And RISE Summer Learning Program
Lavinia Group is thrilled to partner with Summer Learning Labs for the fourth year to provide our proven RISE Summer Learning program to students and educators across Indiana. Summer Learning Labs is a collaborative effort between The Mind Trust, The Indiana Department of Education, and the Lavinia Group to provide high-impact summer programming to students across Indiana.
With expertise in year-round K-8 academic growth, we specialize in curriculum, coaching, and professional development that uniquely position us to address the challenges of unfinished learning over the summer. Our comprehensive Summer RISE program equips educators to bridge learning gaps, setting students up for success in the upcoming school year.
SUMMER 2024 PROGRAM RESULTS
In the summer of 2024, close to 9,000 students entering grades 1 through 9 following summer break were served at 91 sites across five service area regions in Indiana. All students participating in Summer Learning Labs used the RISE Summer Learning Curriculum. To determine overall growth and efficacy of the program, students take a pre-test and a post-test. Below are the results from the summer of 2024.
RISE Summer Learning Program Comprehensive Resources and Support
What RISE Includes:
5 Weeks of Standards-Aligned Curriculum
Caregiver Communication
Pre- and Post-Assessments
Progress Monitoring Trackers
On-Demand Training Modules
Live Weekly Office Hours
Teaching Channel Subscription
Professional Development
Rise ELA Curriculum
We believe that learning to read should be a joyful journey. The RISE K-2 literacy curriculum fosters confidence and a love of learning through an interactive approach.
As students move beyond the foundational skills emphasized in earlier grades, ELA instruction transitions to strengthening comprehension and analytical skills. This shift recognizes that students need to decode words accurately, engage deeply with the meaning of texts, and develop the ability to think critically about their reading.
RISE’s systematic approach to phonics instruction is carefully designed to ensure all students have the opportunity to master foundational reading skills.
RISE Phonics Curriculum Includes:
Explicit Instruction: Teachers clearly explain phonics rules and patterns to students.
Cumulative and Sequential Learning: Phonics lessons in the RISE program follow a logical progression, each building on previously taught concepts.
Multisensory Activities: RISE incorporates visual aids and manipulatives into phonics instruction, creating a multisensory approach that caters to diverse learning styles and makes learning more engaging.
Decodable Readers: These books feature carefully controlled vocabulary and progressively introduced phonics patterns, allowing students to practice their skills in context. At RISE, we believe in the power of engaging stories to support phonics instruction. That’s why we use RedThread Readers. These books are more than just practice tools—they’re engaging stories that captivate young readers.
Curious to see how our decodable readers can help your students shine?
Download a sample of our systematic phonics curriculum
Using genre as an inroad, the RedThread Close Reading for Meaning method teaches students to use a symphony of strategies to unpack complex texts that are at or above grade level. This curriculum prepares students to attend to both the essential meaning and the author’s craft.
After engaging in a shared experience with their teachers, students are given the opportunity to apply the RedThread Close Reading for Meaning method to a new text, honing their ability to tackle any text confidently and independently.
RISE Close Reading for Meaning Curriculum Includes:
Authentic Texts: Each week, students will engage with a carefully selected authentic text—whether a book excerpt, poem, article, essay, speech, or other form of real-world writing. Our goal is to immerse students in the depth and complexity of genuine language, offering them exposure to sophisticated vocabulary, nuanced expression, and diverse viewpoints. By working with texts created for authentic audiences, students will build critical thinking skills, deepen their cultural understanding, and strengthen their ability to navigate the complexities of language and ideas in the world beyond the classroom.
Phonics, Fluency, and Morphology: The lessons include dedicated time for students to focus on text and grade-level-specific concepts like morphology, fluency, and vocabulary, helping them unpack and understand the texts more deeply.
Transferable Questions: Genre-based, transferable questions prompt students to refer back to the text for evidence, fostering a deep understanding of the material and encouraging them to support their thinking with textual evidence.
Curious to see how our decodable readers can help your students shine?
Download a sample of our systematic phonics curriculum
Building on foundational reading skills, RISE’s Author Study and Novel Study component teach students how to be thoughtful, engaged readers. By focusing on a single author or immersing in a complete novel, this literacy block encourages deeper comprehension, vocabulary development, and a love of reading.
RISE Author Study/Novel Study Workshops include:
Responsive Text-Selection: We carefully curate literature that reflects our students’ diverse backgrounds and experiences. Our selections showcase the richness of our global society, ensuring children see themselves, their families, and others represented authentically in their summer reading. We actively choose texts free from bias, stereotypes, discrimination, and prejudice.
