Reading in Motion

Challenge

Helping every student master early literacy skills

Founded in 1983, Chicago-based nonprofit Reading in Motion is on a mission to ensure that every student reaches or exceeds grade-level reading proficiency. Focusing on pre-K and kindergarten, Reading in Motion helps students at the start of their academic journeys build strong literacy foundations  that will empower them to thrive in the long term.

The organization works closely with the Chicago Public Schools District and the Steans Family Foundation, as well as other public and private pre-K centers in underserved neighborhoods of Chicago. Reading in Motion trains teachers in evidence-based reading improvement practices in English and Spanish, at no cost to the schools.

For years, Reading in Motion provided its curriculum to teachers using physical paper binders. . Reading in Motion chose D2L Brightspace as the learning management system (LMS) for its evolving curriculum. With limited resources, the Reading in Motion team started by simply transcribing its existing course content into Google Slides presentations.

Although this solution worked in the short term, Google Slides lacked visual appeal, which is particularly important to keep younger students engaged. At the same time, teachers found the large slide decks difficult to navigate.

“Our curriculum is designed to be customizable,” explains Brenda Robertson, director of education programs at Reading in Motion. “But there were around 300 slides for a teacher to scroll through to get to the part they want. If they wanted to use a song to teach phonetics, for example, they would have to click through the slides manually to show the lyrics in time with the music. It was very cumbersome.”

When Reading in Motion received a grant to help refine its curriculum, the team decided to redesign the learning experience with Brightspace, aiming to ease cognitive burden on teachers and improve student engagement.

Solution

Partnering to boost effectiveness

To modernize and create an intuitive system in Brightspace, Reading in Motion chose to work with D2L Learning Services. D2L Learning Services helped the Reading in Motion team convert the kindergarten and first grade programs into attractive, accessible HTML webpages. Moving away from Google Slides, the teams created a user-friendly interface with navigation tabs for different topics. They also embedded videos directly into the HTML pages, meaning that teachers no longer need to navigate to external sites or manually match lyrics to music.

At the same time, Reading in Motion updated the curriculum to align more closely with science of reading best practices, better supporting teachers and students.

“Our D2L team was fantastic throughout,” recalls Robertson. “Our Instructional Designer has gone above and beyond, even working with us to create images by using her son as a student modelling phonics directly for the course.” 

Maintaining momentum as a team

D2L also supported the transformation by providing project management throughout the process. Even when Reading in Motion faced challenges with its small team, Learning Services helped keep the momentum up.

“The Learning Services team was great about having the balance of empathy and patience while continuing to hold us accountable to ensure we can finish the project,” says Robertson. “I appreciated their ability to keep us on target. We were so overwhelmed, and if it wasn’t for their project management, we wouldn’t have gotten it done.”

New:
phonemic awareness activities

Result

Making early years education literacy-first

With its new kindergarten and first grade curriculum, Reading in Motion can help more students from underserved backgrounds unlock the literacy skills they need to succeed academically. The organization is getting feedback that the curriculum is now easier to navigate, and that teachers are using it more than they did when it was on Google Slides. This means that more students are getting the benefits of evidence-based learning. 

“The students are having so much fun, they don’t even realize they’re learning,” says Robertson. “They’re now actually asking to do the activities as soon as the teacher walks into a classroom. And while they might perceive it as just singing a song, what they’re really getting out of it is skills that will help them for the rest of their life.” 

Looking to the future, Reading in Motion hopes to receive funding that would support the transformation of its pre-K programs, too. At the same time, the organization aims to expand into more schools, helping more students overcome barriers to learning. 

“It’s hard to be a nonprofit,” concludes Robertson. “You have to make the most of your funding and your people. Working with D2L helped us make sure we are making an impact on students as best as we can.”