: Butterflies, Bees, and Beetles: Insects

Unit 6: A House Divided: The American Civil War

Unit 7: Sounds and Stanzas: Poetry

Unit 8 (Choice): Journeys to America: Immigration

Unit 8 (Choice): Making a Difference: Creating Change

Unit 9 (Choice): Building Blocks: All About Nutrition

Unit 9 (Choice): Early Asian Civilizations: India and China

Unit 10: Taking Flight: The Age of Aviation

Skills Strand

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Ancillary Components

    

Grade 3

Explore all available resources for Grade 3, organized by unit.

Core Units

Explore all available resources for Grade 3, organized by unit.

Unit 1: Timeless Tales: Classic Stories

Unit 2: Fur, Fins, and Feathers: Animal Classification

Unit 3: Rhythm and Rhyme: Poetry

Unit 4: Rise and Fall: Ancient Rome

Unit 5: Our Solar System and Beyond: Astronomy

Unit 6: Regions and Cultures: Native Americans

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: Charlotte’s Web

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: Stella Díaz Has Something to Say

Unit 8 (Choice): Systems and Senses: The Human Body

Unit 8 (Choice): From Glow to Echo: Light and Sound

Unit 9: From Blues to Bebop: All That Jazz

Ancillary Components

Supplemental Skills Units

Grade 3 Skills resources are included in core classroom kits, although the instruction isn’t required for Grade 3 standards coverage.

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

    

Grade 4

Explore all available resources for Grade 4, organized by unit.

Unit 1: My Story, My Voice: Personal Narratives

Unit 2: Knights and Castles: Europe’s Middle Ages

Unit 3: Meaning and Metaphor: Poetry

Unit 4: Eureka! Student Inventor

Unit 5: Our Planet: Geology

Unit 6: Road to Independence: The American Revolution

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Season of Styx Malone

Unit 8 (Choice): Crafting Stories: A World of Tales

Unit 8 (Choice): Adventure on the High Seas: Treasure Island

Unit 9: Inspiration and Ingenuity: American Innovation

Ancillary Components

Grade 5

Explore all available resources for Grade 5, organized by unit.

Unit 1: In My Own Words: Personal Narratives

Unit 2: Early Americas: Maya, Aztec, and Inca

Unit 3: Visions in Verse: Poetry

Unit 4: A Knight’s Tale: Don Quixote

Unit 5: The Deep Blue World: Oceans

Unit 6: Cultures and Histories: Native Americans

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Phantom Tollbooth

Unit 7 (Choice): Novel Study: The Science of Breakable Things

Unit 8 (Choice): Arts and Culture: The Renaissance

Unit 8 (Choice): Through the Forest: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Unit 9: Building Up the World: Global Architecture

Ancillary Components

Digital platform

In the 2025-26 school year, Amplify CKLA’s all-in-one platform will offer essential tools that streamline instruction for teachers and engage students with meaningful content. Teachers can plan and deliver lessons efficiently, while students can access assignments, assessments, and fun practice games.

A digital interface showing an assessment report on a monitor and a multiple-choice question on a tablet screen. Both screens display educational content from Amplify's assessment tools, providing personalized learning for multilingual learners.

Presentation Screens
Deliver interactive lessons with ready-made, customizable slides for every lesson.

Auto-scored digital assessments
Assess vocabulary, comprehension, and knowledge development at the end of each K–2 Knowledge and 3–5 Integrated Unit.

Standards-based reports
Identify strengths and growth areas for individuals, small groups, or your entire class. Interactive dashboards offer detailed results from assessments and activities.

Skill-building practice games
Engage students with interactive games that reinforce concepts and make learning fun. Powered by Boost Reading™, these games align with lessons and provide real-time feedback.

eReader
Students access texts, take notes, and use audio-enabled eReaders to enhance their reading experience.

Sound Library
Students watch articulation videos and listen to songs for each sound to support phonological awareness.

Vocab App
Helps students in Grades 3-5 practice Amplify CKLA Tier 2 vocabulary words with fun, interactive games.

Intervention Toolkit
Offers user-friendly resources designed to aid educators in identifying and addressing deficiencies in students’ foundation skills.

Program support resources

Additional program resource documents:

Welcome to the Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition program review site!

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NJ CKLA

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Welcome, Nebo SD, to Amplify CKLA!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is a state-approved core ELA curriculum designated as a primary core program that fully meets the Science of Reading requirements outlined in SB 127.

Truly built on the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA helps all teachers implement the Utah Core Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy by translating the science of reading into manageable, engaging, and effective classroom practices.

Scroll down to learn how CKLA is uniquely designed to help all your students make learning leaps in literacy.

Illustration featuring diverse cultural and historical elements like an african woman, an egyptian sphinx, a space rocket, and urban and natural landscapes under a starry sky.

Recognized Quality

Amplify CKLA is one of only a few high-quality, knowledge-building literacy curricula recognized by the Knowledge Matters campaign. Our shared message: Background knowledge is essential to literacy and learning.

Diagram displaying the "knowledge matters campaign" with connections between "core knowledge language arts comprehension," "skills word recognition," and "amplify ckla skilled reading.

Science of Reading Approved by USBE

Amplify CKLA is a content-rich literacy curriculum that systematically braids knowledge-building with skills instruction. Click below to see our state submission rubric on how Amplify CKLA addresses the Science of Reading requirements outlined in SB 127.

Review our state checklist

Independently and rigorously reviewed

Amplify CKLA not only received an all-green rating from the rigorous evaluators at EdReports, but it was also recently recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign as a literacy program that excels in building knowledge.

Read our EdReports review
Read our Knowledge Matters review

Intentional knowledge-building

The Science of Reading reveals knowledge as an essential pillar of reading comprehension and lifelong literacy. Hear from author Natalie Wexler and CKLA customers on edWebinar about the importance of knowledge-building in reading instruction.

Hear from Natalie Wexler
edWebinar Links

Program Overview

Amplify CKLA is a core ELA program for grades K–5 that delivers:

  • A unique research-based approach truly built on the Science of Reading.
  • A combination of explicit foundational skills with meaningful knowledge building.
  • Embedded support and differentiation that gets all students reading grade-level texts together.
  • Opportunities for students to see the strengths and experiences that all people share while also celebrating each others’ unique identities and experiences.
  • Authentic Spanish language arts instruction with Amplify Caminos.

Amplify CKLA for Grades K–2

After watching the K–2 video below, scroll down to learn even more, download resources, and access a demo.

Amplify CKLA for Grades 3–5

After watching the 3–5 video below, scroll down to learn even more, download resources, and access a demo.

How it works

Amplify CKLA teaches both foundational skills and background knowledge in K–2 and combines them in 3–5, as required by the science of reading.

  • In grades K–2, students complete one full lesson that builds foundational reading skills, as well as one full lesson that builds background knowledge.
  • In grades 3–5, student complete one integrated lesson that combines skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater writing emphasis.
Download CKLA Program Guide
A flowchart showing word recognition and language comprehension strands intertwining to form skilled reading, with progression labeled as increasingly automatic and strategic.

Rich topics

Amplify CKLA builds knowledge coherently across subjects and grades.

Students make connections from year-to-year by exploring grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves.

Illustration showing diverse cultural representations: two native american figures, a bear in a forest, and a medieval european woman, all set against colorful abstract backgrounds.
Seven illustrated circles represent different literary genres: fable, kindergarten, myth, grade 6, farsi, comic book, and novella, each with a relevant scene or symbol.

Units by grade

Take a closer look at the topics students explore.

A collage of educational materials including comic panels, illustrated worksheets, and classroom posters featuring diverse characters.

Knowledge Research Units

Explore our newly added Knowledge Research units.

A chocolate chip cookie in a glass of milk, a person speaking, a speech bubble saying “Let’s say it together!”, and two illustrated eyes on a green background.

Skills by grade

Take a closer look at the skills students develop.

Diverse text

Amplify CKLA puts a variety of texts in the hands of students every day to build and strengthen background knowledge and vocabulary, listening and reading comprehension, and decoding and fluency skills.

More than that, we ensure the texts students read represent the world around them. With a diverse range of authors, topics, and characters, all students have ample access to both windows and mirrors. Our texts include:

  • Authentic books.
  • Authentic text passages.
  • Student Readers.
  • Novel Guides (grades 3–5).
Six children's book covers arranged in two rows, featuring colorful illustrations of animals, people, and nature. Titles include "Rain Player," "A More Perfect Union," and "The Busy Body Book.
A boy sits at a table drawing while smiling at a large blue elephant floating outside the window in a bright, colorful room.

Grade K Text List

A boy sits on brownstone steps as a pink ice cream truck labeled "Yummy" emits colorful, wavy streams on a residential street with three row houses.

Grade 1 Text List

A rocket launches from a pad, releasing smoke, while a peregrine falcon perches on a branch in the foreground, watching the scene.

Grade 2 Text List

Three people are at a playground, with two children singing while sitting and standing on playground equipment, and an adult directing or encouraging them. Musical notes are illustrated around them.

Grade 3 Text List

Cartoon people of varied ages and backgrounds enjoy a city park; some play music, others relax or interact, with buildings and trees in the background.

Grade 4 Text List

A girl writes at her desk, imagining herself graduating in cap and gown, with a thought bubble showing her smiling and holding a diploma.

Grade 5 Text List

Aligned to LETRS and Orton Gillingham

Amplify CKLA aligns with the instructional principles recommended by Orton Gillingham and LETRS.

  • Structured–Concepts are taught through consistent routines
  • Sequential–Concepts are taught in a logical, well-planned sequence
  • Systematic–Phonemes are taught from simplest to most complex
  • Explicit–Decoding and encoding concepts are taught directly and explicitly
  • Multi-sensory–Instruction is delivered through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile pathways
  • Cumulative–Concepts are applied in decodable, connected texts with constant review and reinforcement
Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for K–2

Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for 3–5

Universal access

We believe we have a responsibility to provide literacy instruction that gives every student the same opportunity to succeed and excel.

We know that early reading affects achievement throughout school and beyond—well into college and career. Yet most literacy programs continue to fall short of supporting early literacy success. That’s why we’re so proud that CKLA is helping close the reading gap between students within diverse communities.

A boy with glasses smiles while reading a book, with illustrated objects like a telescope, gourd, and cartoon insect in the background.
A group of diverse children attentively looking upwards with expressions of curiosity and interest.

Grades K–2: Supporting all learners

A diverse group of young students and a teacher laughing together around a laptop in a colorful classroom, engaged with an online language arts curriculum.

Grades 3–5: Supporting all learners

Complete curriculum

A strong literacy program is not just about a reading program or an assessment tool: it brings together curriculum, instruction, regular practice, intervention, and assessments.

Amplify has brought these components together in our early literacy suite of curriculum, ensure that you have what you need for multi-tiered support.

A teacher using a tablet alongside a student

CKLA and mCLASS

CKLA connects to our comprehensive diagnostic universal screener called mCLASS.

Two young girls, one with braided hair and the other with blonde hair, smiling and looking at a laptop screen in a classroom.

CKLA and Boost Reading

CKLA connects to our adaptive reading practice program called Boost Reading.

A diverse group of young students and a teacher laughing together around a laptop in a colorful classroom, engaged with an online language arts curriculum.

CKLA and Language Studio

CKLA aligns with Language Studio–our ELD companion program for grades K–5.

A boy sits at a desk, leaning over a notebook and writing with a pen.

CKLA and Writing Studio

CKLA aligns with Writing Studio–our writing companion program for grades K–5.

Science of Reading Resources

Watching students learn to read: magic. Knowing how they get there: science.

As you consider your next core ELA program, it’s critically important to understand what the Science of Reading really means and what it tells us about how to teach more effectively. Unlike other programs, Amplify CKLA was built upon these insights and practices, making it easier for teachers to implement this proven approach.

Explore Science of Reading Handbook
A girl runs outdoors holding a kite with colorful ribbons labeled knowledge, vocabulary, sentences, connections, gist, sounds, letters, and words.

Access demo

Ready to explore on your own? Follow the instructions below to access your demo account.

Explore the CKLA Teacher Digital Resources

First, watch the quick navigation video to the right. Then, follow the directions below.

  • Go to: learning.amplify.com or click the Access CKLA Teacher Digital button below
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: t1.nebocklak5@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-nebocklak5
  • Click the CKLA button
  • Select your desired grade level from the Program drop down
Access CKLA Teacher Digital

Explore the CKLA Student Digital Resources

Follow the directions below to access the Student Resource Site:

  • Go to: learning.amplify.com or click the Access CKLA Student Digital button below
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: s1.nebocklak5@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-nebocklak5
  • From the main page, click the backpack in the top right corner.
  • Click on the grade level to select your desired grade.
Access CKLA Student Digital

Welcome to Amplify CKLA!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is a state-approved core ELA curriculum designated as a primary core program that fully meets the Science of Reading requirements outlined in SB 127.

Truly built on the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA helps all teachers implement the Utah Core Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy by translating the science of reading into manageable, engaging, and effective classroom practices.

Scroll down to learn how CKLA is uniquely designed to help all your students make learning leaps in literacy.

Illustration featuring diverse cultural and historical elements like an african woman, an egyptian sphinx, a space rocket, and urban and natural landscapes under a starry sky.

Recognized Quality

Amplify CKLA is one of only a few high-quality, knowledge-building literacy curricula recognized by the Knowledge Matters campaign. Our shared message: Background knowledge is essential to literacy and learning.

Diagram displaying the "knowledge matters campaign" with connections between "core knowledge language arts comprehension," "skills word recognition," and "amplify ckla skilled reading.

Science of Reading Approved by USBE

Amplify CKLA is a content-rich literacy curriculum that systematically braids knowledge-building with skills instruction. Click below to see our state submission rubric on how Amplify CKLA addresses the Science of Reading requirements outlined in SB 127.

Review our state checklist

Independently and rigorously reviewed

Amplify CKLA not only received an all-green rating from the rigorous evaluators at EdReports, but it was also recently recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign as a literacy program that excels in building knowledge.

Read our EdReports review
Read our Knowledge Matters review

Intentional knowledge-building

The Science of Reading reveals knowledge as an essential pillar of reading comprehension and lifelong literacy. Hear from author Natalie Wexler and CKLA customers on edWebinar about the importance of knowledge-building in reading instruction.

Hear from Natalie Wexler
edWebinar Links

Program Overview

Amplify CKLA is a core ELA program for grades K–5 that delivers:

  • A unique research-based approach truly built on the Science of Reading.
  • A combination of explicit foundational skills with meaningful knowledge building.
  • Embedded support and differentiation that gets all students reading grade-level texts together.
  • Opportunities for students to see the strengths and experiences that all people share while also celebrating each others’ unique identities and experiences.
  • Authentic Spanish language arts instruction with Amplify Caminos.

Amplify CKLA for Grades K–2

After watching the K–2 video below, scroll down to learn even more, download resources, and access a demo.

Amplify CKLA for Grades 3–5

After watching the 3–5 video below, scroll down to learn even more, download resources, and access a demo.

How it works

Amplify CKLA teaches both foundational skills and background knowledge in K–2 and combines them in 3–5, as required by the science of reading.

