FAQs

How many students can one instructor work with?

Each instructional session is 15 minutes each day. If a staff member is dedicated to the program full time, the staff member could work with 20 students over the course of a day (taking breaks for lunch, gym, etc.)

Do all of the students in a grade need to be enrolled in Once? Is Once a Tier-I, Tier-II, or a Tier-III intervention?

You can start with a small number of students in a grade and grow over time. A district may start by using Once with just Tier-II or Tier-III students. When your district is comfortable with the approach, we recommend using this program as a Tier-I intervention with all of your kindergarten students so that they enter first grade reading fluently and independently well above grade level.

How is Once different from other High-Dosage Tutoring programs?

Unlike many High-Dosage Tutoring programs, Once is in-person and one-on-one. We believe that the relationships necessary to motivate sustained academic growth are best built in that setting. Once is also more affordable than many High-Dosage Tutoring programs because Once instructors are existing staff members at your school.

Our district already implements the Science of Reading. How can Once help?

Once augments the Science of Reading–based instruction already happening in your classrooms. Most Science of Reading curricula have similar progressions because they are drawing from the same research base. If a student learns a phoneme first in Once, the student will be even more prepared for whole-group instruction with the lead teacher. If a student learns a phoneme first in whole-group instruction with the lead teacher, the student will move through Once even more quickly.

What is included in the price quote from Once?

Your Once quote includes costs for student licenses, coaching, student and instructor consumables, program management and professional services including training. We don't provide special discounts to large customers that aren't available to small customers or vice versa. All school district customers receive uniform pricing.

If a student leaves the district mid-year, can that student be replaced with another student at no additional cost?

Yes.

What is the research on this program?

Once is an early-reading program that trains and coaches school support staff to deliver daily, one-on-one, in-person instruction. Once partnered with LXD Research to support educators in understanding the impact of Once tutoring in their schools. This end-of-year (EOY) Once-iReady Research Report for 23-24 summarizes the implementation and presents outcomes from schools that provided both beginning-of-year (BOY) and end-of-year (EOY) data.

This report is based on LXD Research's review of BOY and EOY outcome data from three schools that implemented Once with all students (168 total) in kindergarten. At the beginning of the year, the students' median rank nationally was at the 38th percentile (i.e., they scored worse than 62% of the nation’s kindergarteners), but, by the end of the year, their median rank was at the 67th percentile (i.e., better than all but 33% of the nation’s kindergarteners). If these students had made a year’s worth of typical growth (which is sadly not even the norm for many American students), their percentile rank would have remained at the 38th percentile. Instead, these students outpaced the typical growth and therefore accelerated well past their national peer group.

In the Once curriculum, students learn the long-e sound before they learn the short-e sound. How will this impact students when they learn the short-e sound in the classroom first?

Once’s curriculum always introduces the “short sound” associated with a vowel before its “long sound,” with the exception of e. This is because the long e sound in our specialized orthography allows students to decode many words far earlier than they would otherwise be able to, and that allows them to begin developing their blending, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and syntactic awareness before they have even finished learning all of their sound-symbol correspondences.

The specialized orthography that Once uses renders the long e sound in a way that is easily distinguishable from its short-sound counterpart.

A long-e sound in Once’s specialized orthography looks like this:

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Schools using Once do not report any confusion when students learn the long e sound in Once while learning the short e sound in the classroom.

In fact, schools using Once report that when students learn sounds from Once at a different time from when they are learning those same sounds in the classroom, they benefit from alternating between the two and from the spaced practice doing that provides.

What are strategies to prevent students from relying on the orthographic prompts when they are reading other texts that don’t have these graphic supports?

Early in the curriculum, Once’s specialized orthography enables students to develop the skills and practice they need to become good readers.

However, students do not become dependent on the specialized orthography because Once begins phasing out that orthography one-third of the way through the curriculum and fully phases it out two-thirds of the way through.

By the time most students finish a year of Once instruction, they will have left the specialized orthography far behind and can read books that use standard serif fonts.

Once does not use capital letters in its early cycles. Capital letters appear in the first lesson of Skills and IMSE OG. How will this impact students who are learning to write a complete sentence?

Perhaps counterintuitively, leaving capital letters until the middle stages of the curriculum allows students to read more sentences earlier. If you teach lowercase and capital letters at the same time, students have twice as many symbols to learn for the same number of sounds. The sooner students can read more words, the sooner they can begin to develop many other reading skills in addition to decoding. If students are able to read sentences and stories, they will be developing their vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and syntactical awareness as well.

