HOW Next-Gen Adaptive Learning
CAN SOLVE America’s Reading Problems
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
PRESENTED BY
Teachers have limited time to give struggling readers
the one-on-one attention they need. New adaptive
learning software that closely simulates a human tutor
can help extend a teacher’s reach, leading to more
effective instruction.
INTRODUCTION
Nearly two-thirds of fourth-grade students aren’t reading
on grade level, according to the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the
Nation’s Report Card. Among low-income students, that
figure jumps to nearly 80 percent.1 These students need
more instruction that responds to their specific learning needs
but teachers don’t have time to give every child the kind of
personalized attention they need to succeed.
Adaptive learning can help. Adaptive learning technologies
can respond to a student’s needs in real time by automatically
offering the right support— supplementing teacher instruction
and enabling a student to make accelerated progress.
Early adaptive learning programs were fairly basic. They
would serve up questions for students, and depending on
how the students responded, the questions might get easier
or harder. But the technology has come a long way in recent
years, and now some cutting-edge programs can collect and
respond to hundreds of different data points immediately,
offering not just a binary response but a highly sophisticated
adaptive approach that more closely resembles a human
tutor.
This ebook will describe how adaptive learning has evolved
and how it can be used to support student literacy. It will
introduce readers to Velocity, an advanced adaptive learning
solution for struggling readers in grades K–5, and it will
demonstrate how Velocity is making a big difference in
Virginia Beach City Public Schools and other pilot districts.
MEETING ALL STUDENTS WHERE THEY ARE
New Mexico’s Gallup-McKinley County Schools faces the
typical challenges that educators experience in teaching
literacy. Eighty-three percent of its 11,000 students are
Navajo, and nearly one-third are English language learners
whose first language is Navajo.
“Our students come to us at very different levels,” says
Lynda Spencer, reading and Title III (ELL) coordinator for
the district. “A student should start kindergarten with about a
3,000-word vocabulary. Some students come with a 500word vocabulary, and some come with 5,000.”
Giving all children the kind of personalized attention they need
to succeed can be difficult in a classroom of 30 students.
That’s why Spencer looks for software programs that can
help her district’s teachers provide highly targeted instruction
that meets every child’s unique needs.
“Any program you use has to meet children where they come
to you,” she says. “It can’t be above their heads, and it can’t
be too far below.”
This is where adaptive learning software can help. Adaptive
programs can adjust to how students are performing in real
time, anticipating and then delivering the specific types of
learning content that students need to progress.
1. National Assessment of Educational Progress (2015).
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HOW NEXT-GEN ADAPTIVE LEARNING CAN SOLVE AMERICA’S READING PROBLEMS
The New Media Consortium’s 2015 “K–12 Horizon Report” listed
adaptive learning among the technologies likely to reach a critical
mass of adoption within the next few years. “Teachers rarely have
the capacity to design assignments that uniquely cater to every
student,” the report says. “Adaptive learning technologies provide
a potential pathway for tailoring educational opportunities.”2
Adaptive software can determine where a student’s
weaknesses are and can target instruction accordingly, allowing
students to work through the content at their own pace. In
effect, it serves as an intelligent tutor that responds dynamically
to each child’s learning needs, supplementing the instruction
that a teacher is able to provide and giving struggling students
the personalized attention they need to excel.
NOT ALL ADAPTIVE SOLUTIONS ARE ALIKE
The first generation of adaptive software was fairly simple, says
Sandi Everlove, chief learning officer for the Seattle-based
company Enlearn.
Depending on how a student responded to a given question,
the program would present slightly harder or slightly easier
content, Everlove explains. But these programs still followed a
predefined scope and sequence in covering the topic, just like a
textbook would. In effect, it would send students down one of
several predetermined paths. And that might be fine for some
students. But sometimes students need a different approach in
order to understand a topic.
In the last few years, adaptive learning technology has become
more sophisticated. Rather than
following a series of branching paths
that take students through the same
scope and sequence—with slightly
harder or easier content, depending
on their ability—adaptive programs
“might give a child instruction that
doesn’t follow a preset path,”
Everlove says. The technology is able
to diagnose a child’s learning needs
more precisely and can respond to
those needs with more flexibility, like a human teacher would.