  • In grades K–2, students complete one full lesson that builds foundational reading skills, as well as one full lesson that builds background knowledge.
  • In grades 3–5, student complete one integrated lesson that combines skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater writing emphasis.
Download CKLA Program Guide
A flowchart shows language comprehension and word recognition strands merging into skilled reading, with processes becoming increasingly strategic and automatic.

Rich topics

Amplify CKLA builds knowledge coherently across subjects and grades.

Students make connections from year-to-year by exploring grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves.

Illustration showing diverse cultural representations: two native american figures, a bear in a forest, and a medieval european woman, all set against colorful abstract backgrounds.
Seven illustrated circles represent different literary genres: fable, kindergarten, myth, grade 6, farsi, comic book, and novella, each with a relevant scene or symbol.

Units by grade

Take a closer look at the topics students explore.

A collage of educational materials including comic panels, illustrated worksheets, and classroom posters featuring diverse characters.

New! Knowledge Research Units

Explore our newly added Knowledge Research units.

A chocolate chip cookie in a glass of milk, a person speaking, a speech bubble saying “Let’s say it together!”, and two illustrated eyes on a green background.

Skills by grade

Take a closer look at the skills students develop.

Diverse text

Amplify CKLA puts a variety of texts in the hands of students every day to build and strengthen background knowledge and vocabulary, listening and reading comprehension, and decoding and fluency skills. Our texts include:

  • Authentic books.
  • Authentic text passages.
  • Student Readers.
  • Novel Guides (grades 3–5).

More than that, we ensure the texts students read represent the world around them. With a diverse range of authors, topics, and characters, all students have ample access to both windows and mirrors.

Six children's book covers arranged in two rows, featuring colorful illustrations of animals, people, and nature. Titles include "Rain Player," "A More Perfect Union," and "The Busy Body Book.
A boy sits at a table drawing while smiling at a large blue elephant floating outside the window in a bright, colorful room.

Grade K Text List

A boy sits on brownstone steps as a pink ice cream truck labeled "Yummy" emits colorful, wavy streams on a residential street with three row houses.

Grade 1 Text List

A rocket launches from a pad, releasing smoke, while a peregrine falcon perches on a branch in the foreground, watching the scene.

Grade 2 Text List

Three people are at a playground, with two children singing while sitting and standing on playground equipment, and an adult directing or encouraging them. Musical notes are illustrated around them.

Grade 3 Text List

Cartoon people of varied ages and backgrounds enjoy a city park; some play music, others relax or interact, with buildings and trees in the background.

Grade 4 Text List

A girl writes at her desk, imagining herself graduating in cap and gown, with a thought bubble showing her smiling and holding a diploma.

Grade 5 Text List

Aligned to LETRS and Orton-Gillingham

Amplify CKLA aligns with the instructional principles recommended by Orton Gillingham and LETRS.

  • Structured–Concepts are taught through consistent routines
  • Sequential–Concepts are taught in a logical, well-planned sequence
  • Systematic–Phonemes are taught from simplest to most complex
  • Explicit–Decoding and encoding concepts are taught directly and explicitly
  • Multi-sensory–Instruction is delivered through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile pathways
  • Cumulative–Concepts are applied in decodable, connected texts with constant review and reinforcement
Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for K–2

Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for 3–5

Universal access

We believe we have a responsibility to provide literacy instruction that gives every student the same opportunity to succeed and excel.

We know that early reading affects achievement throughout school and beyond—well into college and career. Yet most literacy programs continue to fall short of supporting early literacy success. That’s why we’re so proud that CKLA is helping close the reading gap between students within diverse communities.

A boy with glasses smiles while reading a book, with illustrated objects like a telescope, gourd, and cartoon insect in the background.
A group of diverse children attentively looking upwards with expressions of curiosity and interest.

Grades K–2: Supporting all learners

A diverse group of young students and a teacher laughing together around a laptop in a colorful classroom, engaged with an online language arts curriculum.

CKLA-Language-Studio

Complete curriculum

A strong literacy program is not just about a reading program or an assessment tool: it brings together curriculum, instruction, regular practice, intervention, and assessments.

Amplify has brought these components together in our early literacy suite of curriculum, ensure that you have what you need for multi-tiered support.

A teacher using a tablet alongside a student

CKLA and mCLASS

CKLA connects to our comprehensive diagnostic universal screener called mCLASS.

Two young girls, one with braided hair and the other with blonde hair, smiling and looking at a laptop screen in a classroom.

CKLA and Boost Reading

CKLA connects to our adaptive reading practice program called Boost Reading.

A diverse group of young students and a teacher laughing together around a laptop in a colorful classroom, engaged with an online language arts curriculum.

CKLA and Language Studio

CKLA aligns with Language Studio–our ELD companion program for grades K–5.

A boy sits at a desk, leaning over a notebook and writing with a pen.

CKLA and Writing Studio

CKLA aligns with Writing Studio–our writing companion program for grades K–5.

Science of Reading Resources

Watching students learn to read: magic. Knowing how they get there: science.

As you consider your next core ELA program, it’s critically important to understand what the Science of Reading really means and what it tells us about how to teach more effectively. Unlike other programs, Amplify CKLA was built upon these insights and practices, making it easier for teachers to implement this proven approach.

Explore Science of Reading Handbook
A girl runs outdoors holding a kite with colorful ribbons labeled knowledge, vocabulary, sentences, connections, gist, sounds, letters, and words.

Access demo

Ready to explore on your own? Follow the instructions below to access your demo account.

Explore the CKLA Teacher Digital Site

First, watch the quick navigation video to the right. Then, follow the directions below to access the CKLA Teacher Digital Site.

  • Go to learning.amplify.com or click Access CKLA Teacher Digital below
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: t1.utahckla@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-utahckla
  • Click the CKLA button on the left hand side
  • Select your desired grade level from the Program drop down
Access CKLA Teacher Resource Site

Explore the CKLA Student Digital Site

Follow the directions below to access the CKLA Student Digital Site.

  • Go to learning.amplify.com or click Access CKLA Student Digital below
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: s1.utahckla@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-utahckla
  • Answer the question.
  • Click “Go” to get to the Hub!
Access CKLA Student Digital

Welcome to Amplify CKLA!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts® (CKLA) is currently the only state-approved core ELA curriculum designated as a primary core program that fully meets the Science of Reading requirements outlined in SB 127.

Truly built on the Science of Reading, Amplify CKLA helps all teachers implement the Utah Core Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy by translating the science of reading into manageable, engaging, and effective classroom practices.

Scroll down to learn how CKLA is uniquely designed to help all your students make learning leaps in literacy.

Illustration featuring diverse cultural and historical elements like an african woman, an egyptian sphinx, a space rocket, and urban and natural landscapes under a starry sky.

Recognized Quality

Amplify CKLA is one of only a few high-quality, knowledge-building literacy curricula recognized by the Knowledge Matters campaign. Our shared message: Background knowledge is essential to literacy and learning.

Diagram displaying the "knowledge matters campaign" with connections between "core knowledge language arts comprehension," "skills word recognition," and "amplify ckla skilled reading.

Science of Reading Approved by USBE

Amplify CKLA is a content-rich literacy curriculum that systematically braids knowledge-building with skills instruction. In fact, according to the Utah SBE, Amplify CKLA fully meets the Science of Reading requirements outlined in SB 127.

Review our state checklist

Independently and rigorously reviewed

Amplify CKLA not only received an all-green rating from the rigorous evaluators at EdReports, but it was also recently recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign as a literacy program that excels in building knowledge.

Read our EdReports review
Read our Knowledge Matters review

Intentional knowledge-building

The Science of Reading reveals knowledge as an essential pillar of reading comprehension, and even lifelong literacy. That’s why leading scientists say knowledge-building must be incorporated into reading instruction from the beginning—and with Amplify CKLA, it is.

Hear from Natalie Wexler

Program Overview

Amplify CKLA is a core ELA program for grades K–5 that delivers:

  • A unique research-based approach truly built on the Science of Reading.
  • A combination of explicit foundational skills with meaningful knowledge building.
  • Embedded support and differentiation that gets all students reading grade-level texts together.
  • Opportunities for students to see the strengths and experiences that all people share while also celebrating each others’ unique identities and experiences.
  • Authentic Spanish language arts instruction with Amplify Caminos.

Amplify CKLA for Grades K–2

After watching the K–2 video below, scroll down to learn even more, download resources, and access a demo.

Amplify CKLA for Grades 3–5

After watching the 3–5 video below, scroll down to learn even more, download resources, and access a demo.

How it works

Amplify CKLA teaches both foundational skills and background knowledge in K–2 and combines them in 3–5, as required by the science of reading.

  • In grades K–2, students complete one full lesson that builds foundational reading skills, as well as one full lesson that builds background knowledge.
  • In grades 3–5, student complete one integrated lesson that combines skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater writing emphasis.
Download CKLA Program Guide
A flowchart shows language comprehension and word recognition strands merging into skilled reading, with processes becoming increasingly strategic and automatic.

Rich topics

Amplify CKLA builds knowledge coherently across subjects and grades.

Students make connections from year-to-year by exploring grade-appropriate subject-area knowledge and vocabulary in history, science, literature, and the arts while learning to read, write, and think creatively and for themselves.

Illustration showing diverse cultural representations: two native american figures, a bear in a forest, and a medieval european woman, all set against colorful abstract backgrounds.
Seven illustrated circles represent different literary genres: fable, kindergarten, myth, grade 6, farsi, comic book, and novella, each with a relevant scene or symbol.

Units by grade

Take a closer look at the topics students explore.

A collage of educational materials including comic panels, illustrated worksheets, and classroom posters featuring diverse characters.

New! Knowledge Research Units

Explore our newly added Knowledge Research units.

A chocolate chip cookie in a glass of milk, a person speaking, a speech bubble saying “Let’s say it together!”, and two illustrated eyes on a green background.

Skills by grade

Take a closer look at the skills students develop.

Diverse text

Amplify CKLA puts a variety of texts in the hands of students every day to build and strengthen background knowledge and vocabulary, listening and reading comprehension, and decoding and fluency skills.

More than that, we ensure the texts students read represent the world around them. With a diverse range of authors, topics, and characters, all students have ample access to both windows and mirrors. Our texts include:

  • Authentic books.
  • Authentic text passages.
  • Student Readers.
  • Novel Guides (grades 3–5).
Six children's book covers arranged in two rows, featuring colorful illustrations of animals, people, and nature. Titles include "Rain Player," "A More Perfect Union," and "The Busy Body Book.
A boy sits at a table drawing while smiling at a large blue elephant floating outside the window in a bright, colorful room.

Grade K Text List

A boy sits on brownstone steps as a pink ice cream truck labeled "Yummy" emits colorful, wavy streams on a residential street with three row houses.

Grade 1 Text List

A rocket launches from a pad, releasing smoke, while a peregrine falcon perches on a branch in the foreground, watching the scene.

Grade 2 Text List

Three people are at a playground, with two children singing while sitting and standing on playground equipment, and an adult directing or encouraging them. Musical notes are illustrated around them.

Grade 3 Text List

Cartoon people of varied ages and backgrounds enjoy a city park; some play music, others relax or interact, with buildings and trees in the background.

Grade 4 Text List

A girl writes at her desk, imagining herself graduating in cap and gown, with a thought bubble showing her smiling and holding a diploma.

Grade 5 Text List

Aligned to LETRS and Orton-Gillingham

Amplify CKLA aligns with the instructional principles recommended by Orton-Gillingham and LETRS.

  • Structured–Concepts are taught through consistent routines
  • Sequential–Concepts are taught in a logical, well-planned sequence
  • Systematic–Phonemes are taught from simplest to most complex
  • Explicit–Decoding and encoding concepts are taught directly and explicitly
  • Multi-sensory–Instruction is delivered through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile pathways
  • Cumulative–Concepts are applied in decodable, connected texts with constant review and reinforcement
Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for K–2

Diagram showing parallel strands labeled with reading skills and knowledge merging together into a single twisted line labeled "Integration.

CKLA Skills sequence for 3–5

Equitable instruction

We believe we have a responsibility to provide literacy instruction that gives every student the same opportunity to succeed and excel.

We know that early reading affects achievement throughout school and beyond—well into college and career. Yet most literacy programs continue to fall short of supporting early literacy success. That’s why we’re so proud that CKLA is helping close the reading gap between students within diverse communities.

A boy with glasses smiles while reading a book, with illustrated objects like a telescope, gourd, and cartoon insect in the background.
A group of diverse children attentively looking upwards with expressions of curiosity and interest.

The four pillars of equity

Two boys sit at desks in a classroom, talking to each other. An upright paper cutout of a yellow light bulb is placed between their open books.

Equity and diversity overview

A group of diverse children attentively looking upwards with expressions of curiosity and interest.

Grades K–2: Supporting all learners

A diverse group of young students and a teacher laughing together around a laptop in a colorful classroom, engaged with an online language arts curriculum.

Grades 3–5: Supporting all learners

Complete curriculum

A strong literacy program is not just about a reading program or an assessment tool: it brings together curriculum, instruction, regular practice, intervention, and assessments.

Amplify has brought these components together in our early literacy suite of curriculum, ensure that you have what you need for multi-tiered support.

A teacher using a tablet alongside a student

CKLA and mCLASS

CKLA connects to our comprehensive diagnostic universal screener called mCLASS.

Two young girls, one with braided hair and the other with blonde hair, smiling and looking at a laptop screen in a classroom.

CKLA and Amplify Reading

CKLA connects to our adaptive reading practice program called Amplify Reading.

A diverse group of young students and a teacher laughing together around a laptop in a colorful classroom, engaged with an online language arts curriculum.

CKLA and Language Studio

CKLA aligns with Language Studio–our ELD companion program for grades K–5.

A boy sits at a desk, leaning over a notebook and writing with a pen.

CKLA and Writing Studio

CKLA aligns with Writing Studio–our writing companion program for grades K–5.

Science of Reading Resources

Watching students learn to read: magic. Knowing how they get there: science.

As you consider your next core ELA program, it’s critically important to understand what the Science of Reading really means and what it tells us about how to teach more effectively. Unlike other programs, Amplify CKLA was built upon these insights and practices, making it easier for teachers to implement this proven approach.

Explore Science of Reading Handbook
A girl runs outdoors holding a kite with colorful ribbons labeled knowledge, vocabulary, sentences, connections, gist, sounds, letters, and words.

Access demo

Ready to explore on your own? Follow the instructions below to access your demo account.

Explore the CKLA Teacher Resource Site

First, watch the quick navigation video to the right. Then, click the “Access CKLA Teacher Resource Site” button to log in.

  • Click the CKLA Teacher Resource Site button
  • Select Log in with Amplify.
  • Enter this username: t1.slcsd-ckla-1@demo.tryamplify.net
  • Enter this password: Amplify1-slcsd-ckla-1
  • Select the desired grade level
Access CKLA Teacher Resource Site

S3-01: Science as the underdog, and the research behind it

A graphic with the text "Science Connections" and "Amplify" features colorful circles and curved lines on a dark gray background.

Get ready for season 3 of Science Connections: The Podcast!