Some may wonder if students are able to recognize sentences if they do not have capital letters in them. The answer is yes because students in the Once program are taught punctuation. In fact, because our language also capitalizes many other words that occur in the middle of sentences, like proper nouns, punctuation is a far better way to recognize sentences than capitalization is.

Now, this is not to say that capital letters are unimportant, but studies show that students learn capital letters more easily than lowercase letters and that they are more likely to be able to learn them using only whole-class instruction. Therefore, Once makes teaching students to first decode lowercase letters a priority during its one-on-one tutoring sessions.

Once finds that students that have been taught the lowercase symbols easily associate the corresponding capital letter with that sound when they reach the middle stages of the curriculum.

The fact that capital letters appear in the first lessons of EL and OG will not conflict with Once. It will provide spaced practice that students will benefit from. EL will teach students to start complete sentences with capital letters before Once does. Once will teach students to decode many complete sentences before EL does.

Once is not a writing curriculum and does not include sentence-writing during the tutoring sessions, so it will not conflict with the important writing instruction that will be happening in the classroom.

What does phonemic awareness instruction look like in Once?

Once’s curriculum prioritizes the development of students’ phonemic awareness (PA) and includes multiple PA exercises in each cycle for the first 70 cycles. These tasks include segmenting, blending, and rhyming (onset-rime) work.

The exercises are demonstrated in videos that can be found in the Curriculum Guide. For an example, select “Cycle 10” and see videos demonstrating The Slow-Fast Game and Rhyming tasks.

Early segmenting tasks involve students repeating instructors’ segmentation of simple words, which have increasingly complex structures and then progress to students segmenting words that they have only heard “the fast way.”

Once’s rhyming tasks involve onset-rime exercises and are particularly useful in preparing students for reading words that begin with stop phonemes ("quick sounds").

Our district focuses on authentic reading. Does Once conflict with this?

The Science of Reading is more than just phonics. Here at Once, we are huge advocates for reading authentic texts. Every lesson in Once (we call lessons "cycles" because the instructional content is spiraled) contains an opportunity for students to read and engage with authentic text by asking questions, drawing connections, and making inferences and predictions.

Are instructors required to read the script?

Yes, it is important that instructors stick to the script, which has been carefully written to allow them to teach effectively with maximum benefit to the students. While at first the format and wording of the script may feel awkward to instructors, they soon become familiar with it so that following the script feels natural and permits instructors to build relationships with their students and tailor instruction to each student's needs.

What is the purpose of Cycle 0?

Cycle 0 introduces the student to the Once program. It also helps to build the relationship between the instructor and the student. Academic content begins in Cycle 1.

What if a student doesn’t complete a whole cycle in the allotted 15 minutes?

One of the benefits of one-on-one instruction is that it allows instructors to differentiate the pace of instruction according to students’ needs. Some students will move very quickly through the content, perhaps completing an average of two cycles for each 15-minute session. Other students will need to move much more slowly, perhaps only completing an average of half a cycle per session. But a student moving more slowly might be working just as hard and have just as much to be proud of as a student moving quickly.

In these sessions, instructors should move as fast as a student can or as slowly as a student needs to move. This will mean that students will finish the year at different points in the curriculum, and that’s as it should be.

That’s why an instructor should never think, “I only have three minutes left in this student’s session. I need to rush in order to get to the end of this cycle before our time is up.” The instructor should just go at the pace that is dictated by the student’s mastery of the material and should stop when they are out of time. They will be able to return to that spot the next time they work with that student, even if it’s in the middle of a cycle.

Similarly, an instructor should never think, “This student just finished a cycle, but I don’t want to start the next cycle because I know we won’t finish it in the time we have left.” The instructor should keep going, use all of the minutes of their scheduled session, and pick up with that student the next time they meet.

How does the Once program work with students who have higher reading abilities?

Students with higher reading abilities should start at the beginning of our curriculum, at Cycle 0, with everyone else to learn the type of tasks and games within the curriculum. Even if they can read, they would still be lost if they didn’t know the routines of the tasks in the Once curriculum. When students have a stronger foundation in reading, they just move really quickly through the cycles until they get to content that is newer and more challenging for them.

How does the Once program work with students with disabilities or with multilingual learners?

