We always knew of the importance of phonological awareness in developing literacy skills and we knew that under-developed phonological awareness skills are a critical factor in students with reading struggles such as dyslexia and are a common issue for students with speech-language disorders.

If you know us at all, you know that we always frame everything from the literacy processing triangle lens.

When students are struggling - it’s hard to know where to start and what the most important steps are in providing support to get them to where they need to be.

After working with hundreds of students, and evaluating thousands of students, we’ve realized that the most important thing that parents and educators can do to support struggling students actually has nothing to do with intervention or tutoring, accommodations, modifications, IEP or 504 Plans…

One of the most important things we have to consider when we are supporting struggling students is:

How we will measure student progress?

This is absolutely CRITICAL in making sure that the plan we have designed to help them get back on track is actually working. This is proof that we are on track.

As parents of struggling students, we need to be requesting this information.

As educators responsible for delivering on student plans and goals we need to be sure we are tracking this information.

So the question becomes, what on earth are we looking for and how do we appropriately measure student progress?