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Middletown begins districtwide rollout of HMH 'Into Reading' for K–5
Summary
The board heard a multi-presenter update on the district’s K–5 adoption of the HMH "Into Reading" curriculum, describing pilot-year work, coaching supports, progress monitoring via Amira, and plans for parent/community events and interdistrict classroom visits.
Middletown School District officials presented the districtwide rollout of the HMH "Into Reading" curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grade, describing a staged implementation, coaching supports and early classroom evidence of student engagement.
Colleen Fitzpatrick and a team of pilot teachers and instructional coaches summarized last year’s vetting and piloting process and the formal rollout that began Sept. 9. Officials said the adoption was driven by a statewide mandate to ground reading instruction in the science of reading and by an internal vetting process that included gallery walks, pilot classrooms and teacher feedback. "Everyone felt like they had a voice," one pilot teacher said, noting that teachers were given 'must dos' and 'can do' guidance to make the platform less overwhelming.
The district described supports now in place: HMH coaches at the building level, interdistrict classroom visits, weekly and module assessments, and an online fluency tool called Amira that provides playback of student reading and data to inform instruction. Carrie Brewster, a multilingual-learning pilot teacher, noted the program's language scaffolds and said the consistent K–5 pacing helps multilingual learners follow classroom instruction across school transfers.
Administrators said the program includes structured literacy components and daily social-emotional learning. Pilot teachers reported anecdotal student gains — classrooms with increased engagement, project-based learning culminating in gallery walks, and early evidence of print-rich instruction and handwriting practice. District leaders said they plan a parent and community event to demonstrate the curriculum and will continue collecting data and aligning pacing guides with district assessments.
District officials flagged next steps: continued coaching, progress monitoring K–3 with Amira benchmarks, alignment of report cards to module assessments and additional professional learning. The presentation emphasized that the rollout is a first-year implementation with ongoing data collection and adjustments rather than a completed evaluation.
The board did not take a separate vote on the curriculum at this meeting; administrators characterized this session as an informational rollout and a status update on a pilot-to-implementation process that began last year.
