Heartland AEA Literacy Newsletter

The Iowa Department of Education's Early Warning System (EWS) listserv is an email distribution list for important information regarding the FastBridge and Panorama Student Success systems, Early Literacy Implementation (ELI), Healthy Indicator Reporting, and more. To sign up to receive this communication click here.

For the start of the year, there are a couple of Important items we wanted to ensure were communicated in multiple places.

There are a few minor but critical changes to the screening materials for 1st-grade Sentence Reading and CBM-Reading. New student and teacher screening materials MUST be printed for the Sentence Reading subtest of EarlyReading and 1st-grade CBM-R. The changes should not affect student scores and do not affect progress monitoring materials.

• Updated Sentence Reading and CBMR pages - this is a Google folder but you can download it from the FASTbridge site as well.

• The main Progress Monitoring/Intervention user interface has been redesigned. The new version should be active now for academics (literacy and math). The same interface will follow later this Fall for behavior. There will be articles in the Knowledge Base and a tutorial to support the use of the redesigned interface.

• Note that interventions and grouping in FastBridge do not transfer to Student Success, only scores are transferred. It may be more efficient to only set up interventions in Student Success, at least where required in K-3, but encouraged at all grades to take advantage of the intervention effectiveness and other analysis features in Student Success.

• There were Benchmarks and/or norm updates for the following:

• aReading and aMath for grades 7-8 only

• SAEBRS for grades K-12 - moving from two levels to three and from criterion-referenced to norm-referenced benchmarks

• mySAEBRS for grades 2-12

• All other benchmarks and norms remain unchanged

• mySAEBRS is now available in Spanish (Grades 2-12)

• FastBridge is merging its corporate website with Illuminate’s. This will have no effect on Iowa users. Iowa users will still use their Iowa Education Portal login to access FAST. Some things may look different with Illuminate's merge so be aware of some design changes.

Schools are working towards implementing a balanced assessment system that is designed to minimize duplication of and/or gaps in the needed information. An effective and efficient assessment system gathers enough, but no more than necessary, information to make sound decisions for all learners.

As part of a balanced assessment system, data is collected in a cyclical pattern throughout the school year. Therefore, it is important to plan for those assessment patterns and be ready to respond to data soon after it is collected. Assessments are tools for learning and promoting equity. They provide necessary information for educators, families, the public, and students themselves to measure progress and improve outcomes for all learners.

With the FAST screening window open, a reminder on the State's protocol on Universal Screening data is represented in the graphic below. Healthy systems are at 80% meeting expectations. If you find your district needing support around how high-impact instructional practices can be implemented to accelerate learning, please reach out to your Heartland AEA literacy consultant.

Why some students are left behind and how assessment and evidence-based reading instruction can close the gaps.

In Illuminate Education's Playbook, reading experts and educators from across the country offer advice for assessing students for reading difficulties and literacy gaps and addressing those deficits with instruction and interventions grounded in the science of reading. Includes information about choosing valid assessments, supporting ELs, planning effective literacy instruction, and implementing a school-wide reading improvement model built to provide the supports every student needs to become a proficient reader.

Science of Reading: The Podcast from Amplify delivers the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Each episode takes a conversational approach and explores a timely topic related to the science of reading.