TINYIVY, INC.

408 BROADWAY, FL 2
NEW YORK, NY 10013
(917) 994-0406

Pilot Data
Review
Fall 2020

EARLY LITERACY IMPROVEMENT FROM:

READING WITH TIPS™

12/15/2020 WWW.TINYIVY.COM
INTRODUCTION
THE METHOD
TEACHING KIDS TO READ WITH TIPS™
TinyIvy's Phonics System (TIPS)
enables virtually all children to
make massive progress by reducing
the complexity of early reading in
English.
2 TINYIVY | www.tinyivy.com | © 2020 - All Rights Reserved
Look at the passage below and think about how easy
it is for a child to struggle to read in English.
How do they learn to read GREAT vs EAT, or AMY vs
MY, FRIEND vs FRIED, or BEAR vs EAR or EARTH?
Why is it LIVES and not LIVES?
Reading in English is exceptionally hard, precisely
because our spelling system is complex. That's what
we fixed. We added TIPS.
TIPS reimagines how we present text to children,
adding training wheels to guide their pronunciation
of every letter in every word.
THE DATA

RESULTS
In Fall 2020, teachers brought TIPS to their classrooms in a mix of in-person
and remote instruction. Data from the pilot demonstrated substantial
improvement in every category of early reading, regardless of the children's
age, native language, and delivery type (remote vs. in person).

BACKGROUND PILOT SIZE

TIPS program materials were provided to all particpants, including TEACHERS 9
physical flash cards, a curriculum guide, lesson plans, and access to a IN PERSON 4
digital portal to support remote instruction. Teachers were provided 2 HYBRID 1
hours of professional development prior to their first lesson. Teachers REMOTE 4
participated in weekly group coaching sessions. Teachers taught STUDENTS 36

students 3-5 times per week for 15-30 minutes per session over six ESL 25

weeks, in a mix of small group and 1-1 instruction. All assessments were NON-ESL 11

performed without TIPS to guide the students. Assessment 1 is the

"pre" assessment (pink) in the graphs that follow. Assessment 2 is the
"post" assessment (gold).

LETTER-SOUND PERFORMANCE
Students achieved 370% faster progress than the norms data, dramatically improving letter sound
awareness. Students error rate for letter-sound matching was reduced by 56%. Over 50% of students
improved by one full quartile on this measure.

TINYIVY | www.tinyivy.com | © 2020 - All Rights Reserved 3

THE DATA

PHONEMIC AWARENESS & EARLY DECODING

Students were also assessed for phonemic awareness and early decoding skills using the DIBELS framework
(phonemic segmentation and non-word reading fluency sections). After six weeks, the student average
increased from the 23rd to the 55th percentile in phonemic awareness and from the 51st to 68th percentile
in non-word decoding skills3.

PHONEMIC SEGMENTATION WORD READING FLUENCY

DIBELS PSF - PERCENTILE RANK DIBELS WRF - PERCENTILE RANK

Numerous students were unable to PSF during the pre- Numerous students were unable to perform WRF
assessment, but achieved over 50th percentile rankings during the pre-assessment, but achieved over 50th
in the post-assessment. . percentile rankings in the post-assessment3.

4 TINYIVY | www.tinyivy.com | © 2020 - All Rights Reserved

 THE DATA

KEY DATA PERSPECTIVES

STUDENT PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENTS

VIRTUAL VS. IN-PERSON BY AGE

IMPACT ACROSS TEACHING DELIVERY METHOD IMPACT ACROSS AGE GROUPS

In a pandemic, delivery over Zoom and remote TIPS product suite focuses on early readers, ESL, and
learning platforms is critical. All groups saw gains in remedial reading. Across all age groups, substantial
performance relative to the benchmark. performance improvement were observed.

