Good Morning Memorial Families,

Throughout the school year, your children will be engaging in assessments that evaluate how your child is progressing through their grade level. Some of these assessments are more frequent, like with our Bridges in Mathematics unit assessments, some are administered district-wide during three intervals throughout the year through the digital platform, iReady, and some are level or building based to help us evaluate instruction in certain areas, such as writing.

During the weeks of October 2nd and 9th, students in grades K-3 will be taking part in short early literacy screening assessments. These assessments help us to gather information about your child’s reading strengths and needs. The screeners will be administered by many different school personnel (e.g. tutors, paraprofessionals, teachers, reading specialists). The assessments take just a few minutes each and the students often find them to be a fun way to share their knowledge.

Our screening protocol includes school wide administration of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) 8th Edition. DIBELS encompasses a number of critical skills for proficient reading, including the following:

• Phonological & phonemic awareness – the ability to recognize and manipulate the sound structure of language.

• Rapid automatized naming – the ability to quickly retrieve information from phonological memory.

• Alphabetic principle – the ability to associate letters with sounds to read words.

• Word reading – the ability to fluently and accurately read words using sound-symbol correspondences and sight word recognition

In the weeks following the completion of the DIBELS screening, notification will be sent out to families to keep you informed about your child’s progress. Please let us know if you have any questions/concerns.

Have a wonderful week!

Warmly,

Wendy and Lauren