Early Literacy Plan

Universal Screener

For literacy screening in Spanish, MMSD employs the Syllable Reading Spanish for  Kindergarten (FastBridge Early Reading Spanish) and CBMReading Spanish for Grades 1-3.  

For literacy screening in English, the Department of Public Instruction requires the use of the Reading Readiness Screener for Grades 4K-3.  Students in the Madison Metropolitan School District will be assessed three times per year using AIMSwebPlus by Pearson. This is a state-mandated and state-selected assessment, and families cannot opt their child out of this requirement. Screening assessments identify students who may need support with reading skills and meeting literacy standards. Three screening windows will take place during the school year:

• First, within the first 45 days of the school year
• Middle of the year (K-3)
• Third, at least 45 days before the end of the school year 

This chart shows the specific assessment measures that will be given in each grade level.

Time	Kindergarten	1st grade	2nd grade	3rd grade
Beginning of Year (BOY) Within 45 calendar days of the start of the year	Initial Sounds (IS) Auditory Vocabulary (AV) Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) Letter Word Sounds Fluency (LWSF)	Phoneme Segmentation (PS) Auditory Vocabulary (AV) Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) Letter Word Sounds Fluency (LWSF) Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) Word Reading Fluency (WRF) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)	Vocabulary (VO) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)	Vocabulary (VO) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)
Middle of Year (MOY) Near the middle of the school year	Phoneme Segmentation (PS) Auditory Vocabulary (AV) Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) Letter Word Sounds Fluency (LWSF) Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF)	Auditory Vocabulary (AV) Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) Word Reading Fluency (WRF) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)	Vocabulary (VO) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)	Vocabulary (VO) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)
End of Year (EOY) At least 45 calendar days before school ends	Phoneme Segmentation (PS) Auditory Vocabulary (AV) Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) Letter Word  Sounds Fluency (LWSF) Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF)	Auditory Vocabulary (AV) Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) Word Reading Fluency (WRF) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)	Vocabulary (VO) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)	Vocabulary (VO) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)

State Required Fundamental Skills Screening Assessment (Grade 4K):

Students in the Madison Metropolitan School District 4K program will be assessed twice per year using AIMSwebPlus by Pearson.  This is a state-mandated and state-selected reading readiness screening tool. State law does not allow families to choose whether to have their child(ren) participate in this assessment. The purpose of the fundamental skills screening assessment is to evaluate phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge.

This chart shows the specific assessment measures that will be given in 4K:

Time	Four-Year-Old Kindergarten (4K)
Beginning of Year (BOY) Within 45 calendar days of the start of the year	Initial Sounds (IS)
End of Year (EOY) At least 45 calendar days before the last day of the school year	Initial Sounds (IS) Letter Word Sounds Fluency (LWSF)

It is not unusual for 4K students to be at many different levels of reading readiness. With that in mind, the results of the fundamental skills screener do not require the diagnostic assessment or interventions, but will be used as one data point to inform instruction.

---

Diagnostic and Progress Monitoring Tool: Encoding Microphase Assessment 

The  Encoding Microphase Assessment is a spelling diagnostic tool administered four times per year, within 10 days of the AimsWebPlus (ELI) or FastBridge (DLI-DBE) universal screener. This assessment provides insight into students’ phoneme–grapheme correspondence and orthographic development, allowing teachers to identify specific foundational literacy needs. Data collected from each window informs targeted small-group instruction, intervention planning, and progress monitoring throughout the year.  The assessment is administered in Spanish and English in DLI-DBE programs and in English for ELI programs.

• First Window (Beginning of Year) – Establishes baseline data for each student and supports the formation of targeted small groups. Results are also used to develop Personal Reading Plans (PRPs) for students scoring below the 25th percentile on the district’s universal literacy screener (AimsWebPlus or FastBridge).
• Second Window (Midyear: December–January) – Provides updated information on student progress and the effectiveness of targeted small-group instruction. Data from this window supports the continuation or creation of PRPs for students who continue to score below the 25th percentile.
• Third Window (Spring: March–April) – Guides next instructional steps with approximately 45 instructional days remaining in the school year. Data from this window also supports the continuation or creation of PRPs for students needing additional literacy support.
• Fourth Window (End of Year: May) – Provides summative data to evaluate the effectiveness of instruction and intervention over the school year. These results help teachers and teams plan for instruction in the following year. 

