AWS Public Sector Blog

Seesaw builds AI-powered reading assessment tool to support elementary literacy with AWS

Reading is the gateway to all learning, yet many K–8 students struggle with it. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, confirms this: fourth and eighth grade reading scores continue to decline, with averages lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

To measure student reading progress, teachers rely on assessments that have children read aloud to gauge pronunciation, skipped words, and natural phrasing. This time-intensive process must be completed multiple times for each student throughout the school year.

When educators shared these challenges with the educational technology (EdTech) company Seesaw, they saw an opportunity to apply artificial intelligence (AI). Seesaw’s mission is to empower every student to achieve their best through a creative, collaborative digital learning platform. The company supports educators with intuitive tools that make it easy to capture, share, and reflect on learning—fostering engagement and personalized growth.

Learn how Seesaw worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build an AI-powered reading assessment tool using Amazon Transcribe, and how it has supported teachers at Vacaville Unified School District (VUSD) in northern California.

The challenge of assessing student reading

Learning to read involves recognizing sight words, decoding unfamiliar ones, and understanding meaning in context. When teachers assess reading, they look for reading fluency: the ability to pronounce words correctly, quickly, and expressively based on syntax and punctuation.

For many teachers, time management in the classroom is a constant struggle. Devoting the necessary time and attention to 1:1 reading assessments—which can take days to complete for more than 30 students—interferes with instruction time for the rest of the class. Teachers must also support a wide range of learners, including students whose first language is not English and those with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).

“The diverse needs of classrooms have grown exponentially year by year,” said Cheryl Carter, digital education coordinator at VUSD, which uses Seesaw’s learning management platform across its 10 elementary schools. “We need tools that enable us to differentiate teaching, so that we can meet the needs of all of the learning levels in our classrooms.”

Utilizing AI tools from AWS

Since 2018, Seesaw has leveraged the latest technology to deliver deeper insights into student reading progress. Until recently, speech-to-text technology was not accurate enough for reading assessment.

Thanks to advances in AI, the accuracy of such tools has improved dramatically. In 2023, Seesaw turned to AWS to incorporate automatic speech recognition capabilities into its learning management platform. Because Seesaw was already built on AWS, it was a natural fit. “Whenever we’re trying to solve a problem with technology, we look to what is already part of our tech ecosystem, because it’s faster for us to get the product to market,” said Emily Voigtlander, EVP of product. The development of Reading Fluency Assessments and Read-with-Me reflects Seesaw’s focus on empowering educators with simple, effective tools that support and track student reading progress and confidence.

Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) delivered the functionality Seesaw needed. They provide high-accuracy transcriptions, data security, and the choice to opt out of having user data used to train AI models (which Seesaw did). Seesaw worked closely with the Amazon Transcribe team throughout product development, building an initial prototype in just two weeks.

The insights provided to teachers are where the magic happens

Seesaw makes Reading Fluency Assessments feel less nerve-wracking than being pulled out of class for a 1:1 sit-down with the teacher. Instead, students record themselves reading a passage on the platform they use daily. This removes anxiety while allowing teachers to collect an entire class’s recordings at once.

Once a student submits their recording, the teacher sees an annotated transcript showing what they got right or wrong, which words they missed, and their overall accuracy. This, according to Voigtlander, is where the magic happens because Seesaw enables teachers to complete what used to be a time-intensive assessment in minutes, with the data at their fingertips.

Outside of instant feedback, the tool enables teachers to assess more frequently and gather richer data to intervene earlier. Additionally, aggregated classroom insights help identify learners who meet accuracy thresholds and those who need targeted instruction. They can also listen to each student’s recording while the tool highlights each word in real time.

On the back end, the platform stores students’ voice recordings in Amazon S3, then sends a link to the audio asset to Amazon Transcribe, which returns a transcript with timestamps for each word. “The per-word timestamp was critically important for this feature to be successful,” noted Voigtlander. “It allows teachers to see exactly when each word was spoken, so they can track reading speed and follow along as the tool highlights each word the student reads. Other transcription providers don’t always have that capability.”

The companion tool, Read-with-Me, allows teachers to record model readings for students to listen to, helping them learn what fluent reading sounds like in a familiar voice. This scaffolding tool expands teachers’ reach by providing one-to-one guided reading experiences. Students see each word highlighted as it’s read aloud, connecting spoken and written words.

Accounting for noisy classrooms

Seesaw always tests out products in real classrooms with elementary teachers and students to catch issues before they go live. When it came time to test the tool in an actual classroom, VUSD was eager to try it. Recognizing the realities of elementary classrooms, the Seesaw team knew beta testing would be essential to ensure the tool could handle typical noise levels and fully support multilingual learners. “We wanted to make sure that the reading fluency tool could pick up both the Spanish speaker in our dual immersion program and the English speaker—and in a loud classroom setting,” explained Carter.

Since rolling out the Reading Fluency Assessment tool, teacher feedback has been very positive. They have been pleased with the time savings (estimates show up to eight hours back each week) and the tool’s accuracy. Carter reported that students also love using it because they get to be “superstars” in a recording studio of their own making. “When they listen to themselves, they internalize, they become aware of their own learning, and then they go back and record themselves again,” Carter said.

VUSD is equally thrilled that Seesaw is not only developing AI features but also considering how to teach students about AI—providing teachers with AI Literacy lessons to help students understand the responsible use of AI. “We have to make sure we’re teaching our children about what AI and responsible use are,” said Carter, “and we need to tell them directly that this is a tool that’s using AI.”

Expanding curriculum alignment and parent access

Seesaw plans to add functionality to the Reading Fluency Assessment tool, including the ability for educators to upload passages as PDFs (with questions) and generate leveled passages from a prompt, rather than copying and pasting or choosing from Seesaw’s pre-loaded library. This will allow greater alignment with core curriculum requirements. It will also elevate Seesaw’s reading tools from measuring fluency alone to assessing whether students truly understand what they read—expanding the ways schools can use Seesaw to support literacy growth.

For both Seesaw and VUSD, the key takeaway from their experience is clear: to be successful, EdTechs need to work directly with real students and teachers when developing their tools. “If it doesn’t work in the trenches, don’t try to sell it as a superpower,” advised Carter.

Learn more about how AWS powers better learning outcomes for students of all ages.

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