The mission of the Wallingford Public Schools in the area of literacy is to build a culture of effective readers, writers, thinkers, and communicators through high quality, explicit literacy instruction across all content areas.

With strong partnership between faculty and our families, Wallingford Public Schools’ students will: 

• Develop into independent readers and writers who are self-aware of their strengths and needs.

• Read and write with depth, purpose, and a critical eye.

• Employ strategies to create meaning and to inspire lifelong learning.

• Develop strong and meaningful communication skills.

CT Common Core Standards for Families (Spanish) (Portuguese) (Polish) (Arabic) (Chinese) (Creole)

CT Common Core Standards ELA Progression K-5

WPS started using DIBELS in the 23-24 school year. This universal screener provides our students with the best opportunity to showcase their literacy skills in a manner that provides our staff with valuable insight into students' progression in learning to read.   The assessment consists of multiple measures that are given to the appropriate grade levels. Five subtests (LNF, PSF, NWF, WRF, and ORF) are 60-second measures designed to be administered individually in a quiet setting. The sixth subtest, Maze, is a 3-minute measure designed to be administered in group settings. Below is a brief description of each of the measures. 

• Letter Name Fluency (LNF) - Students are presented a page of upper- and lower-case letters arranged in a random order and are asked to name as many letters as they can.

• Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) - Assesses the student's fluency in segmenting a spoken word into its component parts or sound segments. Students are asked to say the sounds in a given word. 

• Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) - Assesses student knowledge of basic letter sounds, and the ability to blend letter sounds into nonsense words.

• Word Reading Fluency (WRF) - Assesses student accuracy and fluency in reading “high frequency” words.

• Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) - Assesses the student’s ability to read words accurately, effortlessly, and with appropriate phrasing and expression when reading orally.

• MAZE:  Assesses student’s ability to construct meaning from text using word recognition skills, background information, and prior knowledge (comprehension).

This FAQ provides additional information on DIBELS.  

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