I wanted a tool to help me think about my students with their assets at the center. What unique gifts do they bring to the classroom? How can these gifts help them in whatever challenges come along?
So I built a simple app using V0.
I also added an element at the end to help me write about the student, as done for report cards or IEPs.
You can try it with any person you want to know better: https://v0-sas-tv-l88suhizsqs.vercel.app/
I also started making a tool to help foster interesting, active daily discussions that deepen relationships and promote rigorous thinking and speaking practice. Then I stumbled on an app doing something similar called Along, so I'm no longer working on it. They have a good thing going there.
March 22, 2025 to Present
I've started vibe-coding! I downloaded V0 and started typing and now I have a couple apps.
My first app was a Clifton Strengths inspired questionaire to help teachers think deeply about an individual child's unique assets and then write about those.
Then I made an app to guide whole-class discussion, with the goal of deepening connections within the class community, and fostering interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and literacy skills.
The most recent project is an app that can scan nearly any page of text and then displays that text in an interface for the teacher to conduct a running record (informal assessment of reading rate and accuracy).
Update (May 5, 2025): I'm currently adding the informal reading fluency assessment to the app store for iOS mobile devices. See if you can find it there!
App Name: Reader Meter
September 25, 2024 to Present
Story Telling
What if I combed through the mountains of available school data to identify the rare schools that have achieved substantial gains in literacy and closed gaps between student groups in recent years?
Then I call them up or mail them a letter to find out: What's going on? What advice do you have for schools that are trying to do the same thing? Share their stories. Look for trends.
This project is currently under construction at www.outlierschools.com
February 2, 2025
A couple months ago my husband took the Clifton Strengths Survey at this workplace. He found it interesting and inexpensive enough that he encouraged me to take it as well.
I lean skeptical always, so I approached this with my usual dose of doubts. Would this knowledge substantively change anything for how I see how my husband or myself or how we work and live? Is this a hand-wavy sort of pseudo-science, akin to the magazine surveys promising to reveal your "true season?" I'm also a scientist at heart, so I am more than to make myself an experiment.
Now, a few months later, I can only remember two of my top five strengths (they'll charge a prettier penny to see the full breakdown of the 30+ strengths they are measuring). One was HARMONY. This was memorable because it is something that rang true but I would never use quite that word. I'd more often self-identify as "conflict avoidant," which of course isn't a strength at all.
The other strength I can recall was "intellection." I remember this one because it sparked a "I'm becoming my mother" moment. Hold on. Let me look up the report so I can quote directly: "You are characterized by your intellectual activity. You are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions."
Whether that is true or not, it's a nice sentiment. And that is half the magic of the Clifton survey. It gets you thinking about yourself in a kind light. My spine straightens and my shoulder relax when I hear think that perhaps I am introspective and maybe I do enjoy intellectual discussions."
I recently read in David Brooks' "How to Know a Person," that "People often haven't had anyone tell them about themselves." (p. 83) It is a strange and interesting phenomenon that I think has potential for powerful motivational impact among teachers and students.
August 5, 2024
Same goal but new MVP (minimum viable product):
By George, I think I know what I want to build.
Picture this: A cohort of dedicated teachers and admin across the country take charge of researching the efficacy of their school's curriculum. The results are shared (with great pains taken to protect identifiable student information).
How:
Low lift for teachers: Teachers answer a couple questions about their school. Teachers qualify to participate by 1) intending to use one of the 4 promising programs and 2) agreeing to collect DIBELS data. They will track data inside the app for just 4 students that are receiving the program's instruction. (Security note: student names or ages are never used. Only their grade-level and initials. Initials are never published with graphs.)
Simple visualizations: At each assessment (3 times or 5 times a year) the results are graphed.
Sharing for the Greater Good: Data is shared anonymously. Teacher and student information is always protected. School names are omitted and instead we share a short description of the school (urban/rural, % free and reduced lunch, etc.) Teachers share a sentence regarding the usability of the program and how strongly they recommend it to fellow teachers. Decision makers can get a glimpse into the progress students are making in various settings, with various programs. Developers get critical feedback about usability and pain points in their program.
