Program Description
Amira is a personal artificial intelligent tutor program. It provides every student with an always available, infinitely patient, and highly-trained personal reading tutor. Amira provides teachers with a tool that can be deployed in the classroom or as homework. Amira also generates reports that provide a granular, real-time view of student progress. Amira assesses and tutors students and recommends appropriately challenging stories, listens as a student reads aloud, and intervenes when helpful. Amira assesses oral reading fluency and analyzes errors to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. Every time a student and Amira read together, Amira generates diagnostic reports that teachers and parents can use to understand student progress.
Program Outcomes
The impact of Amira (formerly called The Reading Tutor) was examined in a student randomized study that took place in two suburban schools with a majority white population. The study focused on 178 students in grades 1-4 who needed support for reading difficulties. Students spent 20-25 minutes a day for seven months either engaged in the usual Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) activity (control group) or using Amira (experimental group) during the block time normally allotted for SSR. After seven months, students who used Amira performed significantly higher on the Total Reading Composite scores from the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test compared to the control group (ES = +0.64), qualifying Amira for an ESSA “Strong” rating.
Staffing Requirements
No special qualifications or certification are required to implement Amira.
Professional Development/Training
Teachers typically have 2 hours of in-person or remote training, which includes an overview of Amira Assessment and Amira Practice and details about logging in and access to the various reports. Then there is typically a follow-up 1 hour “data deep-dive” training after teachers and students have used Amira a few times to walk through reports and explore ways to use the data to guide instruction.
Technology
Amira is a web-based program that can be accessed on most web browsers (Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and Firefox). Amira also works on most devices, including Chromebooks, PCs, Macs, iPads, Surface Go, and other. Chromebooks and PCs must have 4 GB RAM minimum. Most standard internet plans provide adequate bandwidth for Amira. However, internet speed may be variable depending on at-school or at-home use with other devices. Students will be reading out loud to Amira. As an AI tutor, Amira requires a reasonably quiet space to hear students. In noisy classroom, the use of headphones with microphones is encouraged.
Amira has a library of resources available for families, teachers, or school/system leaders at https://www.amiralearning.com/support2