In a kindergarten classroom, children drilled down on the sounds different letters and combinations of letters can make, and rules to go along with them.

“No English word ends in -i. Use a?” their teacher prompted them.

“Y!” they shouted.

The focus on phonics is a major change for P.S. 125 in Harlem -- and a preview of some of what’s to come at about half the city’s school districts next fall, as the education department begins phasing in a requirement to use a curriculum based on a structured literacy approach.

The shift comes after years of using balanced literacy -- a method Schools Chancellor David Banks says failed too many children. Many educators say they saw that up close in their own classrooms.

“It was kind of just like keep moving forward, this is what, how you're supposed to do it, even though we knew as educators that children weren't reading and learning to read,” Principal Yael Leopold said.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to make changes. When Leopold was first approached about being a pilot school for new approaches to better help struggling readers, including those with dyslexia, she said: “Absolutely not.”

She was worried about changing the culture of her school. But assured its focus on social justice could remain, she jumped in. 

She spent the summer taking down old materials from balanced literacy curricula -- which emphasizes memorizing sight words, using context to make guesses, and learning to read by developing a love for reading. 

Structured literacy goes back to basics -- breaking words into syllables and sounds, and building vocabulary and comprehension from there. 

“It's a really hard shift to make as an educator, when you've worked so hard to finally understand something, to get in your craft of doing whatever that is, and to be told that how you've been doing it is not what's best for children,” Leopold said.

But once teachers learned more, they were all-in, she says. Many of them -- like Tiffany Smartt -- had experienced their own frustrations with balanced literacy.

“It was, like, you know, if you kept exposing them, eventually, they would get it. And eventually they got some of it. But as they moved on, you know, from grade to grade, they hit this roadblock, and they would struggle,” Smartt recalled of the old approach. “One of the things that I always grappled with was that I wasn't really teaching them how to read well, I was just giving them words, enough times that they were memorizing it."

Smartt now helps both teachers and students adapt to the new approach to literacy.

There was a lot to learn. P.S. 125 is using the Into Reading curriculum hundreds of  schools will adopt next year, along with additional programs for phonics and phonemic awareness. Teachers were also trained in Orton-Gillingham, a technique for breaking down words that is often used for children with reading disabilities.

Much of the work happens in what’s called Tier One instruction -- to the whole class. Tier Two focuses on smaller, and Tier Three even smaller settings for struggling readers. On a recent visit, rather than spelling words, children were spelling out specific sounds, often represented by just a single letter.

“When they're in the whole group, sometimes things just move a little quick for them,” Smartt said. “And so we pull them into smaller groups just to provide that support that they need, in a pace that's slower for them and giving them the time they need to really master the concepts before we move on.”

When the pilot was rolled out, it was centered around children with dyslexia -- something Mayor Adams struggled with, undiagnosed until he was in college. But with the way reading is taught being changed from the ground up at P.S. 125, it's reaching a much wider group for children.

“The way we teach to children who have dyslexia or theoretically have dyslexia has benefited all of our children in our school," Leopold said.

It’s too early for there to be much data, but staff says almost all students have shown growth in their literacy. For some, it’s been more dramatic. 

First grader Jayden told NY1 his favorite book he read this year was The Giving Tree.

“It had good stories. And as the boy got older in the story he got greedier and greedier,” he said.

Leopold says that focusing down on the basics hasn’t stopped children from also comprehending the themes of the text they read.

“The ability to talk about complex ideas, like the idea of being greedy, or the idea of what happens when people grow old is only something that can happen when a child is able to have that foundation to be able to read, and also the ability to read fluently,” she said.

And the structured approach hasn’t stopped these children from developing the love of reading that was a selling point of balanced literacy. 

Emerson couldn’t pick a favorite book.

“I like all of them,” he said.

That prompted a barrage of questions from two of his friends seated beside him.

“Even the Peter Pan ones?”

“Even the boring ones?”

“Even the ones that only have one page?”

“Even the ones that have infinity pages?”