Heartland AEA Literacy Newsletter

October is National Dyslexia Awareness Month. All across the country, communities will be making efforts to spotlight a range of dyslexic needs, struggles, and signs. The Iowa Department of Education launched a dyslexia webpage on October 3, 2022.

Anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of Americans have dyslexia. That wide range stems from the fact that many go undiagnosed. And because of the lack of diagnosis, dyslexia wreaks havoc for adults and children alike, all of whom struggle with everyday reading. But if caught early, dyslexia – a language-based learning disability or impairment – can in most cases be successfully addressed through proper supports and interventions. To that end, the Iowa Department of Education has launched a new webpage dedicated to dyslexia in conjunction with Dyslexia Awareness Month.

The webpage is chock full of resources for educators, who are at the front lines in determining whether a child has characteristics of dyslexia and what kind of instruction is needed to address the learning challenges.

“It's important for educators to recognize the characteristics of dyslexia, talk about them openly with families and collaborate to intervene early in addressing learning needs,” said Ann Lebo, director of the Iowa Department of Education. “Supporting Iowa educators and providing them with the guidance, tools and resources they need to recognize, address and instruct students with dyslexia is one of our top priorities.” Lebo thanked the Iowa Dyslexia Board, which lent its expertise to help create the page. “I appreciate the Iowa Dyslexia Board’s work and partnership to improve the literacy outcomes of students with and at-risk for dyslexia,” she said.

Katie Greving, Iowa Dyslexia Board member and executive director of Decoding Dyslexia Iowa, said Dyslexia Awareness Month is a time to educate people about dyslexia.

“October is a time we make special efforts to educate Iowans about what dyslexia is and is not and how to help,” she said. “Dyslexia is so common, and learning about it can be life-changing for teachers, parents and kids. The Department of Education's dyslexia webpage will be a valuable resource for teachers and families."

The webpage includes resources such as:

• Required and recommended response to dyslexia/characteristics of dyslexia, including screening and intervention;
• Required intensive instruction; and
• Required dyslexia related supports for students beyond third grade.

The webpage also includes supports for families as well as required training for educators.
Additional resources and guidance will be regularly added to the webpage and distributed to educators and families.

The genesis of the webpage came when the Iowa Dyslexia Task Force submitted its findings and recommendations relating to dyslexia to the Iowa Legislature in 2019. The task force shared its vision for public education for all students, while attending to the needs of students with dyslexia/characteristics of dyslexia. The vision is as follows:

Every student in Iowa will attend a school where educators understand what dyslexia is and provide explicit, systematic reading instruction as both a part of universal instruction and in specialized interventions, and where every student has access to appropriate accommodations and assistive technology to support learning.

October is recognized worldwide as Dyslexia Awareness Month, and is focused on supporting those with this learning difficulty. Dyslexia is a learning impairment that causes problems with writing, reading, and spelling. There is no correlation to those with dyslexia and their intelligence.The Department’s work focuses on effective responses to students who have dyslexia or characteristics of dyslexia and supporting the needs of those students.

Here are some additional websites that can provide great information and resources for educators and parents:

International Dyslexia Association

University of Florida Literacy Institute Dyslexia Resource Hub

Center for Dyslexia Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia

National Center for Improving Literacy

Understood

Decoding Dyslexia Iowa

With the FAST screening window closing and data review sessions beginning, it is important to ask strategic questions at each grade and classroom level. The first question to ask, is universal core sufficient? Research shows that if 80% of the students are meeting grade level expectations then the universal core is sufficient or healthy. If universal core is not sufficient, then what instructional needs must be met? Included in this section are resources to support evidence-based instructional responses to screening data at the classroom level. For classrooms where there are higher numbers of students with unfinished learning, it is important to implement the big ideas of accelerating learning which involves:

1. Understanding the demands of grade-level materials and content
   
2. Identifying the most critical prerequisite skills and content knowledge students will need to access that grade level content when they encounter it throughout the year.
   

If currently in your classroom or grade level, fewer than 60% of your learners are meeting the universal screening benchmark, in addition to instruction on grade level literacy standards, you will want to consider providing:

• Classwide interventions around the critical prerequisite literacy skills OR
  
• Purposeful practice around high priority literacy skills that students are accurate at but not automatic or effortless.

The Universal Tier Tools provides the following description and guidance regarding class wide interventions: A class wide intervention/program includes foundational content skills or concepts needed to access universal tier and make progress in grade-level standards. Classwide intervention is implemented with an entire class of students. This would be implemented in addition to core instruction in classrooms when large numbers of students are not at benchmark.

