Lexia LETRS Grant Winner Shares Success With Fellow Educators

A single educator taking the Lexia® LETRS® journey alone was able to transform the way her entire school approached literacy. Tiffany Holmes is the literacy specialist for Lonsdale Elementary School in Knoxville, Tennessee. She was one of the lucky winners of the Lexia LETRS Science of Reading Grant.

Educators submitted short videos explaining how LETRS would help transform their teaching, and the winners received access to the award-winning LETRS professional learning at no cost. 

Holmes said the education she received with LETRS opened her eyes to strategies she and her fellow teachers were not really using in the classroom such as phonic variations. “So, it was definitely an aha,” she said. “This is why this has been happening, and now I know, and I can help kids overcome that.”

The next step was sharing what she learned with her fellow educators. “I feel like my feedback has changed,” Holmes said. “It’s become more specific. So, instead of just giving general advice, I can say this is what is happening when your student is writing the word this way, or they’re not hearing the sound. So, we need to work on that.” 

Educators soon started seeing their students master reading faster. The students noticed too. “When that first starts clicking, that excitement is there,” Holmes said. “They know that they’re a reader!”

This short video will give you some more insight about how Holmes used her LETRS grant to bring opportunity to her entire school.