The Once program can be used with students with disabilities and with multilingual learners. The curriculum supports many of the accommodations typically found in IEPs and 504s, like a one-on-one setting and a code-emphasis curriculum. Instructors follow the script and differentiate the pace based on the needs of the student. It is recommended that decisions to place multilingual learners or students identified with disabilities in the Once program are reviewed with the appropriate school-based team (IEP, 504, LEP).

For spiraling, what strategies do you recommend that instructors use to remember which sounds or words should be revisited at the end of a task?

It is recommended that instructors have a notepad or paper with them so that when a student makes an error, instructors can immediately correct it with the student while also making a note of which sound or word the student struggled with. Then, at the end of the task, when there is always an opportunity in the script to spiral back to those trouble spots, the instructor can refer to the note and direct the student to do that one again.

When using the flowchart, how do you recommend isolating the first two sounds of a word when trying to eliminate pauses?

It is recommended that the instructor holds the flowchart handout right over the laptop screen to cover all but the first two sounds, which also allows the instructor to easily follow along the directions and script in the flowchart.

Though that handout may briefly block the instructor’s webcam, coaches watching the recording will still be able to hear the instructor and student, and they will know that the instructor is correctly following the correction protocol described by the flowchart.

Can this program be implemented with older students?

Once is not the best intervention for most older students.

Sometimes people assume that if an older student is reading at a kindergarten level, this program for kindergarteners will also be appropriate for them. Keep in mind though that the curriculum was designed for younger children, not just people who read at that early level.

Even when older students aren’t successful readers yet, they will almost certainly have developed coping mechanisms to deal with that fact. These coping mechanisms are the hallmarks of unsuccessful readers, and they should be deconstructed in order for students to learn to decode. The Once curriculum doesn’t include that deconstructing work because it’s designed for students who haven’t had the chance to develop those unhelpful habits.

Once can be appropriate for some types of older students, like those who are starting school for the first time or students who are new to the country, but being behind in reading isn’t enough to make Once the best fit for an older student.

Are all of the decodable booklets included in the student box?

The student materials box for each student will include all of the decodable booklets through Cycle 100. Contact your coach when students are ready for the next set of booklets.

What type of books should students be reading at Cycle 140?

Students should be reading books that are printed in a regular serif font and that have paragraphs, dialogue, and complex vocabulary.

Can instructors “tap out” the sounds during phonemic awareness tasks (by touching their fingers to their thumbs), instead of counting the sounds on their fingers (including their thumbs)?

Counting sounds on their fingers (i.e., holding up one finger for the first sound, then two for the second, three for the third, etc.) is the best way for instructors to indicate each distinct sound in a word as they say it. This is true even though instructors and students are using the technique of connected phonation, or not pausing between the sounds, which is fundamental to the Once curriculum. And because counting sounds on their fingers allows the instructors to dictate the rhythm, it is also the best way for instructors to train students to hold all continuous sounds, thus reinforcing the practice of connected phonation, which sets students up for success when they are sounding out words and learning to blend them into words (i.e., to say them the fast way).

If an instructor is counting sounds by touching their fingers sequentially to their thumb, it is harder for the student to see how many sounds are being counted. It also limits the instructor to words that have four sounds in them. The Once curriculum has students work with words that have more than four sounds in its phonemic-awareness tasks.

Is this program for all K students, or is it designed to target certain groups?

Once is designed to be implemented as a Tier-1 intervention in kindergarten.

Who can be scheduled to provide instruction?

School employees in a variety of roles can provide instruction as part of Once. Here are some examples:

• Full-time Once instructor pulling 16 students throughout the day

• Part-time employees who work four hours per day working with 10 to 16 students a day

• Lunch aides/playground supervisors pulling students in hallways one hour before and after lunch

• SPED/ELL teacher using two blocks a day to pull students

• Classroom teacher pulling a few students in smaller scheduled moments (e.g., during small-group/intervention time, independent reading time, centers, etc.) throughout the day

• Specials teachers with extra free periods to instruct Once

• Administration team members (principal, assistant principal, instructional coaches, parent coordinators, behavior interventionists, office staff) can take parts of their day to instruct students and get a chance to connect with students, teachers, and the school community.

How many hours per day should Once instructors dedicate to instruction?

Once instructors are scheduled for 15 minutes of instruction per student each day. Working with 10 students equates to at least 2.5 hours per school day.

