Dyslexia Services

Per Indiana Code 20-35.5, schools in Indiana must ensure that all students in kindergarten through second grade are screened each school year for learning characteristics related to dyslexia.  The universal screener must be approved by the Indiana Department of Education and include the following skills: 
• Phonological and phonemic awareness 
• Sound-symbol recognition 
• Alphabet knowledge 
• Decoding 
• Rapid naming 
• Encoding 

Southmont Schools are using the Indiana Department of Education approved NWEA MAP Reading Fluency dyslexia screening assessment.  This assessment is an online, adaptive universal screener and progress monitoring test that efficiently assesses oral reading fluency, literal comprehension, and foundational reading skills. 

Advanced speech recognition technology enables group administration for an entire class in approximately 20-25 minutes. The automatically scored results support instructional decisions to advance reading development for all students. The MAP Reading Fluency Dyslexia Screener quickly assesses key reading skills, including those most often associated with dyslexia. A predictive model flags student results that suggest possible risk factors for dyslexia or other reading difficulties. If students are identified as being at risk for having learning characteristics of dyslexia, parents are notified and provided with information regarding our intervention services.  Students who are considered “at risk” or “at some risk” then receive targeted, intensive instruction to grow their foundational literacy skills.

While the characteristics of Dyslexia screening are a part of this assessment, it is important to understand that we do not diagnose Dyslexia. We conduct this screening to provide us with further information to guide our interventions for our students’ reading instruction.
Students in Southmont Schools who need intervention in foundational literacy skills receive targeted research-based multi-sensory approaches to instruction through intervention that may include, but are not limited to, the Orton-Gillingham Approach and the Heggerty phonemic awareness curriculum.

All Southmont students in kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades were assessed using the Indiana Department of Education approved universal screeners. During the 2023-2024 school year 347 students tested, and 29 students were found to be “at some risk” or “at risk” for dyslexia. These students receive targeted and explicit direct instruction that is intensive and systematic.