Launch HN: Litnerd (YC S21) – Teaching kids to read with the help of live actors
There are 37M elementary school students in America. Schools spend $20B on reading and supplemental education programs. Yet 42% of 4th grade students are reading at a 1st or 2nd grade proficiency level! The #1 reason students aren’t reading? They say it’s boring. We change that by bringing books to life. Think your favorite book turned into a tv-show style episode-by-episode reenactment, coupled with a complete curriculum and lesson plans.
1 in 8 Americans is functionally illiterate. Like any skill, reading is a habit. If you grew up in a household where you did not see your parents reading, you likely do not develop the habit. This correlates to the socio-economic divide. Two thirds of American students who lack reading skills by the end of fourth grade will rely on welfare as adults. To impact this, research suggests that we need to start at the earliest years.
I am passionate about the research in support of art and theatre as well as story-telling to improve childhood learning. Litnerd is the marriage of these interests. The inspiration comes from Sesame Street and Hamilton The Musical. In the late 60s, Joan Cooney decided to produce a children’s TV show that would influence children across America to learn to read—it became Sesame Street. Cooney researched her idea extensively, consulting with sociologists and scientists, and found that TV’s stickiness can be an important tool for education. Lin-Manuel Miranda took the story of Alexander Hamilton and brought it to life as a musical. Kids have learned more about Hamilton’s history thanks to Hamilton the Musical than any of their textbooks. In fact, this was the case so much that a program called EduHam is used to teach history in middle schools across the nation. When I heard that, the lightbulb went off and I decided to go all in on starting Litnerd.
We hire art and theatre professionals to recreate scenes directly from books in episode style format to bring the book to life, in a similar fashion to watching your favorite TV shows. We literally lead 'read out loud' in the classroom while the teacher/actor is acting out the main character in the book. We have a weekly designated Litnerd period in the schools/classes we serve and we live-stream in our teachers/actors for an interactive session (the students participate and read live with the actor as well as complete written lesson plans, phonetic exercises etc). We are currently serving 14,000 students in this manner.
The format of our program is such that if you don't complete the assigned reading and worksheets, you will feel like you are missing out on what is happening in later episodes. In this way, reading is layered in as a fundamental core to the program. Our program is part of scheduled classroom time.
A big part of our business involves curating content and materials that capture the interest and coolness-factor for elementary school students. We’ve found that students love choose-your-own-adventure style stories, especially ones involving mythical creatures—something about being able to have autonomy on the outcomes. So far, it seems to be working. We've even received fan mail from students! But we are obsessed with staying cool/relevant in our content.
Teachers like our product because it eases the burden placed on them. US teachers typically spend 4 to 10 hours a week (unpaid) planning their curriculum and $400-800 of their own money for classroom supplies. That's outrageous! When designing Litnerd, we wanted to ensure our product was not adding more work to their plate. Our programs are led by our own Resident Teaching Artists, who are live streamed into the classroom and remain in character to the episode as they teach the Litnerd curriculum built on top of the books. Our pro...
95 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadGood luck!
- a video component to a reading program is a distraction, not a value-add, until around grade 4. young kids are mesmerized (this should be in all caps) by video, and before around grade 4 video will create a contest for kids' attention that reading will lose. they won't think "I want to read more so I can follow these programs" they will instead think "I want to watch tv".
- to teach kids to read, and to encourage them to enjoy reading, you need to read with them. there is no substitute for this. talking to them about reading, watching videos about reading, etc. are time wasted that could be spent patiently reading, together.
But yes, the live stream - think of it as a video conference where the artist is in character and the students go through the lessons, answer questions based on the episode they watched earlier, read out loud, do the craft activity etc.
As for the ebook - no special effect (yet!) but working on that!
No close caption yet. We are 5 months old so definitely a lot of this will be what we look to add as our product offering grows. For now, we've been focussed on curriculum, episode content with actors, and scaling out our interactive teachers streamed into classrooms.
Of course. But can you mock a session? Can you get volunteer children to participate?
>As for the ebook - no special effect (yet!) but working on that! No close caption yet.
Both of these are fine of course. But again a product demonstration showing the student experience would answer what is or isn't in the product :)
And yet, I just watched the Loom and am not bullish on a model where kids have and are asked to read on devices and then are streamed supporting video content.
There may be a delta between effective and commercially viable, but sitting with a group of kids and reading to and with them, as a teaching method, is fundamentally not broken. It works really, really well!
Kids who don't get that experience struggle, and while I appreciate that you are trying something that may offer some kids who need it some additional reading experience, I don't see it as anything like Khan Academy for reading, which we all agree would be super.
