Program Description
Lenses on Literature (formerly Literacy Design Collaborative) is a comprehensive instructional framework that engages all students in daily, standards-driven reading, writing, and discourse. Grounded in disciplinary literacy, curriculum units and modules are organized around a Driving Task Prompt and are purposefully designed to build knowledge, support text-based analysis, and strengthen students’ ability to communicate ideas across genres and formats. Students explore complex, diverse texts through a sequenced instructional journey that includes comprehension, knowledge building, genre study, synthesis, and writing.
Lenses provides both print and digital experiences, robust scaffolds for multilingual learners, and embedded formative assessments using standards-aligned rubrics from the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity. The program provides teachers with high-quality instructional materials, professional learning and planning tools, and an implementation plan rooted in student work analysis and continuous improvement to support teachers and schools in delivering high-quality, responsive instruction every day.
Program Outcomes
A quasi-experimental study examined the impact of Lenses (referred to in the report as Literacy Design Collaborative) on eighth-grade students’ reading achievement in Kentucky and Pennsylvania during the 2012–2013 school year. The sample included over 2,500 Lenses students in Kentucky, drawn from five districts that were early adopters of the program. Most teachers implemented at least two Lenses modules in history/social studies or science. The analysis found a statistically significant positive effect on state reading assessment scores for Kentucky students (effect size = +0.06), earning Lenses a Promising rating. In Pennsylvania, exploratory analyses showed a small, non-significant effect on reading (effect size = +0.03).
Additional results from a large-scale quasi-experimental study found statistically significant positive impacts for middle school students in schools where teachers had two years of Lenses experience. The largest improvements occurred among students who spent more than half of their class time in Lenses-supported instruction. Due to attrition that left a self-selected group of teachers, these results are considered suggestive and did not meet the inclusion criteria for a rating.
Staffing Requirements
Classroom teachers and instructional leaders.
Professional Development/Training
Lenses on Literature provides curriculum-embedded tools for implementation and professional learning, enabling teachers and administrators to enact continuous improvement cycles centered on learning from student work. Additional supports include workshops, teacher planning coaching and classroom coaching, instructional leadership walkthroughs, and data analysis.
Technology
Lenses is a hybrid program with print and digital components. The digital platform ensures that teachers can deliver layers of scaffolding and differentiation to meet varied learning needs, conduct ongoing formative assessment, and use standards-aligned rubrics to score periodic and summative performance tasks.