A new reading curriculum already used in some other McLean County school districts is coming to Unit 5.
The Unit 5 School Board approved districtwide adoption of UFLI [University of Florida Literacy Institute] for K-2 classrooms during its February meeting, to begin in the 2026-27 school year. UFLI introduces well over 100 new sight words over the course of a school year between kindergarten and second grade. It provides a scripted curriculum with an evidence-based and research-based guide for how to most effectively teach reading to kids.
“A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, I don't want a scripted curriculum,’” said Elana Heinonen, a first grade teacher at Oakland Elementary School, a District 87 school in Bloomington.
District 87 has already adopted UFLI.
“When the script is really good and what you're teaching is really good and you can still add your own flavor to it, there's nothing wrong with a scripted curriculum,” Heinonen said.
Unit 5 implementation
UFLI will become a piece of the pie for the Unit 5 reading curriculum. It will serve as Unit 5’s phonics and word study program. However, between reading, writing and word study, Unit 5 classrooms have up to 180 minutes of class time per day allocated for ELA [English/language arts].
“We allocate a great deal of time to literacy in our district. It's something we're very proud of,” said Maureen Backe, director of elementary education for Unit 5. “We have a comprehensive model, meaning there is no one singular way to teach reading to a student, but there's definitely things that are important to include in your reading program.”
For readers’ workshop, Fountas and Pinnell material is set to remain. This consists of an initial lesson from the teacher, followed by independent work time, then capped off with students sharing what they learned and how they applied the initial lesson. Fountas and Pinnell-provided books would still be used for the independent work portion.
“We do use some Fountas and Pinnell materials of the interactive read aloud, their book clubs, mini lessons,” said Backe. “But our schools have book rooms with a variety of resources for that small group differentiation.”
Piloting UFLI
When the newest Illinois State Board of Education [ISBE] comprehensive literacy plan was made available in 2024, Unit 5 started to look at how their reading program matched up.
The literacy plan lays out guidelines for effective instruction. It includes seven components of literacy which are considered foundational elements to reading instruction. These include phonological awareness, word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, oracy and writing. The latter two are omitted from federal guidelines, focusing only on reading skills.
Backe said Unit 5 was lacking in the explicit phonics instruction category with the Fountas and Pinnell material. This prompted the search for new material, which resulted in a UFLI pilot.
It proved successful in many classrooms across Unit 5 over the past year and a half. By now, 107 elementary staff from each of the 16 elementary schools in the district have used UFLI in their classrooms already. All 54 staffers who responded to a feedback survey strongly supported districtwide adoption.
Teachers reported measurable growth in phonemic awareness, decoding, encoding and applications across reading and writing. Responses also mentioned a clear scope and sequence, teacher-friendly design and multi-sensory approach to instruction.
UFLI in the classroom
District 87 and Heyworth elementary schools both use UFLI for their respective phonics curriculums.
Heinonen said she often tells people that learning to read is one of the hardest things you can do. Many people do not realize this because they do not remember what it was like to not know how to read.
In general, kindergarteners begin to read by learning consonant sounds and short vowels. First grade is when students can put those sounds together into short words and understand more about what sounds certain letters make together. By second grade, students can build on and ‘firm up’ the lessons they ended first grade with, like how words end and other reading skills.
Any new concept takes two days to teach. On the first day a teacher introduces a new idea, and on the next day the lesson resumes. This gives students a chance to review and ask questions before moving to a new lesson.
District 87 began implementing UFLI materials in school curricula a year ago. It makes this year’s first graders the first to have started under the UFLI system of reading.
“Our hope is that within a couple of years, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade should see less holes in kids' phonics because we've explicitly taught all of the sounds in K through two,” said Heinonen.
Valerie Thompson said she and her students also love using UFLI in the classroom. Thompson has taught kindergarten at Heyworth Elementary School for the past three years, after serving as a special education teacher of kindergarten through third grade at Heyworth the prior 27 years.
Thompson used UFLI as part of the ‘boot camp’ elementary teachers have students undergo at the start of the year. Over the course of 26 days, kindergarteners learn a new letter each day.
“It's intensive. We do a lot of songs, and they bring show and tell items, and then the teachers, we draw them,” said Thompson. “And then we put the posters up all over the room, and that's there for kids to look and see what pictures make those sounds, and we practice learning how to write them the correct way.”