This needs to be highlighted much more strongly, not be buried in the 2nd half of a paragraph in the middle of your pitch. It is the key that links what you are doing to the actual improvement of reading. I had to read through your writeup more than once to find it, which is a problem when trying to understand your plan.
Good luck!
[I have a more than passing interest in literacy and pedagogy - it'd be Real Nice to see what you're doing.]
If you are still having trouble, please let me know or feel free to drop me a line anisa@litnerd.com
All of this was so very striking to read. Causation =/= Correlation aside, I'm so glad some tech startups are taking on such foundational societal issues in a way that makes them a profit. I'm really hoping school boards play ball, and play ball fast.
I created programs for title 1 schools / kids in math and always wanted a cool way to inspire kids to be more curious and excited about reading.
Can’t wait to see Litnerd grow and reach more kids!
> Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is an education practice that integrates social emotional skills into school curriculum. SEL is otherwise referred to as "socio-emotional learning" or "social-emotional literacy." When in practice, social emotional learning has equal emphasis on social and emotional skills to other subjects such as math, science, and reading.[1] The five main components of social emotional learning are self-awareness, self management, social awareness, responsible decision making, and relationship skills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_and_Emotional_Learning
For good measure, Common Core English Language Arts standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_In...
Khan Academy has 2nd-9th Grade ELA exercises: English & Language Arts: https://www.khanacademy.org/ela
Unfortunately AFAIU there's not a good way to explore the Khan Academy Kids curriculum graph; which definitely does include reading: https://learn.khanacademy.org/khan-academy-kids/
> The app engages kids in core subjects like early literacy, reading, writing, language, and math, while encouraging creativity and building social-emotional skills
In terms of Phonemic awareness and Phonological awareness, is there a good a survey of US and World reading programs and their evidence-based basis, if any??
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_awareness :
> Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness in which listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest mental units of sound that help to differentiate units of meaning (morphemes). Separating the spoken word "cat" into three distinct phonemes, /k/, /æ/, and /t/, requires phonemic awareness. The National Reading Panel has found that phonemic awareness improves children's word reading and reading comprehension and helps children learn to spell.[1] Phonemic awareness is the basis for learning phonics.[2]
> Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are often confused since they are interdependent. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual phonemes. *Phonological awareness includes this ability, but it also includes the ability to hear and manipulate larger units of sound, such as onsets and rimes and syllables.*
What are some of the more evidence-based (?) (early literacy,) reading curricula? OTOH: LETRS, Heggerty, PAL: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aen.wikipedia.org+%22l...
Looks like Cambium acquired e.g. Kurzweil Education in 2005?
More context:
Reading readiness in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_readiness_in_the_Unite...
Emergent literacies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_literacies
An interactive IPA chart with videos and readings linked with RDF (e.g. ~WordNet RDF) would be great. From "Duolingo's language notes all on o...
You can add https://schema.org/about and https://schema.org/educationalAlignment Linked Data to your [#OER] curriculum resources to increase discoverability, reusability.
Arne-Thompson-Uther Index code URN URIs could be helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson%E2%80%9...
> The Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU Index) is a catalogue of folktale types used in folklore studies.
Are there competencies linked to maybe a nested outline that we typically traverse in depth-first order? https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt : Todo.txt format has +succinct @context labels. Some way to record and score our own paths objectively would be great.
Writing letters, too.
Looks like there are only 21 search results for: "LETRS" "Fundation" "Heggerty": https://www.google.com/search?q="LETRS"+"fundation"+"heggert...
What is the name for this category of curricula?
Perhaps the US Department of Education or similar could compare early reading programs in a wiki[pedia] page, according to criteria to include measures of evidence-basedness? Just like https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/ has "aggregate data for each institution [&] Includes information on institutional characteristics, enrollment, student aid, costs, and student outcomes."
From YouTube, it looks like there are cool hand motions for Heggerty.
2. Sign me up for the B2C offering for my 3 year old.
3. I’m a little confused on the delivery here. It seems that a teacher dedicates time during the day to have a live-streamed enactment of the story. Students then complete exercises relatively independently on their own devices?
* Please provide a copy of the physical book with the subscription (to rent for 3-ish weeks). Particularly for young students to recognize the joy of a physical book, to go through it on their own time in the classroom, and as a supplement to the digital formats/lessons.
* Make sure the craft activities are creative and not 'cookie-cutter'. Make sure the students have autonomy to go off the path. Be very intentional about how it relates to the story. Several teachers do craft projects for themselves where the art all comes out looking the same and has no outcomes associated with them.
With a baby on the way, we would love to have a B2C subscription to this sort of content.
