The Amplify reading program

The Amplify reading program aims to ensure deliberate practice with critical analysis, develop students’ reading accuracy, and build student’s knowledge through the following reading opportunities:

• Close reading activities: Daily lessons and instruction provide clear practice through structured close reading activities, where students closely read— and reread—using the lens of the standards to discern what the writer is saying, analyze their choices, evaluate their claims and assumptions, and build content knowledge. These close reading activities are designed to engage and foster critical thinking with the texts, supporting students as they make meaning and develop their own analyses through a small set of repeated moves.
  • Analytic reading cycle: A basic cycle of reading instruction in these lessons asks students to:

1. Select specific details from the text.
2. Describe what they see in those details.
3. Explain what those observations might signify.
4. Connect moments or details within one text or across texts to build a larger idea or understanding. In every unit, Amplify ELA lessons ask students to describe and explain their ideas based on close observations of the text, encouraging them to develop their own more complex analyses using these fundamental building blocks.

• • The importance of collaboration: Just as strong readers check their analysis and understanding as new content is presented, the close reading activities provide ample opportunities for teachers to facilitate a discussion or partner students to compare their evidence and interpretations of the text. For this reason, most activities are designed to support a range of interpretations—as opposed to a pure reading comprehension exercise.
• Independent reading activities (Solos): In the Solo activities at the end of core lessons, students apply their developing skills to a new text while answering a range of auto-scored questions that track their ability to read a level text with accuracy. The close reading activities provide practice with the analytic cycle to build reading comprehension, while the Solos check students’ level of independent reading comprehension to help teachers understand their progress and decide whether or not to provide additional Amplify supports for fluency practice.
• Reading in the Collections: The research-based Collection units in each grade provide opportunities for students to build content knowledge and adapt their reading skills to work with a variety of primary and secondary sources around a particular topic. The activities in the Collection units are designed to support students as they skim to find key pieces of information to answer a research question, compare perspectives of two or more articles, determine relevant sources and their credibility, and gather pertinent information for a discussion or debate.
• Reading in the Amplify Library: The Amplify Library offers an extensive variety of texts spanning many genres, interests, and reading levels to give students continual access to additional class and independent reading opportunities.

Foundational reading supports

• Word knowledge: The ability to access increasingly complex texts requires an increasing vocabulary and understanding of how words work. Amplify’s Vocab App provides students with daily exposure to the key and challenging words needed to parse meaning from each text, as well as practice with a variety of activities that help students understand how to use context clues, word relations, morphology, and contextual definitions.
• Fluency support: The design of the Amplify reading program ensures that all students have access to fluent readings of each new text and opportunities to practice fluency themselves, but studies show that struggling readers benefit significantly from regular and deliberate fluency practice. With that in mind, each Amplify Flex Day contains a fluency activity, allowing students to regularly practice fluency (both rate and expression) with a partner using the unit text.

 

Amplify Library

The Amplify Library comprises more than 650 classic and contemporary fiction and nonfiction books in their entirety. The collection spans a wide range of genres, topics, and cultural perspectives—a diversity meant to support students as they develop literacy skills. The titles have Lexile levels spanning grades 3–12, providing books for students with varied reading abilities. The collection includes classics such as And Then There Were None and The Call of the Wild as well as modern titles including Walk Two Moons and Inside Out & Back Again. These texts are all aimed at supporting and extending work done with the core texts and fostering a love of reading and learning in all students

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