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DIBELS
Dynamic Indicators of Basic
Early Literacy Skills Winter
2008 District Norms for Word Use
Fluency
“FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS” about Progress Monitoring and Intervention Instruction
What is progress monitoring? The Reading First Assessment Committee defines progress monitoring as assessments that are done to determine if students are making adequate progress or need more intervention to achieve grade level reading outcomes (U.S. Department of Education 2002).
Most probably, the most important characteristic of using DIBELS is its capacity to monitor the progress of students while they are receiving intervention instruction.
Knowing that the purpose of administering DIBELS is to predict which children are at risk of later reading difficulties, then we must monitor to see how well our intervention efforts are doing in helping our students reach critical reading milestones.
Which students should be progress monitored? Progress monitoring is for students who are below benchmark on the DIBELS and are receiving intervention instruction; therefore, a teacher will only be administering progress monitoring to a portion of the class. As the year progresses, it is hopeful that more and more students will be exited from intervention groups back to core curriculum instruction only, and so the number of students receiving progress monitoring lessens over time.
For all the students who are at benchmark and are reaching important milestones in reading, there is no need to progress monitor more often than the three times a year they participate in the benchmark screening.
How often should students be progress monitored? Assessing every three weeks generally allows a teacher to see a good trend line of progress after nine weeks. Monitoring progress every three weeks, within nine weeks of the fall benchmark, allows plotting of four points – the initial benchmark assessment in which the student was flagged for intervention instruction and three progress monitoring scores.
A teacher can increase the frequency of progress monitoring for any student at any time. Progress monitoring can be done weekly or biweekly, depending on the circumstances; however, we must progress monitor at least once every three weeks.
Which indicators are assessed for progress monitoring? Intervention begins at the lowest skill that is deficient and addresses this skill before moving up the continuum. Although a student may be below benchmark in several indicators, we should progress monitor in one skill at a time, paying attention to the skills that are most critical to the students’ current instructional focus. Some examples include:
*This may require progress monitoring out of grade level.
What is the importance of different skills at different grade levels? The ultimate goal of reading instruction is to teach students to comprehend what they read. Comprehension depends on accurate and fluent decoding, as well as understanding the words and concepts that are included in the reading passages. Many studies have shown that oral reading fluency measures are valid at measuring not only fluency, but at predicting a student’s overall reading comprehension as well. If we wait until third grade to see if the student reads well, critical time has been lost when early interventions may well have prevented the reading difficultly. Because of the importance of intervening early, it is imperative to look for indications of risk long before the student is beginning to read text. Even if we wait until the middle of first grade, when students are expected to begin reading, to look for the possibilities of difficulties and begin intervention it is too late.
The solution is to look in kindergarten and at the beginning of first grade for pre-reading skills that link to the ultimate skill of reading passages. DIBELS uses the early developing skills of letter naming, phoneme identification, and phoneme segmentation to predict how likely it is that the later skills that ultimately lead to proficient reading will also develop. Reading books fluently with comprehension is the ultimate goal, a task that is not accomplished until second, third, or a later grade for some students. Throughout kindergarten and early first grade, we need to measure the precursor skills to successfully reading connected text. Although fluent reading is the best indicator of reading abilities, a kindergarten student would not be expected to read connected text fluently, if at all. A kindergarten student would, however, be expected to identify letters by name, to identify sounds in words, and match some letters and sounds. Those are the skills that DIBELS assesses in kindergarten and at the beginning of first grade. By the middle of the year, a first grader would be expected to read connected text, but not as nearly as fluently or accurately as a second grader. Even a high-performing first grader is still mastering basic skills. Because of this, DIBELS measures not only connected text reading in first grade, but also phonemic awareness (PSF) and phonics (NWF). At the beginning of second grade, DIBELS measures phonics (NWF) as well as connected text reading because some beginning second graders are still struggling with the concept of matching sounds and letters.
DIBELS indicators link to skills that are usually acquired in a progression of reading development. Research teams refer to these as “stepping stones” from one important early reading skill to the next, through the developmental progression.
