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Elementary Screeners

Wisconsin recently passed an educational law, commonly known as “Act 20.” One of the mandates of that law requires each child in grades 4K-3 to take an assessment called the aimswebPlus early reading screener. In our District, we already use a screener, called the Core Phonics Screener, and your child’s teacher may have talked with you about those results at conferences. The new state-required literacy screener, aimswebPlus, is very similar.  

A screener is an assessment that quickly checks your child’s reading skills to help teachers plan individualized instruction. 

Early Reading Skills

2023 Wisconsin Act 20 requires that children are assessed in the early reading skills of alphabet knowledge, letter sound knowledge, phonemic awareness, and decoding. These skills are assessed differently depending on the student’s grade level. You can learn more about these important early reading skills below:

  • Alphabet knowledge: Knowing the names of printed letters. 
  • Letter sound knowledge: Knowing the sounds of printed letters. 
  • Phonemic awareness: Hearing, saying, and manipulating individual sounds in spoken words. 
  • Decoding skills: Connecting sounds to written letters to read printed words.
  • Oral vocabulary: Understanding the meanings of words when speaking or listening. 
aimswebPlus Early Reading Screening Assessments 

The aimswebPlus reading screeners that measure the skills above are based on a student’s grade level. You can learn more about these assessments below:

  • Letter naming fluency (5K): Measures a student’s knowledge of upper-and lower-case letters. Your child will have one minute to say the names of visually presented upper-and lowercase letters that they know. 

  • Letter word sounds fluency (4K-1st grade): Measures a student’s letter sound knowledge. Your child will have one minute to say the sounds of visually presented letters, syllables, and words that they know. 
  • Initial sounds (4K-5K): Measures a student’s phonemic awareness. Your child will be provided a page with four pictures. Your child will be asked to either point to a picture of a word that matches the initial sound the teacher says or make the initial sound of a word spoken by the teacher. This assessment will take 2-3 minutes. 
  • Phoneme segmentation (1st grade): Measures a student’s phonemic awareness. Your child will listen to a word that is spoken by the teacher and then say each sound they hear in the word. This assessment will take 2-3 minutes. 
  • Auditory vocabulary (5K-1st grade): Measures a student’s knowledge of words commonly found in 5-year old Kindergarten and Grade 1 reading materials. Your child will match a picture to an orally presented word. This assessment will take 2-4 minutes. 
  • Vocabulary (2nd- 3rd grade): Measures a student’s knowledge of the meanings of grade-appropriate words. Your child will choose the meaning of target words by selecting from multiple choice options. This is an untimed, computerized assessment that typically takes 4-7 minutes. 
  • Oral reading fluency (1st-3rd grade): Measures a student’s decoding skills. Your child will read two stories aloud, each for one minute.