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Litnerd — The Pixar for education, reading program for K-5 schools
Litnerd is an online classroom reading program that brings books to life by blending the creator economy to traditional education. Programs include episode reenactments of books, ELA lesson plans, curriculum and ebooks.
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@evanlodge Hey Evan! Great to see W15 fam in the comments/questions :) A few factors go into the selection of our books. 1) we designate books based on Lexile score and have a small (but growing) library of books sperate by PreK to K, Grades 1-2 and Grades 3-5. We want to ensure the books that we are building our programs around are age appropriate and just the right amount of challenge for our young readers. 2) We select books that focus on messages of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills. We feel SEL is an important element in teaching with empathy and that it should be layered into all subjects 3) We focus on diversity. We can't have kids generate interest in our books if they can't relate to the characters. Students need to 'see' themselves in the stories we tell.
@evanlodge ps you can learn a bit more about our approach to book selection here https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/2...
Love the very thoughtful approach and go-to-market strategy! Congrats on the launch @theanisamirza!
@anson_kao thank you, Anson! 🔥🤓 has big targets for September and cannot wait to begin the new school year 💪
Hello Product Hunt fam! First off, big thanks to Kat for hunting us!
My name is Anisa and I am the founder of Litnerd. Excited to be back in YC with S21 batch (I was previously YC W15). The mission we are solving is extremely personal for me.
Litnerd’s mission is to inspire elementary school students to fall in love with reading by blurring the line between learning and entertainment. Our reading program is part of scheduled classroom time for elementary schools.
🎭 HOW IT WORKS: We recreate scenes directly from books in episode style format to bring the book to life — in a similar fashion to watching your favorite TV shows. Teachers have no additional burden when deploying our programs in their classrooms; all of our programs come with lesson plans, activity packets, curriculum correlations, educator resources, and complete ebooks!
🗽 TRACTION: Launched in January 2021, Litnerd is a contracted vendor with the New York City Department of Education. We are used by over 14,000 students in their classrooms and growing at 60% MoM.
📚 THE PROBLEM: Today, schools spend approx. $20 Billion on reading and ELA programs. Yet 42% of their students still cannot read proficiently by the 4th grade. Furthermore, the decline in literacy and reading proficiency increases amongst Title 1 schools (schools where the majority of the student population is from low-income families). Litnerd is on a mission to change that!
💡 INSPIRATION: Lin-Manuel Miranda took a history book (the story of Alexander Hamilton) and brought it to life through art and theatre as the musical “Hamilton”. From there he created EduHam — a history teaching program used in public schools across the nation. So too will Litnerd teach students with that same inspiration of bringing subjects to life through story-telling.
💰 OFFER: Elementary schools get 20% off for September enrollment. Contact us to signup at this discounted price with the code PRODUCTHUNTER20.
HOW YOU CAN HELP: We would LOVE introductions to principals at elementary schools! Please email us at contact@litnerd.com if you are willing to facilitate an intro!
I look forward to the feedback of this community and cannot wait to answer any questions from you!
Sincerely,
Anisa and Team Litnerd!
Love the mission of Litnerd. But I have heard a lot about teachers spending their own time and money to help their students already. Does this add to their plate?
@freddier Heya Freddy!! You are absolutely correct that US teachers typically spend four to ten hours (unpaid) each week planning their curriculum and $400-800 of their own money for classroom supplies. Litnerd doesn’t add to this teacher burden, and in fact eases it. We provide everything needed including: digital books, curriculum correlations, educator resources, complete lesson plans and recorded or live-streamed content (created by our Resident Teaching Artists). Our program augments the classroom’s existing English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum and integrates with the school’s Common Core curriculum with no additional work on the part of the teachers.
This is really interesting @theanisamirza. This might sound old fashioned but doesn’t the entertainment aspect take away from building a reading habit? How do you balance the video and reading ?
@neilxm Hey buddy! Thanks for stopping by :) In fact, the correlation is the opposite - by utilizing a sticky medium (short form episodes that mimic kids favourite TV shows, characters they love, musical numbers etc), we spark students' interest in reading. The number one reason kids cite for not reading is that reading is BORING to them. By taking the boredom factor out of it, we help kids truly engage with the content they are learning and find books engaging. This is very much in line with the thesis behind Sesame Street (the founder of Sesame Street wanted to encourage reading in kids back in the 60s and she realized that TV is the best sticky medium to achieve this behaviour change and encourage reading at higher rates).
@neilxm I should add, the format of our program is such that each episode doesn't build on the last. Instead, if you don't complete the assigned reading and worksheets, you will feel like you are missing out on what is happening in proceeding episodes! In this way, reading is layered in as a fundamental core to the program.