Do Once instructors need to have any experience teaching reading?

They do not need experience teaching reading.

What are the commitments for Once Instructors?

The goal is for designated support staff (a paraprofessional, instructional assistant, interventionist, community volunteer, etc.) to provide 15-minute, 1:1 sessions for at least 10 students each day.

What are the responsibilities of the point person at a school?

The point person for Once at a given school will be the contact person for scheduling, questions, and concerns. This person will work closely with Once and serve as a resource for the instructors in the school.

What are the commitments for classroom teachers and other staff members involved in supporting Once?

Lead classroom teachers do not deliver Once instruction, nor do they receive the full Once training and coaching. Their buy-in, however, is critical to the success of the program since they need to embrace the fact that each student is leaving class for 15 minutes per day to accelerate their ability to read fluently and independently.

The Once personnel meet with lead classroom teachers to clarify the purpose and expectations for students enrolled in Once, answer questions, and provide a direct line of communication and support.

What are some schedule templates to implement Once?

Please click here to learn more about scheduling and review three sample schedules.

What does a Once instructor's schedule look like?‍

The schedules can take many different forms depending on factors like the instructor’s availability, the school’s schedule, the number of students being served, the number of classrooms, and the physical layout of the school building. Once’s Program Team will help schools design the optimal schedule considering all of these variables.

Once instructors might be scheduled for 15 minutes of instruction per student each day for a minimum of 10 students. If instruction is near the classroom, transition time may not need to be scheduled, but if the instructional area is far from the classroom, transition times may need to be added.

What does a student’s schedule look like for this program?

Student schedules include 15 minutes of protected time for instruction each school day.

Will students receive five days of instruction per week?

It is strongly preferred that students receive instruction five days per week, but the minimum requirement is four days per week.

Should students be pulled for Once at the same time every day? If so, will the student miss the same subject every day?

Not necessarily. The Once Program Team will work with school leaders to build the schedule, and what the rest of the class will be doing while a student is in a Once session will be a key consideration. In some cases, the schedule is designed so that students aren’t pulled at the same time every day so that they don’t miss the same whole-class moments every day.

What is the timeline for kick-off and implementation?

Strategic planning sessions are held with district and school leaders, and they are focused on the following:

• Vision setting (school expectations and vision)

• Personnel & student Identification

• Building the schedule

• Finalizing logistics - launch date, training, implementation and program support dates

• Setting dates for quarterly reviews

What information is needed about students and staff to run the program?

Once does not use student accounts, so students are not given usernames or passwords. Only instructors maintain accounts with Once. In order to initiate Once, the program will require this data:

Student

o First name

o Last name

o Grade

o School name

o District

Instructor

o First name

o Last name

o School name

o School-based email address

How do you choose, or help districts/schools choose, students for the roster?

Once is designed to be implemented as a Tier-1 intervention in kindergarten. Districts and schools evaluate the personnel available to facilitate instruction, and then they use data to make decisions about whether all students or a subgroup of students are selected for the program.

What is the kickoff meeting to start implementation?

Once personnel meet with the principal and/or principal’s delegate at each school to create a personalized implementation plan for Once.

The objectives of the implementation planning meeting are to:

• Introduce the Once team to the school.

• Choose the target students for the Year-1 Implementation.

• Inventory available resources: computers, space for daily Once use, etc.

• Choose the instructors (teacher assistants and supplemental staff) who can best facilitate the program.

• Create the Once tutoring schedule.

• Discuss the data-transfer protocol.

• Select a location for training instructors.

• Schedule the training dates, parent communication date, and first day of instruction.

• Introduce the Once portal and resource center.

Where should instruction take place?

Ideally, instruction will take place in close proximity to where the student is being pulled from. Reducing the transition time between students is the first priority because every minute saved really adds up over the course of the year. For that reason, most instructors meet with their students in the hallway right outside the classroom.

The second priority is making sure that the location isn’t too distracting. This tends to be more of an issue for instructors than it is for students. Of course every student is different, but we see many students focus just fine on the work if there’s noise in the background as long as they are facing away from other students. But the instructors need to make sure that they aren’t distracted by other students too.

Do instructors need a device?

Each instructor requires access to a laptop computer with a front-facing camera (not a tablet). The laptop must be connected to the internet to record sessions and to participate in coaching meetings through a video conference platform (Google Meet).

If an instructor misses a session with a student, can the student be pulled at another time during the day?

