Launch HN: Litnerd (YC S21) – Teaching kids to read with the help of live actors

Thank you - that is so spot on. While in the US, there are 37 million elementary school students, it is interesting to note that around 505 million people speak English as a second language outside USA! For example growing up in Pakistan (South Asia) for my middle school years, English was very much taught (and in demand) at our schools and a language parents actively invested in for their kids. There is so much room for impact outside of the US!

I do see us growing up into a Byju-style global company in the future. Or, at least, those are our aspirations and ambitions at Litnerd! But first... we are committed to improving learning outcomes locally for our kids who need it most.

Thanks for this detailed answer.

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?

TIL a new acronym word symbol lexeme: SEL: Social and Emotional Learning

> 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 one page" https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-26430146 :

> An IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) reference would be helpful, too. After taking linguistics in college, I found these Sozo videos of US english IPA consonants and vowels that simultaneously show {the ipa symbol, example words, someone visually and auditorily producing the phoneme from 2 angles, and the spectrogram of the waveform} but a few or a configurable number of [spaced] repetitions would be helpful: https://youtu.be/Sw36F_UcIn8

> IDK how cartoonish or 3d of an "articulatory phonetic" model would reach the widest audience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics

> IPA chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe...

> IPA chart with audio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vowel_chart_with_audio

> All of the IPA consonant chart played as a video: "International Phonetic Alphabet Consonant sounds (Pulmonic)- From Wikipedia.org" https://youtu.be/yFAITaBr6Tw

> I'll have to find the link of the site where they playback youtube videos with multiple languages' subtitles highlighted side-by-side along with the video.

>> [...] Found it: https://www.captionpop.com/

>> It looks like there are a few browser extensions for displaying multiple subtitles as well; e.g. "YouTube Dual Subtitles", "Two Captions for YouTube and Netflix"

Phonics programs really could reference IPA from the start: there are different sounds for the same letters; IPA is the most standard way to indicate how to pronounce words: it's in the old school dictionary, and now it's in the Google "define:" or just "define word" dictionary.

UN Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education: https://www.globalgoals.org/4-quality-education

> Target 4.6: Universal Literacy and Numeracy

> By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy.

https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4 :

> Indicator 4.6.1: Percentage of population in a given age group achieving at least a fixed level of proficiency in functional (a) literacy and (b) numeracy skills, by sex

... Goals, Targets, and Indicators.

Thanks for question. In all honesty, out of 14k nyc students not 1 complaint about the name so far :) Litnerd is kind of a known endearing name librarians and English/literacy majors use describe each other. And on the other hand, we play up the “lit” aspect for the older kids. Because dungeons and dragon themed choose your own adventure stories is exactly that: lit :) Either way, we just haven’t had students of schools hate the name as much as I think some on HN have (which is totally cool. Happy to hear different views).

I second that book. My father in law used it to teach my wife and her sister to read, and my eldest daughter. My youngest is not yet willing to follow the lessons though. We'll try again when she's 4.