This is, oh so awesome an idea! Like you point out though, the schools that need it the most are also currently very underfunded. What happens if a school cannot afford to fund this? Can an individual or company pay for it? Is that an option?
@pj_mukh PJ you're totally right! So.... we recently launched a corporate partnership/sponsorship opportunity where companies may offer to fund our programs within schools. They may select the school or, they can choose from our existing wait-list. For more information https://litnerd.com/for-companies/
Hi Anisa! Litnerd looks awesome. I'm curious, how would teachers adopt the platform, my mother is a teacher in Texas and if she were to use this for curriculum, what would be the steps to go about it?
@syedahmedz Thank you, Syed. Our new teacher and new school onboarding process is a little manual right now. If your mom fills out this form online, info + pricing will def be sent to her and a demo or onboarding can be setup: https://litnerd.com/contact/
This is awesome, @anisa! Reminds me of growing up & watching Wishbone on PBS (except this looks way more engaging).
@anisa @bytingtheapple Thank you, Dan :) We're hoping that our programs can offer the right mix of entertainment (while being relevant/cool to a pretty tough crowd: NYC kids) and solid education (we follow Common Core curriculum with all our lesson plans and always pick age appropriate books that have just the right level of challenge!)
@givemetap I missed this one! For us, schools opening back up is best. We were actually mostly used in classroom from Jan-June because elementary schools were allowed to return back to in-person first (before middle and high school). While we can accommodate remote and hybrid learning, our product is designed to be used in classroom for best outcomes.
Fantastic to see this continue to progress to the next stage! Have you expanded beyond the original broadway focus for classes?
@funkstop hey Rahim! Thanks for stopping by! We moved away from that entirely as of September last year. We pivoted to Litnerd and launched live in January with a B2B focus on selling to schools (growing at 60% MoM - so we realized we were on to something). We’re contracted vendors with the largest education district in American and so our curriculum and reading program aligns with academic Common Core guidelines. We believe in teaching through story-telling and we utilize amazing art and theatre professionals to reenact books into TV-style episode format, integrated with our curriculum, quizzes, lesson plans, ebooks etc.
Absolutely love this mission and I love that you guys are already a contracted vendor with the New York City Department of Education (Right in my backyard, go Liternerd!)
My girlfriend teaches 4th grade @ Success Academy here in Brooklyn and I can't wait to show this to her!
@andrew_tsao thank you so much! Yes, we’re NYC Strong 💪 and just recently began work in other cities/states. Cannot wait to hear what your gf thinks! If she has questions, please be in touch!
Why did you choose to go the school route versus creating something for parents to use at home?
@chris_nguyen3 Great question! This is sort of what @mwseibel pressed us on during our YC interview. Here's the thing.. to solve the problem of childhood illiteracy, we are going to need an integrated approach that blends innovation, government collaboration and education reform. While the future of what this looks like remains unknown, one thing remains clear: the influx of startups focussed on the B2C consumerization of K-12 edtech will not work. This isn’t simply because parents can’t pay out of pocket. Rather, because for 95% of Americans, who are working a typical 9-5 job, school is free daycare! You cant afford to have your 6 year old learning from home if you have to go to work, no matter how fabulous the online teacher is! To truly disrupt the socio-economic divide and its impact on childhood illiteracy rates, we need a solution that works from the outside in - a solution that is free and integrated within traditional schools.
I should get royalties for this name because I was a true lit nerd growing up. Nothing was more exciting to me than opening up a book and being transported to Middle Earth, Lilliput, or the Alaskan frontier. My reading empowered me to think independently, speak confidently, and dream constantly.
Fast forward 20 years and there’s a lot more competition for kids’ attention today. I’m so excited to see Litnerd taking modern tools and making all these fantastic stories more accessible.
Reading changed my life and I can’t wait to see Litnerd help it do the same for today’s students.
@scheff61 Damn, Jesse - we'll setup another pizza and cocktail day to discuss royalties ;) This is so kind of you to share. We promise you Litnerd is going to change the staggering illiteracy stat by helping kids fall in love with reading. We won't stop!
@scheff61 Second this. Books were the best escape growing up, and it is sad to know that this is not always accessible. I'm hoping to see something like Litnerd in every classroom!
@scheff61 @pj_mukh it’s funny - a big part of success involves knowing what is cool for kids esp grades 4 and 5. We found mythical creatures, dungeons and dragons theme etc is what gets our students going at the older grades :) We’re pumped for September. We have our work cut out for us but the team is focussed and committed to helping students across that nation (starting with NYC)!
To see Litnerd go from idea to usage by 14,000 students is still surreal ♥️ Excited to contribute and make an impact. Litnerd to the moon!
@ryan_chang2 thanks, Ryan ♥️ 14,000 students strong - and on track for 30,000 students in September!!
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