Congratulations, Ontario educators!
This week marks the completion of Ontario’s first-ever beginning-of-year early reading screening window, a crucial milestone for literacy in our province. This early screening initiative follows the recommendations of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) in its Right to Read Inquiry, which highlighted the importance of identifying reading needs as early as possible. By screening early, we’re setting the foundation to help every student get off to a strong start on their journey to becoming confident readers. Thank you to all educators who contributed to making this impactful first screening window a success!
At ONlit, our teacher team is made up of educators who are experts in screening, and we’re thrilled to receive such wonderful questions from educators across Ontario as they navigate early reading screening. For many, this is a new way of thinking about early reading assessment, and we are here to help!
To help answer the many questions we’ve received, we’ve made a series of short videos titled “Screening: The Reel Deal.” If you missed these videos on our social media, don’t worry – we’ve gathered them all in a convenient playlist. Below, you’ll find an overview of each video in the series:
- Kathryn Hayes-Waldhuber answers, « Why screen – don’t we already know which students need help? »
- Laura Bross answers, « Why are the measures focused on speed? »
- Marlene Perry answers, « Do I still need to do a reading level assessment like the DRA or the Benchmark Assessment System? »
- Una Malcolm answers, « The screener my board is using doesn’t measure reading comprehension. Shouldn’t we be screening for this? »
- Kate Winn answers, « Why does my board’s screener only assess segmenting? Don’t we need to know about other phonemic awareness skills? »
- Erika Chesnick answers, « Isn’t screening just a way of streaming students? »
- Nellie Caruso answers, « These benchmarks are too hard for my students. Should I use materials from the grade level below? »
- Ayesatta Conteh answers, « Why do screeners have measures with nonsense words? »
- Leigh Fettes answers, « Isn’t it a problem that these screening tools are from American companies? »
- Melissa Monette Smith answers, « Why isn’t the text in Oral Reading Fluency passages decodable? »
Do you have questions we haven’t answered yet with this video series? Drop us a line and let us know – we’re here for you!