Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: And I'm Nicole. Welcome to DAC Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We're so happy you could join us. We're both moms and dyslexia interventionists who want to talk about our students and children. What dyslexia is, how it affects our kids, strategies to help and topics related to other learning disabilities will all be covered in this podcast. Parents are not alone and we want to give a voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having. This is a safe place to learn more about how to help our children grow and succeed in school, in the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 21 of DAC Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We like to start our episodes with the concept of the week. So concept of the week is our opportunity as practitioners to let our listeners in to an intervention session and teach a little bit about what we're teaching our students. So today's concept of the week is a Greek combining form. A Greek combining form is a meaningful word part that comes from the Greek layer of language of English.
Greek combining forms are put together with other Greek combining forms to create words. Words. This is really similar to how we would create a compound word. So an example is photo. Photo means light and graph, which means picture. So if we put those together, photograph, that means it's a picture made from light.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: So today's topic is square screening assessments.
So why is everybody talking about screening students for reading?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Yes, so that's kind of got a layered answer. And we will give our listeners full disclosure that we live in the state of Wisconsin where there have been recent law changes that have mandated screening for dyslexia in schools.
The primary goal of screening students is to identify students who may be at risk for dyslexia and establishing that early on, so providing them with timely and targeted interventions to help support their reading and academic success.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: So how early can dyslexia be identified?
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah, so this is really interesting. Dyslexia can be identified as early as age 4.
Keep in mind the skills that we would screen for or look at in a four year old going to be a little bit different than what we're looking for in an older child. But we can start to see those signs as early as age 4. Some of the things we might red flag a 4 year old if they're not really understanding how a book works. Right. If you give them a book and they don't automatically turn it the right way if they're not flipping the pages in the right direction or if they're having difficulty with creating words that rhyme or establishing their word sounds correctly. Those are all things that we might want to be on the lookout for for that four year old.
And yeah, we can, we can screen that 4 year old and see could there be dyslexia here?
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So some key points about dyslexia screeners. First of all, it's early detection. Screeners are designed to identify potential issues in young children even before they can formally read. This allows for early identification and intervention, which is crucial for successful learning.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Also, keep in mind a screener is not the same as a diagnostic test. So when you screen, that's not a diagnosis. So while a screener can flag potential concerns, it does not provide a definitive diagnosis of dyslexia. So if a kid is flagged as at risk, further evaluation by a qualified professional is required to make that diagnosis.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: So screeners focus on key skills.
So screeners assess foundational reading skills like phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, rapid naming, letter knowledge, and all these are known indicators of potential dyslexia.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: So what is phonological awareness?
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Yeah, so phonological awareness for those playing along at home. Right.
Phonological comes from the word phoneme or sound system. So phonological awareness is paying attention to sounds in words and then being also able to manipulate those sounds.
So creating different words.
A good indicator of this is early on, as is rhyming words.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: So the whole point of a screener. Right. Is to be able to intervene and intervene early.
Early identification through screening shows the targeted interventions that specialized reading instructor that can really, really significantly improve a child's reading abilities. We've talked before on this show about early intervention shows the best outcomes for students with dyslexia.
It's never, ever too late to intervene. We've talked about that before too. But our expectations as far as how much progress a child can make in their reading skills, the earlier we get in there, the absolute better off that student's going to be.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Correct. So like we were talking about earlier, Wisconsin just passed a bunch of laws in 2023. So in 2023, Wisconsin passed Act 20, which requires children to be assessed in early reading skills of alphabetic knowledge, letter sound knowledge, phonemic awareness and decoding. These skills are assessed differently depending on the student's grade level.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, for those listeners that are not in the state of Wisconsin, I don't want to lose you guys. This is still really relevant. Many, many other states have passed Similar laws in r recent years and more have legislation on the floor of your state houses right now.
Also, our listeners in not the United States, we do have some. Hello, everybody.
You know, many places like the uk, places like Canada, they are fighting it out in provinces right now. Australia is the same way. So this is really relevant. Even though we're talking about our specific state law, this is still really relevant information since it is happening really on a global scale right now.
So we want to drill down a little bit, though, on what are those skills that we are screening for and why we might be looking at them. So the first area here is Alphabet knowledge. So knowing the names of printed letters. Why is that important, Nicole?
