Educators Piloting Avenue PM Literacy Software

With about six million children in the US having hearing issues, the US Department of Education is investing almost US$ 900,000 into a software suite to track and monitor oral literacy progress in both mainstream and supported education programs.

Forty-nine US states with 500 teachers and 1000 students are piloting the Avenue PM product, named for its audio-visual elements and progress monitoring (PM) capabilities.

The software has four literacy assessments

1. KidSpeak, to measure oral reading fluency for all children.
2. Slash, for students to decide where word breaks occur in sentences.
3. Maze, where students complete sentence blanks with relevant words.
4. WordMark, a timed authentic task to measure student writing skills.

Data Visualisations For Student Progress

Teachers’ grading time is reduced by about 50% by using these computerised literacy assessments, with all student results visualised as data-sets to show progress milestones. Intervention can be targeted when relevant, with the software being redirected for use with students in the ESOL category and for adult English language learners worldwide.