What Can I Do with This Certificate?
‍
In today’s society, there’s a growing need for qualified Reading Specialists who understand how to use the science of reading, evidence-based assessments and interventions to improve instructional practices. As a Reading Specialist, you may:

• Work alongside regular or special education teachers to support students with certain learning differences such as dyslexia or dysgraphia.
• Serve as an interventionalist in the classroom, working with individual students or small groups of students.
• Further support students in your regular education classroom that are challenged with literacy skills and strategies.
• Develop assessments and interventions appropriate for students from diverse cultural, social or linguistic backgrounds.
• Serve as a coach or mentor for other teachers.
• Take on a leadership role in your school or school district’s development of curricula.

• Demonstrate knowledge of and apply major theoretical, conceptual, historical, and culturally and linguistically relevant evidence-based foundations of literacy (including components of reading, writing development, writing processes and foundational skills) and language (including language acquisition, structure of language, conventions of standard English, vocabulary acquisition and use, speaking, listening, viewing, visually representing) along with an understanding of how to integrate the new literacies and digital learning to influence literacy development across the grades and in the academic disciplines to effectively teach diverse learners.
• Use foundational knowledge to select, design, critique, adapt, evaluate, and implement scientifically and evidence-based, literacy curricula, instructional strategies, supplemental and intervention approaches, and programs (components of a comprehensive, aligned, and integrated literacy curriculum) that are responsive to social, cultural, cognitive, and linguistic diversity, to meet the needs of all learners in various settings, especially those who experience difficulty with literacy.
• Select, utilize, analyze, and interpret a variety of valid, reliable, fair, and appropriate assessments aligned with current research to screen, diagnose, and to comprehensively monitor and measure the literacy achievement of diverse learners  across multiple field-based experiences to implement data-driven and evidence-based literacy instruction and interventions.
• Engage in multiple field-based experiences in which you work with individual and small groups of students, and coach peers and experienced colleagues at various grade levels, as you assess students’ literacy achievement, develop literacy intervention plans, implement instructional practices, create supportive literacy learning environments, and assess impact on student learning through data- and evidence-based instructional strategies designed to meet the developmental needs of diverse learners.