In our first episode, we unpack the research around our season theme of science as the underdog with Horizon Research, Inc. Vice President Eric R. Banilower and  Senior Researcher Courtney Plumley. Eric and Courtney dive into the research they’ve found and their experiences as former educators to show how science is often overlooked in K–12 classrooms. We discuss how the science classroom compares to other subjects in terms of time and resources, how schools are a reflection of society, and what’s needed to change science and its impact on a larger scale.

We hope you enjoy this episode and explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page!

DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT

Courtney Plumley (00:00):

We asked teachers how much science, professional development, they’ve had in the last three years, and nearly half of elementary teachers said none.

Eric Cross (00:10):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. I am super-excited to be kicking off the third season with the show. This entire season will be exploring the theme of science as the underdog. And we’re gonna make the case for science, by showing how and why it can be used more effectively. In the coming episodes, we’re gonna talk about how science can be better integrated into other content areas like literacy and math, and explore some of the benefits that you might not be thinking about good science instruction. But first, science as the underdog. I bet some of you out there feel like science is the underdog in your community at school. I know I have at times. To kick off this season, I’m gonna talk to two people who really studied this question by looking at the state of science instruction across the US. Eric Banilower is Vice President of Horizon Research and Courtney Plumley is Senior Researcher at Horizon Research. Eric was the principal investigator and Courtney an author of the latest in a series of studies called “The National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education.” We’re gonna dive into the findings of their most recent report to see what the data’s showing us. Please enjoy my discussion with Eric Banilower and Courtney Plumley. Courtney, hello. And thank you so much for joining us.

Courtney Plumley (01:25):

Hi Eric. It’s nice to be here.

Eric Cross (01:26):

And Eric, welcome.

Eric R. Banilower (01:27):

We’re thrilled to be here, so thank you for having us.

Eric Cross (01:30):

I was reading through the report. Four hundred…a very thorough report, 471 pages, I think, as I got it?

Eric R. Banilower (01:37):

And that’s only one of the many reports from that study.

Eric Cross (01:40):

Yeah. You all have done your work, so I’m really excited to to talk to you about this. And on this season of the show, we’re exploring the theme of science as the underdog. And I think a lot of our listeners, we feel like science is an underdog either in their school or in their district. But you’ve actually done some research on this, in a 2018 study, “The National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education.” So I wanna talk about this report. But first I was hoping you can kind of set the stage. How did you come to work on this report, and then, big picture, what were you hoping to find out?

Eric R. Banilower (02:10):

So the 2018 study that you just mentioned was actually the sixth iteration of a series of studies dating back to 1977. And we collect data every decade or so—you know, plus or minus a few years. And really, what we’re trying to do is get a snapshot of what the science and math education system looks like in in the nation. So my role grew. I started working at Horizon in about 1998, after teaching high school for five years in California. And then going to graduate school. And right about that time, the company was doing the 2000 iteration of the survey. And I worked on it with the team here at Horizon. And then we did it again in 2012. And I had a much more prominent role in that study, and became the kind of leader of the study. And in 2018, the most recent version, we just did it again. So the goal of this study is really to kind of examine key aspects of the K–12 STEM education system. And the main audience of the work has traditionally been policy makers, researchers, and practitioners who work at the federal, state, and district level.

Eric Cross (03:30):

So this study, you took kind of a sample size, but it’s reflective of trends that we tend to see across the nation as a whole. Would that be fair to say?

Eric R. Banilower (03:38):

Yes, definitely it is. It is a random sample of schools in the country. So we start with a list of all the public and private schools in the nation, and then do a random sample of those schools, and then work really, really hard to recruit schools to agree to be in the study. And that has gotten harder every time we’ve done the study, for many understandable reasons. And then once we have schools on board, we sample teachers within schools. So we don’t even survey every teacher in a school. It’s really a sub-sample. So that we can make inferences about the nation as a whole.

Eric Cross (04:14):

Makes sense. And so Courtney, what did you find out about the time spent on science instruction in US schools?

Courtney Plumley (04:22):

So, I’m gonna talk about elementary teachers to begin with.

Eric Cross (04:26):

Because that was your past life, right?

Courtney Plumley (04:28):

I am a former elementary teacher, yeah. So that’s kind of where my head is. And that’s relatable for me. Right? So we asked teachers, like, how many days of the week or weeks of the year that they teach elementary school. And fewer than 20% teach science every day of the school year. They kind of do one or two things, for the most part. They teach a couple days a week or they teach every day of the week, but only for, like, maybe six weeks, and then they swap with social studies and they kind of do that across the school year. Which is really different from, like, math, right? We also asked elementary teachers, how often do they teach math, and it’s every day of the year. Then we also asked them how many minutes they teach when they’re teaching, and we kind of did the math to figure out, all right, if they taught science every day of the school year, how many minutes would it be in a single day, so that we could make a more comparable comparison with math and ELA. If you were to work it out, how many minutes of science an elementary teacher teaches across the year, and break it down to per day, it’s like 18 minutes for the lower elementary grades, 27 for the upper elementary grades. Which is not a lot. But it’s pretty much an hour a day in math, and 80 plus minutes in ELA. So, a lot less. And then, you know, when I was teaching, the first thing to go was always science, right? If there was an assembly, if there was early release or whatever, that was the first thing to go. So those numbers might even be higher. Just because they aren’t factoring that kind of thing in, too.

Eric Cross (06:05):

So, now I’m curious. That is something that I’ve seen just anecdotally, science being the first thing to go. I feel like I’ve seen that almost…it’s almost become a meme, that I’ve heard that so often. Just in your experience, why do you think that is that huge disparity between the two?

Courtney Plumley (06:26):

Well, I mean, when I was teaching, I was teaching third grade. I had an end-of-grade test in math and ELA for my kids. I didn’t have one in science. So the administration said, “Hey, if you’re gonna drop something, drop something that’s not tested.”

Eric Cross (06:41):

Simple as that. And Eric, you, past life: physics teacher. High school. What did you see? ‘Cause our listeners run the gamut from elementary all the way up to high school. What did you see, as far as relative science instruction in the secondary level?

Eric R. Banilower (07:00):

Sure. You know, secondary is just a whole different situation than elementary. Rght? Because you have departmentalization. I taught science. I didn’t have to teach other subjects. And students had periods, and they still do, sorry, they still have periods, even though it’s been a long time since I taught. And you know, they rotate from one class to another. So all the classes were essentially the same length. So, you know, when I was teaching, it was about 50-minute periods. So in terms of minutes of a class or minutes on a subject, it’s not really different. But what is different is what students are required to take in order to graduate high school. One of the things we asked schools about in this study was how many years of a subject do students have to take in order to graduate? And what we saw was in mathematics, over half the schools in the nation require students to take four years of mathematics to graduate. OK? And the vast majority of the rest, about 44%, require three years in science. Most schools require three years. Very few require four years. And many, or a fair number, still only require two years to graduate. So the expectation of what students are taking is lower in science than it is in mathematics.

Eric Cross (08:20):

So you were seeing the same trend in secondary, essentially.

Eric R. Banilower (08:24):

Yes.

Eric Cross (08:24):

The amount of time devoted to the instruction of science…we’re kind of seeing it mirrored just across K–12 across the board.

Eric R. Banilower (08:33):

That’s correct.

Eric Cross (08:34):

And that’s across the country. ‘Cause the sample size represents teachers from Alaska, Hawaii, the South, SoCal, everywhere. So what’s been the reaction to that number? Like 18 to 20 minutes is…I mean, it’s, it’s half of my lunch at our school. What’s been the reaction to that number since this data has been published?

Eric R. Banilower (08:58):

I don’t know, Courtney, if you want to take that…

Courtney Plumley (09:00):

It’s a lot of what you just did. Like, what??? Like, how is it possible to teach all the things you need to teach in such a little amount of time?

Eric R. Banilower (09:08):

What’s really kind of surprising to me, though — though now that I’ve worked on three iterations of the study, it no longer surprises me, but it did at first — is that these numbers really aren’t changing since we’ve started doing this study. You know, people thought maybe with No Child Left Behind and the increase in accountability, time on science might actually go down, because there was more testing in math and English Language Arts. It didn’t happen. It was pretty much constant, that this has been kind of the state of science education for a long time.

Eric Cross (09:44):

So Eric, if I’m hearing you right: The past studies, we’re not seeing an increase or a decline. This has been this way for how many years, roughly, would you say? Since it’s been studied?

Eric R. Banilower (09:54):

You know, I’d have to go back to the 1977 report to get the numbers, but I’m gonna say since then, it has not changed much, if at all.

Eric Cross (10:03):

So this has kind of been entrenched. This has been the norm for almost for the career of a teacher, almost generationally. We’re looking at anyone who’s been in the highest levels of leadership to someone just entering the classroom, this has been the way it’s always been. This is kind of for many people what they’ve only known.

Eric R. Banilower (10:20):

Right.

Eric Cross (10:21):

Kind of become the norm.

Courtney Plumley (10:21):

We didn’t even have science when I was in elementary school. We had science on a cart that came by, you know, every other week.

Eric Cross (10:28):

Was that like a food truck, but like the science version of it? It shows up and does quick science and takes off?

Courtney Plumley (10:35):

And New York was, I mean — we always watched Voyage of the Mimi. I don’t know if you ever watched that. But that’s what we watched every single time the Science on the Cart came. So it’s like a marine biology show. Ben Affleck was on it when he was a kid.

Eric Cross (10:48):

<laugh> Really? For me it was, Mr. Wizard. For some of my students, even now, Bill Nye. You know, the Bill Nye show or something would come on. So what happens when you look at less wealthy districts? Is there a relationship between community resources and science instruction, or is it pretty much equal no matter what the district resources are, the school’s resources are? Did you see any data there?

Eric R. Banilower (11:12):

Yes. We actually did a lot of disaggregating the data by community type, student demographics in the schools, to look to see whether there were areas of inequities across the country. And, you know, one of the factors we looked at was kind of a measure of socioeconomic status. You know, wealth in the community. By looking at percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. And interestingly, in terms of time on science instruction, there is actually not a relationship between income level and how much time is spent at the elementary level on science, which actually surprised us.

Eric Cross (11:54):

Because you might have expected it to be the other way now. And granted, it’s 18 to 20 minutes, there isn’t much more to shave off off of that. But were there other differences, like when you compared those communities? Maybe it wasn’t the amount of science instruction, but was there anything else, like teacher preparedness, resources? Were there anything else that you did see discrepancies in? Or was it equal across the board?

Eric R. Banilower (12:13):

No, unfortunately there, there have been, and still are, a number of areas where community resources are related to pretty substantial differences in educational opportunities that students have. So, you know, we’re talking about the high school science requirements. One of the things that we saw was that high schools in less wealthy communities tend to offer less rigorous science courses than high schools in better-off-financially communities. So they may not be AP courses or second year advanced courses to the same extent that there are in the wealthier communities. That’s one big difference that we saw. Another one was what you were just saying about, sort of, the teachers who teach in these communities. You know, I think that for many years people have had a feeling that the best teachers go to the better off schools because it’s easier to teach there. Well, we see that the schools with the most poverty, they tend to have the newer teachers, who are just starting their career. They tend to have teachers who are less well prepared to teach their subject. And there’s a host of other differences we found. And you know, you mentioned the report being 400 pages. This other report that looks at these differences is also quite long, and, you know, identified a number of areas where there are these disparities in the system.

Eric Cross (13:43):

Well, we appreciate you synthesizing this for us, because this is super-important. And you’ve fleshed out a lot of things. And the fact that it’s driven by data, we as science teachers, we as scientists, being objective, really, really value that. Because this is actually validating a lot of the things that our listeners and myself, we experience anecdotally. But you don’t have a lot of things to network you. And sometimes, when you see this, you wonder if it’s just you, or is are other people experiencing this? And so as you start talking about this data, realizing, oh wow, this is not something in isolation. This is systemic. This is something that’s impacted. And then Eric, what you said about schools that were lower-income, that were under-resourced, and didn’t offer those advanced classes, what are some of the impacts of that, maybe downstream, of doing that? Not having those AP classes? I just kind of wanted to put that out there and ask you.

Eric R. Banilower (14:31):

You know, this is a really…this is a current debate right now, about what the goals of schooling K–12 should be. You know, are all kids meant to go to college? Should there be alternative paths? And you know, I know when I was teaching, I would have students say, “Why do I need to know this? I’m not gonna go into science. I’m not gonna study physics. Why do I need to take this?” And, you know, the answer I used to give them was, “You never know where your life is gonna end up and what opportunities you’ll have. And by having these educational experiences, you have more opportunities available to you. Whether or not you choose to go down those paths, you have opportunities. And when you don’t take this kind of coursework, you know, even if you don’t want to go to college, you limit your potential careers. Because so many careers nowadays require some technical knowledge, some knowledge of science, even if it’s not explicitly a science job. It is embedded in our society now. We are a technological and science-based society.”

Eric Cross (15:37):

It reminds me of something that I’ve told my students, that if you become a scientist, that’s awesome. I love that. But if you don’t, and you want to be a dancer or an actor or a lawyer or anything that may not be directly related to STEM, I want you to choose it because it was a choice, and not a lack of options. So as long as you’re choosing not to go in STEM, and you don’t make that decision because you can’t, or because you weren’t given the opportunity. So that’s how I’ve always had this mindset as a teacher. And I’ve explained it to my students. So if you say, “Cross, you know what I want to do, I wanna be an awesome chef,” which, you know, low-key that’s science, right? <laugh> Molecular gastronomy, we know that. But like, you be the best chef. But as long as you’re being a chef because you choose that, and you’re like, “I love science, but I don’t wanna go that direction,” we’re good.

Eric R. Banilower (16:26):

Right. And if you think about, a lot of social justice issues with pollution and climate change, and you look at which communities are more affected by some of these larger environmental problems and challenges, it tends to be the lower socioeconomic communities, the more poverty-stricken communities have worse water, have worse air quality. And so if, if people from these communities are going to make informed decisions about who they’re gonna vote for, about what policies they’re gonna support, those are science topics that you have to have some understanding in order to make informed decisions in your life.

Eric Cross (17:09):

Courtney, you were one of the Swiss Army Knife teachers. This is how I perceive it for elementary. You had to teach everything. And shout out to all of my elementary school teachers that have to be mathematicians and grammar whizzes and scientists and PE instructors and social emotional, all of those different things. you also looked at teacher preparedness. How did teachers feel about teaching science compared to other subjects like language arts and math? Did you see anything there?

Courtney Plumley (17:39):

We did, we did. And I’m glad you said, “How did they feel about it?” Because one thing that, you know, in a survey you can’t really do is capture how someone actually…how good someone actually…the quality of someone’s instruction. But you can ask them how prepared they feel. And you can even ask them like stats, like, “What did you major in in college?” You know. But you really are going on based on what what they say. So we ask them how prepared they feel to teach all the core subjects. And two-thirds of elementary teachers felt very well prepared to teach reading. They felt very well prepared to teach math. But when it comes to science, it’s less than a third felt very well prepared. And you know, like you said, when you’re teaching elementary school, you’re teaching all the subjects. But also in science, there’s usually four main instructional units in a school year. And they’re all from different science disciplines. So not only are you going on, like, “Maybe in college took a lot of bio classes, but I didn’t take any physics classes, and now I have to teach physics to my kids and I have no experience there.” So, you know, we also ask them how well-prepared they felt in these different disciplines. And the numbers are even smaller, you know. Fewer than a quarter felt very well-prepared in life science. And like 13% felt very well-prepared in physical science. So there’s definitely a big difference between how much teachers feel prepared for ELA and math versus science.

