Breakout Sessions

Students with dyslexia require instruction that is explicit, systematic, and intentionally designed to build language and literacy skills over time. This breakout session focuses on what effective explicit instruction looks like in practice and how to implement it consistently to improve reading and spelling outcomes for students with dyslexia.

Participants will explore the essential components of explicit instruction, including clear modeling, guided practice, scaffolded application, immediate corrective feedback, and cumulative review. Emphasis is placed on how these practices support student learning across settings and ensure instruction is responsive to student needs. A central focus of this session is the role of data-driven instruction in guiding teaching decisions. Participants will examine how assessment data and ongoing progress monitoring inform instructional next steps, allowing educators to adjust pacing, focus, and intensity to better meet the needs of students with dyslexia.

The session also examines how instructional impact is strengthened when Tier 1 instruction, intervention, and progress monitoring are intentionally aligned. Rather than operating in isolation, these systems must function together to provide students with dyslexia consistent, high-quality instruction throughout their learning experience. Educators, interventionists, and leaders will leave with evidence-based practices to strengthen explicit instruction, use data to guide instructional decisions, and build more connected systems that improve literacy outcomes for students with dyslexia.

Parents often arrive with evaluation reports from psychologists, speech-language pathologists, hospitals, private tutors, or dyslexia specialists—but many educators are left wondering what the results actually mean and how they should influence instruction. This session will demystify common outside assessments, explain frequently reported scores and terminology, and connect findings to evidence-based classroom practices. Participants will learn how to identify meaningful patterns in assessment data, ask informed questions, and collaborate more effectively with families and outside professionals to support struggling readers.

Write Away is an instructional routine that moves struggling writers from a blank page to a complete paragraph in five steps. Built for students with language-based learning disabilities in grades 2–12, and increasingly used whole-class in K–2, it works by reducing cognitive load and removing the decision-making that stalls students before they start. Scaffolds like color-coding and nonsense words take choosing off the table entirely, so students can spend their working memory on language production rather than figuring out what to do next. The goal is compositional fluency before content complexity: a weak paragraph is instructionally useful, a blank page is not.

Assessment reports arrive full of numbers that mean very little to families and, often, to teachers. This session builds the visual literacy needed to interpret them. We start with the anatomy of the normal distribution bell curve: the mean, standard deviations, and what it actually means that most scores cluster in the middle while fewer fall at the edges. From there, we translate the score types educators encounter most: standard scores, scaled scores, and percentile ranks, which describe standing relative to peers rather than percent correct. The takeaway is practical. This session will move attendees from "is this bad?" to a shared understanding of what the student needs, how far the gap is, and how to measure progress toward closing it.

Quick routines and micro‑activities that strengthen phonemic awareness during transitions, warm‑ups, and small‑group work. Low to no preparation!

Progress monitoring can be difficult to logistically implement and even harder to meaningfully use to inform instruction (Fuchs et al., 1984). This session provides practical strategies and team tools to maximize the use of progress monitoring data from FastBridge. Participants will explore how to implement progress monitoring in an evidence-based, feasible, actionable manner. This approach aims to provide educators with insights to tailor instruction and support to accelerate reading growth. A data protocol, resources to support data review, and specific strategies to respond to progress monitoring data will be shared (Toste et al., 2024). The real power from progress monitoring comes from using the data to intensify students' programs when they aren't on track to meet goals, and this session will provide practical, evidence-based strategies to do so (Capizzi & Fuchs, 2005; Fuchs et al., 2017). Educators will leave with a clear understanding of how to use FastBridge data to drive instructional decisions and improve student outcomes.

Double deficit dyslexia describes students who face two compounding barriers rather than one: a phonological weakness that makes mapping sounds to print effortful, and a processing speed deficit that makes retrieval slow even when the knowledge is there. Either deficit alone is a significant obstacle; together they produce the most severe and persistent reading profiles, and they don't simply add up; they multiply. A double deficit profile will reduce the pace of intervention and increase the social-emotional impact of reading and classroom failures. This session will give classroom strategies and accommodation ideas, as well as foundational knowledge about processing speed.

In the simple view of reading, students require word recognition and language comprehension skills. Once the word recognition skills are in place, students still need instruction to build language comprehension: They need content and vocabulary knowledge, both of which can be built systematically in a knowledge-focused classroom. In this session, Devin will describe how text features and student needs interact in reading comprehension and explain how language, content, and vocabulary knowledge can be taught. Participants will leave with knowledge of specific routines and learning strategies that maximize comprehension success before and during reading and resources to make this work in the classroom.

Dyslexia and dyscalculia are two SLD's that sometimes overlap, and sometimes never meet at all! In this engaging and interactive session, Dr. Wall describes the math SLD. Attendees will learn its similarities and differences with dyslexia, their different and shared interventions and accommodations, and their different and similar signs and symptoms. Learn the facts, dispel the myths, and clear up the confusion in this lively presentation.

Language operates across two channels, receptive and expressive, and two modalities, oral and written. That gives us four quadrants: listening and reading on the receptive side, speaking and writing on the expressive. They draw on the same underlying language system, which means a weakness in one rarely stays contained, and a strength in one can be deliberately used to build another. This session maps the box and allows attendees to experience instruction that leverages all sides of language. Students with language-based learning disabilities are frequently underestimated because we assess them almost exclusively through their two hardest quadrants, reading and writing, while their listening comprehension and oral expression tell a very different story about what they actually know. This session will provide an in-depth look at the quadrants of language and how they impact instruction and learning.

Discover how one school successfully differentiated foundational skills instruction to meet diverse student needs across an entire grade level. Learn their innovative approach to delivering intensive, targeted intervention for struggling learners while accelerating all students through a comprehensive skills continuum. Explore practical strategies for maximizing existing resources to improve instructional outcomes.

What if every student came with an instruction manual? Accommodations are that guide; it helps each individual student access learning while building independence and allowing them to thrive. For students with language-based learning disabilities, support shouldn’t stop at language arts; it should travel with them across every classroom. Explore practical ways to embed accommodations and assistive technology (AT) in math, science, art, music, and physical education to remove barriers and unlock potential. Leave with strategies you can use right away and a fresh perspective on what’s possible when every student has the tools to succeed.

Discover practical, evidence-based strategies for designing personalized, strengths-based IEPs that help students with dyslexia build reading fluency while gaining confidence and independence.

Why do some students struggle despite intervention? This session explores the Instructional Hierarchy and how students progress from accuracy to fluency to independent application. Learn how analyzing student errors can identify where a learner is in the hierarchy, leading to more targeted instruction and effective interventions. You'll also gain practical Explicit Instruction strategies including modeling, guided practice, and purposeful feedback to help move more students from "Wait...what?" to "I got this!"

New to the world of dyslexia? Join us as we cover the basics of what dyslexia is (and isn’t), the signs to look for, and the myths that still get in the way. We’ll also point you toward the Iowa Department of Education’s dyslexia guidelines, referencing their website and handbook so you know where to find additional resources. Our goal is to leave you feeling more confident in recognizing and talking about dyslexia—because understanding it is the first step in changing the path for struggling readers.

Get inside what it feels like to have dyslexia, the most common learning disability. Participants will experience a series of hands-on simulation activities designed to increase their understanding of and empathy for students with dyslexia. 

Explore practical, trusted resources to support students with dyslexia. This session will highlight helpful tools, websites, organizations, and resources for educators and families, with an emphasis on finding effective, evidence-based support.