Probably, but the school’s point person will determine best practices for schedule adjustments.

A student was absent and missed a session. Do I work with the student for 30 minutes the following day?

Every student is different, but it is usually better to pull a student for two separate 15-minute sessions than to pull them for 30 consecutive minutes. But, if an instructor is available to pull any student for extra time, that’s wonderful, even if it would be less than 15 minutes.

If a student regularly misses sessions, reach out to your school’s point person and the Once Program Team to discuss next steps.

Who do I contact if I am having technical issues?

Please contact Once support: [email protected].

Where can school leaders access progress-monitoring results?

The Once portal, accessible at go.tryonce.com, displays school-level, instructor-level, and student-level data on measures like session frequency, session duration, average rate of progress through the curriculum, expected endpoint in the curriculum by the end of the year, oral-reading fluency, etc. School leadership should access the portal regularly to monitor student progress.

Where can instructors access progress-monitoring results‍?

Instructors can access their data about their students’ progress in the Once portal at go.tryonce.com. There they can find data on measures like session frequency, session duration, average rate of progress through the curriculum, expected endpoint in the curriculum by the end of the year, oral-reading fluency, etc.

How will school leaders receive updates?

Each month, the Once Program Team meets with the leadership at each school to review student progress according to program metrics and any available assessment data. They set goals, troubleshoot obstacles to consistent Once instruction, and make any necessary adjustments to the implementation.

How will district leaders receive updates?

Each quarter, the Once Program and Partnerships Teams meet with district stakeholders to review student progress according to program metrics and any available assessment data. They set goals, troubleshoot obstacles to consistent Once instruction, and make any necessary adjustments to the implementation.

How much time should be scheduled for instructors to be coached?

The school should allot 30 minutes per week for each Once instructor to receive coaching from a member of the Once Coaching Team. Our coaches meet with instructors one at a time.

What does coaching look like for instructors?

Weekly instructor coaching is the heart and soul of the Once program. Once’s national network of instructional coaches review video recordings of each instructor and provide weekly coaching (30 minutes by video as well as email/text as needed) to ensure that each instructor is teaching effectively. During coaching sessions, coaches help instructors practice the skills they are going to teach and reflect on their students’ data.

After one year of delivering Once, school-based instructors receive an average of 20 hours of coaching in the Science of Reading and are highly effective reading instructors.

When can instructors expect to hear from their coach?

An instructor’s coach will reach out via email within one week of that instructor completing their onboarding sessions with our Training Team.

Can instructors use a platform other than Google Meet to conference with their coach?

Yes, as long as the platform allows participants to record and screenshare. Talk with your coach about meeting specifics.

Why are sessions recorded?

The recordings provide coaches the opportunity to provide personalized and targeted support to instructors. The video recordings are also used to assess students’ oral reading fluency.

What training will instructors receive?

Once provides staff members with all of the training and coaching they need to become highly effective instructors. Staff members who serve as instructors in the program may be eligible to receive college credit at participating universities.

There are two initial onboarding sessions that are designed for the school's support staff who will deliver instruction to students as part of Once. The first onboarding session lasts 3.5 hours and can be held in large-group settings (for example, with all of a district's instructors in a large PD room). The second session also lasts for 3.5 hours but is held in small-group settings at each individual school. These smaller groups allow for a lot of practice and targeted feedback.

The majority of training that an instructor receives, however, occurs over the course of the year during weekly, virtual coaching sessions in which instructors learn about upcoming content that they are going to teach, receive feedback on their instruction, and ask questions. A fully trained Once instructor is one who has attended the initial training, worked with Once coaches weekly, and led a group of students through the program for a year.

The objectives of the initial instructor onboarding sessions are to:

• Provide context around Once’s vision and methodology.

• Prepare instructors to teach decoding.

• Train instructors on the minimal technical requirements for operating Once.

• Allow instructors to practice the initial instructional content they will deliver.

• Schedule weekly coaching sessions.

• Allow instructors to ask questions and receive personalized feedback.

• Introduce the Once portal and resource center.

During the second onboarding session, instructors practice completing specific cycles with the portal. After instructors practice with Cycle 1, what is the rationale for practicing Cycle 9 instead of Cycle 10?

Cycle 9 allows instructors to practice the tasks with more complexity and rigor before the introduction of the Rhyming task and the merger of the Slow Game and Fast Game in Cycle 10.