Eric Cross (19:08):

And just from a human perspective, when we don’t feel prepared for something, we’re not really gonna probably lean into it as much as we are into our strengths. Like, that’s just kind of how we are across the board.

Courtney Plumley (19:18):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (19:18):

I’m even like that with my own chores in the house. Or when I have things I need to get done, and I might not be as good at doing those things—it’s gonna be a heavy cognitive load; I’m gonna have to do some background research—I tend to find other areas to excel in. Like, I’m gonna be productive in this other area. I’m gonna really crush it here. But this other thing gets put to the back burner.

Courtney Plumley (19:36):

Totally. And the same reason I might skip science today, <laugh> ’cause it’s scary.

Eric Cross (19:41):

Yeah, exactly. But I love this book. <Laugh> Or we could do this math, and let’s really, really dive deep into it. Now, did you also look at professional development and instructional resources that are being provided?

Courtney Plumley (19:53):

We did.

Eric Cross (19:54):

And on the whole, how was the amount—and I’m seeing a trend here, so I’m kind of feeling like I know where this might go—but I wanted to ask it, did the amount of professional development and resources for science, was there much of a difference between that and other subjects?

Eric R. Banilower (20:10):

Well, I’ll start on this, and Courtney, feel free to jump in. You know, one of the things that we asked was how much kind of discretionary funding do schools devote to science and how much to mathematics? So, for consumables or equipment and supplies or computer software for teachers to use in the classroom. And it’s hard to compare, I think, across subjects because the demands for this kind of supplies, et cetera, is very different, I think, in science than it is in mathematics. Right? We have a lot of, you know, equipment for doing investigations, consumable supplies in science. And those things need to be replenished on a regular basis. It turns out, when we look at the data for school discretionary spending on this kind of stuff, the median school spends less than $2 per student at the elementary level on science, compared to over $6 for mathematics. At the high school level, it’s kind of reversed. Schools spend more money on high school science than they do on high school math. but even still, at the high school, it’s less than $7 per student. Which is not a lot of money being devoted to thinking about all the materials, supplies, chemicals, et cetera, that you need to teach science well, at the high school level. More disturbing is the fact that, you know, we were talking about inequities before, schools that serve less well-off communities spend less than schools that serve wealthier communities, by quite a big amount.

Eric Cross (21:46):

So essentially the per-student thing just kind of popped out to me: So, like, an expensive Starbucks drink is what we’re spending on science per student.

Eric R. Banilower (21:57):

At the high school level. Yes.

Eric Cross (21:58):

At the high school level. And I get those catalogs in the mail, from all of those big science companies. You can’t get much for seven bucks. At least, nothing high-level. And I know I do a lot of 99-cent store science. I go down the street, go to the 99-cent store. Thankfully we could do a lot of awesome science with just, you know, cheap things. But a lot of the higher level experiences, they’re pricey. But the experiences are so rich! And $7 at the high school level is nothing. It’s not much at all.

Eric R. Banilower (22:28):

Yeah. It is definitely, you know, kind of shocking to think about what we’re investing in our children’s future.

Eric Cross (22:37):

Now, just to put you both on the spot, ’cause I feel like that we’ve identified some…we’re seeing a trend here, we’re seeing a pattern. We’re talking about, you know, being science teachers. There’s a pattern going on here. Do you think it’s fair to characterize science as the underdog?

Courtney Plumley (22:52):

I think in elementary school, it is a fair statement. Because, like we said before, I mean they’re gonna preference math and ELA almost all the time. I mean, the other thing you’d asked a little bit ago was about professional development, too. And we do have some data on that. And we ask teachers, you know, how much science professional development they’ve had in the last three years. And nearly half of elementary teachers said none. And I know I didn’t have any science professional development. If I was gonna pick from among the catalog, I was picking one that I needed more, like math. Math and ELA. I keep making that statement, but just over and over, it’s the truth.

Eric Cross (23:31):

And going back to what you said earlier, because that’s where the accountability was, right? And that kind of came top-down.

Courtney Plumley (23:38):

Yes.

Eric Cross (23:38):

And influenced everything else.

Eric R. Banilower (23:40):

Yeah. Now, really interesting thing that we did, a year or so ago, ’cause someone asked us, you know, “Hey, could you look at this?” is we compared elementary science instructional time among states where science counted towards accountability versus states where science doesn’t count towards accountability. And at the upper elementary grades, more time was spent on science in schools in states where they had science accountability. Now I’m not arguing for adding science to accountability systems. But that’s a pretty telling piece of data.

Eric Cross (24:19):

What gets measured gets done.

Eric R. Banilower (24:20):

Yeah.

Eric Cross (24:20):

Or what was getting evaluated was getting done. And that raises, that opens up a myriad of other questions about testing, and what that reveals, and all of those different things. But at the end of the day, what you’re finding is that the things that were getting tested were the things that were getting the priority.

Eric R. Banilower (24:36):

That’s right.

Eric Cross (24:37):

How did we get to this point? And Eric, you said it goes back at least to ’77, but we look at society and we’re…I wanna say we’re post-pandemic, but we’re we’re not. but we’re trying to, we’re trying to get past that. But we’re looking at…we had innovations in biology, we have innovations right now in green energy and electric cars and all of these things that are STEM-based. We know that these are things that have moved humanity forward. And we look at the pipeline of people who are in STEM and we, we see the disparities and things like that. Why was science given less of a priority? I’m just curious. Maybe, Courtney, we could start with you, if you have any ideas. Or Eric. Either one. But how did we get here?

Eric R. Banilower (25:22):

<laugh> I think Courtney wants me to take that one. I’m older so I’ve seen more <laugh>. So, you know, I have the gray hair. She doesn’t. I think it’s complicated. And I know this sounds cliche, but but schools are a reflection of society, right? And, and so science education, you know, if you think back when Sputnik was launched, there became this great demand in America to improve and produce more scientists and engineers in response to this Cold War threat. Right? And then in the ’80s there was rising, oh, the gathering storm was an economic argument that we needed to increase science and math, you know, education and people going into those fields in order to compete economically against the global competitors. And I think that America has always produced a fair number, a large number, of high-quality scientists and engineers, you know. And we still lead the world in many ways. But where we’ve identified as a problem is who has those opportunities to go into those fields. You know, it used to be a very select, a very male-dominated, white male-dominated field. Right? And other people didn’t have the opportunity, or they were shown the way out pretty early. And we, I think, have come to realize as a country that, you know, the, the greater the diversity of thought that we can get into these discussions, the more innovative we can be and the more productive as a society we can be. And so I think we’ve had this shift in the country to, instead of thinking about just the quality for the select few, but to be thinking about the quality for everyone. And so that makes it seem like some of these challenges are greater than they used to be. And I think they’re different challenges, right? We’ve evolved as a society and I think schools have evolved.

Eric Cross (27:40):

There is a conversation I was in on a plane with a person who was a materials manager for a company that made the adhesive for sandpaper. And we were flying…I was flying to Denmark and he was flying to some other Scandinavian country. And we were just talking about it. And he came from another industry, and somehow the conversation led to science. I don’t know how that happened. But somehow I just started talking about science and I asked him about, Eric, kind of what you said about the US kind of leading the way in science innovation versus the rest of the world. And I asked him why. And he said one of the reasons why is because the heterogeneous thought. The different groups of people that are coming to a problem actually create more innovative and novel solutions. Versus when it’s more homogeneous. And everyone’s either culturally or just for whatever reason, kind of thinks a certain way. While they might have a more efficient way, the variety of solutions are not as varied and not as novel. I was reminded of that story based on what you just said. So it’s really interesting. So it seems to be that it benefits if we have more heterogeneous groups, more folks who are contributing to STEM, because that’s gonna be solving the next problem more efficiently. Or I guess maybe in my head it seems like the next we need…we do really well when we have a dragon to slay. I mean, it seems like we come together when that’s the case, right? Like, I dunno.

Eric R. Banilower (29:06):

No, I think that’s…I think that’s accurate.

Eric Cross (29:09):

Later on the season of the podcast, we’re gonna explore ways to better integrate science with other subjects like literacy and math. Were you able to study at all any more integrated approaches to science instruction? Does any of your research support that approach?

Courtney Plumley (29:25):

Not on the national survey, we didn’t study that. And it’s something that we’ve talked about before, because it’s difficult to get teachers to…we were talking about instructional time. It’s hard for teachers to put a number on it when they’re integrating, because, you know, it’s not like I have my science block from 3 to 3:30 anymore. Now it’s kind of scattered about. But it’s something that has been in the ether. We’ve been looking at it in a couple of projects. So there’s some evidence that it can be effective, especially for getting more, you know…the idea is you can get more time for science if you are integrating with other subjects. But one thing to kind of caution is like, students need to have opportunities to learn each discipline when they’re doing integrated instruction. So you don’t wanna just have, like, math in your science. Kids already know to just, like, support it. Then it’s hard to take time from math to put it into science when they’re not actually learning anything new. That’s the easy thing to do, though, is say, “Oh, my kids already know how to measure. We did that in a previous unit. So now we’ll we’ll do it as part of our science instruction.” So it’s a lot of work to make it so they’re learning something new, mathematics and science, at the same time. And it’s not really something that we think that teachers should be having to do on their own, with all the other things that teachers have to do. The last thing they need to do is be creating their own, you know, curriculum. Something that’s already…you know, it’s not straightforward. So we’ve been talking about it, we think it’s really something that instructional materials maybe need to be focusing on instead of teachers having to do that on their own,

Eric Cross (31:01):

Teachers would implement it, but asking them to create it is a whole different thing, and it’s a huge ask.

Courtney Plumley (31:08):

Yes.

Eric Cross (31:08):

Yeah. And, did I hear you right? So the ideal situation would’ve been the students learning a newer math concept, but embedded in a science kind of context? Or was that the better way? Versus, “I’m gonna take a math concept they already know and then just put it into the science setting?”

Courtney Plumley (31:26):

Well, if the idea is that you can get more science time if you’re, you know, integrating things, so you can maybe take time away from a specific math block by putting it with science, or whatever, then if the math is something that the kids already know, now you’re just taking away. I think that that has to be new in both cases, in order to justify having more time.

Eric Cross (31:49):

Right. Eric, in the secondary level, any thoughts on that? On integrating these disciplines together?

Eric R. Banilower (31:56):

I think, you know, just like at the elementary level, it can be challenging to do it well. When I taught, I taught my last couple years in a kind of school-within-a-school kind of situation, where our goal was to try to integrate science, mathematics, and language arts. And it’s hard to do that in a meaningful way. And we did not have curriculum materials given to us to help us do this. We were trying to figure out how to do this on our own, while we were teaching 200 kids a day in our subjects. Right? And five preparations. And you know, it’s a big ask of any teacher. And there are teachers who thrive on this and are great at this. And, you know, that’s one thing I wanna, make clear: our data is about the system, and we are former teachers. Almost everyone who works at Horizon is a former teacher. We have the greatest respect for teachers and what they do. And what our data is showing is are kind of like areas where the system isn’t providing teachers and their students the opportunities to do great things. I think at the high school level, there has been this idea of project-based learning where students are bringing together different skills, different ideas from across disciplines. And I think there’s, again, a lot of potential in doing that. But trying to develop those experiences so that they are doing service to the different subjects, so students are learning what they’re supposed to learn in English Language Arts, that they’re learning, important mathematics, and that this is in a science context, where they are getting to do and understand what science is and how science, as a discipline, operates…that’s just a really hard thing to develop.

Eric Cross (33:53):

So what I’m hearing—and I really appreciate the nuance in this, because it’s not a simple “Yes. Integrated is better,”—I’m hearing “Yes. Quality control.” “Yes. It needs to be written not by teachers; they’re the practitioners.” It’s “Yes. And,” not just simply binary. Which…it’s so easy to wanna chunk things and say yes or no on things. But this one seems a much more nuanced approach. And in a future episode, you mentioned project-based learning, we’re gonna try and talk to people who have thoughts on this. And I really appreciate that you talked about project-based learning, because also, how do you evaluate that? How do you evaluate whether or not it is high quality? Is this is something I see? You know, high-quality standards, highest quality science teaching, highly qualified teachers. It’s something that I see often. Now, based on all your research, this is kind of the 30,000-foot view. What advice might you have for people who are thinking about changing the way science is taught in this country? Which hasn’t changed since 1977, at least since we’ve been measuring it. Any advice for people who do want to act? Another way to ask, it might be, if you were given a magic wand, <laugh>, you have all power, what might you do if you can control the entire vertical system?

Eric R. Banilower (35:07):

Yeah, so a clarification, I do think science instruction has changed. It has evolved. I think there’s a lot of really good things going on in different pockets of the country. One of the challenges is bringing those good ideas and good practices to scale. Right? There are approximately 1.2 million teachers of science K–12 in this country. That’s a lot of people. And about 80% of those are elementary teachers who are responsible for teaching other subjects as well. So my thinking is often about, “How do we take what we know and that we’ve learned through decades of research is effective, and impact a large number of teachers, and therefore a large number of students?” And you know, Courtney I think has hinted at this already. And you’ve mentioned it too, Eric, is that teaching is a profession, right? And it’s a craft. But in no other profession do practitioners have the expectation that they’re developing their own tools and methods for their work. I know when I was in my teacher preparation program, and it’s still extremely common, one of the assignments perspective teachers are given is to develop a unit and develop a lesson, right? You don’t have doctors being asked to develop new treatments and new tests to use. Their job is to get to know their patient, assess what’s going on, and then using research-based methods to develop a plan of action, right? And I think that analogy works really well in education and is a way that we could have a scalable approach for kind of raising the floor across the country for the quality of science education. Giving teachers research-based materials, high-quality instructional materials, that they can then use and adapt to meet the needs of their students, would allow them to focus on getting to know their students, seeing what their strengths are, seeing where they have room for growth, and using the materials they’re given to help those students progress. And I think that is definitely a way where we could have a big impact at a large scale.

Eric Cross (37:39):

Courtney, same question: Magic wand, all power. You can change systems from the elementary perspective. What would you do? I’m assuming part of it’s gonna be changing that 18 to 20 minute time. But even for that to happen, what would you do? What would you change?

Courtney Plumley (37:57):

Well, I don’t know. Like, for it to change, I don’t know the answer to that. But yes, increasing the time would be great. And like Eric was saying, giving teachers— ’cause again, I’m coming in, not enough probably background in science—and then, you know, when I was, when I was teaching, we had one set of textbooks for the entire grade. Six classes, right? Like, share them. But third graders aren’t gonna read textbooks anyway, right? So instead I’m going to the teacher store. I’m pulling things off the shelf. And like, “OK, yeah, sure, I’ll use this.” And nowadays, teachers are going to Teachers Pay Teachers or whatever. Because I didn’t have anything good to use. So like Eric is saying, if I had instructional materials that were good instructional materials that were gonna teach my kids, that they were gonna be engaged, that they weren’t sitting and listening to science, but they were doing science, you know, and I had professional development to actually help me do it? That’s what I think we need to have. And I mean, I know there are some people out there that are working on that, but it’s not a lot. I mean, if you look at Ed Reports, they rate how well-aligned science curriculum are to standards. And there are two right now that have Ed Reports green lights. There’s Amplify and there’s OpenSciEd. You know, so there’s not much out there for teachers to use. And, so it’s hard. It’s hard. Where am I gonna go and get this stuff if it doesn’t exist? And so I’m making it up by myself. Which we already said is not the best use of teachers’ time, when they’ve got so many other demands on their time.

