Northern Lehigh School District will embark on an English/language arts pilot study at both of its elementary schools this school year.

Assistant Superintendent Karen Nicholas notified the school board on Monday of the English/Language Arts K-6 Pilot Study, which she said will entail two different reading series this year at Slatington Elementary School and Peters Elementary School."This will not be an inexpensive decision," Nicholas said.Nicholas estimated the cost would be about $140,000 for all the materials for the English/language arts for grades K-6.She said the district will be collecting data throughout this coming school year to see how the students are progressing, and based on that, will make a recommendation to the school board at the end of the year for the 2017-18 school year."We're looking for the best of the best for our students," Nicholas said. "We want to make sure children have access to the proper phonics, phonetic awareness, comprehension and fluency that's going to give them a firm foundation in the early grades so that as they move forward, they can be proficient readers."She said the district has found that the new reading series has a multitude of digital components that it doesn't have with the series that its presently using.Further, Nicholas said that teachers can have the students do the assessment online, and the assessment is graded automatically so that the teachers can analyze the data and immediately work with the students on their weaknesses."With the digital capacity, the research components are fantastic, and also there's a great deal of nonfiction literature as a major component of these new series," she said. "And we know that our young students are very interested in nonfiction."She added, "It really is very motivational, and the students are anxious to read because they want to find out about something in the world. We all know that the more reading that you do, the better you will become as a reader. Practice makes perfect."Nicholas said the first day of training was held Tuesday, and that the teachers in the training "seemed very excited about the new pieces of literature they're going to be sharing with the students throughout the school year."