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Teachers recommend Amplify CKLA on display for district review; board approves one-month public display
Summary
An elementary ELA SALT team recommended Amplify CKLA (third edition) after 12 weeks of field testing in 22 classrooms. Teachers reported stronger grade-level text access, daily writing, and engagement; the board voted to place the materials on public display for one month.
Teachers who field-tested Amplify CKLA told the board that the program aligns with the Illinois Comprehensive Literacy Plan and has produced early positive results in classrooms.
Colleen Gunderson, a third-grade teacher at Louise White, said the materials help students access grade-level complexity by giving them strategies to approach challenging texts. "One of the instructional shifts...is that we are now giving students strategies to access grade-level text," Gunderson said, citing a unit where students read a challenging Walt Whitman poem and used guided strategies to interpret figurative language (Colleen Gunderson).
Jake Wyeth, a fourth-grade teacher field-testing CKLA, described the SALT team's selection process as thorough: the group vetted more than a dozen resources, aligned options to IAR standards and the Illinois Comprehensive Literacy Plan, and selected CKLA for field testing. Teachers reported daily writing, more integrated topic-based units and strong student engagement.
The SALT team asked the board to place Amplify CKLA third edition on public display for a month under policy 6.210 (instructional materials). The board approved the motion; administration will return in December with cost estimates and a recommendation for adoption or further steps.
