DIBELS: One Piece of the Puzzle

March 5, 2012

Establishing Context

• K-3 Elementary School (became K-6)• Component of a Collaborative Response Model• Required a common progress monitoring tool

– Are students progressing?

Collaborative Team Meetings

Assessments Pyramid of Interventions

Why DIBELS?

• 5 Thread of Reading– Phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension

• Common assessment across grades• Quick administration – easy to train• Tools already developed• Ability to disaggregate data• Inexpensive

Effective When…

• Part of a responsive school-wide model that includes collaborative team meetings and pyramid of interventions

• Flag students for conversation• Focus on trends, not scores• Focused on student growth• Indicate students for further investigation• One assessment within a student profile to build

a complete picture of student reading achievement

Literacy Assessment Profile• DIBELS

– Benchmark (3 times a year)– Progress Monitoring

• GRADE (Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation)

– Annual common assessment (May)– Inform student transition, instructional effectiveness, teacher

PD

• Teacher Assessments– Further diagnostic information– In relation to learner outcomes

• Triangulation of Data– Also included library circulation, home reading survey,

reading attitudes survey

Ineffective When…• Used as the sole or primary measure of

student reading achievement• Progress monitoring for all students• Summative (reporting to parents)• Focus on scores, not trends• Drives instruction (fluency is more than

words per minute)• Used as sole evidence of success (or

failure) of school reading programs• Determine teacher effectiveness

What We Learned• Focus on purpose – Dynamic Indicators of

Basic Early Literacy Skills• Utilize with a pilot grade when starting• Determine passages for progress monitoring• Administer using an assessment team

– Not generally administered by classroom teachers

• Assessment schedule determined annually– Two days benchmarking– Progress monitoring every two weeks

• For use by staff – not generally communicated to families

• Kept student progress at the forefront

Questions?Kurtis Hewson (@hewsonk27)

Lorna Adrian (@lornaadrian)

@jigsaw_learning

jigsawlearning@shaw.ca

http://jigsawlearning.wordpress.com