Creating a New Way for Children to Learn to Read with Zach Silverzweig

Zach Silverzweig is the CEO and Founder of TinyIvy, a startup focused on helping children learn to read. He returns to join host, Mike Palmer, in a conversation about what it’s been like launching and growing his company through the challenges of the past year. When we first met Zach a year ago, he had developed a program of flashcards and worksheets based on a system that adds marks to English letters to create a one-to-one mapping of characters to sounds to make English more decipherable for young learners.

Now, Zach and team are in multiple schools across K-3 grade levels and in special ed programs with an app and plenty of opportunities to learn from this school year’s cohorts. We explore how TinyIvy is in some of the most challenged districts across the country and has proven to help kids catch up while taking it easy on teachers who have so much on their plates these days. Zach explains how a class with a wide range of abilities can use TinyIvy to stay on the same activities despite the wide ranges in ability we’re seeing as schools and families emerge from the challenges of the pandemic. Results are starting to come in and Zach tells a story of hope and engagement with teachers and students as he tries to address the meaningful problem of early childhood literacy through the use of a genuinely innovative program.

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