ARI Literacy Leadership

The Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) is a statewide initiative committed to supporting the development of high-quality instruction that will prepare all students with the literacy skills needed to meet or exceed grade-level standards. The goal of the ARI is to significantly improve reading instruction and ultimately achieve 100% literacy among public school students.

The goal for our students is reading proficiency. This includes the developmental stages a learner goes through to become a confident and skilled reader. Foundational skills of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary development, and comprehension foster skilled reading. Supporting learners along their paths to proficiency allows educators to:

• Increase awareness of individual student differences.
• Learn how to use regular monitoring to inform instruction.
• Utilize engaging instruction and interactive activities that are student-centered.

A school-wide literacy system can strengthen the path to reading proficiency. Each component of the school-wide system functions like a cog working with other gears in a complex machine. The components are critical for improving reading proficiency. They contain the criteria that inform practices, processes, and the overall strength of services delivered to improve reading achievement.

• Meet with the local reading specialist (LRS) to analyze beginning-of-year (BOY) data, set next steps for progress monitoring, and create a strategic plan for initial coaching supports.

• Focus on Tier 1 instruction and begin classroom walkthroughs based on the science of reading.

• Schedule and plan a BOY data meeting with the LRS.

• Utilize the Data Inquiry Protocol to support the planning of the BOY data meeting.

• Identify students who need to be enrolled in dyslexia interventions and document those interventions in Student Reading Plans within Analytics & Insights.

• Identify students who need Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions in Student Reading Plans by following the Alabama Literacy Act Student Supports Flow Chart and Early Years Assessment Flow Chart to support next steps.

• Plan structures to enter Tier 3 interventions and Grade 3 tutoring interventions into Student Analytics and Insights.

All components of the final report are due no later than Tuesday, September 16, 2025. This will allow adequate time for review prior to the September 30th legislative deadline. Please refer to the May 2025 memo for further guidance. We want to remind leaders of a valuable resource developed collaboratively by ARI and OMI. The 2025 Annual Reporting Requirements/ Analytics & Insights Guidance resource outlines key aspects of the reporting process and includes live links for easy access to reports within PowerSchool Analytics & Insights.

Now that students have returned to school for a new year, it is imperative to know where they are in their reading development. Prior Early Years Assessment data for 1st-3rd grade students, as well as Spring 2025 ACAP Reading Sufficiency and Proficiency data, can be used to identify trends over a period of time and create instructional focus areas.

Per the Alabama Literacy Act, the first BOY task is to administer an approved Early Years Assessment to each Kindergarten-3rd grade student. Use the collected current baseline data to inform your decisions related to planning for tiered instruction. If students are not performing on grade level, we are tasked with using additional screening measures to identify deficiencies so that we can intervene in those areas.

The ARI Data Inquiry Protocol is a tool that supports data-informed instructional reflection and practices. It aligns with Alabama PST guidance, and it provides literacy leaders with key steps in using data for decision making and strategic actions.

Alabama is charting a strategic course to prepare students for life after graduation, and literacy must be the vehicle for improving outcomes for our students. A strong foundation in reading will support student learning in all content areas. Implementing high-quality Tier 1 literacy instruction will enable the state, district, and school to impact the largest numbers of students’ academic achievement. To ensure every student graduates from high school and is prepared for college and career, high-quality Tier 1 literacy instruction must align with the science of reading research and resources.

• High-quality instruction should be based on the science of how students learn to read. It is essential and necessary for all students, especially for those who are at risk of reading difficulties. To ensure students become proficient readers and confident learners, we must align our literacy instruction to the science of reading.

• Literacy instruction must be explicit, direct, systematic, sequential, and cumulative and use evidence-based tools and resources.

• Effective literacy instruction must be coherent and vertically aligned, so that instruction spirals across various providers of literacy instruction.

• Adolescent literacy learners need continued literacy instructional support and more engagement with various informational texts (digital and print) to learn how to use literacy skills for specific disciplines (content areas) in various contexts.

• Learning opportunities must include rich and explicit teaching to build background knowledge in content areas. (Wexler, 2019)

In his book Differentiating Phonics Instruction, Wiley Blevins provides detailed information about phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is a readiness skill and one of the seven characteristics of strong phonics instruction. It is also one of the two best predictors of early reading success, coupled alongside alphabet recognition.

Oral blending and segmenting are critical phonemic awareness skills. If students cannot orally blend, they will find it challenging to sound out a word in print. This directly affects nonsense word fluency - words recoded correctly (NWF-WRC). If students cannot orally segment, they will find it challenging to spell (encode) correctly. This directly affects DIBELS phoneme segmentation fluency (PSF).

