Components of WordFlight
A literacy intervention program for grades 3+
WordFlight takes a new approach to helping students achieve reading fluency and build their confidence in reading. WordFlight bridges the gap between phonics and fluency using evidence from the Science of Reading and the Science of Learning.
How WordFlight is aligned to the Science of Reading
WordFlight assesses and develops key foundational reading skills that students must have to transition to fluency by the end of elementary school, as identified by the Science of Reading. These skills include decoding and automatic word recognition—a critical and often overlooked component of fluency.
How WordFlight uses the Science of Learning.
After a decade of development and research, WordFlight effectively combines structured, student-driven practice and teacher-led instruction to “make learning stick.”
Cognitive science shows that students, especially those who struggle to read, need many varied opportunities in structured practice to develop automatic word recognition skills.
WordFlight leverages technology to apply learning principles from cognitive science to provide systematic and structured practice, augmenting what educators can do during class time to maximize retention and retrieval. Students experience an engaging game-like environment that adapts the content and difficulty to their needs as well as providing immediate feedback and support.
Five Major Components
1
WordFlight Screener
2
WordFlight Diagnostic
3
Instructional Program
To check if students are on track, the system provides diagnostic and ongoing formative assessment.
4
Teacher Resources
5
Support
1. Screener
The quick online screener identifies students who likely have deficits in the critical foundational reading skills.
With the WordFlight Screener, educators can identify early which students are struggling with foundational reading skills.
The WordFlight Screener reliably predicts performance on standardized reading measures. It tells you if the student’s foundational literacy skills—decoding and automatic word recognition—are likely:
- Proficient
- At some risk
- At high risk
The typical student will complete it in about 10-15 minutes.
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The WordFlight Screener is available to schools at no charge.
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2. Diagnostic
The diagnostic assessment provides a unique learning profile that reveals new insights about students’ reading skills.
The patented WordFlight Diagnostic measures the skills necessary to become a fluent reader, identifying:
- Strengths and gaps in decoding skills with a depth of information not seen in other assessments and
- whether a student can automatically and flexibly use what they know across many contexts to automatically read words.
Students typically complete the WordFlight Diagnostic in three 20-minute sessions.
The WordFlight Diagnostic is the first and only validated measurement tool for automatic word recognition.
Teachers receive a detailed individual report for each student that identifies their strengths and deficits in specific foundational reading skills, aiding in the selection of targeted interventions for individuals or groups of students.
The WordFlight Diagnostic tells you:
- How many and which students are proficient or at risk in decoding and/or automaticity skills.
- What specific gaps exist in decoding knowledge.
- If a student can generalize decoding to novel words and to multisyllabic words.
- Whether the student has the foundational literacy skills to support automatic word recognition.
- If a student is prepared to read fluently.
- Student instructional priorities.
The WordFlight Diagnostic is administered three times per year as part of the WordFlight Instructional Program.
3. Instructional Program
The WordFlight Instructional Program moves students to proficiency in foundational reading skills in less than a year.
The WordFlight Instructional Program offers a personalized, online learning experience built on more than a decade of research and development.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why focus on automatic word recognition?
WordFlight is the only solution designed to build students’ automatic word recognition, a missing component in many reading curricula. WordFlight builds students’ foundational reading skills in a way that allows them to automatically transfer those skills to fluency.
How is instruction personalized for each student?
WordFlight is different from other personalized and adaptive solutions. Each student receives the structure they need to build their foundational literacy skills. To support the needs of diverse learners, we integrate decades of research from cognitive science about how students learn to become skilled readers.
Is WordFlight appropriate for diverse learners?
The tens of thousands of oral and print experiences delivered privately allow diverse learners—such as English language learners, those with dyslexia and other special populations—to repeatedly explore the language and the links between sound and print. This varied and systematic practice allows students to gain competence and confidence with the meaning and structure of English through diverse and increasingly difficult word experiences.
How much class time should be dedicated to WordFlight?
The blended learning environment moves students to proficiency with foundational reading skills in less than a school year with 20-minute daily online sessions, which can be blended into classroom routines.
How do I use WordFlight in my classroom?
- How and when they use it. For example, some schools dedicate 20 minutes of class time for every student to use it while others have instructional coaches use it during their intervention time.
- Whether they use teacher-facilitated instruction in addition to online learning
What teacher delivered materials are included?
In addition to the online components, WordFlight provides meaningful, teacher-facilitated instruction. It includes curriculum guides and daily lesson plans to extend and deepen student learning.
How is the WordFlight Instructional Program designed to build foundational reading skills?
WordFlight’s instructional design consists of a scope and sequence of 24 units organized into six objectives.
- Each objective has a pre-test, four instructional units, and a post-test.
- Each instructional unit includes 22 varied tasks that focus on sounds, onsets and rimes, syllables, phrases, and passages.
- The lesson content in each unit supports three levels of difficulty, enabling the program to adjust to each student’s instructional needs.
How does WordFlight engage students?
The online instructional program increases student engagement. Students earn points, get avatars, achieve goals, and win competitions without sacrificing learning. We developed each task based on the science of how students actually learn to read.
4. Teacher Resources
Our professional learning ensures teachers understand the purpose of WordFlight and are comfortable with the program and can implement it effectively.
WordFlight is easy to launch, requiring minimal training to start. However, we provide professional learning throughout the school year to:
- Discuss obstacles many students face in becoming proficient readers.
- Introduce principles and methods from the science of learning that overcome these obstacles.
- Enable teachers to fully implement the program.
- Support data-driven instructional decisions.
- Use WordFlight effectively.
Does WordFlight include formative assessment?
How can teachers monitor progress?
What type of reports are included in WordFlight?
5. Support
The WordFlight team is committed to you.
Our team is always here to support you and your implementation, from answering questions about the research or making sure your technology meets our minimum requirements.
We are committed to:
- Meaningful and effective professional learning experiences for teachers and staff.
- Continuous support to make sure that your implementation is successful for students and teachers.
WordFlight is an easy-to-use, personalized learning tool for both students and teachers. See for yourself.