Early Literacy Screening & Dyslexia

Edmonds administers a Literacy Screener to all K-2 Students three times each year.  A Literacy Screener is designed to answer the initial assessment question: Who might need extra help?  Screeners do not diagnose dyslexia. Instead they help to determine the right instructional support in order for schools to be proactive in providing literacy instruction in areas students have not fully developed. Providing literacy support in the early years helps prevent reading delays that may arise in later years.

Keep in mind there is no, one, single universally adopted assessment that can be used to definitely identify if a student has dyslexia (Odegard, 2019). We instead rely on a “pattern” or “cluster” of concerns.

Edmonds uses Acadience Reading as its literacy screener. 

Purpose of Acadience Reading: to quickly identify students that MAY have a difficulty in the area being assessed.

The following areas are assessed with Acadience:

• Phonemic Awareness: Hearing and using sounds in spoken words
• Phonics: Knowing the sounds of the letters and sounding out written words
• Letter Names: Identifying the name for each letter
• Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN): Quickly identifying a series of letters, familiar objects or colors
  • Per state mandate RAN is administered during the winter benchmark only
  • RAN Cut Points for Risk
• Accurate and Fluent Reading: Reading passages easily, expressively and quickly with few mistakes

Acadience Reading is a state approved assessment in compliance with E2SSB 6162.

For information from the state of Washington (OSPI) on literacy screening please see the following:

Educational Information for Parents and Families (English PDF)
Educational Information for Parents and Families (multiple languages)

Once a school has identified students who did not meet the benchmark standard on the screening assessment (and therefore “might need extra help” and can be considered “at-risk”), we move to the next set of assessments to help us answer the obvious next question, “What kind of help do they need?”

Diagnostics Assessments: What kind of help do they need? 

Purpose: to determine the specific skills in which a student needs more instruction or intervention.  An academic diagnostic does not diagnose or determine if a student has a disability. Instead, it pinpoints specific skills that are underdeveloped.

• Benchmark Skill Inventory
• Phonological Awareness for Intervention (PASI)
• Phonics Screener for Intervention (PSI)

Families will receive notification letters along with the screener results if their child does not meet the benchmark criteria and the diagnostic assessment confirms there are areas the student needs support.

Instructional Materials

Edmonds school district uses the following instructional resource to address foundational literacy skills in a structured literacy approach.

95 Percent Group  

The 95 Phonics Core Program (95 PCP) adds an explicit phonics strand to the daily Reading Block to ensure that all K-5 students receive consistent evidence and research-based phonics instruction to improve outcomes. 

When a student demonstrates a significant or persistent difficulty with phonemic awareness or phonics skills, 95 Percent Group intervention materials provide an additional evidence-based, multi-sensory phonemic awareness and phonics intervention that aligns to the Phonics Core Program taught in the classroom.

These assessments and instructional materials are implemented by staff who are well trained in these materials and in structured literacy interventions.
 

It is important for educators and families to be able to talk about early literacy difficulties. Identifying learning needs and working together to support and intervene early is the best way to prevent problems from becoming more severe over time. OSPI has provided two guides to help families and teachers have these discussions during conferences or other meetings.

Family and Caregiver Discussion Guide (English) Family and Caregiver Discussion Guide (multiple languages)

Educator Discussion Guide with Families and Caregivers

Edmonds School District has adapted a Dyslexia Screening Worksheet from Acadience Reading to support families and school staff in identifying definitive indicators of risk for dyslexia and other reading difficulties. 
 

Dyslexia is a specific learning disorder that is neurological in origin and that is characterized by unexpected difficulties with accurate or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities that are not consistent with the person's intelligence, motivation, and sensory capabilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological components of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge. (E2SSB 6162)

This definition of dyslexia is adopted by the 65th WA State Legislature, 2018 Regular Session.

Dyslexia is: (from the OSPI Implementation Guide: Early Screening of Dyslexia)

• A difference that makes processing speech sounds difficult, specifically the ability to hear, substitute, and change individual sounds in words.
• Characterized by challenges with reading and spelling, particularly with the connections between letters and sounds.
• Likely to lead to problems learning and remembering vocabulary, understanding what is read, getting thoughts on paper.
• Not related to overall intelligence.
• Not a visual problem or caused by a lack of motivation, interest, or exposure to rich literature, or ineffective classroom instruction.

Additional information is available on the OSPI website:

Dyslexia Fact Sheet

Dyslexia web page

Multilingual learners in Edmonds at all levels of English proficiency receive core instruction and assessment in the foundational skills of reading, in addition to literacy intervention as needed. All students, including multilingual learners, are screened using Acadience Reading as part of our K-2 literacy screener for skills that may be associated with dyslexia. Students in our dual language program may be screened with IDEL, the Spanish alternative to Acadience Reading.

Students with reading difficulties should be identified as early as possible, but it is important to not confuse language development with a reading disability. Multilingual learners may:

• Exhibit reading behaviors and characteristics that look like native English speakers who have reading disabilities (but do not have learning disabilities).
• Struggle with both language and reading, and students of any language can have dyslexia regardless of their linguistic background.

To ensure educators are meeting student instructional needs, ALL multilingual learners are included in early literacy screening except during their first four months of U.S. schooling, per OSPI guidance. As a result, some multilingual learners may not be screened until the winter or spring assessment windows to ensure they have been enrolled for four months.
 

State law does not require districts to screen students in grades 3 through 6 (RCW 28A.320.26). The purpose of screening K-2 students is to intervene early and reduce or eliminate the severity of potential reading difficulties. Screeners do not diagnose Dyslexia. Third graders who scored below benchmark on previous Acadience testing, will be screened with Acadience Reading for Title I/LAP services. 

In Edmonds, our Title I/LAP base model across all elementary schools is providing additional literacy support to students in grades K-3. Some schools receive additional federal funding based on their free and reduced lunch percentage to extend services beyond 2nd grade. Students in 4th through 6th grade who did not meet standard on the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) will be screened with Acadience Reading. There is no guarantee that students in 4th through 6th grade will receive reading intervention through Title I/LAP. 
Families who have reading concerns about their child in grades 3-6 should start by talking to their child’s classroom teacher.

Supporting students in 3rd grade and above

Students attending private schools and live within district boundaries may request to have their child screened with the K-2 Literacy Skills Screener. Contact Tory Amos or Megan McCarthy for more information regarding screening. 

Students who are homeschooled and live within district boundaries may request to have their child screened with the K-2 Literacy Skills Screener. Homeschool students who are enrolled in Edmonds Heights Homeschool Resource Center will be screened through Edmonds Heights. Students who are not enrolled in Edmonds Heights will be screened at their neighborhood school. 

Contact Tory Amos or Megan McCarthy for more information regarding screening.