Week 9 Assignment

Assignment #1:

After reviewing the information that was provided for DIBELS, I learned that is a test that was created to indicate the students that may need more instruction in reading. Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) is an set of assessments that are used for the progression and monitoring of the students' reading skills. The assessments are used within the K-6 grades, they are designed for the students to develop stronger reading skills. It was started in the University of Oregon and they are designed to help educators monitor potential instruction for struggling readers. The tests have benchmarks for each grade that determines the test that is given, the assessment level that they should achieve, and the results obtained from the assessments. The DIBELS measures are broken into many sets:

• ISF: Initial Sound Fluency
• LNF: Letter Naming Fluency
• PSF: Phoneme Segmentation Fluency
• NWF: Nonsense Word Fluency
• WUF: Word Use Fluency
• ORF: Oral Reading Fluency
• RTF: Retell Fluency

The students are given the assessments and timed to get the results that they complete the assessments in a specific time frame. The assessment are not as detailed in identifying the struggling areas as accurately as the QRI-5 to me, in reviewing the two systems.

Assignment #2:

The DIBELS is broken into areas of assessment and the measures are administered as follows:

Phonological Awareness:

• The Initial Sound Fluency (ISF) assessment is administered with the student being shown four pictures. They have 3 minutes to complete this assessment. The child is asked to identify the picture that represents the sound made by the examiner. For example, the examiner says /m/ to which the student selects the picture of milk. This assessment is to develop the student's knowledge of the beginning sounds and pictures that are determined by the amount of time taken and converts it into the correct number of initial sounds in 1 minute.
• The Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) is used to assess a student's ability to segment 3- and 4-phoneme words into their individual phonemes. They are to break the words apart and acknowledge the phoneme sounds. The student is assessed on how fluently they are able to complete the task. The assessment is done in 2 minutes, the student hears the words and then gives the sounds. Scoring is done while the sounds are produced, and placed in a scoring booklet.

Alphabetic Principles:

• The Nonsense Word Fluency is an assessment that tests the student's alphabetic principle knowledge. The student has to demonstrate the ability to blend sounds. The words that are given do not have a sensible combination. The student can sound out or say the word as spelled; either way they will receive a 3-letter correct score for the task. This assessment has the student demonstrate their ability to pronounce unfamiliar words. They will be able to say the word and not just the letters, and to measure the speed of the word pronunciation.

Fluency with Connected Text:

• The Oral Reading Fluency assessment is designed to monitor the student while reading a passage. Any hesitations, omissions and/or substitutions is an error. The reading fluency of the student is measured by the 1-minute reading. Self-corrected texts are to be considered as read correctly, the student is correcting the word without assistance from the examiner. The number of words read correctly per minute is the reading fluency score. This assessment also measures the reading level of the student and what level they should be reading at to begin with.
• The Retell Fluency assessment provided a check for the ORF assessment; it is a comprehensive check that identifies students that has fluency, but the comprehension is not at the same level. The assessment check provides the ability to keep the examiner from practicing a misrule with the student. The comprehension of what the student is reading is an important part of the reading/learning process. The passage must have meaning recognized for the purpose of the text to be understood. It is apparent when a student can not retell the details of the passage that they were just reading the passage without comprehending. This check will eliminate the need to speed read and to place comprehension first.

Assignment #3:

The QRI-5 and the DIBELS are both assessment tools to monitor the the student's comprehension and fluency. The QRI-5 assessment is designed to monitor the comprehension of the student. Using this assessment identifies where there is an issue with the student. Detecting any struggling students with this assessment, but in the present, it does not evaluate for the future learning opportunities. The assessment results are processed and evaluated for the school year at the present time.

The DIBELS is more of a screening assessment in the areas of phonemic awareness, alphabetic principles, fluency and vocabulary. This assessment is used by the districts and schools; the district used the assessment to place children in the appropriate learning level. While the teachers use it to gauge the interventions that the student needs. The DIBELS can be used to also monitor lesson progression when there is a common issue amongst the students or a select group. The DIBELS assessment is less intensive as the QRI-5 assessments. Most districts use DIBELS because it is affordable during the times of budget cuts.

As different as they are in the manner of adminstration of the assessments, they work good together. The DIBELS is better in the realm of the K-3^rd grade level. They both assist in identifying the struggling students and where they are needing assistance. The most widely chosen assessment tool would be the QRI-5 because of the intensive nature. The schools can pinpoint the struggling student's issue and develop strategies that would effectively help them. I like the idea of the DIBELS, but I would prefer the QRI-5 much better in a classroom setting.