Universal Reading Screening: What Parents Need to Know Now!
It’s a busy weeknight and you just sat at the kitchen table to work on homework with your first grader. You didn’t have to do this with your older child, but this child is really struggling with her homework and it breaks your heart. She has a hard time putting sentences together and her handwriting is difficult to read. You can see she needs help but you just don’t even know where to start.
Realizing that your child may be struggling to read can be overwhelming, isolating, and frustrating. Early intervention is the most critical and crucial part of reading success. If you feel that your child is struggling to read at school, you may be wondering what you can do.
Your first step is to ask your child’s teacher for the results of his/her universal screening. Currently, more than forty states mandate universal reading screening for children in kindergarten through third grade. The screening determines a student’s risk of reading problems and the potential risk for dyslexia.
What is Universal Screening?
A universal screener is a tool that provides educators with a snapshot of each student’s early literacy skills. The universal screener is administered to students at the beginning, in the middle, and again at the end of the school year. The screeners will flag if and when a student is not meeting grade-level benchmarks.
Every student in the class will go through the screening process, then their teacher will use the data to determine if a student needs extra help.
Universal Reading Screeners:
The exact screener that is used in your child’s school will vary by state or school district. The following list of screeners are widely used, research-based, K-3 universal screeners:
Acadiance Reading (formerly DIBELS NexT)
aimswebPLUS
Amira Learning
DIBELS 6th and 8th Edition
mCLASS
STAR
NWEA - MAP Growth
Perhaps you recognize the name of one of these screeners. It’s our hope that your student’s teacher shared this data with you. If not, you can request your child’s results.
What Can My Child’s Universal Screener Tell Me?
The universal screener measures your child’s critical thinking skills and the abilities necessary for reading success.
It also assesses the critical components of early literacy, which are:
Phonemic awareness - the ability to identify and manipulate phonemes, or individual sounds, in spoken words.
Phonics - the correlation of sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system.
Fluency - the ability to read accurately, smoothly, and with expression.
Your child’s results on their universal screener will drive instruction, moving forward.
Take a minute to review Seven Signs of Dyslexia.
Questions to Ask About Universal Screening
You, as a parent, have a right to view your child’s results of their universal reading screening. If it is not sent home with your child, contact the teacher and ask for the results.
Once you review your child’s results, follow up with these important questions:
Which benchmark assessment was used?
What were my child’s results?
What cutoff score does the district use to provide intervention?
If my child does not meet the cutoff score, what services are you required to offer?
How are you using the information from the universal screener to guide instruction?
The answers to these questions are especially important to you if your child is hovering just above the cutoff. If the cutoff is 25% and your child is at 26%, then you want to know that so you can monitor their progress closely.
If your child falls below the cutoff, then you want to know how your child’s teacher is using that information to guide instruction, whether in whole class or small group tiered intervention.
If you have a struggling reader, don’t delay! Learn what you need to know today. Watch our recent webinar to learn more about universal dyslexia screening, tiered intervention, progress monitoring, the Science of Reading (SOR), signs of dyslexia, and how you can help your child.