The right literacy strategies help students truly enjoy reading, yet many schools focus solely on phonics and mechanics. Educators have adopted the Science of Reading to build foundational skills in early elementary years, but one important metric often gets overlooked: How do we inspire students to fall in love with the written word? Students who love reading become deeper thinkers, more confident writers, and stronger students overall, yet the current educational setting frequently prioritizes data over the joy of discovery.
The challenge with current reading systems
At Franklin Square Union Free School District in New York, school leaders and educators examined what wasn’t working. Teachers felt the existing reading system was flawed. Passages were often redundant, robotic, and out of context, leaving young readers frustrated. Compounding the problem, assessments were conducted just a few times a year to measure how students compared to state benchmarks rather than capturing in-the-moment progress.
The district needed to build an interactive program that engaged students at every level while meeting state literacy briefs. This meant providing timely, actionable insights into day-to-day growth so teachers could quickly address emerging learning challenges. They combined new resources with an emphasis on teacher autonomy.
Using AI tutors to support, not replace, teachers
Franklin Square UFSD implemented a suite of new resources, including Amira Learning. This AI-powered learning agent acts as a tutor and reading coach using speech-recognition technology. It provides pre-K through fifth-grade students with personalized, real-time reading support.
Students spend 20 to 25 minutes a week reading aloud with the AI tutor. The software provides gentle corrections and encouragement when students struggle. It also offers specialized questions based on the passages they read, helping them deepen their understanding of the content. When assessments are centered on fun, students are excited to practice their emerging literacy skills.
Teachers can immediately identify students who need additional support and adapt one-on-one and small group instruction. While classroom screen time is intentionally limited, every minute is meaningful. Interactive tools have freed educators from the hours spent on collecting and analyzing results after class.
Restoring creativity to the curriculum
In addition to new tools, the district made a deliberate commitment to establish cohesive, research-aligned instruction district-wide while supporting teachers with day-to-day flexibility. For years, literacy programs varied by each school, each grade level, and even between classrooms, creating inconsistencies in students’ learning experiences as they moved between buildings.
Rather than creating a top-down literacy plan, Franklin Square UFSD took a ground-up approach with teachers. All classrooms must meet basic state and district standards, but teachers are offered the flexibility to help their students reach them. The curriculum is not intended to strip creativity from the classroom. Teachers are encouraged to lead according to their strengths.
If a teacher highlights particular stories or lingers on a favorite unit, it is encouraged. Designing special, hands-on projects is also a priority. This spirit of play and imagination is key to inspiring confident, capable learners. It helps students see reading as an adventure to explore rather than just an assignment.
While the data from the new system is promising, the structural changes reveal a broader reality about educational technology. Tools like Amira can identify gaps in fluency and comprehension with impressive speed, but they cannot replicate the nuance of a human teacher’s judgment. The autonomy granted to teachers appears to be the stabilizing factor; without the human element to interpret the data and support a genuine love of books, the system risks becoming a high-tech version of the rigid, robotic instruction it was originally designed to replace.
Measurable improvements in proficiency
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