Growing: Teacher who want to collect more data can do that. Schools that want to adopt a research approach to professional development or to the piloting of new programs can use this model.
May 7, 2024 to Present
Goal: Identify high impact (quick, effective, lasting) reading interventions; enable teachers to test those interventions in their classroom and share their results with admin and fellow teachers; expand implementation of those interventions that work best.
First stage: Form a Community of Practice: This group of experts across disciplines investigates promising literacy interventions and puts forth recommendations for ones that are likely to achieve significant results and deserve further research.
Second stage: Teacher Leader Fellowship: Selected teachers (always in pairs) from schools nationwide enroll in a prestigious experience of decision-making, planning, implementing, assessing, and sharing outcomes. Enrolling teachers in pairs reduces the isolation often felt by teachers, encourages a team mentality in school cultures, and improves accountability. Each teacher will identify four students from their classroom with a demonstrated need for targeted reading intervention, based on results from a universal screener. They will select an intervention from the list provided by the community of practice. They will complete all the necessary training to implement the intervention and then will provide the intervention for 9-12 weeks, collecting formative data along the way and a post-test at the end. By implementing interventions, collecting data, and presenting findings to their school community, the participating teachers will not only impact the students in their classrooms but also elevate the knowledge base and practices within their school community.
Third stage: In the tradition of community health workers in public health initiatives, enlist influential community members to learn effective reading instruction methods. Support them in getting the necessary training and practice and then connect them with opportunities to use their knowledge and skill in service of the desired educational outcome: increased knowledge and adoption of excellent reading instruction. This could include advocacy, tutoring, and parent-to-parent education.
May 23, 2024
Risky assumptions in this idea:
We believe there are at least two teachers in most school buildings who are innovative and ambitious or in a state of hair-on-fire desperation.
We believe the government will pay for professional development that centers on field research projects led by teachers.
We believe school leaders are more influenced by data from inside their building than other “more robust” reports and data.
We believe teachers need excellent tools in order to monitor the effectiveness of interventions.
We believe teachers need autonomy to try new things and will be customers at a low cost, if their school is not willing to pay.
We believe our very first customers will be schools Savannah worked at.
We believe we can charge schools and teachers enough to cover our costs.
We believe we can develop strategic partnerships to prove this idea before going to market.
August 5, 2024
Things I've changed my mind on:
Sound it out: When I was a resident my mentor teacher told me in no uncertain terms that we didn't use the language of "sound it out." We sent home letters to families asking them to avoid this prompt as well. Parents were often confused, "isn't that how we learned to read?" Hopefully they ignored our well-intended but misinformed advice. The advice came from the training and curriculum my mentor received. A good time to remind us, that we all can only work with what we currently know. My mentor was an incredible advocate for lifelong learning and I hope I can connect with her someday to hear what she's thinking and doing now that science of reading is more prominent in the K-12 sphere.
Guessing at words: A curriculum failed us. We trusted without verifying. Don't be surprised when teachers and administrators scrutinize every new program coming down the pipeline. They will, if they can find the time. I'm trying to help on this front: see Literacy Reviews. Turns out guessing was never what excellent readers did, though it might have looked like it. Proficient readers know a great deal about the code of their language and they've practiced it to a point of automaticity. They use something called "set for variability", which means they can flexibly take out and insert sounds that could be represented by that spelling in order to get to a real word. Is that guessing? I guess not.
importance of letter names: I used to think letter names were about as important as letter sounds. Now I believe that the sounds of our language and the letters we use to represent them are FAR more essential than the names of those letters. In fact, letter names may cause some interference. (e.g., McCutchen et al. 2009). Takeaway: Let's not go overboard, but generally speaking use the sounds as much as possible and save letter names for handwriting/letter formation practice.
