Reading is fundamental for education. Children spend time in primary grades learning how to read. They build their background knowledge in language, learn to decode words, and build vocabulary.
As they transition to intermediate grade, the focus becomes more on reading to learn rather than learning to read. While students still learn text features and how to decode difficult passages, they should be able to fluently read and comprehend a grade-level passage.
Schools implement several methods for tracking progress in reading, and they use this data to guide instruction and provide reading intervention to students who would benefit from it.
READ Act
According to the Colorado Department of Education’s website, “The Colorado Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act (READ Act), passed by the Colorado legislature in 2012, focuses on early literacy development for all students and especially for students at risk to not read at grade level by the end of the third grade. The READ Act focuses on literacy development for kindergartners through third graders. Students are tested for reading skills, and those who are not reading at grade level are given individual READ plans.”
When a student is given an individual READ plan, the school begins communication with the parents regarding this plan and the support they will receive. That communication is continued throughout the school year so that parents, teachers and other school staff are all aware of how the student is performing in reading and how they are responding to intervention. This ensures that the child is supported at school and at home.
The Reasoning for Reading Training
The CDE’s Information for Parents flyer states, “End of the year assessment data from 2019 shows 16.34 percent, or 41,003, of K-3 Colorado students, had a significant reading deficiency, meaning the student doesn’t meet minimum reading competency skills in areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, and reading fluency – including oral skills and reading comprehension.”
The goal for Colorado educators is to help every child learn to read so that they can read to learn. The required training has helped teachers gain a deeper understanding of how to explicitly teach each reading skill so that their students will comprehend fundamental reading skills and be able to apply those skills as they progress in school.
Requirements
The READ Act states, “Each teacher employed to teach kindergarten or any of grades one through three must successfully complete or has successfully completed evidence-based training in teaching reading.”
This statute has been revised and now states that teachers must complete the required training by Aug. 1, 2022.
Since the legislature updated the READ Act in 2019, kindergarten through third-grade teachers have been required to complete a 45-hour reading training to improve practices in teaching reading. The state offered several ways to satisfy this requirement, such as passing a state-board approved assessment, but many teachers chose to complete the course offered by CDE at no cost. This course was provided online for self-paced learning as well as virtual for live instruction.
The online, self-paced route included six modules: Science of Reading, Oral Language and Phonology, Phonics and Word Study, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. These modules included educational videos, articles, recordings, and assessments. Successful completion of the course is shown through a final assessment that is then submitted to the Colorado Department of Education.