"Imagine a child's reaction when they're reading a physical book, and then the character comes to life on screen. THAT's the hook"
I know she had two similar teaching experiences this year, one was reading a book about Ivan the Gorilla, then showing a documentary about the actual Gorilla. And again with Harry Potter. This format really excites kids :)
What I’d love to see is someone who figures out how to scale and make attractive the approach of a method like 100 Easy Lessons. This is the book I give or recommend any parent whose child is struggling with reading (whether at home or at school.)
I’m a parent, and married to a parent and opinionated educator, for the record.
I would love to make sure I understand your feedback and disappointment more clearly in hopes to learn from it, esp since you are an educator. While I reference Sesame Street - we are not Sesame Street (as I am sure you gathered from our description already). What parts of our program or model specifically are you depressed by? I would love to either address it or at least learn from your feedback. Cheers.
(Submitted title was "Launch HN: Litnerd (YC S21) – Sesame Street Inspired Reading Program for Schools")
I didn’t communicate well re: Sesame Street. I didn’t mean that your show is actually like Sesame Street, rather that the model is to use the entertainment value of the readers/actors/action to engage students until they start to read well due to other factors, rather than to directly teach those fundamentals and rely on the students’ delight in their fledgling skills to pull them further into good habits and teacher-guided reading.
If what I paraphrased above truly is your position, we will have to respectfully agree to disagree. Tons of research shows that the brain synapses grow stronger through active participation in the arts/story-telling/theatre. These essential activities at an early age can actually create new neural pathways and fortify those that are already present.
But again, I want to be careful to not miss your point because if you took the time to clarify, I want to make sure I beneifit from your feedback and sound like I'm ignoring it.
- I'm honestly baffled by spending so much time on one book (program?) in a classroom context. I imagine some kids won't be interested in the particular story, but it will go on for an entire month. I could see this damaging interest.
- The pace seems incredibly slow. To learn to read, you need to read a lot. But this is one book per month?
- The more stories a child is exposed to, the more chances there are to encounter something especially captivating for that child, and to spark an interest.
- It's hard to believe how much participation there will be without seeing an example class and interactions between the students & actor. The videos on the site make it seem like a completely passive experience.
- Craft activities seem like a distraction from reading unless the activities are grounded in literacy (e.g. letter/word games or creations). Even then I'm kind of skeptical.
- I predict you'll end up changing the name "litnerd". Being a nerd is cool on HN, but elsewhere?
All that said, I'm a fan of your mission and understand that learning to read in a classroom is going to look a lot different than learning 1:1. But I wonder if you could leave the group instruction to teachers and go direct to kids with a more Duolingo ABC-like experience, but include live instructors/actors. It'd be sort of like reading with a remote parent. Instructors could act out the story as you're doing with litnerd, but also unstick kids with reading help and mini-lessons. Basically, build a literacy-specific Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from A Diamond Age with gig economy ractors.
- I'm honestly baffled by spending so much time on one book (program?) in a classroom context. I imagine some kids won't be interested in the particular story, but it will go on for an entire month. I could see this damaging interest.
So the program time is actually 4 active periods on one book. For longer books (higher grades and more difficult Lexile scale will have some extra designated time to ensure students can finish the book but on average it is 4 periods. This includes the watching of episodes, reading out loud, lesson plans that have to be covered as part of ELA (English Language Arts) instruction anyway. High engagement level has been core to our early success but interestingly, one of the main points for improvement from teachers is that our program can feel rushed (ie desire for more designated time). We're still working through the kinks :)
- The pace seems incredibly slow. To learn to read, you need to read a lot. But this is one book per month?
Yup. We only target 9 books ie 1 book per month. Of course, we hope that students would read far more but going from no reading to some reading and carving out "reading time" to develop the habit of reading is where we come into play. Of course schools can and should continue to foster take-home reading and after school or within school time reading outside of this.
- The more stories a child is exposed to, the more chances there are to encounter something especially captivating for that child, and to spark an interest.
I agree with this.
- It's hard to believe how much participation there will be without seeing an example class and interactions between the students & actor. The videos on the site make it seem like a completely passive experience.
Legally, we cannot share that footage at all. So I'll just have to accept your disbelief here even though I wish badly I could show you otherwise :)
- Craft activities seem like a distraction from reading unless the activities are grounded in literacy (e.g. letter/word games or creations). Even then I'm kind of skeptical.
Respectfully, I don't exactly agree with that. Esp for younger ages, craft activity is a form of sensory learning. We use craft activities built to help showcase comprehension of the unit as opposed to just phonetics (though there is that aspect too). I think just evaluating our students comprehension in one medium form is limited (again, esp for younger ages).
