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SALEM -- Salem school personnel are working to improve student literacy skills and prepare for a new requirement to screen all students for dyslexia.
School board members heard about the progress in both areas from Salem City Schools Literacy Specialist Shelley Wilson during a meeting earlier this week.
"We have seen huge gains already," she said regarding dyslexia.
By the 2022-2023 school year, schools will be required to screen for the learning disorder known as dyslexia, which can make reading difficult due to letter reversals and other factors.
According to statistics presented by Wilson, nationally one in five adults in the United States has low literacy skills and 54 percent of adults in Ohio are less than proficient in literacy skills.
The testing will be required for K-12 and what worries Wilson is the fact that students in K-2 may look like they're dyslexic when they're not because kids at those young ages can mix up their letters because they're just learning them.
Many teachers already know the signs of dyslexia and have already been using one program to help with letters. A second program is now in use to help students.
To prepare for 2022-2023, Wilson said they're getting more teachers trained in the programs to help screen for dyslexia, have interventions in place and documentation to meet state requirements.
Wilson also presented a snapshot of the school's literacy plan. She noted that 80 percent of students entering kindergarten were below or well below the benchmarks set for literacy at the beginning of the school year. She said it was also true of first graders. In the winter period, the percentages came down, even though they remain higher than previously, with 71 percent of kindergarten students still below or well below benchmarks and 57 percent of first graders below or well below benchmarks.
Lots of factors have led to those numbers, including COVID-19 shutdowns and interventions not able to take place in small groups like before. Interventions are now being done in the classrooms by the teachers and now they can have more interventions in K-2 with three teachers no longer focused on online instruction.
Wilson developed online videos on YouTube for intervention lessons and strategic intervention plans are in place to help guide teachers. Next year, she said they're going to use a Data Map program to document interventions students have received and follow their progress so that all teachers will have the information, leading to more consistency.
She's also developing a website where teachers can go to access forms needed to screen students, see what interventions need to take place, how to monitor progress and record the data so it can be sent to parents.
mgreier@salemnews.net