LETTER-SOUND ACCURACY LETTER SOUND PERCENTILES

ERROR RATES DRAMATICALLY REDUCED PERCENTILE RANKING CHANGES

Children's accuracy, and thus their confidence when

The number of students performing below the
reading, improved by over 50%, with the strongest
50th percentile was cut in half. Of the 12 students
gains coming from historically low performers.
performing under the 10th percentile, only 1 remained
at this level at the end of the six week intervention.

TINYIVY | www.tinyivy.com | © 2020 - All Rights Reserved 5

THE RESEARCH

RESEARCH STRUCTURE
SCOPE, SEQUENCE, DURATION, PARTICIPATION

The intent of this research was to develop an initial data set to measure the
performance of the Reading with TIPS™ program as well as to explore teacher
perceptions of how this system compares with more traditional methods.

01
Teachers were recruited to the pilot through a variety of means, including social
STUDY media outreach, networking events, and direct contact by our team. Teachers
POPULATION participated from the US, Phillipines, South Africa and Ukraine. Students were a
diverse mix, ranging in ages from 3 to 7 years old at the start of the program and
represented a spectrum of learners that included ESL and Special Needs students.

02
Students were taught over a six week window, using TinyIvy's levelled reading
SCOPE & curriculum. Teachers introduced a sequence of "TIPS" that indicate specific letter-
SEQUENCE sounds needed to decode English. The program included both traditional and
digital materials to support remote instruction, as well as levelled readers and
worksheets for practice. Teachers received 2 hours of training and optionally
participated in weekly group coaching sessions lasting 30 minutes.

03
Students were assessed using both the University of Maryland Letter-Sound
ASSESSMENT Test and the DIBELS framework. Assessments were performed using traditional
STRUCTURE materials, without any TIPS marks included. Data was only included if both pre and
post assessments occurred in the same medium (virtual or in person). Students
who failed to perform an assessment in the pre-test received estimated scores
based on a ratio of results from the completed assessments (N=4). For Word
Reading Fluency, note that a small value of correct responses can yield a high
percentile ranking.
04
The pilot research design was reviewed by Johns Hopkins' Center for Research
RESEARCH and Reform in Education (CRRE). Given the constraints of fidelity in a pandemic,
SUPPORT low sample sets, and diverse mix of students, additional research is required to
demonstrate repeatable results across larger sample sets of students. Data analysis
and summary were performed by the TinyIvy research team.

6 TINYIVY | www.tinyivy.com | © 2020 - All Rights Reserved

THE RESEARCH

FOUNDATIONS & BACKGROUND

UNDERLYING RESEARCH ON READING ACQUISTION

English orthography is so complex that it is viewed by cross-linguistic research as a true

SUMMARY OF outlier to other alphabetic languages (Share 2008, Aro 2005). This complexity plays a direct
PRIOR RESEARCH role in the reading development of English-text readers, including slower reading-accuracy
and phonemic awareness development (Galletly 2004). Cross-linguistic studies posit that
it takes between 2 to 5 times as long for students to master English-text reading-accuracy
as it does to achieve the same mastery in a "transparent" alphabet like Spanish or German
(Seymour, 2003). Even when controlled for factors of intelligence and socioeconomic status,
the English language’s orthography itself requires years of additional study to achieve
competency (Galletly and Knight, 2004). Other studies confirm these results, suggesting that
the rate of learning to read English is twice as slow as other languages (Ellis et al 2004).

English’s complex orthography reduces the ability of a young child to read independently
and self-teach through unguided practice (Cossu, 1999). This “self-teaching” principle is
the underlying mechanism through which children learn to read fluently (regardless of
orthography), and, in English, this principle is severely delayed (Share 1995, Share 2008).

The challenges imposed by English orthography fall disproportionately on the low-achieving

students (Spencer & Hanley, 2003) and undermine intervention, as these students fail to
respond as well to interventions as those students in more transparent orthographies
(Vellutino, 2000).

