LDOE Director of Academic Innovation Adam DiBenedetto said the reading assistant constitutes further growth for LDOE’s Amira Literacy Tutoring Pilot, which began in the 2022-23 school year as an intervention for K-8 English learners. The pilot expanded the following year to include around 25,000 general K-5 students.
Pandemic relief funds are being used to pay for the pilot program, DiBenedetto said. School districts not participating in the pilot can request Louisiana Act 771 funding to purchase Amira for use with K-5 students as part of a new state requirement for tutoring during the school day.
According to a news release, increased demand for ed-tech tools such as Amira’s reading tutor prompted the department to create the role of director of academic innovation, focused on researching and supporting the use of these tools. DiBenedetto was hired to fill the new role in early 2024. Prior to that, he was a third-grade teacher using Amira in his own classroom.
“At first, you know, you’re skeptical of a new tool, but I tell you what, I really benefited as a teacher,” DiBenedetto said. “What I loved was that while working with my small group of students, the rest of the students in my classroom could be reading along with Amira, and I could go back and take a look at what their words correct per minute were. I could go back and listen to my students actually reading that passage.”
After a student session with Amira, teachers can view reports on “student success or struggle down to the phoneme level and across the pillars of reading,” according to Amira’s website. Providing teachers with this immediate, granular data can help drive instruction, according to Amira’s Chief Impact Officer Joe Siedlecki.
“I’ve never talked to a teacher who didn’t want to be standing over the shoulder of every student as they’re reading to help them the moment they struggle, but it’s just not possible,” Siedlecki said. “Amira does make that possible and then immediately shares that information back to the teacher so they can actually use that in their small group or their whole class or individual instruction.”
As far as how Amira provides this in-the-moment assistance, Siedlecki said the AI tool is informed by Scarborough’s Reading Rope, a framework devised by American psychologist Dr. Hollis Scarborough and based on decades or research, which defines interrelated aspects of language comprehension and word recognition required to create a skilled reader.
“The machine learning behind the way Amira interprets student mistakes and selects micro-interventions is built on Scarborough’s Reading Rope,” he said. “So when Amira is listening to a student read aloud and they make a mistake, what Amira is discerning with AI is which thread in the reading rope is the error emanating from, and what does all of our experience tell us is going to be the most effective tutoring micro-intervention for that student.”
DiBenedetto said a team of Amira trainers will visit pilot schools throughout Louisiana to provide teachers with professional development on the use of the AI reading tutor in time for its expanded rollout this fall.
