Introducing any kind of new program to a school or district means convincing administrators to green light the time and resources necessary to make it happen. It can be a big undertaking, but some ideas are too good to pass up.
That’s how Vanessa Hill felt when she came across the idea for SOS, which stands for Stretch or Support – a game-based program designed by educators Elizabeth Uptegrove and Corrie Glover for their students in Charleston County, South Carolina.
In her district located in Tucson, Arizona, Vanessa is the Gifted Education Coordinator for Amphitheater Public Schools and was recognized as a Gifted Coordinator of the Year by NAGC in 2024. Her district already used CogAT, and she was seeking out new ways to make the most of it. So, when Elizabeth Uptegrove, a fellow Gifted Coordinator colleague in Charleston, SC hosted a webinar with Riverside Insight for CogAT about her SOS program, it clicked with Vanessa – and it was only a matter of time before the students of Amphitheater Schools were developing their cognitive skills simply by doing what kids do best: playing.
It’s not a secret to any educator or caregiver that kids learn by playing. But what if you could use data to ensure kids are engaging in the specific kind of play activities that will address their individual areas of improvement and push them to further hone the skills they do have? That’s essentially what Uptegrove sought out to do in South Carolina.
The key to SOS is CogAT, a universal ability screener that is used to gain insights into the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of students and their ability to learn regardless of their achievement levels. While CogAT has historically been used specifically as a gifted student screening tool, but the educators of Charleston County realized how much value there is in knowing where students excel and where they need additional support across three main areas: verbal, nonverbal, and quantitative reasoning. Using CogAT results, teachers grouped students as needing "stretch" and “support” in each of the three areas, then assigned students games to play based on those groupings. That way, a student who excels in verbal skills but struggles with quantitative reasoning, for example, will get to “stretch” her verbal abilities by playing Apples to Apples alongside similarly skilled peers, and will work on her quantitative skills by playing number games with peers who also need additional support in that area. And with CogAT informing the groupings, all that’s left to do is schedule the time and provide the games.
“I participated in the webinar,” Vanessa says, “and I instantly fell in love with that program and went right to my associate superintendent to ask for funding.”
It’s not a secret to any educator or caregiver that kids learn by playing. But what if you could use data to ensure kids are engaging in the specific kind of play activities that will address their individual areas of improvement and push them to further hone the skills they do have? That’s essentially what Uptegrove sought out to do in South Carolina.
It was an immediate hit with kids, teachers, and even administrators. The way she implemented SOS at Amphitheater was tied to specific achievement goals, so they were able to demonstrate that SOS game time was really making a difference in helping students build skills in their identified areas. Being able to point to the program’s efficacy impressed district administrators and gave Vanessa grounds for expanding the program to other schools and grades.
It even got the attention of educators who aren’t yet formally participating in the program. Vanessa and her colleagues are aiming for steady growth, expanding SOS to just three additional schools this year – “But,” she says, “what would happen is, principals would reach out to me and say, ‘Hey, we want to buy all those games for our maker space.’” Educators in her district aren’t just willing to consider trying it out, they’re enthusiastic about the idea and want to get in on the action. Everyone, it seems, is eager to see SOS grow within their district.
For nearly a century, Riverside Insights has created research-backed assessments that empower educators with the insights needed to understand each student’s strengths and challenges. From identifying overlooked needs to navigating complex learner profiles, our best-in-class assessments—including the Woodcock-Johnson V® (WJ V™) and Cognitive Abilities Test™ (CogAT®)—deliver actionable data that help educators transform student trajectories and meet the evolving needs of today’s learners.
Given that the SOS program is still new and limited within Amphitheater Schools, initial data analysis is positive as students who participated in SOS classroom experiences learning gains of 6% in ELA and 3% in Mathematics, while other cohorts without SOS did not experience those same gains.
Amongst the many conclusions Vanessa has uncovered in her work with CogAT and SOS! Is that one in comparing one school in their district, which serves a very marginalized population, to another which serves a more secure and affluent population, they’ve noticed that the growth of students at the less-privileged school is keeping pace with their peers at the more privileged school. It’s well-known that students from underserved communities can often fall behind early in their education and never manage to catch up. If a little bit of strategic playtime can help keep those students on track and remain competitive alongside their more-affluent peers, we say: Game on.