Key Components of Classwide Intervention

• Delivered in addition (time) to universal instruction in the Iowa Academic standards, Social-Emotional Learning Competencies and behavioral expectations and part of the universal tier of instruction (everyone receives it).

• Provided to all students in a classroom in Kindergarten through grade 8.

• Driven by data that suggests students need support to learn specific grade-level skill(s) that they should have already mastered.

• Explicit in nature.

• Frequent and ongoing monitoring of student progress and implementation fidelity.

Cllasswide interventions are NOT

• A targeted or intensive intervention for students who are persistently at-risk.

• Differentiation is part of universal instruction used with all learners as part of meeting needs in learning the Iowa Academic Standards, Social-Emotional Learning Competencies and behavioral expectations.

• A replacement for collaboratively identifying and removing barriers to implementation of a comprehensive, effective universal tier.

If an analysis of your student data indicates a majority of the student are accurate at the high priority skill, adding daily purposeful practice routines is an excellent instructional response to ensure automaticity of these skills, and enables student application of these skills.

To assist you, your grade level team, or building in these instructional responses, we have provided two sets of resources. The first set of resources are reference tools that can help with identifying high priority literacy skills as well as critical prerequisite literacy skills for grade level content:

• Building the Foundation

• High Priority Milestones for K-3 Literacy Development

• Big Ideas in Beginning Reading: Curriculum Maps K-3

• Vertical K-12 Progressions for the Iowa Core ELA Standards

The second set of resources are high-impact instructional routines around the 5 main components of reading. The document includes routines, samples of data collection tools, ways to give feedback, and video examples for both synchronous and asynchronous instruction.

• K-2 High Impact Instructional Routines

• 3rd - 8th Grade High Impact Instructional Routines

  
  

If you find your district or building needing support around how high-impact instructional practices can be implemented to accelerate learning, please reach out to your Heartland AEA literacy consultant.

This is the University of Florida Literacy Institute’s Parent Resource Hub! This collection of web-based language and literacy resources was compiled and curated by UFLI faculty and graduate students. We are adding to and refining these resources regularly, so check back often!

Parent resources are organized by the following age/grade spans:

• Birth to PreK
• Primary Grades K-3
• Intermediate Grades 4-6
• Secondary 7-12

Resources for the Birth to PreK include Information for Parents, Activities for Children, Developmental Milestones for Language and Literacy, and Organizations. Resources for the Primary Grades, Intermediate Grades and Secondary Grades include Information for Parents and Student Activities.

One of the examples of Information for Parents for Primary Grades is a video on Blendable Sounds. As children are learning the sounds associated with letters, it’s important that the pronunciation of the sounds are blendable. This video provides an example of how to pronounce the sound associated with each letter of the alphabet.

Another one of the resources shared is a link to the National Center for Improving Literacy. The mission of the NCIL is to increase access to, and use of, evidence-based approaches to screen, identify, and teach students with literacy-related disabilities, including dyslexia.

and to build individual and organizational capacity to assess students’ literacy-related skill, identify students with disabilities or those at risk of disabilities, and fully implement evidence-based literacy programs and professional development. There are infographics, resources and toolkits for families, educators, schools and state agencies.

Did you know vocabulary knowledge is strongly linked to academic success? That it facilitates accurate word recognition? vocabulary knowledge is critical to reading achievement and comprehension, and it is the BEST predictor of reading comprehension. John Hattie's research found the effect size for vocabulary programs is .67!

Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary instruction in grades K-3 is informed by two distinct literatures - Vocabulary literature and Storybook literature. Effective vocabulary instruction:

1. Teaches students the meanings of unfamiliar words and concepts that are essential to understanding text. Vocabulary literature: 300-400 new word meanings can be taught per year through direct instruction. This is a significant proportion of the words that students who are at risk will learn. Provides students opportunities to learn vocabulary through wide independent reading (listening).

2. Provides students opportunities to learn vocabulary through wide independent reading (listening).

• Vocabulary literature is when students use strategies to access word meanings: Contextual analysis and Morphemic analysis.
• Storybook literature: Students learn new vocabulary from oral language experiences like listening to storybooks. (Robbins and Ehri, 1994; Elley, 1989)

3. Nurtures an appreciation and consciousness of words and their use.

A first grade students vocabulary predicts their 11th grade comprehension, so it is essential that

vocabulary instruction is embedded into instructional practice at the elementary and middle school level, to ensure success later on.