Because the inclusion of TIPS makes English orthographically transparent, we hypothesize

that faster, earlier, easier reading will result at similar rates of learning to those seen in
the shallow orthographies of Spanish or Finnish. The impact is anticipated to be manifold
across numerous aspects of literacy, including improved letter-sound awareness, phonemic
awareness, reading-accuracy, reading fluency and ultimately improving comprehension, self-
concept, and a literate lifestyle.

Aro, M. (2004). Learning to read: The effect of Seymour, Philip & Aro, Mikko & Erskine, Jane.
orthography. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European
CITATIONS orthographies

Cossu, Giuseppe. (1999). Biological constraints on

literacy acquisition. Reading and Writing. 11. 213-237.
Ehri, L.C. (1983). A critique of five studies related to
letter-name knowledge and learning to read.
Ellis, Et al. (2004). The effects of orthographic
depth on learning to read alphabetic, syllabic, and
logographic scripts. Reading Research Quarterly,
In L. Gentile, M. Kamil, & J. Blanchard (Eds.), Reading
research revisited (pp. 143-153). C.E. Merrill.
Share, David (1995). Phonological recoding and
self-teaching: sine qua non of reading acquisition.
Cognition. 1995; 55(2):151-226
Share, David. (2008) “On the Anglocentricities of
Current Reading Research and Practice: The Perils
of Overreliance on an ‘Outlier’ Orthography.”
Spencer, Llinos & Hanley, John. (2003). Effects
of orthographic transparency on reading and
phoneme awareness in children learning to read in
Wales.

Galletly, S. A., & Knight, B. A. (2004). The high cost Vellutino, F. R. (2000). Differentiating between
of orthographic disadvantage. Australian Journal of difficult-to-remediate and readily remediated poor
Learning Disabilities, 9(4), 4-11. readers. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 33(3), 223.

TINYIVY | www.tinyivy.com | © 2020 - All Rights Reserved 7

PROBLEM

ENGLISH IS
REMARKABLY
COMPLEX
The bubbles you see (above and right) show how English
writing and English spelling are related. Each white circle is
one letter. Each blue circle is one sound the letter makes. As
you can see, most letters can make lots of sounds.

Precisely because of thletters can make so many different

sounds, English is very, very difficult to decode. This complexity
is unique to English and the consequences are severe.

READING ACCURACY AFTER ONE YEAR, BY LANGUAGE

Seymour, Philip & Aro, Mikko & Erskine, Jane. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies Seymour, Philip & Aro,
Mikko & Erskine, Jane. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies

8 TINYIVY | www.tinyivy.com | © 2020 - All Rights Reserved

 ABOUT US

ABOUT US
TinyIvy develops solutions that help your students learn
to read. Our fundamental approach is based on the most
essential science of reading: a language written with
transparency is simply much easier to learn.

Zachary Silverzweig Briney Burley

Founder, CEO Co-Founder, Curriculum
Educator, writer and curriculum with 10+
Successful tech entrepreneur, growing
years of experience creating content for
last business to $100M+ valuation before
K-12 students.
leaving to found TinyIvy.

M. Ed. Columbia’s Teachers College

BS, MS (Technology Management)
BA, Georgetown University
Columbia University

KIDS CAN BECOME

EXCEPTIONAL DECODERS OUR ORIGIN
IN 12 WEEKS AND THEN
THEY TEACH THEMSELVES TIPS™ is based on an algorithm that
TO READ. optimized the letter-sound connections
of English and decoded the dictionary.

The teaching model is similar to those

used in Israel and the Middle East where
kids learn to read with phonetic supports
that are removed for advanced readers.

In a single year of Hebrew reading

instruction, word-reading accuracy
is greater than English word reading
accuracy after five years. This is true even
if the student is a native English speaker.

TINYIVY | www.tinyivy.com | © 2020 - All Rights Reserved 9

TINYIVY, INC.
408 BROADWAY, FL 2
NEW YORK, NY 10013
(917) 994-0406

Thank you
To learn more about our work, visit us at www.tinyivy.com
and schedule a meeting with our team.