Literacy Learning and News

The literacy team at Great Prairie AEA hopes this newsletter finds you well. It is hard to believe that we are almost to the end of April! The end of the school year rush is being felt by all.

As a team, we would like to provide you with information that is relevant to literacy. This information may be agency or state level news, opportunities for engaging in ongoing learning, or research and findings that impact our work with students. We want to keep you up-to-date!

So how do you find our newsletter? Our newsletter will be shared in the Cornerstone, and it can be sent directly to your inbox. If you would like to receive our newsletter when it is hot off the press, please share your name and email with your friendly AEA Literacy Consultant so you can be added to the list.

As always, we are here to support you and your students. Don't forget to take time to enjoy the moments and beautiful spring days.

It’s spring cleaning time in FAST and Panorama Student Success. Please take a moment to read this message for exciting updates and a few timely tasks.

FastBridge Updates

• Action needed by users, leadership and student information system managers to confirm/retain FastBridge access. Cleanup of Fastbridge user roles is tentatively scheduled for April 10th. Details and action steps in Iowa News! What’s happening with Fastbridge.
• Check out the Iowa section in the FAST Knowledge base for up-to-date information about known issues with the FastBridge system, as well as how-to articles and other resources specifically tailored to Iowa users and processes.
• Also see the FastBridge Release Hub article for updates on FastBridge development work.

Panorama Student Success Updates

• Exciting updates to individual and group intervention plan pages that improve accessibility and function including:
• New plan organization options and filtering. You can now hide inactive plans!
• Ability to view just your plans or the plans for all students you have access to in Student Success
• Plus more. You are going to like these new features!
• Click here for more information and a 3-minute video introduction.
• There are several other recent system updates you should know about. Read about them in the Panorama release notes.
• Action needed: We have a new method for mapping courses to subject areas for K-8 students so the system can separate course grades by subject for individual student grade display and Overview reports. Read about course mapping requirements here.
• We are in the process of updating the academic, attendance and behavior cut points in the overview reports at the system and student levels. Read about the new systems level cutpoints here and student level cutpoints here.

General Updates

• The Spring window for screening opens April 23rd and ends May 26th. Plan to start and complete all screening for ELI during this time regardless of the assessments used. Check out our window planning article here.
• Action needed: Start planning for the end of the year.
• Review Iowa End of Year and Rollover Information. There are tasks that need to be attended to before certain information goes away at the end of the school year.
• Here are the tentative 23-24 screening window dates. Confirmed dates will be posted in the Panorama Resource Library and Iowa Resources in the FastBridge knowledge base (link to article).
• Fall Window 8/27/23 to 9/29/23
• Winter Window 1/2/24 to 2/2/24
• Spring Window 4/28/24 to 5/31/24
• The Iowa DE continues to support the myIGDIS literacy screener for students in Statewide voluntary preschool programs. Contact mary.breyfogle@iowa.gov for more information.