What is the Get Ready to Read!
Screening Tool
Get Ready to Read! (GRTR!) is a national initiative to build the early literacy skills of preschool-age children. The initiative provides an easy-to-administer, research-based screening tool to early childhood educators, child care providers, and parents in order to help them prepare all children to learn to read and write.
Why is Get Ready to Read! so important?
Research shows that learning to read and write begins very early in a child’s development—years before kindergarten—and is a result of adult interaction and guidance.
Children who enter kindergarten with strong pre-reading skills are more likely to become strong readers, thereby laying the foundation for future learning. Those who lack these skills are likely to fall behind, creating a gap that only widens over time. Children who fail to develop these essential skills often have difficulties in other areas when learning becomes more heavily dependent on the ability to decipher words and comprehend text.
Goal of Get Ready to Read!
To screen children for pre-reading skills before they enter kindergarten and provide skill-strengthening activities to ensure their reading success.
What are the fundamental skills
necessary for learning to read?
Print Knowledge
A child's understanding of books, letters, & words
Emergent Writing Skills
A child’s first efforts to use print in a meaningful way
Linguistic/Phonological Awareness
A child’s knowledge of how language works
Why Screen for Literacy?
Helps parents and early childhood professionals understand each child’s progress in acquiring literacy concepts and skills.
Helps promote developmentally appropriate experiences and teaching techniques used to support early literacy learning.
Provides direction toward linking appropriate activities, information & resources for individual needs.
Alerts early childhood professionals and parents to seek additional advice if a child does not appear to be making appropriate progress.
How does the GET Ready to Read! program work?
The Get Ready to Read! program consists of several elements including the screening tool, skill-building activities, and Web site.
The hallmark of the program is the screening tool, a 20-item, research-based series of questions designed to gauge a child’s grasp of pre-reading skills. This quick, easy-to-administer tool was developed by some of the country’s top researchers and indicates where a child is on the path to begin to learn to read. Using the tool, an adult asks a child questions. The child responds by pointing to one of four pictures illustrating possible answers. The total score indicates the extent to which a child has mastered the skills in three core areas of early literacy.
The fun, skill-building activities that are part of the Get Ready to Read! program allow parents and early
education and child care professionals to help children further develop and strengthen their pre-reading skills. These activities are available in the manual and on the Web site: www.GetReadytoRead.org.
Why is it so important to strengthen the literacy skills of preschool children?
Early screening and intervention are the keys to changing the nation’s growing crisis of poor reading skills.
Research clearly shows that children begin the process of getting ready to read long before they enter kindergarten.
Seventy-five percent of children with reading difficulties that have not been identified by the third grade will have poor reading skills at the end of high school.
What can I do?
Talk with parents and early education and child care professionals about including early literacy screening as an ongoing process.
Include parents in discussions about their children’s literacy development and tell them what they can do.
Find ways to incorporate early literacy activities into your daily life such as when you go shopping or take a walk.
Check out www.getreadytoread.org for and abundance of literacy activities and other helpful information that will help your 3-5 year olds with their pre-reading and writing skills.
I would like my child screened
If you have a child that is 4 or 5 years old and would like them screened in pre-literacy skills please call the Phoenix office for the next screening date or check our calendar of events. We also provide full developmental screening for children 3-5 years old. For more information on our Early Childhood Developmental Screenings click here.
Our Involvement
The Arizona Literacy & Learning Center is considered the Southwest Get Ready to Read! Regional Center and we use this screening tool with our developmental screening program and as we screen children at local community events and fairs as part of our public awareness literacy campaign.
It typically takes 10-15 to screen each child after the screening the parent is given a literacy activity packet appropriate to their child's skill level in order to help strengthen the child's skills at home. Depending on the venue we are able to provide a literacy craft for children to make and take home.
National Center for Learning Disabilities recognized the importance of every young child having the experiences and skills necessary to become a competent reader. This is especially important because more than 80 percent of school-age students with learning disabilities have problems reading, so NCLD developed the Get Ready to Read Screening tool that would help identify children's pre-literacy skills. The Arizona Literacy & Learning Center was involved in the pilot research of the tool and also wants each child through Arizona to have the necessary skills to become a competent reader and ready to enter kindergarten.