A great resource from TextProject (same entity that provides the passages for TopicReads) is

Stories of Words. Stories of Words aims to develop students’ interest in interesting words (e.g., snickerdoodles, terrapin, scuba). The texts in Stories of Words use the TExT model—the same model that underlies all TextProject products (e.g., FYI for Kids) and commercial products (e.g., QuickReads® ). That means that reading the texts also increases students’ exposure to the core vocabulary. Each book of the 16-volume series explores the vocabulary of a different topic such as food, movies, and acronyms.

Each topic falls into one of four methods of how words have been added to the English Language.

1. Languages from other parts of the world.
2. Themes that play a big part of our lives.
3. Words that we’ve manipulated or reused to suit different needs.
4. New words to describe new inventions or technological advances.

You may download the Stories of Words books by topic from this link:

Stories of Words

TopicReads is an evidence-based set of free texts that support vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension for struggling, middle-school readers. Texts become progressively harder across the 6 levels, from an emphasis on the 600 most frequent root words at Level A to Level F, where all 2,500 root word families that make up 90% of all the words in texts appear. The texts are available in two formats: downloadable PDFs or e-books.

Here are the different levels and topics:

Level A

Science: The Five Senses, Starts and Solids, Liquids and Gases

Arts and Culture: Drum, Famous Paintings, Outdoor Art

Social Studies: Americans Who Dream, Careers, and the Stone Age

Literature and Language: Realistic Fiction, Word Play, and Real-World Reading

Level B

Science: Do Animals Talk?, Water and Forces Around Us

Arts and Culture: Popular Foods in the United States, Dance and Wearable Art

Social Studies: National Symbols, Money, Cars: Then and Now

Literacy and Language: Writing Diaries, How the News Gets to You, From Book to Movie

Level C

Science: Exercise and Your Body, Earthquakes, Inventions

Arts and Culture: Masks, Jazz, and Posters

Social Studies: Our National Government, Oceans and Ancient Egypt

Literacy and Language: Adventure Writing, Many Ways to Communicate, and Comics and Cartoons

Level D

Science: Taking Care of the Human Body, Volcanoes, and Wind and Solar Energy

Arts and Culture: The Origin of Sports, Art and Technology, and Fashion

Social Studies: Immigration to the United States, Our North American Neighbors And Ancient Rome

Literacy and Language: Mystery Writing, The Internet, Creating Ads

Level E

Science: Eating for Energy, Earth's Moon, Heat and Energy

Arts and Culture: Science Fiction, All about English, Newspapers

Social Studies: Civil Rights Leaders, Managing Money, The American Civil War

Literacy and Language: Guitars, People in Pictures, Music in the Movies

Level F

Science: The Human Nervous System, Environmental Disasters, Computers

Arts and Culture: Murals, Amazing Architecture, Designing for All

Social Studies: Speeches that Inspire, Purchasing Power, Ancient Greece

Literacy and Language: Myths, All about Advertising, Careers in Language

Here are Heartland literacy staff you can contact for support and resources:

Region 1 Christine Esser

Districts: Adair-Casey, Audubon, Carroll, Coon Rapids-Bayard, Earlham, Exira-EHK, Glidden Ralston, Guthrie Center, Panorama, West Central Valley, Winterset

Region 2 Barb Shutt

Districts: Adel-DeSoto-Minburn, Dallas Center-Grimes, Perry, Van Meter, Waukee, Woodward-Granger

Region 3 Jodi Cross

Districts: Carlisle, Indianola, Knoxville, Martsensdale-St. Marys, Melcher-Dallas, Norwalk, Pella, Pleasantville, S.E. Warren, Twin Cedars, Interstate 35

Region 4 Jenny Sumner, Robin Koskovich, Lynn Bowen, Destiny Eldridge, Angie Lorenz

Districts: Des Moines

Region 5 Janelle Thompson

Districts: Johnston, West Des Moines

Region 6 Emily Reynolds

Districts: Ankeny, Saydel, Urbandale

Region 7 Judy Zeka

Districts: Ames, Ballard, Boone, Collins-Maxwell, Colo-Nesco, Gilbert, Nevada, Ogden, Roland-Story, United

Region 8 Becky Hinze

Districts: Baxter, Bondurant-Farrar, Colfax-Mingo, Lynnville-Sully, Newton, North Polk, PCM, S.E. Polk