Eric Cross (39:27):

Eric and Courtney, listening to both of your responses, it created a visual in my mind. And Eric, I loved your analogy of…I started thinking of a chef, a welder, and a farmer. And I thought about the chef saying like, “You’re a great chef! Now, can you go farm, and make your own food, so that you can cook it?” Or the welder who has to make his own welding tools and go smelting. You know, making the different rods. I’m not a welder. But you know, all those different parts. Or the farmer who has to build his own tractor and innovate all that stuff. You’re absolutely right, the way you articulated that. And then Courtney, you essentially said, “Give them the tools and then teach them how to use it so they can go and actually be effective with it, because you’re in front of kids doing so many different things.” There’s only so much time in the day, and teachers want to do these things; they want to, but you end up having to triage when you’re asked to. Going back to Eric’s analogy, if you’re in the ER, but you’re also creating the vaccines and you’re also doing the research on which types of vaccines are gonna be the most effective, that’s, that’s a lot to ask. And so, I appreciate both your responses on that. Now, last question, what are you both working on now? This report came out in 2018. What’s, what’s next on the horizon? Actually literally, that’s no pun intended. <laugh> What’s next? <laugh> What’s next for, for you both? What are you working on?

Eric R. Banilower (40:42):

Well, you know, we would love to do another national survey, in a few years. We have to get funding to do it. And you know, that’s always something that takes effort and isn’t a guarantee. We’ve written grants to do these studies in the past, and there’s also the dealing with the reality of the situation. I think a lot of schools, still coming off the tail end of dealing with Covid, are overwhelmed. And we’ve had a hard time, I mentioned before, recruiting schools, and it gets harder every time, just ’cause they have so much on their plate. And I couldn’t see going to a school now and saying, “Hey, one more thing. Do you mind?” So I think we have to kind of wait a little bit for things to settle down before we can do another one of these studies. It just doesn’t seem feasible right now. But we’d love to in the not-too-distant future. Other than that, Courtney and I actually work on some projects together and some projects not together. One of the things that we’re working on together is a study of a fifth grade science curriculum that was developed by Okhee Lee at NYU and her colleagues, that is both aligned with the NGSS and purposely designed to support multilingual learners in developing both their science knowledge and skills as well as their language skills. And we’ve been working with the crew at NYU to study this curriculum and try to figure out, how well it’s working and under what circumstances. So that’s been a really interesting project that’s going on right now.

Courtney Plumley (42:26):

I recently worked on a report with the Carnegie Corporation in New York that actually I think, compliments what we’ve been talking about a lot. It’s about the status of K–12 education in the US—or science education in the US! <Laugh>—and so as part of that report we interviewed like 50 science education experts across the country. We surveyed teachers, people in the university settings, researchers, and everything to kind of get a little bit more update of the state of science education right now. And so a lot of the things we’ve been talking about, we still are talking about with the people in this report four years later. So, work in progress. <Laugh>

Eric Cross (43:09):

And again, going back to 1977, based on what Eric was saying earlier, we’re looking at these large systems, these systemic changes don’t happen overnight.

Eric R. Banilower (43:20):

That’s right.

Eric Cross (43:21):

It’s very slow-moving.

Eric R. Banilower (43:22):

That’s right. I would say there is progress. I think we’ve learned a lot. We are getting better. Are we there yet? No, we’re not happy with where we are. But I think, you know, I think it’s important to be hopeful about the direction things are going in.

Eric Cross (43:37):

Well-said. I agree. Courtney. Eric, thank you so much for unpacking that report that speaks to, that validates what so many teachers across the country are experiencing. And thank you for your advocacy for high-quality science education and your passion for supporting teachers and being that voice from a data-driven perspective of what teachers experience and then advocating for solutions for them. It’s super-encouraging for me, and I know it’s gonna be really encouraging for a lot of our listeners. So thank you.

Eric R. Banilower (44:10):

Thank you for having us.

Courtney Plumley (44:12):

Yeah. Thank you, Eric.

Eric Cross (44:15):

Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Eric Banilower, Vice President of Horizon Research, and Courtney Plumley, Senior Researcher at Horizon Research. For much more, check out the show notes for a link to the 2018 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education. And please remember to subscribe to Science Connections wherever you get podcasts, so that you’re not missing any of the upcoming episodes in Season three. Next time on the show, we’re gonna start laying out the road map for using science more effectively. And we’ll start by looking at the how and the why of integrating literacy instruction.

Susan Gomez Zwiep (44:49):

When we look at Science First and build language development around it, the experience tends to be more authentic and organic.

Eric Cross (44:58):

That’s next time on Science Connections: The Podcast. Thanks so much for listening.

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What Eric R. Banilower says about science

“Our data is showing us places where the system needs to provide teachers and their students the opportunities to do great things.”

– Eric R. Banilower

Vice President of Horizon Research, Inc.

Meet the guests

Eric R. Banilower is a Vice President at Horizon Research, Inc. (HRI), and has worked in education for over 30 years. Eric was previously a high school physics and physical science teacher before he joined HRI in 1997, where he has worked on a number of research and evaluation projects. Most recently, he has been the Principal Investigator of the 2012 and 2018 iterations of the National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education, a nationally representative survey focusing on the status of the K–12 STEM education system.

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Courtney Plumley is a Senior Researcher at Horizon Research, Inc. She began her career in education as an elementary school teacher before starting at HRI in 2009. In her time at HRI she has worked on many K-12 STEM research and evaluation projects. Most recently, Ms. Plumley has worked with Carnegie Corporation of New York on mapping the landscape of K-12 science education in the US and is managing the field test for the OpenSciEd elementary materials.

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A laptop screen displays the “Science Connections: The Community” private group page, with science-themed icons decorating the background and edges.

About Science Connections

Welcome to Science Connections! Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So…how do we help kids figure that out? We will bring on educators, scientists, and more to discuss the importance of high-quality science instruction. In this episode, hear from our host Eric Cross about his work engaging students as a K-8 science teacher. 

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S2-05: Moving students forward with project-based learning

A promotional image for the podcast "Science Connections" featuring guest Janis Lodge and the topic "Moving students forward with project-based learning." Season 2, Episode 5.

In this episode, Eric Cross sits with K–5 educator Janis Lodge to chat about building on her own science curriculum to create meaningful project-based learning experiences. Janis shares her work teaching Gifted and Talented Education (GATE), and how to use those practices to help accelerate the learning of all students. Eric and Janis also talk about making time for science within K–5 classrooms. Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.

DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT

Janis Lodge (00:00):
To me, the reward of having those kids feel like they accomplished something and the way that they can take ownership of it and go in so many different directions, I cannot take that away from them. That’s such an opportunity that if I have the means to do it, I have to just take it and run with it.

Eric Cross (00:18):
Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Janis Lodge. Janis is a third-grade teacher in Orange County, California, with a specialization in gifted and talented education. Recently, Janis was awarded the Orange County Council for the Gifted and Talented Education Classroom grant. This grant funds a project that provides an extension to her third-grade science unit about environments and survival. Through this project, students will think like a biomimicry engineer as they design a robot that is inspired by an innovation found in nature. In this episode, we discuss how she uses interdisciplinary teaching practices to make time for science learning; why gifted and talented education strategies can benefit all students; and her process for creating a problem-based lesson that ultimately earned her a grant for her classroom. And now, please enjoy my conversation with Janis Lodge. One, welcome! Thanks for being here.

Janis Lodge (01:14):
Of course, I am happy to do it. I’m excited for the opportunity.

Eric Cross (01:17):
Of course! Yeah. Elementary school teachers in science, I feel like there’s so many things to have conversations about. And some of the things that you’ve really focused on, I think, are, really, really important. But I wanna start off with your journey of you becoming a teacher in the classroom. And so, would you kind of give your background, your origin story? How did you end up as a third-grade teacher?

Janis Lodge (01:37):
Well, my story is definitely not a traditional story. Before I was a teacher, I was actually living in Maui, Hawaii. I moved there right after college. I went to Chico State in Northern California. And I got a degree in graphic design. And after I graduated, well, I should give a little bit of a backstory. My last summer before graduating, I spent the whole summer in Maui and I just fell in love with it. So when I graduated, I decided instead of applying for jobs in Northern California, I’m just gonna put some resumes out in Maui and see if I can get a job. And I did. I ended up getting a job doing graphic design and marketing for a kite surf company out there. And I ended up just staying for seven years on the island. And after about seven years, I kind of got a little bit of island fever and decided I wanted to come back to California. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do, but I just had this calling that I need to do something a little more fulfilling with my life. And I started thinking about different ideas and dreams I had. And I actually started thinking about when I was younger, right? I had this dream. If you were to ask me when I was 10 years old what I wanted to be when I grow up, it would be elementary school teacher.

Eric Cross (02:48):
Really?

Janis Lodge (02:48):
Believe it or not. When I was younger, I transformed my bedroom into a classroom. My stuffed animals were my students. I just thought I’m gonna be the next best teacher ever. And you know, as I went through life and kind of went in different directions, I kind of lost sight of that dream a little bit. But for some reason, when I decided to change careers, I just remembered that. And so I just decided to go get my teaching credential and see if it worked out. And it was probably the best decision I made. I feel like everything just fell perfectly into place. I ended up getting a job at an amazing school, and now, five years later, I’m a third grade teacher.

Eric Cross (03:28):
So one of the questions I have to ask, and talking to elementary school teachers, this comes up a lot: How do you make time for science as an elementary school teacher who’s teaching everything? And let me kind of premise this with, at least for those of us in California, and I’m sure the rest of the states too, but we know this; There’s kind of this pressure with pacing and then even, depending on what school you’re at, math and English tend to get the bulk of things. And maybe there’s this perception also of like, well, I gotta teach math and English, and sometimes science gets put to the back burner for different reasons.

Janis Lodge (03:57):
Well, you’re exactly right. The beginning of the year, we were provided with a pacing from the district. And you know, they try to keep us on track, saying, “You should be starting Unit 2 at this time.” But other than that, there’s really no specific guidelines of how many days we’re supposed to be teaching or for how long. But one kind of secret that I’ve discovered is that I can weave science into the other subjects, specifically with language arts. So quite often what I do is I take a look at the language arts standard, and if it’s identifying the key details and the main idea, well I can do that with the science books used from the curriculum. So I’ll just pull those readers and we’ll do the exact same skill, start with the same standard, but we’ll use the content from science. By doing that, we call that kind of like interdisciplinary study. And the students really enjoy that more, too, because they’re using the same skills but they’re diving deeper into the content.

Eric Cross (04:54):
Right.

Janis Lodge (04:55):
And so also that helps build the background knowledge. So then when it comes to time where, if I want to do a science lab or a science investigation, now they already have that background knowledge ’cause we already dove deep into the reading and they can apply that pretty quickly right away into their lab or whatever activity they’re doing.

Eric Cross (05:12):
Can you give an example maybe of how you might pull out something that might be a skill that you’re trying to develop, maybe in an English content, but you would pull that out in a science lesson, maybe? What would you do?

Janis Lodge (05:25):
We’re actually doing that right now. So we’re in our second unit of science and they’re studying inheritance and traits and they’re looking at different organisms to see how they have adaptations to help them survive in their environment. So coincidentally part of the literacy skills is to look at multiple sources, do research, and summarize and make analysis of what they’re reading. And so we have different varied resources. I have websites; I have books, ebooks, videos, and pictures. And they’re choosing which four sources they want to use. And then, then they’re coming up with a summary at the end and then putting together a Google Slides presentation based on whatever organism that they chose.

Eric Cross (06:05):
Did you have a science background before becoming an elementary school teacher?

Janis Lodge (06:11):
Um, none. Besides what I, you know, took in high school and college.

Eric Cross (06:16):
Did you find it easy to kind of lean into the science, or was it something you just kind of jumped into and said, “All right, I’m gonna get after it”?

Janis Lodge (06:23):
What’s interesting is if, you know, throughout my education, my favorite subjects were English and reading and writing and art. And quite honestly, science wasn’t my favorite subject. But I think because of that, that inspires me to come up with creative ways of presenting the information to them and making it exciting and engaging for them, because I don’t want them to feel that way. I want them to be excited about all subjects. And I think that’s the beauty of combining the different subjects like I mentioned before. Like I say, you know, “What would a scholar do? Think like a wildlife biologist. And like with my project, think like a biomimicry engineer.” And so it kind of shifts their thinking. Like, it’s not just, “Oh, we have to study science.” It’s like, “No, you are the scientist; you are a meteorologist; or you are an author. How would an author write about this? How would an illustrator capture this in a photo or a comic strip?” And so, when you really combine those disciplines, you can take it to another level. So even if science isn’t their favorite subject, like maybe it wasn’t for me growing up, they can still take something they’re passionate about and apply the science content to it and they really resonate with them.

Eric Cross (07:37):
You leaned into your strengths. Which are more like, coming into it, you had all these kind of creative strengths. You have that background as a graphics designer. You were into the arts. But then with those strengths, did that kinda give you more confidence to dive into the science work, because you approached it from your assets that you were already coming to the table with?

Janis Lodge (07:55):
Yeah.You said it perfectly. If you look at it from a different lens, there’s all these different ways you can approach science.

Eric Cross (07:59):
I find it in my own science class, too. We’re all teaching the same standards. But how I approach it is through Eric Cross’s kind of personality and understanding and my angle, and another teacher might do it a different way. But we’re all leading to the same destination.

Janis Lodge (08:14):
Exactly.

Eric Cross (08:15):
That kind of leads me to my next question, and this is having to do with the project that you just alluded to. The biomimicry project. So you did a biomimicry project. Would you consider that like a project based-learning assignment?

Janis Lodge (08:26):
Well, this will be the third year that I’ve taught this unit. And when I wrapped it up last year, it’s through the Amplify Science program, and they do a wonderful job of having a lot of investigations and really thinking like a biomimicry engineer. But the final part of the unit was to design a robot inspired by a giraffe, to eliminate invasive plants in a particular environment. And the project part of it at the end was to create a model using Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. And then the other part of it was a digital simulation where they would put in different shape structures of teeth, and kind of reconfigure the shape of the mouth. And then they’d put in what they think is effective, and then the computer would say, oh, you’re 98% successful or 70% successful. And I remember at the end of it the students were like, “OK, well when do we make the robots?” And I thought, “Well, we’re just doing the simulation, or we’re just doing this model out of Popsicle sticks; we’re not actually gonna make a robot.” And they just seemed so disappointed. And that’s kind of how the wheels started turning my head like, “Well, what if they actually could make a robot? The only thing stopping me is I don’t have the materials to do it.” So, shortly after that unit wrapped up, coincidentally I saw the email about this grant opportunity that was being offered through the Orange County Council for Gifted Education. And they said, If you have a project that you wanna get funded that would promote GATE strategies within the classroom, then you can submit this proposal. So that’s how the ball got rolling for that proposal. And I researched different robotics kits and different companies and I found one that was really user-friendly for third graders, and not so difficult for me to learn as well.