- I predict you'll end up changing the name "litnerd". Being a nerd is cool on HN, but elsewhere?
Come on! The cat and everything? (Lit)nerds rule! ;)
I'm going to push on your deflection to legal obstacles to sharing footage though. Get parent permission and make a better example video! :)
At Litnerd, today we measure learning outcomes in a few ways:
1) Increasing reading time amongst students. We measure time spent reading per student and have seen 63% increase here so far. Albeit our measuring methods still need improvement. I want to just ensure I communicate that a big value prop for teachers is that our program encourages structured reading habits. This is why time spent reading matters.
2) Increasing comprehension. Here we measure outcomes based on quizzes and lesson plans that are part of our course. I don't like this as the primary means but schools do measure learning outcomes based on testing per so and we adopt this method for now though intend on adding more ways to creatively measure this.
3) Engagement in the classroom! All of our live stream sessions are recorded and we actively measure how engaged students are in the class, if they are raising their hand to participate, are they having fun with the actors or is it boring etc.
Ultimately we need more than 4-5 months to be able to credibly report back on Lexile level improvement amongst students. But in the next 12 months we should have enough data to confidently report back on this metric directly!
I'm curious how y'all plan to address one of the markets that need this the most -- public schools in the American South? Those schools are notoriously underfunded, so how do y'all plan to overcome budget issues? Sounds like you know what you're doing with the "budget line item process", so I'm curious to hear what you might have in mind.
With that said, most of my knowledge is about Mississippi. We have tons of problems with our public education system. Budget constraints are always a big issue for teachers, and one that might make it difficult to adopt a new program. At a very high level: https://mississippitoday.org/2018/04/16/analysis-shows-state...
If you're trying to make an impact in Mississippi, the Barksdale Reading Institute works in this space: https://msreads.org/.
In the past, I’ve worked for the Meridian Freedom Project: http://themeridianfreedomproject.org/ and Leap Frog: https://theleapfrogprogram.org/. Currently live in Birmingham, AL and each semester I volunteer for a creative writing program called DISCO: http://www.discobham.com/.
From birth: We read to our son often.
August 2020: I saw a recommendation on HN for the book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons".
Aug-Dec 2020: I spent 25-30 hours following that playbook. (15-20 mins per day, 5 days per week, 20 weeks.)
August 2021: Our son (now almost 5yo) reads beyond the level that will be expected of him when he finishes Kindergarten (2 years from now). Most important for me: he's improving (both decoding and comprehension) without our help. He just picks things he wants to read (from his bookshelf, from the library, or from the thrift store), and gets started. He'll re-read books he likes, and abandon others.
Anyone who can read at high school level can follow the instructions in the book I used. Assuming you can find people like that for minimum wage(?), it should be possible to teach N children to read for $500 * N. ($15/hr x 30 hrs = $450, plus some money for materials.)
To put that $500 into context: it's approximately the same as SFUSD spends per student per week.
If you can really teach every child to read, for $8 per student ($110k/14k = $8), that would be a game-changer.
I'm lucky that I don't have to work two jobs, am a native English speaker etc., and this definitely isn't easy for many parents in tough circumstances.
What I don't understand: how is it that school districts spend so much money, yet can't teach kindergarteners to read?
If I wanted to run a kindergarten class of 30 kids, where the kids were looked after all day, and taught to read by the end of the year (36 weeks), then I'd need:
1) A space to teach them, with furniture ($2k/week?, i.e. $72k total).
2) Three adults ($75k/year each?, so $225k total).
3) Some books ($3k?).
That would cost $300k, or $10k per student per year. This is less than many school districts spend per child.
With that setup, at any time, you could have:
1 adult conducting a 1:1 reading lesson
2 adults keeping the other 29 kids occupied
Each kid would get 4 x 15 min reading lessons per week. So, even if they were to be absent for 30% of the school year, they would still have plenty of time for 100 lessons.
What am I missing? Is there other important stuff they do in kindergarten, that could not be covered well if you were to set things up this way?
I like how you approach this though!
We’re no native English speakers but my son went to an English speaking kindergarten. All seemed so natural and easy to me that I could not understand the fuss about teaching reading in America. I mean one could not get cheaper than that and giving tablets to millions children and problem solved!
I definitely love the idea of gamification, the only thing I would add as feedback we have noted from parents is that Epic and AR would push kids to read 'fast' books within the Lexile range they had to stay in, rather than books that might be more interesting to them. The tests also weren't the greatest to measure comprehension because of their format. Having said that, I definitely love the idea of gamification inspired vey AR and we intend on having some of that in our program too!
I'm still grinning that you know and used AR! So cool.