Hiawatha teacher says CKLA decodables speeding kindergarten reading skills

Becky Pianchi, a kindergarten teacher at Hiawatha Elementary School, told the Cedar Rapids Community School District that students using the Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum are learning letter sounds earlier and beginning to blend three- to five-sound words.

Pianchi said CKLA divides the day into a skills portion and a knowledge portion. “CKLA is our new curricular resource that we're using here in Cedar Rapids and for kindergarten, specifically, there are 2 parts to our day. 1 part is the skills part,” she said, adding the knowledge component gives students exposure to topics through fiction and nonfiction to build background knowledge and vocabulary.

Why it matters: Early letter-sound knowledge and blending skills are foundational for decoding and reading fluency. Pianchi said the curriculum’s decodable readers and controlled text reflect the sounds taught in class, and that the combination of skills practice and knowledge-building is helping students see themselves as readers.

Pianchi described classroom progress with specific examples from lessons, saying students who learned letters and sounds were already blending multi-sound words earlier in the year than she had observed in past years. “The students know their letter sounds way sooner in the school year than I have seen in the past couple years,” she said, and later, “we're halfway through. I'm I'm really excited about what things they're doing so far.”

She noted instructional routines that support both reading and writing, including partner reading, whole-group reading and independent reading, and said chaining (segmenting and blending sounds) is central to instruction. Pianchi also said the program’s decodable readers use controlled text that matches the sounds taught that day: “With CKLA, they have decodable readers that have controlled text. So it's the sounds that we've done so far.”

The remarks focused on classroom practice and student gains; the transcript did not specify class size, assessment scores, district adoption date, or funding for CKLA. No formal action or vote was recorded in the supplied transcript excerpt.

Pianchi concluded by linking early success to ongoing learning: she hopes students will maintain reading practice over the summer and return to first grade ready for new skills and content. “I just hope that in May they are able to see themselves as readers and that they have the confidence to try,” she said.