Case Study: When Small Changes Lead to Big Reading Gains: A Story from East 10th Street UMC Preschool

At East 10th Street UMC Preschool, four-year-olds are reading words. Not just recognizing letters — actually reading. And it happened in a single school year, with just ten minutes of targeted instruction a day.

The preschool's director didn't set out to overhaul her literacy approach. She started from a familiar place: there isn't room for one more thing.

"I often think I can't take on a new initiative because we're already doing so much," she said. "What I appreciate about Adira Reads is that it isn't a new program. It's small tweaks to what we're already doing — and those small changes result in huge gains."

That framing matters. School leaders are asked, constantly, to adopt new curricula, new platforms, new initiatives. Each one comes with a learning curve, a rollout plan, and the quiet question of who is going to monitor whether it actually works. For a small preschool, that question is often the deciding factor.

"Accountability is critical, because I can't monitor something new on top of everything else," the director explained. "With Adira Reads, the data and tracking are built in. I can see the progress and the areas of need without adding something to my plate."

Inside the classrooms, the experience has been even more striking. Teachers practice target letters for one minute at a time, multiple times across the day. The routine is short enough that it fits between transitions, snack, and play — but consistent enough that children build real proficiency week over week.

The results have shown up in the data: across all four pre-K classrooms, students made substantial gains in letter sound proficiency. The top-performing classroom moved from 9.4% to 88.4% — a jump of nearly eighty percentage points — with seven of ten students reaching mastery by May. Students also showed dramatic growth in letter form and letter name recognition, with some gains as high as 83.7 percentage points.

But the most meaningful evidence isn't on a chart. It's in the library corner.

"The kids find it fun and want to do it," one teacher shared. "They're spending more time in the library, finding words and sharing letters they recognize with me. They're actually reading words at the end of pre-K. I get so excited watching them grow. I feel very proud."

That pride is earned. Reading at the end of pre-K isn't typical — it's a head start that shapes how a child experiences Kindergarten, first grade, and the years beyond. Letter sound proficiency is the strongest early predictor of later reading success, and these children are walking into Kindergarten with a foundation many of their peers will spend the next year trying to build.

The lesson from East 10th Street UMC Preschool isn't that more is more. It's that the right ten minutes, repeated with consistency and supported by built-in data, can change what's possible for a child — without adding to what's already on a teacher's plate.