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Well, it helps you identify what letter is in a word so you can decode it independently and be able to sound it out as you continue through the words.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: And knowing that names of letters are really important because it's the only property of a letter that stays the same.
So if it's a capital B or a lowercase b, the name of that letter is still B.
And even though we may change fonts, we may learn cursive, the name of that letter still is the only property that stays the same. So it's pretty important.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: And that brings us back to that. Rapid autonomic naming.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Because we need to know how fast a student can grab those names.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: Yep, exactly.
So the second one is letter sound knowledge. This is knowing the sounds of printed letters. This is incredibly important for decoding.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And some letters have more than one sound, right?
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Yep.
Like our vowels.
Right.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Correct. Or even the S. Yep.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: S can make two sounds.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: Yep. S or Z. Yep.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: C can also make two sounds. Right. Or C. So pretty important that we know those letter sounds. And also what happens when we combine more than one letter and it's actually now just one sound.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Right.
Phonemic awareness is hearing, saying, and manipulating individual sounds in a spoken word.
So that's kind of like what. Can you give us an example? Yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: So things that would encompass phonemic awareness is being able to, first of all name the sounds of a word. So if I gave the word boat and I asked a student to tell me the sounds in the word boat, that would be called segmenting. And I would expect a student to be able to say B O T.
And then I would also want the opposite of that, which is called blending. So I would give. I'm going to use the same example. I would give the sounds the boat, and I would want that student to be able to blend them and tell me, oh, that's the word goat.
Higher order phonemic awareness skills would be things like, okay, now we have the word boat, but instead of the first sound, B, I want you to say the. I want you to say K. And then I would want that student to be able to say coat.
Right, Right. I would want. We would target, depending on their age, also the beginning, middle, and end sounds. So depending on this age and grade level, we might be looking at different phonemic awareness skills.
But all of those are really important, and they help us orthographically map as well.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: So the next one is decoding skills. And this is where we connect sounds to written letters to read printed words.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
So this is where we truly get into what we would kind of consider reading. Right. This is where we have printed words, and we want kids to be able to read them. We're watching for how fluent they are, too. So if a student is still in that stage where they see the word, let's say bat. Right. And they're still having to go at that.
Right. When they're older, we know their brain is spending too much time on that decoding piece. And so we know they're not making a lot of meaning from what they're reading. So we want to see how smooth and quick their decoding skills are.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Correct. And then oral vocabulary is the understanding the meanings of words when you're speaking or listening.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
Lots of reasons to test this oral vocabulary. Right. We know first of all that kids come to school with lots of different backgrounds and lots of different abilities when they walk into the door. Right. So some students have been exposed to tons and tons and tons of words at an early age, and they're coming to us with pretty big oral vocabularies. So oral meaning, spoken vocabulary. Right, Right.
And that can have huge implications for their future reading abilities. We know that background knowledge is linked to reading comprehension success.
So it's really important for us to understand what is the oral vocabulary of our kids when they're coming to us, because there's lots of very cool ways to increase oral vocabulary.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Correct.
So Then in Wisconsin, AIMSweb + early reading screening assessments was part of the.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: That was the. The assessment screening tool chosen by the state of Wisconsin through Act 20, that all schools. All public schools in the state of Wisconsin are required as of current this year, this school year are required to screen all elementary students.
So we thought it would be helpful to talk about that screener. Again, those of you who are not in Wisconsin, this wasn't actually.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: This screener is actually a pretty Big one, I think for schools nationwide. So it is.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: So it's pretty widely used. And just because we're talking specifically about AES web does not mean that it does not apply to other. Other screeners that are used.
So the AmesBand plus reading screeners, they measure all those skills we talked about before and they measure them differently based on grade level. So some of the sub tests on the AIMSweb Plus. Okay. One of them is letter naming fluency. That is given to all five case students and it measures the student's knowledge of upper and lowercase letter. So a child will have one minute to say the names of the visually presented upper and lowercase letters that they know.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Another one is letter word sounds fluency. That's 4K into first grade. And this measures a student's letter sound knowledge. So the student will have one minute to say the sounds of visually presented letters, syllables and words that they know.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: So that.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Pretty straightforward there, I think.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. You know, you're looking at knowledge of the sounds themselves and then also how quickly can they do it? That goes for both of those subtests. We do know that that fluency piece, that rapid automatic naming piece, highly tied to dyslexia. So not only can they do it, can they do it quickly?
