Wallingford reports midyear reading gains, outlines K–12 screening and intervention steps

Wallingford School District’s Instructional Committee reviewed a midyear English language arts update on Feb. 3, 2025, covering K–12 assessment results, curriculum implementation and intervention strategies.

The presentation, led by Angela Bucheri, elementary humanities curriculum coordinator, and Carrie Ladadio, secondary humanities curriculum coordinator, explained that the district uses DIBELS as the state-approved universal screener in grades K–3 and i-Ready for grades 3–8, and described steps the district is taking to reduce the number of students identified as “at risk.”

District leaders said Wallingford is one of 17 Connecticut districts granted a waiver from the state’s approved K–3 curriculum list and is in the second year of implementing its chosen curriculum. Bucheri said DIBELS is a timed screening tool that measures five foundational skill areas—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension—and that its composite is used to identify risk, not grade-level proficiency. For students who score in the yellow (some risk) or red (at risk) bands on DIBELS, teachers and interventionists administer untimed diagnostic measures to distinguish lack of automaticity from true skill gaps.

Presenters showed district-level DIBELS and i-Ready data indicating fewer students in the red bands across most grades at the middle-of-year screen compared with the beginning of the year. They emphasized growth and movement between bands rather than single-point proficiency. For grades 3–8 the district uses i-Ready to measure grade-level proficiency and to guide differentiated instruction; Bucheri and Ladadio reported gains in the percentage of students in the proficient (“green”) band and reductions in the at-risk band in several grades.

To support instruction and intervention, the district highlighted multiple initiatives: implementation checklists and administrative walkthroughs to maintain curriculum fidelity in K–2; targeted small-group coaching and feedback supported through grant-funded visits by literacy expert Wiley Blevins; videotaped model lessons for grade-level lesson study; a focused selection of decodable texts for early grades and higher-interest low-level texts for older students; and a public-library partnership to provide circulation-ready decodable-text literacy kits for families.

Intervention staffing and training were described in detail. Bucheri said all K–8 reading interventionists have completed Orton‑Gillingham comprehensive training (a 30-hour course) and that 3–5 and middle-school interventionists received additional “morphology plus” training to support advanced word study, morphology and vocabulary instruction. The district reported LiteracyHow coaches are providing 12 days of onsite work in each 3–5 building this year, and that every 3–5 teacher has been trained to use Learning Ally human-read audiobooks to help students access grade-level text. District presenters also summarized their work on a consistent districtwide vocabulary routine and expanded emphasis on background-knowledge building, informational-text sets and text-dependent analysis in middle and high school.

Board members asked clarifying questions about who provides targeted intervention (classroom teachers, reading interventionists or special educators), the applicability of Orton‑Gillingham beyond dyslexia, the number of interventionists, and how timed universal screens are interpreted for students with accommodations. District staff said responses depend on student needs: small-group Tier 1 instruction by classroom teachers, time with a reading interventionist, or special-education services as appropriate; untimed diagnostics follow any yellow/red DIBELS result to determine needed supports.

Clarifying quantitative details provided during the presentation included: the district’s K–3 curriculum waiver (one of 17 in the state), use of DIBELS as the universal screener for K–3, i-Ready for grades 3–8, Orton‑Gillingham 30-hour training for interventionists, LiteracyHow coaching (12 days per 3–5 building), and district intervention staffing described by building (two reading interventionists in each K–2 building, two in each 3–5 building, two in each middle school and one in each high school; staff cited a total of 22 K–12 reading interventionists trained through grade 8).

Presenters said family letters summarizing each K–8 student’s fall and winter screening results would be sent after makeups, and that the full presentation would be posted on the district website and provided in hard copy to the board. They asked parents with questions to contact teachers or building principals for individual explanations.

The presentation closed with recognition of the work by curriculum staff and building administrators to implement the curriculum and interventions across the district.