Teacher Amanda McIlhone’s 4th-grade reading class is slicing and dicing words on this day at Ninety-Fifth Street School.  

Base words, prefixes, and suffixes. What those prefixes and suffixes mean; how they change a word’s meaning. It’s all on a large smart board at the front of the classroom, where Ms. McIlhone can underline a word’s parts for clarity. It’s also on the student’s Chromebooks, where they can follow along and participate, writing correct answers.  

More and more hands shoot up with each successive word Ms. McIlhone shows on the screen as she asks, “What is my base word? What is my prefix? What does the word mean?” 

The students clearly are getting it.

When Ms. McIlhone uses a word such as courageous in a sentence, students around the room spontaneously offer their own sentences, without being asked, as if they’re trying the word on for size. 

In another of Ms. McIlhone’s 4th-grade reading classes, students see images one after the other on the smart board to illustrate how different combinations of letters produce the same “er” sound — a bird, a worm, a dollar, a dog (for its fur) — sounding them all out.

New "Into Reading" curriculum

By this time, teacher and students had been working with publisher HMH’s updated version 3 of the “Into Reading” curriculum for a couple of weeks. The new curriculum marks a major milestone in Milwaukee Public Schools’ new Literacy Plan, giving all teachers access to the tools and techniques they need to help all children read — and all means all. 

The difference, the veteran teacher said between classes, was like night and day.   

“Every single kid was like, ‘I like this,’ “ Ms. McIlhone recalled. 

Her students, it turns out, now are really into “Into Reading.”   

“Kids who don’t usually share out are sharing out — audibly,” she said. That includes some children who would be considered nonreaders, “and you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at them. They’re engaged.” 

The students love the interactive parts, like one that shows their written responses anonymously on the big smart board, the teacher said. 

“I think everyone should be using it — and I’m a hard sell,” Ms. McIlhone said of the updated curriculum.

This is her 20th year of teaching, and her seventh year at Ninety-Fifth Street School; she was a special education teacher for the first 15 years of her career. 

The curriculum essentially supplies slide decks and guides, or scripts, for teachers to follow, but there’s plenty of room for educators to supply their own pizzazz, as Ms. McIlhone calls it.  

She asks her students to read a line to their neighbor, for instance. She then asks them to read the next line in a whisper to their neighbor, and to read the line after that aloud like actors in their best theater voice.  

Or in their squeakiest voice. Or in their robot voice. Her students follow her instructions with gusto.

The science of reading and writing

The previous materials “had phonics, but the scope of the skills was not what we know is required for the brain to be able to really soak up and internalize all the skills,” said Gabriela Bell Jiménez, PhD, MPS’s academic superintendent for literacy. Namely, the old materials did not incorporate writing into the lessons. 

The new Volume 3 instruction, however, “is absolutely aligned to the science of reading,” she added. “It has a robust articulation that integrates reading and writing and is a knowledge-building curriculum.” With writing incorporated in their lessons, students are able to show what they have learned. 

MPS had been using Volume 2 materials since 2021; the state Legislature passed Act 20 in 2023, to take effect with the 2024-25 school year. The district attempted to fill gaps in the curriculum on its own before receiving the new materials. 

The district’s current literacy plan was approved in Fall 2025, after MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius, EdD, joined the district in March 2025 and Dr. Bell Jiménez joined the district in July 2025. In addition, the results of an instructional audit ordered by Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers in 2024 was released in June 2025.  

The district is providing professional development for educators this semester that is geared toward the new materials and building on teachers’ skills in using them.

Moving toward proficiency 

Results in reading scores, of course, are not instantaneous. It takes time awhile to get students who were behind up to speed. So soon after a curriculum rollout comes a settling-in period, as well, as everyone gets acclimated to the curriculum’s components and some scattered technology glitches are ironed out, for example.  

Alathea Sumby Setnarowski, an MPS teacher for 28 years who has spent most of her career at Ninety-Fifth Street School, acknowledged the hurdles with launching a new curriculum, but said, “I think that the new series has a lot to offer. I like the slides; I like that I am able to assign things online, including the assessments to help cut down on my grading time so the students have immediate feedback.” 

The 5th-grade teacher added, “I am hopeful that over the next few years that I will see an increase in student literacy, so the content in other subject areas isn't so laborious for my students. I will continue to work on moving my students towards proficiency so they can become stronger readers.”