Early Literacy Screener FAQ

An academic screener is:

• A short, informal test that is given to all students to determine whether further testing is needed
• Not a formal evaluation for learning difficulties or an evaluation for a learning disability
   

Proactive and intense intervention to address reading difficulties is the best way to prevent early problems from becoming more severe over time. 

With early identification and early intervention, students at risk for reading difficulties, including dyslexia, can succeed in school and graduate ready for college, career, and civic life.
 

None of the PSD assessments diagnose dyslexia.

Our assessments are designed to identify what students know, and what they don't know in order to design instruction to meet student needs.

The screener assesses student ability to understand and distinguish sounds that make up a word (this is called phonological awareness) and the ability to connect the sounds that make up words with the letters in the word (this is called phonics).

Difficulties with these skills are areas associated with dyslexia.

Not necessarily. There are many reasons a student may have difficulty with these skills. Any of the following could be reasons:

• During remote learning it might have been difficult to fully develop these skills in class;
• Not enough time or attention was given to develop skills in these areas;
• When learning more than one language, it is possible what looks like a difficulty on a test is actually a result of the assessment being in English only. Using the World-class Instruction Design and Assessment (WIDA) assessment for multilingual learners helps ensure we know more about the student's abilities; and
• Other factors may interfere with students' ability to focus on developing these skills. (During times of trauma, attendance in class, attention challenges, etc.)

Dyslexia may be a cause, especially if the student has received and attended to specific instruction in these areas and continues to struggle.
 

If a student has an identified weakness in phonics or phonological awareness, they will be provided instruction in these areas using a more explicit curriculum targeted to their skill needs.

These interventions may be delivered by an interventionist or a classroom teacher.
 

For the purposes of screening students for weaknesses in literacy skill development that many be associated with dyslexia, PSD is using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Assessment (DIBELS).

DIBELS provides the following screening tools:

• DIBELS 
  • Phoneme Segmentation Fluency 
  • Letter Naming Fluency
  • Nonsense Word Fluency
• Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN)
  • In the winter benchmark session, kindergarten and first grade students will participate in the
    i-Ready RAN assessments. A RAN is a task that involves quickly and accurately naming aloud a series of familiar items. This includes letters, numbers, colors, and objects found in a classroom.

The DIBELS Assessment, which includes the phonological awareness and phonics assessments, is administered in the first few weeks of school for first through fifth grade students, and then all kindergarten through fifth grade students in January and April.

The RAN will be administered in January to all kindergarten and first grade students. It may also be used for older students when reading difficulties are detected.