The University of Oregon researchers publish benchmark levels for all indicators in order to help teachers determine which students are likely to be at risk for reading difficulty unless effective instruction is provided. For example, the benchmark level for oral reading of a passage at the end of first grade is 40 words read correctly per minute. Below 20 is considered “at risk” and between 20 and 40 is labeled “some risk.” A student who reads a minimum of 40 words correct per minute at the end of first grade is more likely to read on grade level in second and third grade than a student who doesn’t make this goal.
There are earlier indications that predict whether a student will read 40 words per minute at the end of first grade. The strongest predictor in DIBELS of whether a student will read 40 words per minute at the end of first grade is the student’s proficiency at decoding nonsense words in the middle of first grade. If a student in the middle of first grade reaches the established level of reading 50 graphemes correct per minute with at least 15 blended words, where the vowels represent the short sound in nonsense words (NWF), the probability that the student will read passages at benchmark level at the end of first grade is extremely high. It is similar that if a student reaches the benchmark goal of 35 on PSF by the winter of kindergarten, the student has a high probability of making the next benchmark. So we can see that reaching benchmark on any one step along the progression increases the chance that a student will stay on benchmark and continue along until he reads well at the end of third grade. A student must achieve all the goals, and achieve them on time, to be on track for becoming a successful reader. It is not enough to meet only one early literacy goal; a student must meet each of these goals to stay on track for successful reading.
Why isn’t there an LNF progress monitoring booklet? The research team that developed DIBELS views letter naming as a less important skill for instruction than the skills that are based on knowledge of sounds (ISF, PSF, NWF). Letter naming is included as an indicator because it is a predictor of reading success. Teachers may choose to provide intervention instruction with this skill and monitor the progress of the student by creating their own progress monitoring materials. There is certainly no objection to teachers doing this. However, the research team does not encourage it, and therefore doesn’t provide a progress monitoring booklet for this purpose. The reason is that they encourage teachers to devote their intervention instruction time to teaching students the sounds and letter-sound correspondences rather than the names of the letters.
If I need to progress monitor out of grade level, where do I get the progress monitoring booklets? Teachers may borrow appropriate progress monitoring booklets from another teacher at the school. Progress monitoring booklets may be copied as many times as necessary. Copies of all progress monitoring booklets can also be requested from the Print Shop.
When do I stop progress monitoring? When we look at the data from progress monitoring assessments for a student, our concern is not only whether the student is making progress, but also if the rate of progress is adequate for the student to catch up to benchmark in time. We want a student to reach benchmark in the skill area, and also to reach the benchmark level on time. Therefore, whenever a student is in intervention instruction, our goal is to catch the student up on the deficient skill as soon as possible so that the student won’t lag behind on the next skill as well. There is no time to waste. We should not be satisfied just with progress alone; we need to continue to focus on catching the student up as fast as possible.
The general rule for when a student is ready to exit intervention is when the student’s score on the skill that must be established reaches benchmark and stays there for at least three progress monitoring periods. We can ascertain that the student has caught up to benchmark and may only need core reading instruction at this point. It is important to consider where a student is in relation to the skills that are supposed to be established by the next DIBELS benchmark period, not just what was supposed to be established at the last benchmark date. The expectations continue to grow across the year, as we see by the increasing benchmark scores up to the time when the skill is to be established. Many teachers may still be concerned about whether the student’s skills will continue to progress. If that is a concern, the teacher can continue to progress monitor for a few more weeks just to be sure that the student stays on track. If at any point the student’s skills aren’t continuing to make progress, intervention instruction can begin again. When a teacher follows this type of progress monitoring schedule, it is rare that a student who is exited from intervention instruction will have to re-enter it. Generally, with effective and early intervention, once the student catches up, he continues to make progress with core reading instruction only.
Are there any approved accommodations for administering DIBELS? Yes! For a complete listing of approved accommodations, please refer to the DIBELS Administrative Guide (found in each DIBELS Classroom kit) beginning on page 63. *The only accommodation that is not approved is extended time.
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