Knowledge Building: We strategically connect the topics in Close Reading to the texts in Novel studies to develop students’ vocabulary and deeper understanding of themes, topics, and ideas. This interconnected approach helps students construct meaningful knowledge networks.
Writing Integration: The curriculum includes daily text-based tasks that require students to write about the topic using vocabulary and language appropriate for their grade level. These text-based tasks encourage students to express their thoughts using grade-appropriate vocabulary and language, reinforcing their comprehension and analytical skills.
Curious to see how our decodable readers can help your students shine?
Download a sample of our systematic phonics curriculum
Rise math Curriculum
The math curriculum maintains a uniform structure across all grade levels, focusing on two core components: story problems and routines.
Story problems are included in the RISE Summer Learning Program to develop students’ understanding of key concepts such as place value, fractions, and proportional relationships. Story problems also allow students to develop their flexibility with operations and their problem-solving skills through solving real-world math problems.
RISE Math Story Problems Curriculum Includes:
Engaging Contexts: Story problems are in familiar contexts, like going shopping, playing sports, or going on a trip. This approach makes the problems more relatable and interesting.
Variety of Problem Types: There are many different kinds of story problems with different actions, situations, and unknowns. Solving different types of standards-aligned story problems allows students to use a variety of strategies to solve any problem flexibly.
Focus on Process and Explanation: RISE emphasizes that it’s important not just to get the right answer but also to explain how you got there and what steps you took. This focus on the process helps students understand math better and feel more confident.
Created specifically for RISE, these shorter, structured activities target common gaps in student knowledge and strengthen foundational math skills and concepts, such as counting, operations, place value understanding, and proportional relationships. The routines are designed to build both conceptual understanding and fluency through regular practice.
RISE Math Routines Curriculum is:
Short, Structured, and Targeted activities: Teachers can easily incorporate routines into daily math instruction without consuming excessive time.
Focused on Foundational Math Skills: The routines support students’ conceptual understanding of essential math content that students need in order to be successful in the next grade level.
Designed to Promote Fluency and Accuracy: Regular practice with these routines helps students develop speed and confidence in performing fundamental math operations.
Curriculum Alignment
The RISE curriculum is strategically designed so it can be used by any educator in any state.
Adapting to State Standards
View MoreFocusing on Power Standards
View MoreAddressing Unfinished Learning
View MoreAligned to the Science of Reading
View MoreView Indiana State Standards
3 Ways to Engage with RISE Professional Development
Lavinia Group provides leader training, teacher training, and weekly professional development throughout the summer. Sites using the Lavinia RISE Curriculum receive these professional development services at no cost.
Leader Training
3 Hours; Live Zoom
Leader Training Options
May 1st: 12pm ET
May 6th: 12pm ET
May 9th: 12pm ET
May 15th: 12pm ET
May 19th: 12pm ET
May 27th: 12pm ET
Leaders attend a 3-hour training session before Teacher Training Week, where they will receive a comprehensive overview of the Lavinia RISE program.
This session will cover strategies to support educators in delivering a high-impact summer program aimed at accelerating student learning, as well as best practices for managing summer instruction.
Additionally, leaders will gain access to valuable tools and resources to help them quickly enhance educator practices.
Teacher Training
3 Days; In Person
Teacher Training Options
Week of June 9th, 2025
Lavinia Group will conduct a comprehensive 3-day training for Summer Learning Lab educators, aimed at helping them internalize the summer curriculum.
This interactive training will immerse educators in model lessons, allowing them to plan and practice lessons while receiving valuable feedback and coaching. Participants will also learn effective strategies for incorporating high-engagement activities and differentiating instruction to meet the diverse needs of their students.
Throughout the sessions, teachers will have ample opportunities to ask questions, engage in content discussions, and debate various instructional approaches, fostering a collaborative learning environment that promotes professional growth.
Weekly Professional Development
60 Minutes Weekly; Live Zoom
Once the summer begins, educators will also have the opportunity to attend weekly development meetings and office hours facilitated by a Lavinia Group coach.
These meetings are designed to support intellectual preparation, data analysis, differentiation, and general program questions.
Participants can join these sessions live through Zoom or participate asynchronously through the self-paced learning modules.
For Expanding What Works Regional Partners
Leader Training
3 Hours
Leader Training Options
May 1st: 12pm ET
May 6th: 12pm ET
May 9th: 12pm ET
May 15th: 12pm ET
May 19th: 12pm ET
May 27th: 12pm ET
Leaders attend a 3-hour training session before Teacher Training Week, where they will receive a comprehensive overview of the Lavinia RISE program.
