If 2020 was the year of making do in education, 2021 has been the year of doing better. Educators have been focused on identifying and addressing the impact of interrupted and disrupted learning for their students and seeking strategies and interventions that work.

Structured Literacy (SL) approaches share a focus on certain types of content, and they exemplify specific instructional features.

One pervasive myth about dyslexia is that students with this neurobiological difference can’t or won’t learn to read. Fortunately, research indicates that this is not the case.

Dyslexia, the most common learning disability, affects as much as 15% to 20% of the population. What exactly is this learning difference? How can educators better understand dyslexia? And how can we best meet the needs of students with dyslexia today?

Reading disorders, including dyslexia, are an important issue meriting our attention. As of this writing, almost all 50 states have legislative rules and guidelines for identifying dyslexia (National Center on Improving Literacy). As someone who has spent over 30 years developing and researching assessments for the purpose of preventing reading disabilities, I believe it is time to reflect on what is known about screening and assessment and ask, “How does screening specifically for dyslexia differ from best practices in screening to prevent reading difficulties?”

The simple view of reading states that reading comprehension is the product of word recognition and language comprehension. This simple, yet powerful, equation informs both my beginning-of-the-year assessments and the reading interventions I provide for my third-grade students. Since my end goal is reading comprehension, I need to assess and support my students in both their word-recognition skills and their language comprehension abilities