After several educators switched to the IMSE approach in 2023, astounding student outcomes have the whole school buzzing.
In 2023, inspired by the dramatic improvements one of their colleagues saw with students’ reading after adopting structured literacy, teachers throughout the school began taking IMSE’s Orton-Gillingham and Morphology courses from the Institute for Multi-Sensory Instruction (IMSE). In just a few months, the impact of this initiative on students’ reading has been nothing short of spectacular. In five short months, second-grade students were reading an average of 43 more words per minute than before implementing IMSE, and in other grades, students doubled the number of words read per minute!
How It Happened
Kate Berry, a second-grade teacher and literacy coordinator at MPH, discovered IMSE after a long and difficult struggle. She had tried many approaches to reading throughout her 20-year career, but she was discouraged by the small, inconsistent improvements she saw in many students’ spelling and fluency, and she always felt uncertain about what she was teaching. When she stumbled on IMSE’s Orton-Gillingham training in the Spring of 2023, she went to MPH Head of School Amy Abdo, who told her to take the training, try it in the classroom, and report back.
Kate observed immediate improvements after she switched to the IMSE approach, and soon, she began recruiting her colleagues to try it. The program had what she had wished for her whole career — it was clear, easy to implement, and could produce strong outcomes for even the least proficient readers. That summer, seven other MPH teachers took an IMSE training. In their first semester equipped with the science of reading, these educators saw massive jumps in students’ reading ability, confidence, and engagement and decreases in disruptive behaviors likely rooted in discomfort with the lack of structure in other literacy approaches.
The numbers coming out of MPH are striking:
2nd grade
- A student who was reading 40 words per minute, is now reading 89 words per minute.
- A student who was reading 18 words per minute, is now reading 60 words per minute.
- A student who was reading 33 words per minute, is now reading 71 words per minute.
4th grade
- A student who was reading 73 words per minute, is now reading 144 words per minute.
- A student who was reading 59 words per minute, is now reading 110 words per minute.
5th grade
- A student who was reading 70 words per minute, is now reading 113 words per minute.
- A student who was reading 83 words per minute, is now reading 131 words per minute.
Manlius Pebble Hill School is another example of how giving educators the tools and knowledge to teach structured literacy can end decades of literacy frustration and unlock massive student potential. With the science of reading on their side, the students and teachers of MPH are making their school the center of a huge transformation.
To learn more about IMSE’s structured literacy programs, visit our district training page.
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