Handwriting: When I was in my teacher training I don't remember any instruction on proper letter formation or how to teach it. Maybe because it would seem offensive to teach adults about letter formation? Then in my residency year I only rarely ever saw my mentor correct spelling, and I don't recall it ever being taught explicitly to our whole class of first graders. Again, maybe because it was assumed they learned this in Kindergarten. As a teacher in my own classroom, I poo-pooed the idea of teaching something that was "low-level." After all, I was there to expand their critical thinking. Straight to the top of Bloom's, baby! Since starting my EBLI training and reading this article, I'm fairly convinced that there is wisdom in teaching letter formation to automaticity so that cognitive energy can be rerouted to that higher level stuff.
Value of independent reading for early readers: Researcher Tim Shanahan writes extensively (here and here) about this on his blog and it got me thinking about how detrimental it is to practice the wrong way of doing something.
"Developmental" or "invented" spellings: On a related note, I used to believe that my first graders could spell words any which way, as long as I could figure out what they were going for. They were just figuring our alphabetic writing system out and I was confident they would eventually internalize the correct spellings with more exposure to texts and more practice with writing. What actually happens? Kids practice the wrong way of spelling for so long without corrections that they have an excruciating time learning the correct spellings. And spelling matters as it's perhaps the best exercise we have to map letters and sounds in our mind which we call upon again every time we need to read. (precise source needed but basically this comes from Nora Chabazi and Diane McGuinness.)
Importance of grade-level texts: I'm transitioning from a mindset of "leveled" books where you read at a level that is only occasionally challenging for you, which means a lot of variety in what kids around the classroom might be reading. I am beginning to see the wisdom in utilizing grade-level texts with varying degrees of supports and extensions to properly challenge all students. Kids will never read on grade-level if they are never given a chance to grapple with grade-level work. (source needed)
Using letters during phonemic awareness work: Back to my teacher training year, my esteemed mentor who I am grateful for every day of my teaching life taught me what she beleived to be best practice: Avoid using any letters as visuals during phonemic awareness (PA) exercises. Instead they should be done completely auditorially. My Orton-Gillingham instructor supported this practice as well, teaching me and the fellow teachers in my cohort that "phonemic awareness exercises can be done in the dark." While this is a technically true phrases, it does not follow that PA should be taught "in the dark." In fact, evidence strongly supports using letters as visuals when teaching PA. Citation: Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley, 1995 or the more accessible Timothy Shanahan
Things I'm still unclear on: (please email me if you're an expert on any of these and can cite sources to help improve my thinking: savannahjacksonngo@gmail.com)
importance of onset-rime: RAVE-O is a program that teaches teachers and students that reading can be more fluent and more efficient, if you look at the rime (the ending of the word, like -an in fan or -ish in dish) and tack on the beginning to make that word. However researcher Diane McGuinness and programs that followed (EBLI and Reading Simplified, to name a couple) believe this approach can be problematic, as it disrupts the left-to-right directionality of reading English, and probably other reasons, (I'm still enjoying Diane's book. More learning and questions to come!)
How a multilingual learner's process to learn to read looks the same and different from a native English speaker. Would love to become on expert in this. The next frontier!
Importance of teaching syllable types: My Orton-Gillingham training and the KPEERI exam would say absolutely valuable. My training with EBLI, my own experience learning to read, and from what I've gathered from Mark Seidenberg and Devin Kearns suggest it is not necessary and can waste precious time that should be focused instead on flexibly breaking apart words in order to decode them, rather than trying to remember several unreliable rules.
Importance of learning letter names: Diana McGuinness is adamant that letter names should be avoided as they cause interference for some students learning to read. The evidence to support letter names mostly comes from rapid naming assessments which happen to use letter names, but my current understanding is that those RAN assessments could just as easily use colors and familiar objects and get the same reliability for predicting reading difficulties. Tim Shanahan weighs in.