Initial sounds. So this would be for our 4k and our 5k students.
So this measures a student's phonemic awareness.
The child will be presented a page with four pictures. The child will be asked to either point to a picture of a word that matches the initial sound a teacher says or make the sound of a word spoken by a teacher. This one's about two to three minutes.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: And so phoneme segmentation is in first grade. And that measures a student's phonemic awareness. So the student will listen to a word that is spoken to it by a teacher and then say each sound that they hear in that word. This assessment would also take about two to three minutes.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Yeah, so that was that kind of example I gave before.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: With the boat. With boat. So the teacher would say boat and we'd want that student to be able to go B boat, boat.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: And then there's auditory vocabulary from 5K to first grade. And obviously this just measures the student's knowledge of words that are commonly found in five year old kindergarten and first grade reading materials.
So they would match a picture to an orally presented word. And this usually takes about two to four minutes.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: And then vocabulary a little bit different for our second and third graders, this measures students knowledge of meanings of grade appropriate words. So the child will choose the meaning of a target word by selecting from multiple choice options.
This one is untimed. This one they also take on the computer, and it usually takes between four and seven minutes.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: And then there's oral reading fluency for first to third grade. And this measures the student's decoding skills. So the student will read two stories aloud each for one minute.
So I guess what we should say too, for screeners, they're fast. They're not long, detailed assessments like we do when we're really trying to tease out what is going on with somebody.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: They're just trying to flag to see if there's anything going on in any of these areas.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly that. So I'll take a minute here to kind of shout out my kids schooled, because honestly, I think they've done a really good job of informing parents about what to expect out of these screeners and when they're taking place. So it's not really often that I get the opportunity to give. Give a shout out to something. I think our school is really doing well, but I think they did a really nice job here. I think they really walked parents through what to expect.
But I think we want to take a minute here to say, okay, so now what do we do? Right. Let's say we have a student and now we're getting the results of this screener, and it says, your child is at risk for dyslexia.
What does that mean? Is it time to hit the panic button, Nicole?
[00:20:22] Speaker B: No.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: Not at all.
So it kind of depends on what the screener says.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: There's three different ways it can go. Oh, they did fine. There's really nothing to be worried about. Move on.
There's the other one where they should really have an assessment. They really flagged. There's something going on. We need to do a full assessment. And then there's the middle.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Yes, the middle. Messy, messy middle. Where most of us live. Right.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: So what do you do if you're in the middle? We talk to teachers. We gather more information. We might do a second screener or we might say based on what we're seeing in their academic areas. Yeah, we should do an assessment or maybe we should wait a little bit longer and see how they're doing. Yeah, it really kind of depends. Those middle ones are hard.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: They are hard. Because some of the things we would want to know more information about for those middle kids is, is there a family history of dyslexia?
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Maybe a sibling, maybe a parent, or maybe, oh, Yeah, I kind of think my grandma might have, you know, often. Right. It wasn't tested then. So if there really is any kind of family history, I would recommend more testing. Correct. And. And yeah, like Nicole said, we want to take a look at some of our academic samples and see. Okay. If we have a late first grader or second and up grader that are still doing some letter reversals, they're not quite automatic.
If you ask them to say the Alphabet, they struggle with it. Ask them to write the Alphabet and they look at you like, I'm not doing that.
Real world experience.
Those are those kids that, yeah, we're going to want to get some more testing on. And that does not mean that they end up having dyslexia. It just means, okay, we want some further testing.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Correct.
And sometimes, you know, any student can have a bad day and maybe they flagged, but it was because they were sick or they were tired or they were hungry or. Or they were goofing around.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Yeah. They thought they were real cute by saying some wrong letter sounds. Yeah. Yeah. Ask me how I know about that one. Yeah.
So I think I'm very cautiously optimistic about how the screening process is going to go.
I'm happy to see that this is on the books in schools.
I also want to kind of further shout out the. The letter that I received as a parent in the district was very clear about what they were looking for and how they were going to look for it, including being up front with, this is a screener and we are looking for dyslexia. That's huge.
