If Amplify CKLA is the curriculum your district has purchased for your classroom, there are some important details you should know! I’ve been teaching ELA using the Amplify curriculum for a few years now, and I just remember having SO MANY QUESTIONS when I started!
My goal is to help you answer some of those questions right here, right now.
I also want to hook you up with some really awesome resources for Amplify (I’m currently working on 5th grade resources, but more is coming!)
First off, what is Amplify CKLA?
What is Amplify CKLA?
According to their website,
Amplify CKLA is a K-5 literacy curriculum that inspires curiosity and drives results, empowering all students with rich background knowledge.
https://amplify.com/programs/amplify-core-knowledge-language-arts/
What Can I Expect?
Since your district has bought the curriculum, expect Amplify trainings to come your way.
In these trainings, the Amplify coordinators may share an example study called “The Baseball Experiment.” It was a groundbreaking study that revealed that the students who were able to comprehend a new text best were the ones with the most background knowledge on the topic, regardless of reading ability.
**read more about the experiment here**
This changed how teachers perceived reading comprehension. Not only was it important for students to be able to decode words. Now, it was imperative that the students understood the meaning of what they were reading. They needed background knowledge.
Let’s dive in to what that actually looks like during Amplify CKLA instruction.
What Does Amplify Instruction Look Like for K-3?
As the website states, Amplify is designed to build background knowledge. What it doesn’t mention straight off the bat is that most of the background knowledge building happens in Grades K-3, so that when reading becomes more technical in Grades 4-5, the student is better prepared.
Amplify has designed the curriculum to help students amass as much background knowledge as possible, while learning important word decoding skills in the early grades.
Starting in Kindergarten, all the way through 3rd Grade, ELA instruction is divided into two parts:
- Skills (60 min a day)
- Knowledge (60 min a day)
What does the Amplify Skills Instruction look like?
The focus of the Skills instruction time is decoding and basic reading skills. Kindergarten through Third Grade teachers will teach letters as sounds, focusing on the different phonemes and corresponding letter combinations. They will teach all basic components of reading and decoding the English language.
K-3 is the Time to Learn to Read
Amplify CKLA has a very strict “Learning to Read” approach to ELA instruction for Grades K-3.
In fact, the curriculum specifically states that students in these younger grade levels should not see the text during read aloud at all!
They believe in this concept so much that they made a whole unit separate from the Skills units (where they learn to decode) just for it.
Which brings us to the Knowledge Units.
What does the Amplify Knowledge instruction look like?
There are several materials for your class’s Knowledge instruction, but you will find a giant book with pictures in it for each unit.
While you’re reading, the students will see the pictures of the story you are reading aloud to them, but they will not see the text. You will be reading aloud from the teacher guide.
Amplify CKLA pushes the idea that background knowledge must precede reading comprehension. Therefore, students should be focused on gaining only Knowledge during this time.
If the students were allowed to see the story text, they may be tempted to focus on word decoding, instead of focusing on listening and learning. That would frustrate the whole division of skills and knowledge.
Special Notes About K-3 Amplify CKLA Instruction
If you read the teacher guides for these grades, you will notice that Knowledge is pretty set, in terms of lesson planning and scheduling. One lesson a day, plus some dedicated “pausing point” days for review and assessment.
Skills, on the other hand, is completely different.
You will teach a few lessons to set a routine, and then you will invariably jump right into the B.O.Y. (Beginning of Year) Assessment.
There are multiple levels to the assessment, so you’ll need to be flexible in order to figure out the exact level of each student. Every student will take the initial test. Based on their scores, they will either take a more advanced assessment or a more remedial one. The teacher guide will help you know who to give what tests, as well as how to group the students when all the testing is complete.
It is “imperative” that students learn at their level in Skills instruction.
Amplify CKLA uses the word “imperative” to emphasize the important concept that students should not be forced to just “move on” with decoding instruction.
This means that if a first grader is on a kindergarten decoding level, they need to receive decoding instruction on that level and catch up, before moving on to first grade phonics.
Instruction should be rigorous and on the student’s level.
This is why the Skills Teacher Guide gives advice about how to group students, based on their scores on the B.O.Y. Assessment. Once students are grouped, teachers on the same grade level are encouraged to work together to meet the learning needs of all the students.
If there is more than one teacher teaching a certain grade, the teacher guide says to split up responsibilities.
- One teacher would teach the highest performing group.
- Another teacher would teach the next highest group.
- And so on.
This makes the best use of time while still allowing each student to be taught on their level.
They want you to help all students catch up at the very beginning of the year, during unit one, so that students can all learn at the same level starting with Unit 2.
Again, Amplify CKLA believes that building the proper foundation is the key to unlocking reading comprehension success later on. That foundation is built on two important factors:
- Decoding Skills
- Background Knowledge
What Does Amplify Instruction Look Like for 4-5?
Remember when I said earlier that K-3 instruction emphasized “Learning to Read?” Grades 4-5 is not that way. In fact, it becomes the opposite. Once students cross from 3rd to 4th grade, students are now expected to be “Reading to Learn” during the ELA time.
Using the background knowledge and decoding skills that their K-3 teachers worked so hard to instill in them, students face the challenge of reading and discussing several texts, most of which are authentic and slightly above the on-grade reading level.
Amplify uses authentic texts.
As a plus, unlike the usual ELA curriculums, you will not find texts that were written specifically for the Amplify Curriculum. Instead, you will find excerpts and abridgments of authentic literary works.
However, because the focus now is “Reading to Learn,” there is no dedicated time for foundational skills (like decoding) for grades 4-5.
Each lesson is 90 minutes long, and it follows a pretty rigorous lesson schedule.
Students read together, independently, or with the class, and then they complete reading comprehension questions and other assignments in the Unit workbook.
For students who need help with decoding skills, Amplify does provide a Remediation Guide supplement.
There are some interactive projects that the students really get into, as well.
The Bottom Line: the Good and Potential Struggles
I want to start this off by saying that I really like the Amplify CKLA curriculum design.
The read-alouds, the authentic texts, the rigorous, on-level decoding instruction–it’s all backed by science, and it’s effective.
But it would be wrong for me to say that I’ve always loved it. In fact, I honestly struggled with it at first. Let me explain.
Amplify CKLA focuses heavily on K-3 foundations of building background knowledge and key decoding skills. The idea is that, by the time they get to 4th grade, they can conquer those rigorous texts because they have the foundation to do so.
When I first got the Amplify curriculum, I was teaching 4-5 ESL at an elementary school where many of the students I taught had not been in the country for 5 years, let alone in the school district for that long. Naturally, there were so many reading gaps that using the Amplify curriculum proved to be incredibly difficult at the 4-5 Grade Level.
To compound that issue, the students who HAD been in the district long-term had never had Amplify instruction either. When our district bought the curriculum, they didn’t purchase it for grades K-3. They only purchased it for grades 4-5. The students were not prepared for the rigor of the text, because they had little to no background knowledge on the subjects.
My recommendation is that districts purchase the curriculum for grades K-3 for a few years first, and then buy 4-5. This way, you can see the effect the Skills and Knowledge curriculum has on the students as they progress through the grade levels.
Some other points to mention:
The Teacher Guides are very specific on how to teach the lesson, if you’re ever unsure.
Amplify is a great curriculum, and there’s a lot of potential to add your own flares to make it even better! The longer you keep it, the more you can get out of it!
Thanks for Reading!
Does your district use Amplify CKLA? What are you having a hard time with? What successes have you seen?
Comment Below!!
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Happy Teaching!
