Got my results last week: CALT certified. I know 19 months sounds like a forever but I was working full-time as a reading specialist while studying, so weekday sessions were usually just 45 minutes. Weekends I could do 3-4 hours.
The exam itself is tough but fair. Structured literacy is the backbone — phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension — and you need to know the theoretical underpinnings (Orton-Gillingham lineage, structured literacy science) as well as practical intervention strategies. I got hit hard on morphology questions, specifically derivational vs. inflectional morphemes and how to teach them explicitly.
If you're preparing for the CALT and currently tutoring students, use your actual caseload as study material. Every lesson I planned, I asked myself which competency it mapped to. That metacognitive layer accelerated my retention significantly.
For assessment, know CTOPP-2 and GORT-5 cold. They test interpretation of results, not just administration procedures. Score report interpretation took me by surprise on a few questions.
The morphology section wrecked me on my first attempt too. Derivational morphemes especially. What resources did you use specifically for that domain?
I'm at month 8 of prep. The CTOPP-2 interpretation questions are something I've been avoiding — this is my reminder to actually dig into them. Thanks.
19 months is actually pretty typical for CALT given the supervised hours requirement. Congratulations — it's one of the harder literacy certs to earn.
Yeah, 19 months doesn't surprise me at all. I did mine while teaching full-time too, and honestly the part-time grind is its own skill. I couldn't do those marathon weekend sessions you mentioned, so I just leaned hard into short daily reps instead. Twenty minutes before school, a little on my lunch break, and I kept a calt practice test pdf on my phone so I could run a few questions while waiting in the car pickup line. It adds up faster than you'd think.
The thing nobody tells you is that consistency beats cramming for this one. Structured literacy isn't something you can memorize the night before. You've got to live in it. Some weeks I barely touched it because life happened, and that's fine, you just pick it back up. Congrats on passing, it's a real grind and you earned it.