Kindergarten students should be able to segment words at the phoneme level by the time their phonics progression requires them to read and spell simple VC and CVC words. When does this occur in your core reading program? What strategies and plans are in place in kindergarten at your school to ensure students can segment words by the time their phonics progression begins?

Three reasons students struggle with blending:

1. They don’t know the sounds automatically.
2. They have low phonemic awareness for oral blending.
3. They have a low working memory, which prevents them from holding sounds long enough to blend.

Instructional ideas to support students with phonemic awareness:

• Use continuous sounds for oral blending (or at least for the initial sound) and stop sounds for oral segmenting (at least for the initial sound).
• Use sound boxes and counters.
• Teach students to count phonemes with their fingers, starting with two phonemes.
• Teach students about initial, medial, and final sound placement.
• Provide daily consistent practice and modeling.

The purpose of assessment is to improve student outcomes through data-informed decisions. Assessments help educators make instructional plans and set goals. The 2025-2026 Assessment Windows are listed below.

In the Alabama MTSS framework, Tier 3 represents the most intensive level of support. It involves targeted, explicit instruction and intervention designed to address consistent deficiencies, using high-quality intervention materials approved by the Alabama Literacy Task Force. Tier 3 interventions must be documented in PowerSchool Analytics & Insights under the aligned MTSS Intervention (Tier 3 / K-3 & 4-5 ELA). The ARI Analytics & Insights Tier 3 Reading Guidance Document provides step-by-step guidance for this process.

Beginning with the 2025-2026 school year, all student plans requiring Tier 3 interventions must be documented in PowerSchool Analytics and Insights: For students in Grades K-5 with identified consistent deficiencies in literacy, documentation must be entered using the ALSDE Student Reading Improvement Plan (SRIP). For all other identified core academic needs, including mathematics, and/or behavioral concerns, the ALSDE Problem-Solving Team (PST) Plan must be implemented.

Read more here.

All students must have equitable access to a tiered continuum of supports, regardless of their achievement level. A layered continuum of supports ensures that all students receive equitable access to foundational wellness, behavioral, and academic supports. Each layer of support increases in intensity from universal (ALL students) to targeted (SOME students) to the most intensive supports (FEW students). This systematic, tiered model approach supports all learners through the selection of evidence based instructional practices and interventions in response to both academic and behavioral needs. This system includes utilizing universal screening methods for early identification and ongoing progress monitoring of the effectiveness of instruction.

The Foundational Literacy Tiered Levels of Instruction depicts this model.

The Prevention and Intervention to Support Student Learning resource provides best practices in early literacy policy and implementation. Eighteen elements have been identified that make effective literacy policies, and Alabama is utilizing all eighteen elements to support our literacy work. They are PREVENTION and INTERVENTION driven.

It is time register for professional learning sessions for the year. Principals will need to ensure they have leadership labs and virtual sessions on their calendars. These labs will highlight various aspects of leadership to strengthen the partnership with the principal and local reading specialist, with the goal of improving student outcomes. Feel free to watch this short video clip, in which Dr. Joy Tyner at Cahaba Elementary School explains how Leadership Labs benefited her as an instructional leader.

As part of the School Principal Leadership and Mentoring Act, leadership labs will count toward the required thirty hours of high-quality professional learning in the Alabama Principal Leadership Development System. To maintain a smaller group size and maximize the learning experience in the Leadership Lab setting, principals will attend two face-to-face sessions and two virtual sessions. If you are unsure of your lab dates, reach out to your Regional Literacy Leadership Specialist.

For more information about the Alabama Principal's Act, please click the link below.

Professional Learning Guidelines | APLDS

K-3 literacy coaching in Alabama is a differentiated, job-embedded professional learning which models side-by-side, intentional support built on collaborative work to implement evidence-based literacy instructional practices. This focus ensures all students are able to read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. Professional learning for LRS is provided four times per year during Coaching Communities.

Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) Coaching Communities take place in school buildings, and these opportunities build small communities of practice in a lab setting to “see the work” of coaching in real time. These labs involve fully implementing all components of coaching cycles, including reflecting on our practice and measuring our impact on student learning. Four required coaching communities are planned from September 2025 to March 2026, and we look forward to these sessions being hosted by various local education agencies (LEAs) and schools.

International Dyslexia Association Fall 2025 Conference

Presented by the Alabama Branch of IDA

Date: October 16-17, 2025

Location: Orange Beach Event Center at the Wharf

Registration: Fall 2025 Conference

57th Annual Alabama Literacy Association Fall Conference

Readers Today, Leaders Tomorrow

Date: December 4-5, 2025

Location: The Hyatt Regency Birmingham - The Wynfrey Hotel

Registration and Information: Alabama Literacy Association

Literacy Reimagined Conference 2026

Presented by The Reading League Alabama

Date: March 5-6, 2026

Location: Daphne Civic Center

Registration and Information: Literacy Reimagined Conference 2026

I See Me Literacy Summit

Date: May 7, 2026

Location: Birmingham Botanical Gardens

Registration and Information: I See Me Homepage

As with any optional professional learning opportunity, you should review these choices to make sure they align with the needs and beliefs from your community.