I think we can kind of celebrate that. I think there's a lot of.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: It wasn't a word that was used.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Much in this state.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: That's right. For very long. You know, and listeners who have been with us know that Nicole and I both feel very strongly that when we're talking about dyslexia, we really need to name it. Giving it a name gives all of the tools then. Right. We can all be on the same page. We're talking about dyslexia. It's not a dirty word, and it's not something to be so in fear of.
We can talk about it and schools can have the tools for. Okay, now how do we help?
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Right. And screeners don't always have all the information that you need in them, which is why sometimes you use more than one screener when you're. There's a concern.
I know that for our center, we use the tests of dyslexia screener which has a lot of the components that we just talked about in it, depending on age, it changes versus if there's pictures involved or not and what type of phonemic awareness is involved or not. So, I mean, there are so many different screeners out there, but know that there's never a screener that's 100%. No, because they're a screener. So that's kind of what they're.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Exactly.
I think a collective deep breath and hey, guys, it's all going to be okay. Right? No screener is infallible. Right. Of course, we will have students who are not flagged as having dyslexia who do in fact, go on to have dyslexia. That will happen.
We will also have students flagged at a high risk that come back after a full test and we say, no, I don't think this is actually student does have dyslexia. That will also happen. So no measure, no screening measure is going to be perfect. And it's.
It's all really going to be okay, though. This is a step in the right direction.
There has been a lot of argumentation regarding Act 20 in general and how it's being implemented. And I don't really want to weigh into the politics of it, but I do want to say this part of it is good, right? This screener that we're. We're going to have everybody screened.
That's just objectively a good thing. This will arm teachers with the knowledge they need, and it will provide parents an honest assessment up front.
How many times have we heard from our older students that come to us from testing, you know, that school's saying they're fine, School saying they're fine. You know, and I think a lot of that is lack of. And this is not a shade to teachers. I am a teacher.
But lack of teacher knowledge and ability to say, I actually think there's a problem here.
Sometimes those teachers were fighting the good fight and trying to say that I think this student has a problem and the schools were shutting them down or other state laws were shutting them down. You know, this does kind of cut.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: This down, doing a really good job at hiding it, or they haven't hit that spot of when they can't compensate any longer. So there's those other things that can also play a part, for sure. This type of thing.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: So for sure.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: So, yeah.
So, Maggie, what's going on beyond dyslexia today?
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Oh, my. Okay, so as we record this, it is mid January, and it has really been a difficult start to this 2025, I had high hopes, high hopes coming in. And it's just. It's been a really difficult January. We've had a lot of very tough family things, kind of both our internal immediate family and kind of extended family stuff. And I'm really seeing the effect of adult stress on tiny humans. Our bedtime routines have just been trash, if I'm being really honest.
But this week really, really tried to go, okay, we are going back to one. We are having our bedtime routine and morning routine on lock. And I've been kind of probably a little naggy about it, if you would ask my children.
But I.
I'm really actively trying to re. Establish routine so that I'm setting my kids up for success at bedtime and, you know, sending them to school well rested and ready to learn things.
Nobody's perfect. And I'm feeling not great about the state of routine in our house right now. What about you?
[00:29:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's been a tough transition to come back from break.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: I think we've also had that really tough time of we were doing so well before break where we were on time and we were getting up at the same time, going to bed at the same time.
And yeah, it's. It's been a very big struggle to turn that back around and.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Get them back to where they want to be or where they should be.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: And then just getting back into the swing of things have been really tough.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Agree, agree. It seems like even more this year. I don't know. Usually I feel like I have a better handle by mid January.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Right. Exactly.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: But no. Yeah, no.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: So, yeah, I totally agree. Ours is kind of been back and forth. Oh, we have a good day. And then that didn't work out so well today.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Here's to hoping for some better luck in the. In the next couple of weeks. Oh, man, it's been a ride.
But thank you everybody for listening. We just really love doing this. It's been a lot of fun. If you like our show, please follow us on social media and reach out if you have any questions or would like us to discuss a topic, especially that. Right. Please reach out to us. We would love your ideas. If you like our show, be sure to follow and rate us on your favorite podcast player. That's how we reach more listeners and leave us a little review. That's tremendously helpful for getting that show out there and reaching all of you. Thank you.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: Thank you.