Eric Cross (10:10):
You’re a risk taker. Like, I’m already seeing this as I’m talking to you. Is that just who you are or do you have a network? Like what keeps you taking these risks?

Janis Lodge (10:18):
I don’t really consider it a risk, because it’s exciting for me. Like I said, I don’t know that much about robotics, but the idea of learning more and then teaching that to my students is exciting. And you know, there was a little bit of risk ’cause I’m deviating a little bit from the curriculum, from the standard lesson, but to me, the reward of having those kids feel like they accomplished something, and the way that they can take ownership of it and go in so many different directions, and on top of that, develop coding skills and computer science skills and robotic skills, to me it was just like I cannot take that away from them. That’s such an opportunity that if I have the means to do it, I have to just take it and run with it. So I think just being inspired by the potential outcomes of what could happen is what made me take that risk.

Eric Cross (11:05):
Did you just kind of create this from scratch? Did you work with a team of people? How did you come to the point where you were ready to present this for the grant?

Janis Lodge (11:12):
Pretty much from scratch. Like I said, the Amplify unit, it does teach them about robotics that were inspired by nature. So some of the materials that they read, and there’s some videos that show really great examples. There’s like a robotic arm that was inspired by an elephant trunk. There’s a book that shows what this field is, biomimicry engineer, they actually show like what they do in that field. And I thought this is a perfect way to apply it because the curriculum’s already pretty much set it up for me; now I just have to add this one final component to it. And essentially it becomes project-based learning at that point, because they’re taking their knowledge and their skills that they’ve learned up to that point. Even the unit that we’re doing doing right now is building up to it. So it’s kind of that final—instead of giving them a test at the end and saying, “OK, tell me what you learned about inheritance and traits and environments,” they can actually take that knowledge and apply it to an innovation or creation that comes out of their own mind, which is so much more powerful.

Eric Cross (12:11):
Do they connect to any other learning goals as they’re doing these projects?

Janis Lodge (12:15):
Well, I think first and foremost, the 21st century skills that from day one I tell them, the four Cs: collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking. All of those are woven in through this lesson. From the beginning, we talked about the whole engineering design process. So from the beginning, they start with a question and oftentimes that actually can be the hardest for them to think about, “What’s a scientific question or a problem that I wanna solve?” If they’re passionate about, maybe, a sport or the environment or something within their school, I go, “There it is. OK, that’s the problem. How can you design something inspired by nature to solve that problem?” And then, from there they go into the planning and the designing and the testing and then the improving. So going through that engineering design process, I think, is what really makes them feel like they are the engineer going through this. And they can make mistakes. They can take risks. A lot of my students I’ve found are afraid to take risks. They wanna make sure they succeed. And they need that challenge to know that if they do fail, that’s OK. We can just revisit this. We can test it. We can look at it in a different way.

Eric Cross (13:27):
You maybe wonder about, how do you assess something like this?

Janis Lodge (13:30):
I think that’s where all those stages along the way are important. Because I wanna make sure that they have a plan and that it’s based on the knowledge that they’ve gained in the unit. I think one of the other things about project-based learning is the final product of how they demonstrate their mastery. And in my classroom I oftentimes give them a choice of how they’re gonna present that to me. So maybe they’re going to write it out like an essay. Maybe they’re gonna create a Google slide. Maybe they’re gonna make a video. Maybe they’re going to—obviously in this part they will have the model, but they’ll have to have some way to explain it to me. And I think giving them that choice gives them the opportunity to show it in the way that’s meaningful to them.

Eric Cross (14:14):
And are you using like a rubric when you’re grading these assignments? Or, how do you actually grade it?

Janis Lodge (14:20):
Yes. So we have a rubric that’s provided to us for the written component that all the students will do at the end. But I can take that same rubric and see if they’ve applied that to the project. So even the verbiage wouldn’t really need to change. I think it’s still important that the students are able to demonstrate this in written form and so all of them will still complete that written component, but to also give them the opportunity to show that in the modality of their choice. I think is really important too.

Eric Cross (14:48):
Right. And you have some students that feel much more comfortable being able to present orally versus—

Janis Lodge (14:53):
Exactly.

Eric Cross (14:53):
—versus writing versus maybe doing a video. I mean, we see that in middle school and in high school too. Students show their knowledge or their understanding of a topic depending on the medium in different ways, and some better than others. Some may find that they can communicate it a lot better orally, but when pen goes to paper or fingers go to keyboard, you might grade it completely different, ’cause they’re not able to transfer what’s in their mind into writing. And the way you’re doing it, and giving that student choice, they probably have so much more buy-in, I’d imagine, because they get to pick what they get to do.

Janis Lodge (15:21):
Right.

Eric Cross (15:22):
You said something earlier and I wanna come back to it. So you mentioned GATE, and GATE is not something that I hear a lot in my world, but it was something I heard a lot when I was in school. There were kind of all of these perceptions and ideas about GATE. You’re a GATE teacher, correct?

Janis Lodge (15:38):
Right.

Eric Cross (15:39):
What is GATE, and what is it like being a GATE teacher? What are the misconceptions, if any, that you might have heard or come across?

Janis Lodge (15:46):
Well, so GATE stands for Gifted and Talented Education. And first and foremost, I think a misconception is that we’re just kind of doing whatever we want; we come up with our own lessons and teach a totally different curriculum. Which is definitely a myth. Because we start with the exact same standards as any other third grade class that you’d walk into. That’s definitely where we start. But I think in addition to the standards, we also implement what are called GATE standards: So they’re Depth, Complexity, Acceleration, and Novelty. And there’s a lot of tools that we use in the classroom, different strategies. You’ll see things like the prompts of Depth and Complexity. We’ll use things like “think like a disciplinarian”; I’m doing “think like a biomimicry engineer.” But really, all they are are just thinking tools and strategies to elevate students thinking and kind of go below that surface level of the content to dive deeper. It also provides opportunities for acceleration. So for example, our last science unit, it was on magnetic force, and there was a handful of students that just grasped the concepts right away, and they’re ready for something else. They’re ready for more rigor. They need some challenge. And so at that point I can kind of pull that group aside and provide some differentiation for them. And I said, “OK, well, you understand the concept of magnetic force, balanced forces. So now what I want you to do is think about something that you’re really passionate about, and how could you use magnetic force somewhere in that field—again to solve a problem, problem-based learning—and present it to me?” So they create this form, it’s like a “think like a disciplinarian” frame, and one of them was “think like a hockey player.” And he’s trying to think of a way that he can incorporate magnetic force. Anyway, I could go on and on. But basically it’s finding what these students’ passions are. And I do that with all my students. And I should probably preface this by saying that even though these are standards that I implement in my classroom because it’s a GATE classroom, these are practices and tools that can be applied to any learner, at any age. And they really just enrich the education for all students.

Eric Cross (18:02):
So your classroom is, is a mixed classroom. There’s GATE students and then general—

Janis Lodge (18:05):
Right.

Eric Cross (18:07):
—students, non-GATE students, in the same class. It’s interesting because I imagine GATE is kind of scaffolding up to a higher level, but then, you also said something that I’ve noticed when I’m creating scaffolds for my students to support them, who may not be at a grade level, maybe in reading or literacy or math, those same scaffolds can help all students.

Janis Lodge (18:27):
So yeah, I don’t just go, “OK, you’re my GATE students; I’m gonna use these practices on you.” I use it for the whole class. But I’m also surprised by having that mix of these different learning styles. A lot of times students are inspired by other students, or, you know, we have this big thing about one of the prompts is Multiple Perspectives. I try to do that as much as I can, because students are inspired by the ideas of their peers. And quite often, if they hear it from a peer, it could be exactly what I just said, but they heard their student say it in a different way and it just clicks and they’re like, “Wow, I get that.”

Eric Cross (19:00):
I think a lot of teachers struggle or, or maybe feel ill-equipped, to support higher-level students. Did you get trained to be a GATE teacher? First lemme ask that question: Did you get special training for this?

Janis Lodge (19:13):
Yes. I went through a course, I think it was like a six-week certification course, through my district.

Eric Cross (19:19):
OK, so you got a special training, which—I’ve been in the classroom for nine years; I teach at a university as an adjunct professor; but I’ve never been trained on teaching gifted or accelerated students. And I’m kind of wondering now, like, do you feel like it made you a better teacher?

Janis Lodge (19:33):
Absolutely.

Eric Cross (19:34):
And if so, how do I get to do this?

Janis Lodge (19:36):
Well, it’s through the county. I mean, anybody can get trained and certified how to teach this way. But, just like you said, I think coming out of that, my eyes were just open, and my biggest takeaway is that these practices, even though they are designed for gifted and talented, it really kind of reshaped my thinking about how I, number one, present material to the students, that I’m doing it in an engaging way, and I’m not just lecturing at them; there’s opportunities for them to collaborate and communicate and use multiple resources. So, you know, how I’m teaching has changed. And then also, how I’m providing opportunities for them to demonstrate their learning. And a lot of that is project-based learning, because once they have the knowledge and skills they need to do something with it. I mean, that’s really the true definition of innovation, is taking the skills or taking something that you’ve learned, and now go with it. Run with it.

Eric Cross (20:32):
How can we take what you’ve learned and then kind of spread it, so teachers have this in their toolkit, too? Like for me, I have multiple ways to be able to support reading and literacy and math and tools and sentence frames. And my students who have special learning plans, I have a have a lot of tool sets for that. I wanna build my tool sets for this other area for my students who want to continue, who wanna run, or go beyond, or even stretch themselves. I think we need to take some of the things that you’re doing and not make them kind of like this exclusive group, but also let’s share it with everyone, ’cause if everybody can access it—

Janis Lodge (21:03):
I agree.

Eric Cross (21:03):
—we might see a lot more potential or a lot more opportunities for students who might not otherwise have them.

Janis Lodge (21:08):
And one thing: My school, I’m really proud to say that my principal has seen that. You know, he’s like, “Well why are we just keeping this in the GATE classroom?” So he’s working on getting all of our teachers certified.

Eric Cross (21:19):
No, I love what you’re doing and your principal sounds, sounds awesome for doing that and recognizing that this can benefit more students than just the ones who, you know, pass the Raisin Test, I think it’s what it was called when I was taking it, or whatever it is back then.

Janis Lodge (21:31):
Exactly.

Eric Cross (21:32):
We’ve talked about project-based learning, the GATE classroom…I kind of wanna come back to you as we wrap up. Thinking about, like, the jobs that you and I do, and the people that listen to this podcast, we have one of the few jobs that people remember us for a lifetime. And I wanna ask you, who was someone that was maybe inspirational in your educational career, that inspired you, or is maybe one of the most memorable? You might have several…but who is someone that was memorable to you in your career, and why? Why were they memorable to you?

Janis Lodge (22:02):
Yeah. Well, obviously, when I was younger, I was definitely inspired by all my teachers. The fact that I turned my bedroom into a classroom…I just was just in awe of this profession. But I think one that really resonated with me was my junior year in high school. I was taking a newspaper class and the teacher was Mrs. Kavanaugh, and she really taught us everything from writing the articles to the editing, to putting the pages together. And I remember in that class I was working on this program called QuarkXPress. I don’t even know if it exists anymore. But I was just fascinated with putting all these pieces together that we’d worked on for so long and getting the articles, picking the pictures, the illustrations and the titles. And I remember her looking at me saying, “You really enjoy this, don’t you?” And I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “Well, I have a computer graphics elective class that you should take next year.” And I thought, “OK, I’d love to do this, this opportunity to expand my knowledge and my skills.” So because of that, I took the computer graphics class the next year and I just remember throughout the whole time, she was just constantly encouraging me and acknowledging my skills. And I find myself doing that as a teacher as well. ‘Cause that really resonated with me. And it’s funny, this summer I was going through some boxes of some old stuff from high school, and I found this handout that I had made, because I remember my senior year of high school, she said, “Janis, you know what? You’re doing such a great job; we have these new, incoming students coming into the newspaper class, and I’d love for you to actually teach them how to do this pagination on this QuarkXPress program. I want you to put something together and actually teach it to them.” I thought, “Wow, she believes in me that much that she’s gonna let me teach this to the incoming students.” But I think my takeaway from that was that she gave me the opportunity to take those skills and actually do something with them, to apply them right away.

Eric Cross (23:53):
Mrs. Kavanaugh. Miss Kavanaugh. Shout-out to Miss Kavanaugh. As you told that story, I heard you as a teacher because I’m hearing she’s applying these GATE strategies in that situation. That’s what that’s what I heard.

Janis Lodge (24:08):
Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Cross (24:09):
She personalized this learning. She created a specialized opportunity. You presented to a real audience that was authentic. It had this personalization in it and this rigor and this challenge and it made a huge impact. And it’s just amazing to listen to you and hear this come full-circle, and now you’re doing this with little ones. And I just wanna thank you for your time in doing the interview, sharing your story with how you became a teacher, your students, the projects that you do. And just like so many teachers, going the extra mile for your kids and bringing in these really important 21st century skills; they’re gonna be so much better off for it. And I know it makes my job easier when I get them in the classroom, so thank you.

Janis Lodge (24:49):
Yeah. Well, thank you for the opportunity.

Eric Cross (24:51):
My pleasure. Thanks so much for listening and we wanna hear more about you and the educators who inspire you. You can nominate them as a future guest on Science Connections by emailing STEM@amplify.com. That’s S -T-E-M at amplify dot com. And be sure to click subscribe, wherever you listen to podcasts, and join our Facebook group, Science Connections: The Community. Until next time.

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What Janis Lodge says about science

“The reward of having kids feel like they accomplished something and take ownership is such an opportunity [with project-based learning] that I have to run with it. Being inspired by the potential outcomes of what could happen is what made me take that risk.”

– Janice Lodge

3rd Grade Teacher, De Portola Elementary

Meet the guest

Janis Lodge is a third grade teacher in Orange County, California. Her career in education started six years ago when she decided to follow her passion of making a positive difference in the lives of young scholars. Prior to teaching, Janis lived in Maui, Hawaii for seven years, working in the field of graphic design, marketing, and hospitality. She has found that her interest in innovation, project-based learning, and inquiry-driven exploration has helped shape her into the educator she is today. STEAM is integrated regularly into her classroom, and her students continually develop 21st century skills through a variety of unique projects. ​​Janis is also a PAL (Peer Assistance Leadership) Advisor for her school, where she helps young leaders (4th-6th graders) cultivate their leadership skills and empowers them to make a positive difference in their school and community. Janis was recently awarded the Orange County Council for the Gifted & Talented Education Classroom Grant, which will provide an extension to the third grade Amplify Science Unit: Environments and Survival.

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About Science Connections

Welcome to Science Connections! Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So…how do we help kids figure that out? We will bring on educators, scientists, and more to discuss the importance of high-quality science instruction. In this episode, hear from our host Eric Cross about his work engaging students as a K-8 science teacher. Listen here!

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Free posters

Inspire your K–8 students with two free bilingual posters of scientists.