By administering the Encoding Microphase Assessment within 10 days of each universal screening window, the district ensures that teachers have timely, aligned diagnostic data to both identify specific foundational literacy needs and monitor progress toward grade-level proficiency.

** Not required through Act 20, we utilize best practice for progress monitoring at 4K as well.

---

4K Progress Monitoring Assessment

Teaching Strategies GOLD  - Teaching Strategies GOLD assesses literacy by observing how children demonstrate key early reading and writing skills during real classroom experiences. It captures development in oral language and vocabulary, phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, print concepts, comprehension, and emergent writing.

As children play, teachers intentionally and explicitly design the environment to create opportunities to observe these literacy skills in action. In addition to ongoing observations, teachers complete a formal authentic assessment checkpoint three times per year, using documented evidence to determine each child’s placement on the developmental progression. Together, this approach provides a comprehensive, developmentally appropriate picture of each child’s literacy growth aligned with the Science of Reading.

Students who score lower than the 25th percentile and are given diagnostic assessments will also be reviewed by a building team composed of building administration, reading interventionists, classroom teachers, special education teachers, bilingual resource and ESL teachers, speech and language pathologists (as needed), and school psychologists. The team reviews all of the data, aligns intervention supports to the student's skills and creates a Personal Reading Plan for each student. 

All Madison Metropolitan School District elementary buildings have a minimum of a 60-minute foundational skills block built into Kindergarten through grade 3 level’s schedule to offer targeted intervention or enrichment support. All students will continue to receive high-quality classroom instruction and support.

MMSD maintains a menu of intervention materials based on the components of science-based early reading instruction. The interventions may address gaps in foundational skills as well as other critical reading skills.  In addition to these intervention programs, teachers may provide extra individual/small group lessons focusing on a targeted skill as an intervention.

Interventions in Spanish

Aprendo Leyendo is a Spanish-language literacy intervention program that provides structured, explicit instruction in foundational reading skills—such as phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension—to help students develop fluent reading and strong literacy skills.

SRA Intervenciones Tempranas is an early literacy intervention program that provides systematic, explicit instruction in foundational reading skills in Spanish—such as phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and early comprehension—for young or struggling readers, supporting their progression toward grade-level literacy.

Heggerty Spanish is a Spanish-language phonemic awareness curriculum that provides daily, explicit instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness skills, supporting early reading development.

Evidence Based Interventions from the CORE Teaching Reading Sourcebook
This resource provides research-based strategies for literacy instruction in both English and Spanish, offering guidance on effective teaching practices, interventions, and instructional routines that support reading development across languages.  Targeted skills include Letter Knowledge, Phonics, Phonological Awareness, Print Awareness, and Vocabulary Development.

Interventions in English

UFLI (University of Florida Literacy Institute) Foundations is an explicit, systematic phonics program designed to help students develop strong foundational reading and spelling skills through structured, research-based instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, and word recognition.

Sonday System 1 is a structured, multisensory reading intervention program based on Orton-Gillingham principles that provides explicit, sequential instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension for beginning and struggling readers.

Sonday System 2 is a structured, multisensory reading intervention program that builds on Sonday System 1 by providing explicit, systematic instruction in advanced phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills for older or more proficient struggling readers.

REWARDS Intermediate is a reading intervention program that focuses on improving the accuracy, fluency, and comprehension of multisyllabic words and advanced vocabulary for upper-elementary and middle school students who continue to struggle with decoding and word-level reading skills.

Heggerty is an explicit, systematic phonemic awareness curriculum that provides daily instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness skills to support early reading development.