Did you know that the Alabama Reading Initiative now has an Education Specialist dedicated to supporting educators serving students beyond grade 3? ARI – Beyond Grade 3 is designed to strengthen literacy attainment, achievement, and acceleration by extending proven structures and supports that drive data-informed decision-making and improve student proficiency.

Grounded in the Alabama Multi-Tiered System of Support (AL MTSS) framework, this part of the initiative focuses on differentiating tiered literacy instruction to meet the diverse needs of all learners, with a focus on students promoted to 4th and 5th grade who still demonstrate reading deficiencies. Through this support, Alabama educators will gain access to high-quality professional learning aligned with the science of reading, supporting full implementation of the 2021 Alabama Course of Study: English Language Arts standards. This work also guides the development of Alabama’s student-centered peer coaching model and the sustained use of evidence-based instructional strategies.

Through these opportunities, educators will be empowered to establish effective progress monitoring systems that document student growth, guide instruction, and ensure long-term academic success.

To learn more about professional learning opportunities, including the ALSDE Peer Coaching Cohort, watch this video and connect with Misty Wilson at misty.wilson@alsde.edu.

Video Link:

https://youtu.be/bB3Z9mRGINM

Act 2025-268 provides supplemental allocations to districts for FY 2026. Summer and after-school program allocation amounts were sent to superintendents in the August 5, 2025 memo. These funds can be used to pay the expenses associated with summer and after-school programs for grades K-12, including summer reading and math camps for K-5 students. In previous years, districts received funds specifically for summer reading and math camps. For summer 2026, districts can use these supplemental allocations in conjunction with other funding streams (ASAP grant, local funds, title funds, etc.) to provide quality programs for students.

A separate memo will be sent in early fall with allocations provided through the Education Trust Fund budget. This includes allocations specifically for summer camps for full-support schools. It also will contain additional funding for before- and after-school tutoring.

The ALSDE Office of Extended Learning offers thought-partnering opportunities, half-day and full-day professional learning sessions, and individual district coaching. Contact Jeff Norris, OXL Education Specialist, at oxl@alsde.edu with specific questions or requests. In addition, guidance for summer and before/after-school learning, training materials, and podcasts featuring innovative ideas are available at the OXL site: https://oxl.alsde.edu

Effective coaching begins with clear, data-informed goals. For ARI Local Reading Specialists (LRS), the Early Years Assessments provide valuable insights into student needs. The data gathered from the assessments not only highlights trends across classrooms but also reveal specific areas where instruction can be strengthened. By identifying gaps, reading specialists can tailor coaching cycles to address these deficits, ensuring that instruction is targeted and impactful.

To make the most of this data, the LRS can follow a few key steps:

1. Gather and analyze assessment results across classrooms.
2. Identify patterns or recurring skill deficits.
3. Collaborate with teachers to identify priority areas for growth.

Once the priority areas have been determined, the LRS can initiate a coaching cycle that includes:

• Setting a goal and determining learning targets

• Co-planning and co-teaching

• Reflecting and providing feedback

• Measuring the impact of coaching

Using data to drive coaching not only makes the process more efficient but also helps build teacher capacity to deliver instruction that directly addresses student needs.

The Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) has created Family and Community Modules to assist literacy leaders in ensuring that every K–3 parent understands the Alabama Literacy Act and has practical ways to support their child’s literacy growth.

ARI can partner with you in delivering this training to families. ​Consider these ideas:

• Provide an opportunity for EVERY family to attend a training (consider having

  translators available). ​

• Couple the training with a service/event already scheduled or a solo event.

• Provide this as a DISTRICT endeavor led by your local reading specialists (with

  support from ARI regionals) or providing a training at each school. ​

• Invite community agencies to support students before/afterschool so they,

  too, are equipped to support literacy. ​

Working together, we can ensure every parent has the opportunity to receive this information during the first semester, setting the tone for a strong year of partnership and literacy growth. ​

We are excited about the 2025-2026 school year kick-off!

The ARI Family Back-to-School newsletter is packed with practical and fun activities that can be used at home to help students succeed in reading. We look forward to an amazing school year and opportunities to collaborate with you.

Let us know how we can support you with your literacy initiatives this year! We are better together.

The information included in this document is done from the perspective of improving LITERACY instruction for students and is only intended to outline support that directly relates to literacy instruction. Please use any resource links with discretion, as their position statements are their own and not necessarily representative of ARI and the ALSDE. Usage of any materials should be with adherence to rules and regulations of the Alabama State Department of Education.