Literacy Home Page

Literacy is an incredibly important skill, one that was determined to be a human right by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2012. However, challenges with the way that reading is taught in schools have made learning to read inequitable. Findings from the Ontario Human Rights Commission Right to Read Inquiry report (2022) found that universal early literacy screeners are not only effective, but also essential to protect education rights of all students, and especially those from marginalized and disadvantaged populations. The OHRC found that universal early screening “facilitates early interventions, reduces the potential for bias, and creates better decision-making around student outcomes”.

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Our Literacy Screening Protocol is a a step-by-step instruction manual for the standardized assessment of early reading skills. This literacy screening assessment is freely available using Acadience tools and is designed to be easily to learned and administered by educators and health care professionals. 

 

Reading written text is a complex task comprised of multiple skills.  The ability to read enables individuals to engage with ideas in a written text and use these ideas to learn, think critically, and manage many of life’s tasks. One of the reasons why reading is complicated is that it depends on more than one skill. It requires word reading skills (e.g., ability to identify words accurately and efficiently) and language skills (ability to know the meaning of the words in the text). The following pages provide more detailed information about each reading skill, as well as links to helpful resources and activities to support the development of these skills. 

For more detail about the progression of reading development, click here. 

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