WGU D697: Literacy Assessment and Interventions

Where D697 Sits in the MAT Sequence

Literacy Assessment and Interventions (course code D697, catalog code EDUC 5088) is a two-competency-unit course in WGU's School of Education. The institutional catalog lists it in graduate teacher-preparation programs, including the Master of Arts in Teaching, Elementary Education and the Master of Arts in Teaching, Special Education, placed after the literacy curriculum and methods coursework rather than before it. That ordering is the point: D697 is where reading theory stops being abstract and starts being about one particular child whose assessment data is sitting in front of you.

Direct answer: D697 is completed through performance assessment rather than a proctored multiple-choice exam, so passing means producing task submissions an evaluator can score line by line against a rubric. Tie every intervention you recommend to a specific piece of assessment data, answer each rubric prompt explicitly instead of implying it, and cite the sources behind your reasoning. Students who get sent back for revision are usually missing a required element, not the underlying knowledge.

The official course description frames the work around identifying and addressing literacy challenges in all student populations, including students with dyslexia, within a multi-tiered system of supports. You review the science of reading, work with the range of assessments used to evaluate reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and then practice the genuinely difficult skill: reading the resulting data closely enough to choose an intervention that targets the actual gap rather than a generic one.

That skill outlives the credit. In a general elementary classroom or on a special education caseload, you will be the person expected to look at a fluency score, say what happens next for that student, and explain the decision to a family. D697 rehearses that conversation, which is why the tasks reward reasoning over recall.

One disambiguation worth knowing before you search for help: the catalog lists an identically titled undergraduate course, D689 (EDUC 2258), worth three competency units, in bachelor's programs such as Elementary Education and the Special Education dual-licensure track. The two share a description almost word for word. If you are in a master's program, D697 is yours; notes labeled D689 cover the same territory but belong to a longer, differently weighted course.

What the D697 Tasks Actually Ask You to Do

The catalog description is unusually specific about the content, and it maps cleanly onto what your submissions have to demonstrate. Expect to work with:

• The science of reading, which is the theoretical spine running through everything else.
• The core components of reading instruction — phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension — because a strong submission names precisely which one an intervention targets.
• Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS): what Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 look like in practice, and what evidence justifies moving a learner between tiers.
• Assessments across reading, writing, speaking, and listening — how they are administered and what their results actually mean.
• Dyslexia and related literacy difficulties, and the assessment patterns that point toward them.
• Interpreting data to identify needs and gaps, the hinge the whole course turns on.
• Designing targeted interventions and taking actionable steps to monitor progress afterward.

Those pieces describe a single arc you will walk more than once: read the data, name the gap, choose the intervention, justify it, and say how you would know whether it worked. Communicating results to the people around the student is part of that arc, not an afterthought.

Students commonly describe tasks built around a provided student profile with realistic assessment data for an elementary-age reader, meaning you need not supply a classroom of your own. Treat that as student consensus rather than catalog fact, and confirm the current task structure on your course page — WGU revises tasks between cohorts, and course announcements are more current than any outside guide.

How Hard Is D697, and How Much Time Should You Budget?

Most students place this course in the moderate range. The reading load is manageable and the concepts are familiar to anyone who has taught, but the writing is exacting. The difficulty is rarely understanding phonics or fluency; it is producing a submission that addresses every rubric prompt out loud. Evaluators score what is on the page, not what you clearly know.

For a two-CU course, students commonly describe a couple of weeks of steady work rather than a single push: a few days in the course material, a few days drafting each task, and deliberate slack for a revision cycle. If you are teaching full time, budget generously for evaluator turnaround — a calendar constraint effort cannot compress. Those reports vary enough that you should treat them as anecdote rather than a schedule.

The honest planning advice is to assume one revision. Building a resubmission window into your term plan removes most of the anxiety if it happens and costs you nothing if it doesn't.

