The demands placed on schools have changed dramatically over the past decade. Staffing challenges, competing priorities, growing student needs, and increasing demands on teachers’ time have become part of the daily reality in many schools and districts. At the same time, the pressure to improve literacy outcomes has never been higher.
As a result, many leaders are beginning to ask a second question when evaluating an evidence-based intervention: Can we realistically implement this program well in our school(s)?
Increasingly, literacy interventions are evolving to address this challenge. Rather than building solutions for ideal conditions—without considering the implementation challenges most schools face—a new generation of solutions is being designed to help schools deliver high-quality Structured Literacy instruction within the constraints leaders and educators confront every day. SPIRE Up is one example of this shift.
SPIRE Up is a blended, Orton-Gillingham-based Structured Literacy intervention for students in grades K-8+—including students with dyslexia—who need intensive support in decoding and foundational reading skills. SPIRE Up builds on the research foundation of SPIRE 4th Edition and is intentionally engineered for today’s classrooms, where every instructional minute must be maximized.
Each SPIRE Up lesson follows a consistent structure: 15 minutes of teacher-led explicit instruction, 15 minutes of teacher-led guided practice, and 15 minutes of independent digital practice.
SPIRE Up’s blended model makes both efficiency and impact possible. While the teacher remains at the center of instruction, purposeful technology engages students in structured practice that allows them to immediately apply new skills, reinforce previously learned skills, and practice reading connected text out loud. As students practice, SPIRE Up automatically collects real-time progress monitoring data and immediately feeds it back to teachers. This allows teachers to track growth and determine instructional next steps without sacrificing instructional time for testing.
Leader visibility is built in as well. Aggregated data gives school and district leaders clear insight into both student progress and implementation fidelity across classrooms and schools. Sessions can run three to five times per week, with flexible pacing to adapt to student needs and scheduling constraints.
Professional learning and implementation science-based support are built in from pre-launch through full implementation, including coaching, instructional rounds, and data review—because successful outcomes depend on both a strong program and strong implementation.
SPIRE Up meets ESSA Level 3 standards and was named a 2025 CODiE Award finalist in the Best Science of Reading Solution category. It builds on the same research foundation as SPIRE, an established literacy intervention with ESSA Level 1 (strong) evidence of effectiveness.
Curious whether SPIRE Up is the right fit for your students—and your school or district context?
