PLUM BOROUGH SCHOOL DISTRICT  |  ONE MINUTE READ 

 

 

                                                          

 

Plum Borough School District’s focus on intervention and instruction for early learners is now enhanced by the use of mCLASS, the gold-standard assessment tool that helps schools identify, manage, and provide support for students in grades K-6. Studies show that effective instruction in these formative years can prevent dyslexia and other challenges to academic achievement in the future. 

Typical literacy benchmarks include understanding the relationship between letters, letter combinations, words and their sounds. The path to proficiency for readers begins in elementary school because it helps wire the brain to read and comprehend content automatically.

mCLASS is a comprehensive tool that offers universal and dyslexia screening, pinpoints the skill that is most challenging to students, aligns lesson plans based on diagnostic data, and eliminates manual assessments. Results are reported instantly which increases the teacher’s instruction time with students.

The District continues to use Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, or DIBELS, to assess student progress. mCLASS is a system that allows data to be captured and quickly analyzed in one storehouse. It also allows teachers to receive research-based strategies to match student needs, increasing teacher efficiency.

According to Dr. Ashlea Rineer-Hershey, Director of Special Education, “mCLASS provides our K-6 students with an assessment that will monitor that reading skills at key points during the school year and align materials and resources to meet their individual learning needs. mClass will allow our parents to have clear data on how their child compares to others across the country in their same grade based on the research-based benchmarks.”

If parents have any questions related to the mClass data or resources, they can reach out to their child’s teacher.  For more information on mCLASS, please visit www.amplify.com.