Evidence Based Interventions from the CORE Teaching Reading Sourcebook
This resource provides research-based strategies for literacy instruction in both English and Spanish, offering guidance on effective teaching practices, interventions, and instructional routines that support reading development across languages.  Targeted skills include Letter Knowledge, Phonics, Phonological Awareness, Print Awareness, and Vocabulary Development.

FastBridge: Screening to Intervention is a system that uses universal screening data to identify students at risk for reading and math difficulties, guides progress monitoring, and connects assessment results to targeted, evidence-based interventions to support student growth.

QAR (Question and Answer Relationship) is a reading comprehension strategy that helps students understand the relationship between questions and where to find their answers, teaching them to distinguish between answers found directly in the text and those that require inference or prior knowledge.

Repeated Reading is a fluency-building strategy in which students read the same text multiple times aloud to improve reading speed, accuracy, and expression, while also enhancing comprehension and overall reading confidence.

If a K-3 student is identified as “at-risk” based on the reading readiness screening assessment or a diagnostic assessment, a building team will develop and implement a Personal Reading Plan for the student. An assessment score below the 25th percentile qualifies a student as “at-risk.”

The Personal Reading Plan includes the following:

• Specific early literacy skill deficiencies identified by the applicable assessment
• Goals and benchmarks that the team sets so the student progresses toward grade-level literacy skills
• A description of how the student’s progress will be monitored
• A description of the interventions to be used in addition to core programming
• A description of the classroom reading instruction programming
• Parent/guardian strategies for at-home practice

MMSD follows the statutory deadlines for the initial creation of a Personal Reading Plan for an “at-risk” student as stipulated by Act 20. Upon the completion of classwide screening, schools follow the timeframe below for the creation and communication of the Personal Reading Plan. 

By Day 10	By Day 15	By Day 20
Microphase Assessments by Program Type are completed in eduClimber	Teachers send home classwide screening results for all students	Teachers or other school staff send the PRP to families
Between Days 10-15 teachers complete PRP-Fall for those students who are below the 25th percentile	Between Day 15-20, Teachers work to communicate with families of students who scored below the 25th percentile	School teams (e.g., grade level teams, SBLT, SSIT, etc) meet to engage in data review and action planning.

A plan is considered completed when the child has met the goals of the plan and has shown an adequate rate of progress according to grade-specific measures. Act 20 states that to exit a personalized reading plan, a child must demonstrate adequate rate of progress in reading development according to grade-specific measures.

• For children enrolled in 5K, adequate rate of progress for the purpose of exiting a personalized reading plan is measured by nonsense word fluency and phoneme segmentation fluency.
• For children enrolled in grades 1, 2, or 3, adequate rate of progress for the purpose of exiting a personalized reading plan is measured by oral reading fluency. Children in grade 3 must also score at the proficient level of the state summative assessment in the area of reading.

Assessment

Results from the state reading readiness screener will be communicated to families no more than 15 days after the closing of the assessment window. The report will include:

• The student’s overall score on the assessment
• The student’s score in each early literacy skill category assessed by the assessment
• The student’s percentile rank score on the assessment, if available
• The definition of “at risk” and the score on the reading readiness assessment would indicate the student is “at risk”
• A plain language description of the literacy skills the reading readiness assessment is designed to measure If a student’s diagnostic assessment indicates that a pupil is at-risk, the district will communicate the following:
  • Information about how to make a special education referral
  • A description of the common indicators and characteristics of dyslexia
  • Information about interventions and accommodations for children with characteristics of dyslexia in connection with a diagnostic assessment, and an opportunity for the student’s family to complete a family history survey to provide additional information about any learning difficulties in the student’s family.

Personal Reading Plan

The school-based team will develop a Personal Reading Plan for all K-3 students determined to be at risk by the state reading readiness screener and subsequent diagnostic assessment. Families should expect the following communication from the school:

• A conference with the teacher will be offered to explain the components of the Personal Reading Plan, which includes strategies for home reading.
  • Once the plan is complete, the parent/guardian will sign the plan to acknowledge that they understand the plan.
• A progress report after ten weeks/once per trimester to demonstrate progress toward the goals.
• An end-of-the-year report to show plan completion and future steps, including summer programming and the next year.