Literacy Acts 20 & 86: Mid Term Exam 2025

• Study notes for Mid Term Exam 2025

New Laws Impacting Districts

• Act 20 and Act 86. place new demands for reading instruction and interventions in school districts.

Act 20: Enhancing Early Literacy

• Focuses on phonics through universal instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics.
• Mandates universal screening of early literacy skills that leads to reading interventions as needed.
• Aims to ensure 3rd-grade reading proficiency.

Act 86: Dyslexia

• Provides schools and parents with resources related to dyslexia.
• Covers screening, instruction, and interventions for students with dyslexia.
• Relies on the Science of Reading, an interdisciplinary evidence base.
• Includes Scarborough’s Reading Rope, which integrates Language Comprehension and Word Recognition for reading skills.
• Formula for Reading Comprehension: RC = LC x WR (reading comprehension = language comprehension x word recognition).

Problem Solving Considerations

• Students have unique needs, so problem-solving requires careful consideration and planning by school psychologists and teams.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

• Provides multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement.
• Addresses the "Why, What, and How" of learning.
  • How learners gather facts and process information.
  • How learners organize and express their ideas.
  • How learners get and stay engaged and motivated.

Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS)

• Uses a tiered approach to identify struggling students.
• Includes universal screening and progress monitoring.
  • If 80% of the class meets Tier 1 expectations, the problem is individual.
  • If less than 80% meet Tier 1 expectations, the problem is classwide.

Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM)

• Measures student progress in core academic subjects to identify students who need extra help and to adjust instruction.

CBM vs. Other Measures

• CBM focuses on the curriculum and provides good sampling, unlike standardized tests.
• CBM uses alterable, instruction-sensitive variables to expose the impact of instruction.
• CBM is low inference and directly related to assessment data.
• CBM uses criterion-referenced measures, not norm-referenced.

CBM Core Assumptions

• CBM is dynamic, serving as an indicator of basic skills in reading, math, and writing that is sensitive between and within students.
• More testing may be required to understand the problem.

Five Questions of CBM

• Is there a problem? (gap between actual and expected performance)
• Is the problem serious? (How large is the gap?)
• Is there a goal to work towards? (What is the important outcome?)
• Is the intervention effective? (How do we know when to change instruction?)
• When can we stop? (When the intervention has shown to be effective and there are no gaps)

Decisions Made with CBM

• Screening decisions: Which students need help?
• Progress monitoring decisions: When to modify instruction or set a new goal?
• Diagnostic decisions: What kind of help is needed?
• Outcome decisions: When can help be discontinued?

Graphing CBM Results

• A box and whisker graph can char results of CBMs.
  • Box = average range.
  • Bottom Whisker = below average.
  • Above Whisker = above average.
  • Plotted points = student scores.
  • Includes fall, winter, and spring benchmark periods.

Setting a Goal with Data

• Use data to set goals.
• Monitor progress to determine if the goal is being met.

Curriculum-Based Measures in Reading (CBM-R)

• Five types of CBM-R: Letter Naming Fluency, First Sound Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, Nonsense Word Fluency, and Oral Reading Fluency.

Letter Naming Fluency

• Students name as many letters as possible in one minute.

First Sound Fluency (DIBELS)

• Assesses the ability to recognize and produce the initial sound in an orally presented word.
  • Example: What sound does "sun" start with?
• Benchmark for kindergarteners.
  • If kindergarteners are behind = intensive intervention is needed

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency

• Assesses the ability to segment words into individual phonemes.
  • Example: "Together" to-get-her.
• Predictor of later reading achievement.

Nonsense Word Fluency

• Assesses letter-sound correspondence and ability to blend letters into words.
• Focuses on phonological decoding.

Oral Reading Fluency

• Measures reading errors (mispronunciations, substitutions, omissions, transpositions).
• Assessed only after 2nd grade.
  • Focus changes from learning to read to reading to learn.

Educational Decision Making

• Determines the effectiveness of an intervention.

Computing Goals

• Select norms to use (not too far ahead or behind the grade’s 50th percentile).
• Find a goal: one category up for next benchmark and use ROI of that goal
• ROI x 1.5 (ambitious goal) = WPM of improvement.
• Multiply by 18 or 36 weeks.
• Add product to initial start point score to predict the score at the next benchmark.

4-Point Rule

• Requires 3 weeks of instruction with at least 6 data points.
• Examine the last 4 points against the aim line.
  • Aim line: anticipated rate of growth to meet the goal at next benchmark.
  • Above or below the line = change intervention.
  • Meeting the aim line = keep the intervention.

Trend Line

• Requires 4 or more weeks of instruction and 8-12 data points.
• Examine the data trend, and determine if the data is bouncing or behaving.
  • Wait to change the intervention until sufficient data points are present.

Intervention Considerations

• Include instructional strategies, group size, and intensity. -Also, include materials used, and reinforcements for buy-in.

Reading Intervention Myths

• Common myths in the educational system include:
  • Learning to read is a natural process.
  • Children will learn to read eventually, given enough time.
  • Reading programs are "successful".
  • We used to do a better job of teaching children to read.
  • Skilled reading involves guessing words using syntactic and semantic cues.
  • Research can support any belief.
  • Some people are genetically dyslexic.
  • Short-term tutoring can get struggling readers caught up.
  • If it's in the curriculum, children will learn it.

Interventions for the National Reading Panel’s “Big Five”

• Phonemic Awareness: Sound boxes for segmenting words into phonemes.
• Phonics: Explicit teaching of phoneme-grapheme relationships.
  • Beginning consonant
  • common endings
• Fluency: Assisted Reading.
• Vocabulary: Frayer Model.
• Comprehension: Reciprocal Teaching.

Factors Affecting Reading Comprehension

• RIOT x ICEL helps determine the difficulties related to reading.
  • Instruction: Evidence-based reading instruction?
  • Curriculum: Does the curriculum align with the student's skill level?
  • Environment: Are there distractions or difficulties in the learning setting?
  • Learner: Does the student have decoding fluency or comprehension gaps?

Interventions Before Reading

• Pre-teach vocabulary for unfamiliar words.
• Activate background knowledge to engage thinking.
• Preview the text by skimming headings or discussing key themes.

Interventions During Reading

• Chunking the Text: Break the passage into smaller sections.
• Guided Comprehension Questions: What just happened? What do you predict next?
• Reciprocal Teaching: Summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting in small groups.

Interventions After Reading

• Graphic Organizers: Use story maps, cause/effect charts, and main idea webs.
• Discussion & Retelling: Have students explain the story in their own words.
• Written Responses: Assign exit tickets, journals, or summaries.

Math CBM

• Math doesn’t mimic reading, so there are three math CBM scales.

Tests of Early Numeracy

• Assess foundational math skills such as number identification, quantity comparison, identifying missing numbers, and basic counting and operations.

M-COMP - Computation

• Assesses the ability to perform arithmetic operations correctly.

M-CAP - Concepts & Application

• Assesses problem-solving and conceptual understanding.

Progress Monitoring in Math

• Math CBM scales may not be useful because math skills don't develop sequentially.

Writing CBM

• Writing is more complex than reading and math.

Total Words Written (TWW)

• Suitable for primary grades only.
• Assesses simple sentence structure and vocabulary.

Words Spelled Correct (WSC)

• Suitable for primary and intermediate grades only.

Correct Word Sequence (CWS)

• Assesses two correctly spelled words in a row.
• Suitable for upper grades.

Incorrect Word Sequence (IWS)

• Measures the number of incorrect word sequences.

Total Correct Punctuation (TCP)

• Represents a promising option for assessment.