A program of
Renaissance Philanthropy
A program of
Renaissance Philanthropy
Learning to read starts with the ability to connect the sounds of spoken language to the letters and letter combinations that represent them. For most students, mastering that code requires thousands of practice opportunities with timely, corrective feedback. Often, a single teacher cannot give every student the ideal level of targeted, individualized practice opportunities and corrective feedback. Project Read x UFLI addresses this gap through two connected tools, built on the UFLI Foundations phonics curriculum, the most widely used phonics curriculum in the US.
The student-facing Project Read Tutor uses speech recognition and touchscreen input to guide students through reading and spelling one sound at a time, providing corrective feedback the moment a student misreads or misspells a sound. The teacher-facing UFLI Assessment and Planning Portal takes the weekly progress data teachers already collect and automatically generates differentiated small groups and lesson plans aligned to each student's specific gaps. Project Read and UFLI will further build out and connect the two tools into a single closed-loop system, so that each student's assessment results directly shape what they practice on the Tutor that same day, providing every K-2 student with consistent, targeted practice and feedback on precisely the sounds and spellings they need most.
In a single school pilot study, first-grade students using the Project Read AI Tutor demonstrated significantly more oral reading fluency growth. Below-average readers showed an effect size of 0.90, while all readers showed an effect size of 0.65, when using the Tutor for at least 10 minutes per week.
"I use the Portal to plan my small groups, and it made all the difference for me this year. I was worried when the groups were large at the beginning of the year, but I listened and stuck with it, and it paid off. These are the best readers to leave my classroom! The AI Tutor has also been a game changer, especially for my ESE and ELL students. One of my students said, 'I'm going to miss Project Read!' when the year ended.”
Elementary School Teacher using Project Read x UFLI
"Co-Founder, CEO", Project Read
"Co-Founder, CTO", Project Read
"Professor, Director", University of Florida Literacy Institute
"Assistant Professor, Assistant Director", University of Florida Literacy Institute
"Professor, Assistant Director", University of Florida Literacy Institute
Co-President, High Fidelity Research