A Rubric-First Study Plan for Data-Driven Tasks

Because D697 has no objective exam to cram for, rehearsal tactics do more for you than memorization. Adapt the standard evidence-based study methods to task production:

• Read the rubric before the course material. Open the task instructions on day one and build your outline from the rubric's own headings, so every aspect becomes a section of your draft and omissions stay visible.
• Use active recall on the assessment vocabulary. Make cards for the constructs you will name — phonemic versus phonological awareness, decoding versus encoding, screening versus diagnostic versus progress-monitoring measures, accuracy versus rate versus prosody. Defining these cold keeps your writing precise.
• Space review across days, not hours. Two half-hour sessions on consecutive days hold the MTSS tier distinctions better than one long evening. The same applies to drafting: write a task, sleep on it, then reread it as an evaluator would.
• Practice on invented data. Make up a short student profile — a fluency score, a phonics survey result, a comprehension observation — and write a one-paragraph intervention rationale for it. Two or three reps make the real write-up feel like a repeat performance.
• Draft the "because" sentences first. For each recommendation, finish the sentence "I selected this intervention because the data shows…". If you cannot finish it from the profile, the recommendation is not defensible yet.
• Keep a source list as you go. Note each citation the moment you use the idea; reconstructing sources afterward is the most avoidable time sink in a WGU performance assessment.

If you have already worked through D670 Elementary Literacy Methods or D688 Foundations of Literacy Through Literature, pull those notes forward — the reading-components vocabulary transfers directly. Notes from D184 Standards-Based Assessment are worth rereading too, since the data-to-decision habit is exactly what D697 grades.

Mistakes That Get D697 Tasks Returned

Nearly every revision request in a course like this traces back to a small number of patterns:

• Describing the data instead of interpreting it. Restating a score is not analysis. Say what the score indicates about the student's skill and which component of reading it implicates.
• Recommending a generic intervention. "More reading practice" or "small group instruction" is not targeted. Name the strategy, the skill it addresses, the frequency, and the tier it belongs to.
• Skipping progress monitoring. Plans that stop at "implement the intervention" leave a rubric aspect unaddressed. State what you would measure next, how often, and what result would prompt a change.
• Answering only part of a multi-part prompt. Prompts often bundle two or three demands into one sentence. Split them apart and answer each in its own paragraph.
• Vague or missing citations. Attribution is part of the evaluation, and unattributed source material creates an academic-integrity problem far larger than a revision.
• Writing about the class instead of the student. Keep the analysis anchored to the specific learner in the profile.
• Treating communication as decoration. Feedback to the student and the conversation with caregivers are part of what the course asks you to demonstrate.

D697 Readiness Checklist

• Can you explain what the science of reading means and why it drives intervention choices?
• Can you distinguish phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, and identify which one a given piece of data reflects?
• Can you describe what instruction looks like at Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3, and what evidence would justify moving a student up a tier?
• Can you tell a screening tool from a diagnostic tool from a progress-monitoring measure?
• Can you read a fluency result or phonics survey and state, in one sentence, the skill gap it reveals?
• Can you name an evidence-based intervention for that gap, including frequency and delivery?
• Can you describe the data patterns that would prompt you to consider dyslexia and involve specialists?
• Can you explain results to a caregiver in plain language, without overstating a single score?
• Have you checked your draft against every rubric aspect by name?

D697 FAQ

Is D697 an objective assessment or a performance assessment?

It is completed through performance assessment. There is no proctored multiple-choice exam to schedule; you submit written task work that WGU evaluators score against a published rubric. Confirm the current number and shape of the tasks on your own course page, since WGU updates them periodically.

How many competency units is D697 worth?

WGU's institutional catalog lists Literacy Assessment and Interventions at two competency units under catalog code EDUC 5088.

What is the difference between D697 and D689?

They share a title and nearly identical descriptions, but D689 (EDUC 2258) is the three-unit undergraduate version in bachelor's education programs, while D697 (EDUC 5088) is the two-unit graduate version in the MAT programs. Check which code appears in your degree plan before trusting a set of study notes.

How long does D697 usually take?

Many students describe a couple of weeks of steady work, though timelines vary widely with experience and how quickly a submission clears evaluation. Evaluator turnaround is a calendar item rather than an effort item, so plan around it.

Do I need classroom experience to pass D697?

No. Students consistently report that the tasks are built on provided student data rather than your own classroom, so candidates without current teaching experience complete the course routinely. If you have not worked with reading assessments before, spend extra time on the terminology.

What should I do if my task comes back for revision?

Read the evaluator's comments against the rubric aspect they name, then revise what was flagged plus anything sharing the same weakness. Revisions are a normal part of WGU's model, not a mark against you, and a targeted second submission usually clears quickly.

For more School of Education guides, see the Education hub or the full guide index. Course details change between catalog editions, so verify competency units and task requirements against the current WGU institutional catalog and your own course page. This guide is an independent study resource, not affiliated with or endorsed by Western Governors University.