ACT 20

Act 20 states that all Wisconsin schools are required to provide science-based early literacy instruction in both universal and intervention settings. Science-based early literacy instruction is defined as follows:

Instruction must be systematic and explicit, including the following components:

• Phonological awareness
• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics
• Building background knowledge
• Oral language development
• Vocabulary building
• Instruction in writing
• Instruction in comprehension
• Reading fluency

Phonics is defined as the study of the relationships between sounds and words; this includes the alphabetic principle, decoding, orthographic knowledge, encoding, and fluency.

Note that the Wisconsin Standards for ELA 2020 defines fluency as being comprised of accuracy, automaticity, and prosody