Boot camp ends with an ABC fashion show. Students dress up as certain words, like an astronaut or fairy princess, and the older students come to watch and show support. After boot camp, kindergarteners are able to get into their reading curriculum at 90 minutes per day. The students begin with letter sounds.
“We want it to be ingrained with them, explicit teaching and knowing, like, how those sounds, how the letters make the sounds," Thompson said. "And that's probably one of our biggest goals in kindergarten is that they have that solid.”
This can be done in ways that are still fun for students. Thompson said students respond well to hands-on lessons, like using erasers or Play-Doh to build words in word mapping lessons. Read-alouds also help kids grow their skills through fun stories with teachers asking comprehension questions as the stories are told.
State standards
The ISBE’s new comprehensive literacy plan differs from other states in the U.S. because, according to Heinonen, it is more versatile.
“There are lots of other states where they're like, ‘These are the curriculums you can use, everyone in the state needs to buy one of these,’” said Heinonen. “And what Illinois has done is recognize that different districts have different needs, and given districts autonomy to do what works well for them, but then provide a guideline site that says, ‘This is what is research-based. This is what is evidence-based.’”
The result has been a bigger focus on phonics, a welcome change to Heinonen.
“It was always what I did because I knew that I'd watched it work for kids. And so to be able to have it now as part of what we're doing,” said Heinonen. “And to be focusing on good comprehension skills and good writing skills, it's kind of a beautiful thing to see how it's coming together.”
Heggerty
In Heyworth, another classroom resource that provides chances to practice reading through phonics is called Heggerty. Heggerty provides a 10-minute daily exercise to hear, identify and work with individual sounds in words for kids from early preschool to upper elementary. It was founded more than two decades ago by Michael Heggerty, a first grade teacher who developed a new way to teach these skills to his students.
“It’s 10 minutes a day, and it really just builds that phonemic awareness and phonic skills,” said Thompson.
For example, if students are given the word, ‘dog’ to practice. Kids recite the word with emphasis on the letter ‘o,’ the vowel sound of the word. In another exercise they can recite two separate words, giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to answer whether the two words rhyme. They might also make chopping motions with their hands as they ‘chop’ up a word by its syllables.
“I build engagement by way of Heggerty the Hedgehog,” said Thompson. “So whoever’s really showing me and doing all the motions—because it's all building like phonemic awareness and syllables and vowels and rhyming, and that builds the first big chunk you need before you read—gets to have the hedgehog at their desk.”
Thompson said both Heggerty and UFLI are good programs for young students, but that Heggerty is especially helpful at the kindergarten level.
“Now that we're getting more into reading, those two together just make a perfect piece to the puzzle,” said Thompson.
Thompson includes 10 minute Heggerty videos in her daily lesson slideshow. While her classroom uses video lessons, physical materials can also be used in classrooms.
Tracking progress
Observation is a big part of how a teacher can determine a student’s reading ability. Grades do not come on an A-through-F scale early in elementary school. Because not all students enter the grade school level at the same reading or writing skill level, progress is seen as a better way to measure the value of a student’s work throughout a school year.
Heinonen said at District 87 schools, teachers check for progress in particular reading or writing skills. Rather than earning points on assignments, teachers can denote whether or not a student is meeting expectations on these skills. This is known as standard space grading.
“Our report card might say, ‘reads long vowel sound words with long vowel sounds,’ or, ‘decodes words with long vowel sounds,’” said Heinonen. “I'm looking for: Are they making progress in that area? I am not expecting them to have every long vowel sound word at this point, but are they growing? Are they starting to make sense of what we're teaching them?”
Teachers also might fill out checklists for each student on certain tasks. They may want to see how many words from a list a student can read correctly. They may check on if the student can write in a complete sentence. They may check on if they can write in a complete sentence or in short paragraphs that are made up of complete, on-topic sentences.
High-frequency words are seen as a good measuring stick in a classroom. At both Heyworth and Oakland Elementary, they are better known as ‘heart words’—the words a student needs to know by heart. Heinonen checks on whether these words—like ‘say’ or ‘the’—are understood by students and not tripping them up as they read.