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Bring joy into a STEM classroom

Check out an episode of the Math Teacher Lounge podcast about joyful math teachi…

Welcome, Tennessee educators!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is the Tennessee program built on the Science of Reading research. Using a fundamentally different approach to language arts, CKLA sequences deep content knowledge with research-based foundational skills.

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High quality instructional materials

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) has been approved by the state of Tennessee.

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All-green on EdReports

EdReports, an independent curriculum review nonprofit, rates curriculum on three gateways: Text Quality, Building Knowledge, and Usability. Amplify CKLA earned a green rating in all three.

Read the review on EdReports.

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Science of Reading

Tennessee has an initiative to get 75 percent of the state’s third graders proficient by 2025. This Science of Reading toolkit will provide some insight into the research behind the Science of Reading and tools to help you support your students as they become proficient readers.

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Science of Reading

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Science of Reading

Case study

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Read Impact Brochure

Program overview

Amplify CKLA inspires curiosity and drives results, empowering all students with rich background knowledge. See what schools are saying about our knowledge-based curriculum.

Background Knowledge drives results for Tennessee students

Our approach to building background knowledge is based on three pillars often overlooked in other curricula. It is:

  • Content-specific.
    Clearly-outlined content objectives are specific and support the development of knowledge in history, science, literature, culture, and the arts.
  • Cumulative.
    Topics and vocabulary connect within and across grades, allowing students to extend knowledge and revisit topics in increasing depth in later grades.
  • Coherent.
    When curriculum is fragmentary and disconnected, students face repetitions as well as gaps that can hinder learning. An intentional
    design ensures the curriculum fits together as a whole.

Foundational skills instruction that makes a difference

Amplify CKLA’s second design principle is a research-based approach to foundational skills that gets real results.

  • Explicit.
    Learning isn’t left to chance. All 44 sounds and their 150 spellings in the English language are taught, practiced, and mastered, with ample opportunity to encounter each sound-spelling in diverse settings.
  • Sequential.
    By moving in a sequence from easier to more complex in phonics and foundational reading skills, students master concepts before moving forward and gradually become more independent
  • Rewarding.
    Learning to read should be fun. Decodabe chapter-books that feature dynamic plots and characters make kids want to read more. Engaging stories include children who discover fossils and a grandmother who flies hang gliders.
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Materials

The program provides engaging print and multimedia materials designed to provide a robust literacy-rich foundation in every classroom.

Teacher Materials

Research-based lessons integrate foundational literacy skills and cross-curricular content knowledge.

  • Teacher Guides
  • Projectable lesson components
  • Quests for the Core for Grades 3–5 (immersive, problem-based learning)
Grade 6 Unit 4 Eureka! Teacher Guide
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Student materials

Engaging student resources include dynamic decodable chapter books and content-rich, cross-curricular Readers.

  • Student Readers
  • Activity Books
  • Formative Assessments
  • Poet’s Journal and Writer’s Journal (write-in Readers for Grades 4–5)

Multimedia resources

Access the program’s online resources anywhere, anytime, from any device.

  • Teacher and student materials
  • Knowledge Builder animated videos
  • Sound Library songs and videos
  • Differentiation and enrichment guides
  • Real-time program support via email, live chat, and phone
  • Professional learning videos, webinars, and self-driven modules
A laptop screen displays the Amplify CKLA website with options to select grades Pre-K to 3.
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Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources give students the opportunity to practice key skills using diverse, fun approaches that build independence.

  • Big Books
  • Large and Small Letter Cards
  • Spelling Cards
  • Vowel and Consonant Code Flip Books
  • Chaining Folders
“This has been the single most powerful curriculum implementation I have seen in my 16 years of education. ”

Deanna Zarichansky

Assistant Principal, Trousdale County Elementary School, Hartsville, TN

Amplify CKLA In Action

Take a peek inside a classroom, spotlight experiences on knowledge and foundational skills and hear fellow educators and students discuss the power of Amplify CKLA

See Amplify in Action

Resources

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CKLA Tennessee Curriculum Maps

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CKLA Tennessee Correlations

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ELA Correlations

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Impact Brochure

Contacts

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Chasity O’Quinn
Account Executive for East Tennessee
coquinn@amplify.com
(865) 599-5101

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Ann Patterson
Account Executive for West Tennessee
apatterson@amplify.com
(704) 813-7757

Welcome, Utah K-8 reviewers!

To view this protected page, enter the password below:



The English language arts program designed to prepare Arkansas middle schoolers for high school and beyond.

Amplify ELA is a blended English language arts curriculum designed specifically to support students in grades 6–8 and prepare them for high school and beyond. With Amplify ELA, students learn to tackle any complex text and make observations, grapple with interesting ideas, and find relevance for themselves.

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  • A student reading "Summer of the Mariposas"
  • students collaborating and using laptops
  • An illustration of the Space Race from Amplify ELA

Built for middle school teachers and students

Built specifically for middle school, Amplify ELA is an interactive core curriculum that brings complex texts to life. Amplify ELA’s 100-Day Pathway is a built-in guide to covering required content for each grade level while allowing teachers time to add supplemental lessons and activities.

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All-green rating on EdReports

The results are in! Amplify ELA received a near-perfect score by the independent review group.

Our approach

Amplify ELA is the ELA program designed for middle school. It offers rich texts that are a delight to teach, better connections with your students through powerful differentiation and assessment tools, and step-by-step instructional guides that save you time and simplify your day.

Explore more research behind the program

We empower students to become critical thinkers.

With text always at the center, students are encouraged to make meaning for themselves. Rather than focusing on right or wrong answers, they develop ideas and opinions on relevant, real-world, texts.

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A student using a laptop

We provide six levels of differentiation.

Multiple entry points and differentiated supports allow every student, regardless of fluency or ability level, to engage deeply with the same complex texts and rigorous curriculum.

We assess while you instruct.

Formative assessment reports provide a continually updated picture of how each student is progressing with key skills and standards. Each learning moment provides a small piece of data, allowing you to keep teaching while building a clear understanding of student performance.

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Download a free white paper

Beyond “make it fun”: Four principles of true engagement in middle school ELA

Download the white paper

What’s included

Amplify ELA is a rigorous core curriculum that empowers teachers and engages middle school students.

Student edition

Available digitally and in print, the student materials guide middle schoolers through complex texts and writing by:

  • engaging students with high-quality narrative and informational texts
  • providing videos, audio supports, and digital experiences that capture their attention
  • keeping all of their writing in one place with a personal writing journal

Teacher Edition

Available digitally and in print, the Teacher Edition contains all the information teachers need to facilitate classroom instruction, including:

  • detailed lesson plans
  • video teacher tips embedded in the lesson
  • standards alignment and exit tickets
  • real-time differentiation strategies
  • robust reporting

Interactive Quests

Quests are fun, week-long immersions into a specific, multilayered topic. They enable students to practice analytical reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills—all while building a strong classroom community.

Digital library for independent reading

The expansive Amplify Library includes more than 650 digital fiction, nonfiction, classic, and contemporary titles.

ELA_teacher_resources_1

Amplify ELA makes teachers’ lives easier

We help teachers make sure the standards are covered, the skills are taught, your students are scaffolded and encouraged, and the test is prepped.

  • Embedded differentiation to support all readers.
  • Informative and streamlined assessment system.
  • Robust reporting that tracks progress.
  • Powerful feedback tools.
All materials
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Our research

Amplify ELA

Drawing on extensive research into learning, cognition, and literacy, Amplify ELA is designed specifically for middle school. In particular, the program has a strong research base behind its approach to differentiation and how it challenges all students to work critically and successfully with complex text. Amplify ELA meets criteria for Tier II-Moderate Evidence as an education intervention under ESSA.

Research base

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Amplify ELA: The research behind the program

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Amplify ELA: The research behind the approach to differentiation

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Efficacy

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Amplify ELA Embedded Measures predicts student performance on state end-of-year assessments

Read more

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Impact of Amplify English Language Arts 6-8: ESSA Evidence Tier II

Read more

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Impact of Amplify English Language Arts 6-8: ESSA Evidence Tier III

Read more

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Impact of Amplify English Language Arts 6-8: ESSA Technical Write Up

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District success stories

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Three Rivers Local School District, Ohio: Three Rivers achieves 70.7% sixth-grade ELA proficiency—16.2 points above state average—with Amplify ELA, Amplify CKLA, and mCLASS.

Read more

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Lake County School District, Florida: Florida’s Lake County School District achieves 54–62% growth on middle-school state assessments, with Amplify ELA.

Read more

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Mehlville School District, Missouri: Mehlville boosts middle school reading achievement with Amplify ELA.

Read more

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West Jefferson Hills School District, Pennsylvania: Students achieve a perfect reading growth score of 100

Read more

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Mustang Public Schools, Oklahoma: Students had double-digit gains in ELA performance

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Ready to learn more?

Fill out this form, and we’ll be in touch shortly.

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Explore more of our research.

Learn more about the research behind our programs.

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Amplify CKLA

Using a fundamentally different approach to language arts, Amplify Core Knowledg…

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Boost Reading

Leveraging compelling storytelling and the latest research, Boost Reading (forme…

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mCLASS®

Based on over 30 years of research, mCLASS® is the gold-standard assessment and…

See All Programs

Amplify partners with Core Knowledge; acquires rights to new language arts program

Known for its scientifically based content and approach, Core Knowledge’s influential work anticipated the Common Core State Standards, so its practices and philosophy are true to the rigorous spirit of the standards and exemplify the manner in which they ought to be implemented.

Through this partnership with Core Knowledge, Amplify Learning will develop and market to schools nationwide a unique, effective reading and language arts program for grades K–3 that will expand to include grades 4 and 5. Amplify Learning is one of three divisions within Amplify, a company committed to re-imagining the way teachers teach and students learn.

The Core Knowledge approach teaches students about the world with engaging fiction and nonfiction content from the sciences, history, and the arts. As students acquire skills in reading and writing, they also develop the broad vocabulary and background knowledge that will allow them to read with comprehension and think critically. From Aztecs to fables to the solar system, from basic sound and spelling patterns to essays based on close reading, Core Knowledge Language Arts® has everything students need to get on the path to college and career readiness—and everything teachers need to meet the Common Core standards.

The rigorous and engaging Core Knowledge Language Arts® program will initially be offered as a print product, to be supplemented with digital enhancements as early as by the next school year. Through its ongoing digital strategy to build dynamic, interactive and academically rigorous curriculum, Amplify Learning will evolve the Core Knowledge Language Arts® program to a full digital format over time.

Amplify Learning is building a fully integrated, adaptive, digital curriculum that will enable educators to meet the rigorous goals set by the Common Core standards and strive to narrow the achievement gap. Its products are designed for tomorrow’s promise and today’s realities. The company is creating exciting new approaches to teaching and learning that are: as immersive as the best films; as compelling as the best video games; as social as the best networking applications; as personal as the best tutors; and as analytically sophisticated as the best search engines.

Together, Amplify and the Core Knowledge Foundation are looking forward to ensuring that students across the country meet the Common Core standards and graduate from high school college and career ready.

Using its long-term rights to the Core Knowledge Language Arts® program, Amplify will continue its work as a leading education innovator and bring additional fresh, technologically advanced products to the marketplace that are founded upon this highly regarded and academically robust material.

Said Josh Reibel, Chief Executive of Amplify Learning and Amplify Insight, “With its deep academic experience, Core Knowledge has spent years addressing the same set of educational issues that today drive the Common Core. We’re excited to now have the exclusive opportunity to market these resources more widely and to use them over time to offer even more transformative educational products that are all Common Core aligned.”

Added Reibel, “What’s more, the Core Knowledge Sequence, and its esteemed, knowledge-building language arts program, are an especially good fit with our groundbreaking development of an all new digital curriculum that is academically rigorous and engaging for kids.”

The path to college, or a rewarding career, begins in early childhood. Core Knowledge puts all students on that path. Combining well-established findings from cognitive science with classroom-based feedback from hundreds of teachers, Core Knowledge has created a successful academic model for preschool through eighth grade. Researchers established decades ago that reading comprehension and critical thinking are only possible with relevant prior knowledge. Over the past 25 years, the organization has identified the essential, foundational knowledge, vocabulary and skills children need to learn and organized them for efficient and effective teaching in a grade-by-grade, age-appropriate sequence.

Said Linda Bevilacqua, president of the Core Knowledge Foundation. “As we surveyed the landscape of education innovators to work with us on expanding Core Knowledge and incorporating our philosophy into new digital tools, we determined that Amplify had extraordinary capacity to enhance and deepen the Core Knowledge learning experience. Unlike its competitors, Amplify understands that in order to improve teaching and learning, technology must be a means to an end, not an end in itself—a means to enhancing effective educational practice, as they have demonstrated with their successful assessment and intervention tools for teachers, such as mClass.” Bevilacqua said, “Amplify’s approach will give teachers and students an even more efficient and effective platform for building essential knowledge. Their digital expertise with the Foundation’s expertise in curriculum development will provide the basis for extraordinary collaboration.”

About Amplify
Amplify is working to transform the way teachers teach and students learn. We are changing the realities of today’s classroom experience by leading the way in data-driven instruction, breaking new ground in mobile learning and paving the way for the next generation of digital curriculum and assessment. We’ve helped over 200,000 educators and three million students in all 50 states begin their digital transition through mobile assessment solutions, adaptive curricula, and tools that harness the power of data for classroom teachers. Headquartered in New York City with more than 1,000 employees across the country, Amplify is led by a team of digital education experts and has provided industry-leading instructional tools, data analytics and assessment solutions to the K–12 market for more than a decade as Wireless Generation, now a part of Amplify. Learn more at www.Amplify.com.

About Core Knowledge

Educational excellence and equity demand a strong foundation of knowledge for all children—and a coherent plan for teaching what every child needs to know. The Core Knowledge Foundation publishes and distributes a wide variety of education books and materials for educators and parents. At the heart of all of our products is the Core Knowledge Sequence, a detailed outline of recommended curricular content to be taught in language arts, history and geography, mathematics, science, music, and the visual arts from preschool through grade eight. We also support a nationwide network of Core Knowledge schools with instructional materials and professional development workshops. Learn more at www.coreknowledge.org.

More News

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Amplify’s research-backed, curiosity-driven math program receives all-green scores across all three EdReport gateways

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Bring the world to students with Amplify CKLA 2nd Edition!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) 2nd Edition is a comprehensive early literacy curriculum grounded in the Science of Reading. With Amplify CKLA, you’ll have the instruction and guidance of proven, evidence-based practices to help all of your students become strong readers, writers, and thinkers.

Click here to access samples!
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Start your review

Digital samples for Grades K–5 are included here, along with other helpful materials for completing your review.
Watch the program overview video, in which Susan Lambert, host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, provides an overview of the unique structure and components of Amplify CKLA for Grades K–5.

The Amplify CKLA Program Guide provides you with an in-depth view of how Amplify CKLA works, how it’s structured, and why it’s uniquely capable of helping you bring reading instruction based on the Science of Reading to your classroom.

For an even more in-depth look at Amplify CKLA, review the following materials:

Click here to access materials!

