Route to Reading: Set Your Destination

If you prefer, read the text version of the infographic.

Route to Reading: Set Your Destination

Location Services

Ask school staff to review your child’s most recent literacy assessment results with you. Discuss together what the results mean and how they inform the literacy services and supports your child gets at school.

Why?

Children with, or at risk for, reading disabilities often need much more intensive instruction than other children to keep typical growth patterns in reading. This is because they often learn foundational skills more slowly than typical readers.

Route Finder

Discuss literacy goals for your child with school staff. Strong individualized Education Program (IEP) goals should be SMART, or Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.

Why?

When IEP literacy goals are SMART, you and school staff can better track your child’s literacy progress and make any needed changes. This is because you’ll know exactly what your child needs to do, by when, and what it looks like when your child is successful.

Arrival Time

Talk often with school staff about your child’s literacy progress. If you are dissatisfied with how your child is progressing, ask about the interventions available that are best matched to your child's needs.

Why?

Children with, or at risk for, reading disabilities need interventions that target the specific skills and knowledge that are interfering with their reading growth. These interventions should also have evidence of effectiveness for improving these skills and knowledge.

Suggested Citation

National Center on Improving Literacy (2021). Route to Reading: Set Your Destination. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from https://www.improvingliteracy.org.