Early Literacy

At Dublin City Schools, the goal of literacy instruction is to develop students who are skilled readers, writers, speakers, and listeners.

Knowing every child’s learning journey is unique; teachers offer personalized, explicit, systematic reading and writing instruction while promoting students’ ability to transfer acquired literacy skills to various personal, professional, social, and academic environments.

Phonics Program

The 95 Core Phonics Program is implemented during the literacy block within our K-5 classrooms. The 95 Core Phonics Program is grounded in the science of reading and principles of structured literacy. This program provides explicit instruction in phonics and word study to enrich the other important components of literacy being taught in Dublin City Schools. Through explicit, systematic, and direct phonics instruction, reading skills can be enhanced so that students can comprehend grade level materials with greater ease in grades K-5 and beyond. For more information, please see 95 Core Phonics Program.

Literacy Instruction

The Dublin City Schools English Language Arts Program includes a variety of curriculum and intervention opportunities in reading, writing, speaking and listening. It emphasizes a strong literacy-based classroom environment as well as the importance of early intervention. The core literacy curriculum utilized in K-5 classrooms is the Savvas myView Literacy program. This program focuses on teaching strong comprehension, language, and writing skills through a lens of building knowledge in a variety of content areas. Students have opportunities to read complex, grade-level texts and learn how to access text with a critical eye while comprehending varying text types. Each unit is tied to an essential question to encourage students to find similarities throughout all of the texts they read. For more information, please see myView Literacy.

Universal screeners combined with classroom assessments allow the teachers to tailor instruction and intervention to meet the needs of individual students. Our Multi Tiered Systems of Support helps students become successful through the identification of specific interventions and by monitoring the effectiveness of these interventions. For more information on the intervention process, see the MTSS site.

A diagram outlines Dublin City Schools' literacy ecosystem, detailing core and primary intervention tools across grade levels, with assessments and resources highlighted at the top.

myView Literacy

Assessments and Dyslexia Screening

The State of Ohio passed Senate Bill 316 which requires actions for elementary schools regarding the "Third Grade Reading Guarantee." Districts are required to administer assessments in order to evaluate student performance, notify parents and develop progress plans in partnership with parents.

The State of Ohio passed House Bill 436 which requires the screening of and intervention for children with dyslexia or dyslexic characteristics and tendencies. Districts are required to administer screening assessments and notify parents, guardians or custodians of students who are determined to be at risk from the universal screening.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the universal screener?

Dublin City Schools utilized mClass DIBELS 8 (Dynamic Indicator of Basic Early Literacy Skills) as the universal screener. This screener is a standardized set of measures used to assess early literacy and reading skills designed for the purpose of prevention of reading failure. The universal screener at your child’s grade level includes a combination of the following measures.

Three column chart with headers, "Measure", "Skill" and "The ability to..." The measures include items such as Letter Naming Fluency and Phonemic Segmentation Fluency.

What does it mean to be flagged?

Why is my child taking additional measures?

The mClass DIBELS 8 universal screener indicated a red composite score. Based on these results, additional measures were administered to learn more about your child’s individual reading needs. These measures include:

Oral Language-Identifies students who struggle with the language structures commonly found in early reading texts.
Vocabulary-Assesses each student’s depth of knowledge of grade-level high utility and content-specific words.
Spelling-Assesses a student’s level of general spelling skills
RAN- RAN stands for Rapid automatized naming and measures how quickly children name a variety of familiar items.

What does it mean to be at mild risk for reading difficulties?

When the mClass DIBELS 8 universal screener indicates a red composite score, and the additional measures do not indicate a deeper level of concern, then the student is considered to be at mild risk for reading difficulties. These students should receive reading instruction from their teacher and may qualify for additional instruction from a reading support teacher. Parents of students at mild risk should discuss the specific details with their child’s teacher.

What does it mean to be at an elevated level of risk for reading difficulties?

When the mClass DIBELS 8 universal screener indicates a red composite score, and the additional measures indicate a deeper level of concern, then the student is considered to be at an elevated risk for reading difficulties. These students should receive reading instruction from their teacher and are the top priority to receive additional instruction from a reading support teacher. Parents of students at an elevated risk should discuss the specific details with their child’s teacher.

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