K–5 Materials

Grades K–2: Dedicated knowledge building and explicit skills instruction
Every day, students in Grades K–2 complete one full lesson that builds foundational reading skills in the Skills Strand, as well as one full lesson that builds background knowledge in the Knowledge Strand. Through learning in each of these strands, students develop the early literacy skills necessary to help them become confident readers and build the context to understand what they’re reading.

Grades 3–5: Integrated instruction
In Grades 3–5, Knowledge and Skills are integrated in one set of instructional materials. Lessons begin to combine skills and knowledge with increasingly complex texts, close reading, and a greater writing emphasis. Students can then use their skills to go on their own independent reading adventures.

Diagram illustrating how language comprehension and word recognition contribute to skilled reading. Language comprehension includes core knowledge, vocabulary, sentences, reasoning, and mental model. Word recognition covers sounds, letters, and words.

Knowledge Strand

Skills Strand

Knowledge Strand

Skills Strand

Knowledge Strand

Skills Strand

CKLA_Sampling-AuthenticTexts_0906b

Amplify CKLA is more engaging than ever!

Fascinating subjects and cool tools captivate students. An intentional approach to background knowledge invites students to dig deeper, inspiring curiosity and driving results. With a cutting-edge digital experience, beautiful and newly-designed decodable Readers, and fascinating extended-learning units that take students all over the world, Amplify CKLA is more engaging than ever before—for both teacher and student!

The Amplify Digital Experience

With the Amplify CKLA digital experience, it’s never been easier to deliver engaging lesson presentations. Your students will love features that allow them to interact with their reading instruction like never before, and you will love the tools that help you keep their attention!

These ready-made, customizable, slides-based lesson presentations enhance instruction and save you time. With the Amplify CKLA digital experience, you’ll have everything you need in one place to plan and present high-quality, engaging early literacy instruction.

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Authentic texts and extending learning

As part of our commitment to creating even richer and more diverse curricula, we now offer newly redesigned decodable Readers and six new supplemental learning units. Stories with human characters now have improved inclusivity and authenticity, and other stories feature fantastical creatures to bring excitement and whimsy to the tales. Supplemental Knowledge Research Units extend learning for Grades K–5, incorporating Amplify CKLA’s powerful and evidence-based instructional approach while also adding more diversity, authentic literature, and flexibility. The authentic trade books in each of these units will inspire your students’ curiosity and grow their capacity for research and inquiry.

Introducing Amplify Caminos!

Amplify Caminos is an authentic elementary Spanish language arts program. Like its English language partner, Amplify CKLA, Amplify Caminos provides explicit, systematic foundational skills instruction sequenced with deep knowledge-building content to foster comprehension. When used with Amplify CKLA, Amplify Caminos provides full parity across English and Spanish that’s suitable for any dual language implementation model.

Discover Amplify Caminos

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Connect with an Amplify CKLA expert!

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Get in touch

Welcome, Arkansas educators!

We are excited to introduce Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) 3rd Edition, now an Arkansas-approved HQIM core literacy program within Amplify’s literacy suite. For more than a decade, Amplify CKLA has transformed classrooms nationwide with its intentional knowledge building and systematic skills instruction.

Rest assured that Amplify CKLA 2nd Edition remains a robust, trusted option, and our high-quality professional development and ever-growing PD Library of resources continue to be available to all CKLA partners.

Whether you’re continuing with the 2nd edition or exploring the 3rd, you’ve chosen a proven and research-based curriculum designed for lasting impact.  Together, let’s write the next chapter in the Science of Reading.

A correlation of the Arkansas English Language Arts Standards to Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition is now available!

Request sample
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Amplify ckla servers

150,000+

Classrooms

4,000,000+

students

50+

us states and d.c.

Our approach

Improve outcomes with a program built on decades of research, that meets the strongest ESSA Tier I criteria.

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Grounded in the Science of Reading

As the original Science of Reading program, Amplify CKLA puts research into action with explicit, systematic foundational skills instruction and a proven knowledge-building sequence. In collaboration with education experts and practitioners, we provide powerful resources that deliver real results.

Success stories

Background knowledge drives results for Arkansas students

Amplify CKLA follows the Core Knowledge Sequence, a content-specific, cumulative, and coherent approach to knowledge building. This approach improves reading scores and closes achievement gaps by establishing a robust knowledge base that strengthens comprehension.

In Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition, we’ve enriched our Knowledge Sequence with a wider range of perspectives and high-quality texts in new and enhanced units.

See units and connections
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Build foundational skills for long-term success.

Students progress from simple to complex skill development, starting with phonological and phonemic awareness. Instruction in Grades K–2 explicitly teaches the 150 spellings for the 44 sounds of English, following an intentional progression to ensure student success.

In our 3rd Edition, we’ve added dedicated Grade 3 foundational skills instruction that can either support core lessons or function as an intervention, based on student needs.

Skills by year

Daily writing deepens learning.

Grounded in the Science of Writing—the research on how kids learn to write—instruction is explicit, daily, and woven into the curriculum’s rich content. It covers both transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition (organizing ideas into narratives) with high-impact activities like sentence-level combining and expanding, and pre-writing exercises. Writing and reading instruction are integrated, so students simultaneously strengthen their communication skills, comprehension, and confidence.

See the simple view of writing
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High-quality texts

Amplify CKLA students are immersed in a variety of texts—complex read-alouds, decodable chapter books, trade books, and content-rich readers—that reflect varying experiences and backgrounds, and connect to learning goals.

Readers are 100% decodable for Grades K–2, empowering students to directly apply what they’ve learned. Novel Study units for Grades 3–5 offer a mix of contemporary and classic literature, and Culminating Research Units in every grade include a set of authentic texts and trade books.

See Research Unit trade books

Reach all learners with differentiated support.

Scaffolds and challenges, developed in collaboration with education experts, make content available to every student—including multilingual and English learners. With strategies embedded right in the curriculum, teachers can deliver in-the-moment, individualized instruction to meet all student needs.

For a dedicated English language development program aligned to Amplify CKLA, explore Language Studio.

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What’s included

The comprehensive resources in Amplify CKLA 3rd Edition support effective literacy instruction in every classroom.

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Easy-to-use teacher materials

Amplify CKLA teachers are empowered to deliver effective instruction with the following print and digital resources:

  • Teacher Guides (K–5)
  • Assessment Guides (K–5)
  • Authentic texts and trade books (K–5)
  • Knowledge Image Cards (K–2)
  • Knowledge Flip Books (K–2, digital)
  • Ready-made and customizable Presentation Screens (K–5, digital)
  • Remediation and intervention resources (K–5)
  • On-demand professional development (K–5, digital)

Immersive Amplify CKLA student resources

Amplify CKLA students stay engaged with the following print and digital resources:

  • Decodable readers (K–2)
  • Student Readers and novels (3–5)
  • Student Activity Books (K–5)
  • Poet’s Journal and Writer’s Journal (3–5)
  • eReaders (K–5, digital)
  • Sound Library featuring articulation videos and songs (K–2, digital)
  • Skill-building practice games (K–5)
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Rich literary experiences

The high-quality texts in Amplify CKLA foster students’ curiosity, reflect the wide variety of their backgrounds and experiences, and help them learn to read with confidence.

  • Trade Book Collections (K–5) inspire student research in each grade’s Culminating Research Unit.
  • Classic and contemporary literature (3–5) delights students in Novel Study Units.
  • Increasingly complex Student Readers (K–5) develop students’ literacy across grades.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources engage students with fun, varied approaches that promote mastery and build independence.

  • Chaining Folders and Small Letter Cards (K)
  • Read-Aloud Big Books (K–1)
  • Large Letter Cards (K–2)
  • Sound Cards (K–2)
  • Image Cards (K–3)
  • Blending Picture Cards (K)
  • Consonant and Vowel Code Posters and Spelling Cards (1–2)
  • Sound Library (K–2, digital)
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All-in-one digital platform

Our comprehensive platform simplifies your day-to-day tasks and makes it easier to plan and deliver lessons.

  • Ready-made and customizable Presentation Screens
  • Auto-scored digital assessments
  • Standards-based reporting
  • Assignable skill-building games
  • Sound Library
  • eReaders

Professional Development

We look forward to working alongside our Arkansas partners to build a strong foundation in Amplify CKLA. Our dedicated professional development team will continue collaborating with the ADE to provide job-embedded, on-site support that aligns with the Arkansas ELA standards and the Science of Reading.

Explore Amplify’s Effective PD Solutions

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A true Science of Reading early literacy suite for Grades K–5

Amplify has combined the critical elements of a Science of Reading system: assessment, core curriculum, personalized learning, and intervention. Based on 20 years of experience with the Science of Reading, this complete system saves you time and aligns your literacy practices.

  • Assess with mCLASS®: A universal and dyslexia screener, powered by DIBELS® 8th Edition
  • Instruct with Amplify CKLA: Core curriculum to build foundational skills and knowledge
  • Practice with Boost Reading: Personalized learning program to extend and reinforce core
  • Intervene with mCLASS Intervention: Staff-led Tier 2 and 3 intervention for intensive support

Language Studio: Multilingual and English learner support

Language Studio is Amplify CKLA’s dedicated K–5 program for multilingual and English learners. Through daily 30-minute lessons, it strengthens reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills while reinforcing core instruction. This tailored support empowers students to confidently access grade-level content as they develop academic English.

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Explore more programs in Amplify’s literacy and biliteracy suite.

All of the programs in our literacy suite and our biliteracy suite are designed to support and complement each other. Learn more about our related programs:

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Amplify Caminos

Amplify Caminos is a K–5 Spanish language arts curriculum grounded in the Scienc…

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Boost Reading

Boost Reading is a Science of Reading K–5 personalized reading program that…

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mCLASS

Amplify’s mCLASS is the gold-standard universal and dyslexia screener grou…

See All Programs

Get a demo

Fill out this form and your Account Executive Paige Benoy will contact you to set up a demo, send samples, or answer questions about Amplify CKLA.

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Paige Benoy
Arkansas Account Executive
pbenoy@amplify.com

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Elementary literacy

Science of reading resources

What does the “science of reading” really mean? How can you apply it in the classroom? We’ve created resources to help you get started

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What is science reading?

The “science of reading,” or “structured literacy,” refers to the wealth of research findings on how students learn to read. 

At its heart is what experts call the Simple View of Reading, which describes the two fundamental skills required for people to read with comprehension: 

  • Decoding—the ability to recognize written words
  • Language comprehension—understanding what words mean

Decoding x Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension

Without both decoding and language comprehension, reading comprehension cannot occur.

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Download the Science of Reading Toolkit

Find out why foundational skills must start with sounds and the crucial role of background knowledge.

Get the kit now!

Amplify literacy programs built on the science of reading

Amplify’s suite of instruction, assessment, and intervention is based on the science of reading. Developed with experts, our highly-regarded programs for elementary core curriculum (Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts), assessment, (mCLASS ®) and intervention and differentiated instruction (Amplify Reading and mCLASS ® Intervention) are a comprehensively aligned system based on the latest research.

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Core instruction

Rated “all green” by EdReports.org, Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is an English language arts program for preK–5 offering explicit, systematic foundational skills and deep knowledge-building in real-world, relevant topics that kids love to learn about.

Learn more here >

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Universal and dyslexia screening

Valid, reliable data is at the center of a science of reading-based literacy system. Built from the ground up on the science of reading, mCLASS, Amplify’s literacy assessment for K–6, identifies risk of reading difficulties, including dyslexia, at the earliest levels.

As the only licensed digital provider of DIBELS® 8th Edition, mCLASS’s predictive, teacher-administered, one-minute measures generate actionable data on skills, risk levels, and level of support needed. Teachers receive targeted instruction for small groups and individual students.

Learn more here >

Remediation and enrichment

Amplify Reading, K–5 Edition, is an adaptive digital program that extends the learning from core instruction, giving students deep, differentiated practice in foundational skills, comprehension processes, and vocabulary—all while exploring narrative worlds designed to appeal to kids at each grade band. Part of Amplify’s integrated literacy suite, it syncs with mCLASS, using students’ assessment profiles to start them at the right place in the learning progression.

Learn more here >

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Structured, staff-led intervention

For students below grade level, mCLASS Intervention for K–6 integrates with mCLASS screening and progress-monitoring to provide the analytical tools and resources educators need to make targeted, staff-led intervention a daily reality throughout the school year. Specifically, it groups students with similar needs and provides explicit, systematic foundational skills lessons for each group.

Learn more here >

Getting Started Resources

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Science of reading: Volume 2

Cover of Science of Reading: The Primer Part Two by Amplify, featuring an illustration of a person standing atop a large stair pyramid holding a staff with a glowing symbol, with trees and clouds in the background.

Science of reading: Volume 2

Illustration of a girl holding a kite with colorful tails labeled with reading skills. Text: Toolkit: Science of reading. Five insights you can start using today. Amplify logo in top left.

Science of reading Getting started..

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Science of reading: The Podcast

Join us for an informative new episode featuring a new special guest every two w…

What would you like to do next?

Talk to product experts Stay up to date on new science of reading resources and podcasts

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Overview

Among English Language Learner (ELL) students, Spanish is the most common language spoken at home—77% of students with limited English proficiency in the U.S. public schools claim Spanish as their primary language at home.

Amplify’s new Spanish-language companion program for Amplify CKLA meets an essential need for educators, and fulfills a central mission for all of us who aspire to achieve true equity in education. With Amplify Caminos, teachers will be able to develop student comprehension in Spanish through a content-rich curriculum while also building bridges to English literacy.

Amplify Caminos was developed by a bilingual team from across the Latinx Hispanic diaspora with a concerted effort to create relevant connections for students so the classroom experience strikes the ideal balance between the security of the familiar and the excitement of the unknown.

Amplify Caminos is a Spanish language arts curriculum for grades K–5 and can be used on its own. It can also be used alongside Amplify CKLA to provide students with equitable instruction in Spanish and English across a range of instructional models, including dual language immersion and transitional classrooms.

Amplify Caminos is a program for Grades K–5.

In Grades K-2, the Knowledge Strand builds background knowledge and vocabulary through carefully sequenced read-alouds and complex texts. Teachers read stories aloud that are more complex than the text students can decode on their own, enabling children to engage with complex texts and build background knowledge of a variety of connected topics in history, science, literature, and the arts.

In Grades 3–5, students are still focused on building reading and writing skills as well as knowledge and vocabulary, but the program no longer has two strands. The various lessons in each unit include read-alouds; whole group, small group, and partner reading; close reading; literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension questions; vocabulary; grammar; writing; and unit assessments.

The Amplify Caminos Skills Strand for K–2 is under development.

Available for the 2021–22 school year, Amplify Caminos can support teachers in multiple language teaching models, including dual language immersion classrooms, transitional classrooms, newcomer or bridge programs, and other unique models.

It can be taught alongside Amplify CKLA or as a standalone.

Program design

Grades K–2
Knowledge Teacher Guides, Flip Books, Student Knowledge Activity Books, Image Cards, recorded Read-Alouds, and planning and professional development resources.

Grades 3–5
Teacher Guides, Student Readers, Activity Books, Poet’s Journal, Writer’s Journal, Text Anthologies for Grades 4 and 5, Core Quests, Writing Quests (The Contraption in Grade 4, The Robot in Grade 5), and planning and professional development resources.