History of the AERO Reading Curriculum
The AERO Reading Curriculum is the product of more than 15 years of research and development by researchers and teachers from the Children’s Learning Institute.
Online Curriculum
The AERO Reading Curriculum is the product of more than 15 years of research and development by researchers and teachers from the Children’s Learning Institute. Created for online delivery on CLI Engage, the AERO Reading Curriculum is derived from the Reading RULES! curriculum, a comprehensive reading intervention program developed originally for delivery to students using print based materials. Our current education context often requires educators to use online instruction in some capacity. Therefore, during 2020-21, the AERO team at the Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) drew on its experience delivering remote tutoring to revise Reading RULES! for blended learning, renaming the new online version of the program, “Accelerated Early Reading Outcomes.” An online curriculum not only allows educators to pivot easily between in-person and remote instruction, but it also reduces the cost of instructional materials for schools, allowing more funds to be directed to staff who deliver this evidence-based instruction to students.
Dr. Carolyn Denton led the development of the Reading RULES! Curriculum. A former classroom teacher herself, Dr. Denton taught Grades 1, 3, and 4, and reading intervention. As the lead author of the curriculum, Dr. Denton worked with Rebecca Beegle and a talented team of other current and former teachers, with expertise in the area of reading instruction, and with deep teaching experience. Now retired, while developing the curriculum Dr. Denton served as a Professor of Pediatrics at CLI where she held the Meg and Dick Weekley Endowed Chair in Childhood Reading and Learning.
Accelerating Learning for Students
Both the original Reading RULES! and the new online AERO Reading Curriculum are grounded in 30 years of scientific research about effective instruction for students in the early grades who are experiencing difficulties learning to read. AERO provides struggling readers with supplemental instruction in phonemic awareness, letter-sound instruction, spelling, decoding, word recognition, text reading, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. This instruction is delivered in 20 minute sessions in small-group or one-on-one formats. The curriculum has been delivered by researchers, literacy specialists, and classroom teachers in a variety of formats – push-in or pull-out formats in schools, as well as through private tutoring. The chief aim of the curriculum is to accelerate learning for struggling readers to close gaps between these students and their peers.