“That’s where a lot of adaptive technologies are today,” she says,
“and it’s a superior model.”
Enlearn has taken this approach and refined it even further by
developing an adaptive learning engine that can dig deeply into
a student’s thought process to uncover any misconceptions that
might be standing in the way of his or her learning. The software
then fixes that misunderstanding before proceeding with a
lesson.
“When you think about learning a concept, you might have 50
percent of the thought process involved in solving that problem
right—and you might have 50 percent wrong,” she says. “You
might have a misconception somewhere along that thought
process, and it keeps you from really learning or understanding
that particular concept.”
By adjusting organically to support a student wherever he or she
needs assistance—even if no student has ever needed precisely that
same type of help before—the software functions as an extension of
the teacher’s presence in the classroom, providing truly individualized
instruction for every learner.
VELOCITY: AN INTELLIGENT READING TUTOR LIKE
NO OTHER
Voyager Sopris Learning has developed a new K–5 literacy
program called Velocity that uses Enlearn’s revolutionary adaptive
learning engine to help elementary students close the gaps in
their reading skills.
Velocity continually monitors
students’ understanding,
provides scaffolded support
and hints throughout the
learning process, and
feeds this information to
the teacher. The software
breaks down the learning
process to a whole new
level of granularity, analyzing
2. New Media Consortium (2015). NMC Horizon Report: 2015 K–12 Edition.
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HOW NEXT-GEN ADAPTIVE LEARNING CAN SOLVE AMERICA’S READING PROBLEMS
Adaptive programs can adjust to how
students are performing in real time,
anticipating and then delivering the
specific types of learning content that
students need to progress.
dozens of discrete yet interwoven thought processes that underlie
each skill competency—and then uses this information to coach
students up in areas where they’re having trouble.
Suppose a student is working on reading comprehension. He
or she might be given a short reading passage and asked to
highlight the topic sentence. If the student gets this wrong, the
program tries to figure out why by offering follow-up activities that
can hone in on the nature of the problem.
For instance, it may be that the student doesn’t understand what a
high-utility word such as “however” means. “A simple word like that
can completely change the meaning of a paragraph,” Everlove says.
“If a student doesn’t know that word, it could look like they can’t
comprehend the text—when maybe all they need is some work on
those utility words instead.”
Designing a program with this level of sophistication requires a very
different approach. Developers need to consider questions such as:
What are all of the potential places students could stumble when
they’re trying to make inferences about a passage?
“All of those discrete areas are considered for each individual
learning activity,” Everlove says. “They’re tagged separately in a
way that reveals the student’s thought processes throughout the
problem or activity.” If the program determines that one of these
areas might be a problem, “it can serve up a subsequent problem
to confirm whether that is what’s really going on—and if so, it
can deliver instruction to fix that particular challenge.”
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NOT A REPLACEMENT, BUT AN AID, FOR TEACHERS
This highly intelligent, adaptive literacy software “is the closest
thing to having me work with my students individually, without
doing it myself,” says Laura Boothe, a teacher at Seatack
Elementary School, part of the Virginia Beach City Public
Schools.
Seatack Elementary was the first school to use Velocity, and
Boothe says the software keeps her fourth graders engaged. “It
identifies their strengths and weaknesses, and I know they’re
learning when they’re using it,” she says.
Seatack is a Title I school, and every one of its nearly 400
students, kindergarten through fifth grade, qualifies for free or
reduced-price lunch.
“Most of our students are exponentially behind in terms of
vocabulary development. Of course, that affects their basic
comprehension as well,” Boothe says. “My own students’ abilities
range from closer to a second grade reading level to well above
fourth grade in some cases.”
Reaching students such wide-ranging abilities would be difficult, if
not impossible, without a program such as Velocity. It’s like having
another teacher helping out in the classroom.
Boothe’s students all have Chromebooks, and she has them
working on Velocity for up to 30 minutes a day. While the
program extends the personalized instruction she is able to give
them, it doesn’t replace this individual attention. In fact, Velocity
makes Boothe an even more effective teacher.