July 31, 2024
Today I applied to be a volunteer at KIPPSoCal. I love my former colleagues and the families there. They don't seem to have a volunteer form so I used a job application form. I was asked about my goals in the next 3-5 years. Copy and pasting here for accountability purposes. So let it be written...
My goal in the next year is to help in-service teachers at even just 1 school learn the best information we currently have about teaching kids to read and write.
Within 3 years I want to be working with multiple schools to see the same improvements that my first school experiences. By year five I expect teachers across the KIPP SoCal region to be seeing the immense impact these instructional methods can have in a comparatively short time. Teacher retention will be high because successful teachers are happy teachers. KIPP SoCal is nationally recognized as leading the way in terms of literacy achievement, a model of excellence that schools across the country are learning from and emulating.
July 13, 2024 to Present
Problem: It is difficult for schools to implement new things with fidelity on a limited budget. It is very difficult for the folks doing research to get connected with schools that are eager or even willing to conduct research.
Opportunity: Administrators, teachers, and researchers are all motivated to see implementations be successful. Capitalize on this shared goal for the benefit of students!
Goal: Connect schools and their goals, with researchers who have aligned interests. A marketplace for schools and researchers to find each other and be in service to each other.
First stage: Ask schools about their priorities for the coming year. What are they most eager to accomplish? Place these in a searchable database.
Second stage: Collect research topics and projects in a searchable database.
Finally: Support in matching schools and researchers.
March 27, 2024 to Present
Goal: Reduce the overwhelm and confusion and increase the speed at which promising interventions can be adopted.
How can we move from a formidable mountain of information (of varying quality) about curriculum and instruction to a more manageable source of just the crème de la crème? To use another analogy, how can we go from a proverbial gigantic thrift store of information to a small, heavily curated boutique vintage shop? And who should do the curating?
This idea evolved into Crisp Apples which is the "Rotten Tomatoes" of curriculum and teacher trainings.
May 30, 2023 to Present
Goal: Allow any teacher to increase their positive impact on students, through succinct, research-aligned information and well-timed nudges.
Why? Teacher professional development doesn't work which has detrimental impacts for kids. (source: The Mirage by TNTP)
My husband and I spent evening and weekends developing an application that allows any teacher to perform the high leverage tasks that were are so time-intensive that only almost no teacher finds the time to do them all. From getting to know students, to excellent communications with families and school staff, to flexible groupings of students for targeted instruction, the app would allow teachers to do well, from year one. Informed by research about learning and the brain, the app guides teachers to spend time on the domains that profoundly impact student outcomes: teacher and student beliefs and attitudes, student goal setting, regular feedback, and proven reading methods. By analyzing relevant data and grouping students (a notoriously difficult and time consuming task for teachers), the application enables teachers to meet the needs of their many students who naturally will learn at different rates.
Iteration: Develop a culture of "we are all learners" and allow both teachers and learners to see their path of learning.
Teachers might work through short modules on creating classroom culture or supporting multilingual learners and be able to track their progress through reflections and accountability steps. Teachers will also be able to see pathways of student progress toward reading and other goals and be prompted to share that visual with the students and families at regular intervals.
https://www.outlierschools.com
What if we knew the stories of the most effective schools in the United States? Data tells us just a fraction of what we really need to know. There is a wealth of knowledge and experience inside those schools that could potentially serve many more students.
Effective at what, you ask? For now, I want to talk about reducing inequities. Where can poor families send their kids to get an excellent education?
https://www.cohorteducation.com/
In the evenings and on the weekends you can find my husband and I sitting side by side on our IKEA couch, working on this app.
The goal is to build something that makes life better for reading teachers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrispApples/
Think of this as the "Rotten Tomatoes" of curriculum and trainings. The vision is to provide a place where researchers (the film critics) and practitioners (the audience) could rate the curriculum and trainings, so that the cream rises to the top. This is my fast version of this idea. Thanks to Reddit for having a built in upvote/downvote system.