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DIBELS
 

 

 


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Jefferson County Schools administers DIBELS to all students in grades K-5 three times each year to monitor progress of students, look at benchmarks, and to plan instruction.

 

What should teachers look for when analyzing students’ responses?

 

Initial Sound Fluency (Kindergarten)

  • Does the student guess?
  • Does he/she answer but do so very slowly? (Is it a processing speed weakness, is the student shy, or is there an initial sound or retrieval weakness?)
  • Does he/she appear to understand the directions?
  • Does he/she forget the names of the pictures?
  • Does the child need prompting or to be kept on track?
  • How can this information inform my instruction as the teacher? Do I need to re-teach the whole class, work with a flexible group, or just this student on this skill?

 

Letter Naming Fluency (Kindergarten, Grade 1)

  • What pattern is there to the types of letters that the child misses? (Near the beginning of the alphabet, lowercase, curved letters, straight or stick letters, etc.)
  • Does he/she confuse letters that look alike? (b/d, m/w, p/q/b, u/n. h/n, etc.?)
  • Does the child confuse letters that sound alike? (p/b; r/w, etc.?)
  • Does the child look for letters in his/her name?
  • Does the child track for left to right or skip around?
  • Does the child recognize letters that we have done in class?
  • Have I noted letters that need reinforcement?

 

Phoneme Segmentation (Grades K-1)

  • Does the child understand the directions?
  • Does he/she segment blends?
  • Does he/she segment final phoneme /s/ at the end of words?
  • Have trouble with short vowels, including short e and short i?
  • Fail to segment the final l in words?
  • Does the child omit the medial sounds?
  • Does the child have trouble with nasals?
  • Do I need to recommend this child for a speech referral?
  • Should I work with the class, group, or child on segmenting activities using Elkonin boxes or manipulatives?

 

Nonsense Word Fluency (Grades K-2)

  • Is the student at the sound-by-sound stage or at the whole word reading stage?
  • Does he/she read the first sound only?
  • Can he/she read final sounds?
  • Does he/she read long vowels instead of short vowels?
  • Which short vowels sounds are students having trouble with?
  • Can the student identify consonant digraphs like /sh//ph//th/ /ch//tch/?
  • Does the child read blends correctly? (br, cr, cl, dr, str, etc.?)
  • Was he/she slow but accurate?
  • Do we need to work on blending individual phonemes?

 

Oral Reading Fluency (Grades 1-5)

  • Did the student tend to miss High Frequency Words, or sight words?
  • Did the student tend to miss words that could be decoded?
  • Does he/she tend to look at the first letter and guess the rest of the word?
  • Does he/she miss the same word, even after being told the word?
  • Was the student slow but accurate?
  • Was he/she quick but impulsive?
  • Does the student have persistent reversals or transpositions? (was/saw;  felt/left; bad/dad?)
  • Does he/she loose her place or skip lines/words?
  • Does the child re-read?
  • Does the child self-correct?
  • Should I work with this child, or flexible group, on prosody, phrasing, pace, or expression?
  • Would Reader’s Theater, repeated readings of familiar text, fluency drills, reading aloud at home, etc. help this child?
  • Is the child practicing fluency with the appropriate level text?
  • How often should I monitor this student’s progress?

 

ReTell Fluency (Grades 1-5)

  • Does the child understand the directions?
  • Does he/she speak in a halting manner?
  • Does he/she speak in complete sentences?
  • Does the child require a longer than usual response time?
  • How does my observation on the retelling compare to what I see in the student’s day-to-day performance in my classroom?
  • Does the child share during SSR?
  • How can I encourage retelling in my classroom?

 

Word Use Fluency (Grades K-5)

  • Is there a pattern to the type of words missed most often? (Nouns, adverbs, adjectives, verbs, etc.)
  • Does he/she speak in a halting manner?
  • Does he/she speak in complete sentences?
  • Should I make a speech or language referral?
  • Does the child require a longer than usual response time?
  • How does my observation on the retelling compare to what I see in the student’s day-to-day performance in my classroom?
  • How can I build vocabulary in my classroom? Do I need to add more Sparkle Words? Dead and Tired Words to my wall?

 

~ Jeannette Mulholland, Reading Specialist (Based on information presented by Susan Smartt at the TNIDA Workshop.)