This session will cover strategies to support educators in delivering a high-impact summer program aimed at accelerating student learning, as well as best practices for managing summer instruction.
Additionally, leaders will gain access to valuable tools and resources to help them quickly enhance educator practices.
Teacher Training
3 Days
Teacher Training Options*
May 27th-May 29th
June 3rd-June 5th
June 10th-June 12th
June 16th-June 18th
June 30th-July 2nd
July 8th-July 10th
Lavinia Group will conduct a comprehensive 3-day training for Summer Discovery educators, aimed at helping them internalize the summer curriculum.
This interactive training will immerse educators in model lessons, allowing them to plan and practice lessons while receiving valuable feedback and coaching. Participants will also learn effective strategies for incorporating high-engagement activities and differentiating instruction to meet the diverse needs of their students.
Throughout the sessions, teachers will have ample opportunities to ask questions, engage in content discussions, and debate various instructional approaches, fostering a collaborative learning environment that promotes professional growth.
Weekly Professional Development
60 Minutes Weekly
Sessions will occur at 12pm and 2pm ET throughout the summer; meeting days will depend upon your program start date. The schedule will be released at the end of February.
Once the summer begins, educators will also have the opportunity to attend weekly development meetings and office hours facilitated by a Lavinia Group coach.
These meetings are designed to support intellectual preparation, data analysis, differentiation, and general program questions.
Participants can join these sessions live through Zoom or participate asynchronously through the self-paced learning modules.
Shining Moments of Student Growth
RISE delivers meaningful results. Explore interactive before-and-after examples of student work, showcasing the measurable growth students achieved in just five weeks.
Rising 1st Grade
Word Spacing & Spelling Improvement
Initially, the student struggles with word spacing and phonetic spelling. By week four, the student is correctly spacing words, and we see an improvement in phonetic spelling.
Rising 6th Grade
Problem Solving Improvement
By the fourth week of RISE, the student applies mathematical expressions to solve problems, signaling meaningful development in their comprehension and application of math concepts.
2024 RISE At a Glance
Organizations
Testimonial
“Every professional on the Lavinia team is exceptionally knowledgeable, thinks through the lens of student achievement, and acts as a true thought partner. The team is flexible to the dynamics and shifting needs of a small charter network and demonstrates through action that we are a priority to them despite our small size. Lavinia Group is a go-to strategic partner for our organization.”
Casey Paulus Crews, Champion Education Network
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FAQ
What do you recommend for students who are significantly below grade level?
We recommend small group, individualized instruction for students who are significantly behind grade level. Our phonics curriculum can be used flexibly across any grade level to support developing readers. Additionally, our Math Routines curriculum can be adapted for small group instruction to support mathematical reasoning, build number sense, and address content gaps.
What is the format of the pre- and post-assessments?
Each assessment is designed to take 30-45 minutes and includes both multiple-choice and open-response questions (except for Rising Grades 1-3 ELA, which is only open-response).
RISE will provide scoring guides, rubrics, and virtual professional development on administering and scoring assessments. Assessment data will be available immediately for school leaders to analyze and for teachers to adjust their summer instruction accordingly.
We recommend that assessments be administered digitally, but they can also be administered via pen and paper if necessary. Any assessments administered via pen and paper will need to be entered into the assessment platform afterward.
The pre- and post-assessments are not intended to be comprehensive evaluations of students’ overall academic abilities. Instead, they focus on a subset of grade-level standards that align with the specific skills and concepts taught in the RISE curriculum.
What standards does the RISE Summer Learning Program align with?
The curriculum aligns with Common Core State Standards and state-specific standards.
However, the curriculum does not cover all possible standards within a grade level. Instead, it focuses on a smaller set of “power standards”—essential skills and concepts for each grade level.
RISE aims to bridge learning gaps and prepare students for the upcoming grade level. To accomplish this, the curriculum focuses on standards from the previous grade level. For example, students entering 1st grade (Rising 1st) in the fall would work on those kindergarten “power standards.” This approach seeks to solidify foundational knowledge before moving on to new grade-level content.
What format will our school receive the materials?
You will receive access to the curriculum as downloadable PDFs by grade level through the RISE Summer Learning Program platform.
The materials are labeled based on the grade students will enter in the fall of 2025 (e.g., students entering 3rd grade in the fall will use materials labeled “Rising 3rd Grade”).
Schools can print and organize these materials by day, week, or in one batch for the summer session.