Manitoba teachers and school leaders have been urged to change how they detect struggling readers and intervene earlier to increase literacy rates.

The inaugural Manitoba Universal Screening Symposium advocated for requiring standardized screenings with all students at least in kindergarten and Grades 1 and 2 to detect early signs of difficulties with research-backed “screeners.”

“Early identification of reading difficulties is imperative. Without it, struggling readers are forced to play catch-up and their gaps grow wider as families struggle or, worse, remain in the dark,” said Carrie Wood, an elementary school teacher in Winnipeg who helped organize the event this week.

Wood was teary-eyed as she spoke to about 150 attendees about her oldest son’s challenges and how he felt like a “fraud and a fraud” because neither nightly story reading nor his training helped. The stress led her to take a leave of absence from work for mental health reasons, she said.

Her son Emmett, who just started sixth grade, was diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disability in reading and writing, about three years ago.

That’s when he began receiving the explicit, systematic phonics instruction he needed to become literate, but it wasn’t a quick fix, his mother said. Receives early morning tutoring four times a week.

Provincial guidelines are vague in promoting observation and early detection. They advocate comprehensive instruction that responds to the specific needs of students rather than adopting a “reading wars” stance.

Simply put, one side of the debate about how to teach reading effectively prioritizes systematic word decoding and sound binding. The other, which is under widespread scrutiny, focuses on word meaning and context clues.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission, a proponent of the former, identified universal early detection as an effective and necessary tool that reduces the potential for bias in its groundbreaking “Right to Read” report.

The 2022 document stated that ages four to seven are a “critical window” for teaching foundational word reading skills and intervention, and concluded that students’ difficulties were not being detected early enough and they were allowed to grow like a snowball.

Many students failed because of delays, combined with flawed core instruction and intervention efforts that were not evidence-based, the commission said.

Its Manitoba counterpart is currently investigating concerns about limited explicit instruction and local reading lessons in general that generally reflect Ontario’s pre-Right to Read situation.

Wood and Dyslexia Canada hosted a symposium to discuss how Ontario’s findings and recent changes, including a new requirement for universal screening, could lead to positive changes at the local level.

“Every child has the right to be taught to read within our public school system. It should not be something reserved for those who can advocate effectively, afford tutoring and access private evaluations, as my family has been fortunate to do,” Wood said, after which the conference room erupted in applause Tuesday night.

School leaders, doctors and teachers heard several speakers emphasize the need for change because of the number of struggling young readers.

“As a first-grade teacher, there was always a group (about 15 percent of my students) who didn’t learn to read the way we taught them,” said Kim Turner, a teacher for about 25 years, speaking of her interest in changing instructional practices.

Some Manitoba schools, including the Linwood School where Turner works, have already reviewed their programs.

“Many school divisions are using universal screening as a practice in the early years and the department continues to monitor with an eye to future steps the province could take,” a Manitoba Education spokesperson said in a statement.

The spokesperson said the province is committed to improving literacy outcomes and developing teachers’ awareness and skills to meet the needs of students with reading disabilities.

The Evergreen School Division, based in Gimli, moved to structured literacy and introduced the DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) screener last year to quickly assess how each early grades student reads.

“Using a universal tool helps us compare apples to apples. Before this, our teachers would simply nominate students in their class for interventions,” said speech therapist Britney Morrish.

Morrish said the old model made it difficult to determine who needed support and what that help should look like.

Students were often referred without details about the interventions they had received or the intensity of them, she said.

Dyslexia Canada’s chief academic officer noted that a 2015 research report found that the Fountas and Pinell Assessment and Referral System, a common tool used in Manitoba, was only 54 per cent accurate in predicting reading achievement.

An effective evaluator needs to tell the teacher quickly and reliably if a child is on track and the above “doesn’t work very well,” presenter Una Malcolm said.

Malcolm, a teacher and advocate from Ontario, repeatedly talked about how reading problems get worse over time because students tend to avoid activities they find difficult.

Universal screening speeds up intervention so it can be done when it is quicker to fix, requires fewer resources and “preserves the dignity and mental health of the child, preventing them from experiencing the challenges that can arise when reading is really difficult,” she said. saying.

Malcolm added that it is also an effective way to identify systemic problems.

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Maggie Macintosh
education reporter

Maggie Macintosh reports on education for children Free press. Originally from Hamilton, Ontario, Maggie was an intern at the Free pressures twice while earning her degree at Ryerson School of Journalism (now Metropolitan University of Toronto) before joining the newsroom as a reporter in 2019. Read more about Maggie.

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