{"id":67194,"date":"2025-12-22T01:21:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/67194\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T01:21:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:21:06","slug":"allentown-school-district-pilots-ai-teacher-assistant-to-help-sixth-graders-improve-literacy-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/67194\/","title":{"rendered":"Allentown School District pilots AI teacher assistant to help sixth-graders improve literacy skills"},"content":{"rendered":"

ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 Allentown School District recently showcased its efforts to incorporate artificial intelligence in the classroom to improve student literacy proficiency.<\/p>\n

At Thursday\u2019s school board meeting, school directors got a demonstration on Coursemojo, an AI assistant teacher being piloted in sixth-grade English classes. <\/p>\n

The computer-based tool will be expanded to seventh- and eighth-graders next school year.<\/p>\n

Through multiple choice and open-response questions, Coursemojo prompts students to engage with a piece of text that\u2019s listed next to the questions for students to reference.<\/p>\n

Allentown School District administrators<\/p>\n

Through multiple choice and open-response questions, Coursemojo prompts students to engage with a piece of text that\u2019s listed next to the questions for students to reference.<\/p>\n

Coursemojo personalizes its immediate feedback to help students improve their reading and writing skills. The questions and support provided by the AI assistant teacher are aligned to the district\u2019s curriculum.<\/p>\n

The Coursemojo pilot was funded by the philanthropy arm of Digital Promise<\/a>, a global education nonprofit. <\/p>\n

The cost of the pilot is $45,754, which includes student licenses, professional development and in-person coaching. <\/p>\n

‘The best resource’<\/p>\n

The pilot began this school year, and so far, 1,048 ASD students and 17 teachers have been using Coursemojo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the best resource that has ever been given to me to support my students,\u201d South Mountain Middle School literacy teacher Suzie Bichovsky-Thomas told school directors.<\/p>\n

Bichovsky-Thomas said she lets students work both individually and in groups to complete their Coursemojo work.<\/p>\n

The AI teacher assistant keeps track of the questions students get right, the questions they need prompting in order to answer correctly and the ones they aren\u2019t fully understanding. <\/p>\n

It also flags any text that has been copied from somewhere else to ensure student work is original.<\/p>\n

“If I don\u2019t understand something [Coursemojo] gives me an explanation and evidence on why this is the answer to something.”<\/p>\n

Lily, a sixth-grader<\/p>\n

A South Mountain student named Lily, who accompanied Bichovsky-Thomas through the Coursemojo demonstration, said she enjoys using it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows me how much I can improve my reading skills and my typing skills,\u201d Lily, a sixth-grader, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I don\u2019t understand something [Coursemojo] gives me an explanation and evidence on why this is the answer to something,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kyle Kauffman, director of innovation and instructional technology, said AI tools such Coursemojo can be used to hyper-personalize instruction for all students, including English language learners and special education students. <\/p>\n

Kauffman said such AI tools serve as a “transformation partner.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not taking the place of any human, but rather augmenting our capacities,” he said. <\/p>\n

Kauffman and others recently spoke about the use of AI in education and in the district on the inaugural episode of the district’s new quarterly podcast.<\/a><\/p>\n

In that conversation, Kauffman highlighted Coursemojo and other similar tools. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 Allentown School District recently showcased its efforts to incorporate artificial intelligence in the classroom to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,35603,35600,121,120,35599,35604,35601,35602],"class_list":{"0":"post-67194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-ai-teacher-assistant","10":"tag-allentown-coursemojo","11":"tag-allentown-headlines","12":"tag-allentown-news","13":"tag-allentown-school-district-ai-teacher-assistant","14":"tag-allentown-school-district-course-help","15":"tag-coursemojo","16":"tag-digital-promise-allentown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}