HOW NEXT-GEN ADAPTIVE LEARNING CAN SOLVE AMERICA’S READING PROBLEMS
The software provides a detailed report on
each child’s abilities, and it automatically
groups students by ability. It even provides
lesson plans and resources to help teachers
address the skills that students are lacking.
The software provides a detailed report on each child’s abilities,
and it automatically groups students by ability. It even provides
lesson plans and resources to help teachers address the skills
that students are lacking. “During small-group instructional
time, I can hit on all of those weaknesses that Velocity has
already picked out in my kids for me,” Boothe says. “It saves
me time and energy, because I have those plans and those
groupings right there at my fingertips.”
The idea that teachers play an essential role in their students’
success is foundational to the program, says Voyager Sopris
Learning’s vice president of instruction Karon Brown. “We hear
teachers say all the time: ‘If only I had 30 more minutes with
that student, I could really get him up to speed,’” Brown says.
“Velocity is a way to provide that additional instruction, but it’s
not meant as a replacement for the teacher. On the contrary, it
gives teachers more time and support to do what they do best,
and which a computer can’t do”—making personal connections
with students.
EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS
Velocity can be used as an intervention or as a supplement
to the core reading curriculum. For maximum effectiveness,
Voyager Sopris recommends that students use the software
for 20 to 30 minutes a day, up to five days a week.
During a 2016 pilot program involving summer-school programs
in 49 school districts across the US, nearly 8,000 students used
Velocity in addition to other resources their schools provided.
Most of these summer-school programs were four-week
programs, says Janet McPherson, vice president of research
and product effectiveness for Voyager Sopris. In total, students
completed more than 600,000 problems in Velocity. The
students were given pre- and post-tests at the beginning and
end of their summer program, and students who took both
assessments made about three months’ gain in their reading
skills during that one-month period.
“While we can’t attribute all of this success to Velocity, it was
certainly a big factor,” McPherson says.
Gallup-McKinley County Schools was one of the districts that
took part in the “Summer of Velocity” pilot, and after trying the
software, the district’s Catherine A. Miller Elementary School has
purchased the program for use this school year. “I think it’s going
to be a great program,” Spencer says. “Catherine A. Miller has
been a low-performing school for years. I’m hoping that we see
results.”
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HOW NEXT-GEN ADAPTIVE LEARNING CAN SOLVE AMERICA’S READING PROBLEMS
Velocity gives teachers more time and
support to do what they do best, and which
a computer can’t do—making personal
connections with students.
At Seatack Elementary, Boothe used the software with third-grade
students last year. At the beginning of the school year, about 45
percent had a passing rate on their first district reading test; by
the end of the year, 80 percent had passed the Virginia Standards
of Learning test in reading—which was the highest passing rate
among the district’s 55 schools.
“I’m thrilled with having (Velocity) in my classroom,” Boothe says.
“When you’re teaching below the students’ level, they get bored
because it’s not challenging them. But if you’re over their heads,
they’re not going to connect, either. The fact that it’s working at
their level and is adaptive to their needs is very engaging. Plus,
it’s very interactive; students are constantly getting feedback.”
CONCLUSION
With nearly two-thirds of all fourth graders in the US reading
below grade level—a statistic that is even higher among lowincome students and English language learners—students need
more personalized instruction that responds to their specific
learning needs. Teachers have only a limited amount of time
to give children this individual attention, but next-generation
adaptive learning tools such as Velocity can help.
Using a highly advanced adaptive learning engine, Velocity can
identify misconceptions that struggling readers have and deliver
exactly the instruction they need to succeed, when they need
it—even if it’s outside of the traditional scope and sequence of a
lesson. While Velocity is the next best thing to having a one-onone session with a human teacher, it can never replace teachers.
In fact, the feedback and information Velocity provides helps
teachers become even more effective in their daily interactions
with students.
“This is the first reading program I’ve seen that makes me
feel like this is the direction we should be going in,” Boothe
concludes. “I’m very happy that we have it, and I will fight to use
it every year.” ¾
Find out how Velocity can accelerate early literacy
in your schools: Get a FREE 60-day trial at
www.teachvelocity.com
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HOW NEXT-GEN ADAPTIVE LEARNING CAN SOLVE AMERICA’S READING PROBLEMS
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