DIBELS Assessment Report

There are many assessment tools that can be used to identify students at risk and give teachers an idea of what they can do to help each student become better readers. We have recently learned about two such tests, the QRI-5 and DIBELS.

QRI-5

The first exercise of the QRI-5 is a word list to consider at which grade level the student can read. Then the student is assigned a passage at that grade level. The student will answer some concept questions, predict what the story will be about, read the passage, retell the story, and then answer recall questions.

DIBELS

The DIBELS assessment determines if the student has mastered the basic skills needed for reading. The student takes a series of tests to evaluate if he/she has good phoneme skills, alphabetic awareness, ans oral fluency. For the first test, the student says which letter sound the pictures shown start with. In the second test, the student breaks apart a word into its phonemes. The next test has the student orally read a passage and the last test has the student retell about what they have read.

Compare/Contrast

These two assessment differ in the way that they are presented to the students. The QRI-5 is a sequence test in which the student is focused on one topic throughout the assessment. DIBELS has different parts to it and the student uses different examples for each part of the assessment. Both of these tests, though, are informal ways of testing students to determine the level of reading skills of each student.

Instructional Planning

A teacher can use these assessments to ascertain the level that the class can read and understand what they are reading. In a any given class, there will be students at different reading levels. Using these assessments, teachers can give slightly different assignments to the students to help them with exactly what they need to succeed. Sometimes a student could pretend to be a better reader than he/she actually is. These assessments will clarify many misconceptions that teachers may have about the level of the students. These assessments can benefit students by making sure that they get the help they may need and making sure that they are progressing throughout the school year.

QRI-5 Assessment Report

I administered the QRI-5 to a second grade student living in Israel. She speaks English as her first language yet she is learning how to read and write English through private lessons. I first gave her the primer word list to read, but I saw that it was too difficult for her. She read the pre-primer 3 word list with 3 miscues. I did a practice assessment using a pre-primer 3 story and it was clearly on her independent level for reading and comprehension. The next time I saw her (2 days later) I gave her the primer word list again and she read many words that she had not gotten correct the first time. Although she scored below the accepted level, I gave her a primer story to read and she did well enough to be on the instructional level for primer.

The story we read was “A Trip”. She scored a 66% on the concept questions so I knew that she would not have too much trouble understanding the story. She included 2 ideas in the prediction of the story. She made 10 miscues but only 5 were meaning-change or non corrected. Her rate was 82 WPM and her correct WPM was 75. She was able to retell 11/22 ideas. She retold most of the important information leaving out only the details, so it could be that she thought she was supposed to summarize the passage, which she did well. She retold the story in the correct order. She answered all of the retelling questions correctly, so I knew that she understood what she read. I was proud of her success. Although she has trouble reading some sights words, I think that she is on the primer instructional level.

I would give her a lesson about irregularly spelled words. She will practice reading and writing “sight words”. These are words that are too hard to pronounce but they are used frequently so it is important for students to know how to read them just by looking at them. The students will practice the sight words that are appropriate for their grade level to know. This lesson will incorporate technology and teach sight words in a fun, engaging way. This lesson can be used regularly to help students practice their sight word vocabulary. Students will engage in this lesson specifically before they will be reading texts that will use such sight words.

Lesson Plan:

1. Students will learn knew words that are irregularly spelled (sight words)

2. Students will write the words and put them up on the word wall so they can be easily accessible at all times

3. Students will practice using these new words by writing sentences with them and reading them out loud

4. Students will do activity using the Sight Words with Samson Web site. The students can play this game in teams. Teams of four might be the ideal size for this activity. Try to blend ability levels within the teams. Students from each team will take turns spelling the given word. The team scores a point if the word is spelled correctly. The team with the most points at the end of the time period is the winning team.

NY- New York State Standards

- Subject: English Language Arts

- Learning Standard 1 : Language for Information and Understanding

Students will listen, speak, read, and write for information and understanding.

As listeners and readers, students will collect data, facts, and ideas; discover relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generated from oral, written, and electronically produced texts. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language to acquire, interpret, apply, and transmit information.

- Level: Elementary

- Key Idea: Listening and Reading

Performance Indicator:

make appropriate and effective use of strategies to construct meaning from print, such as prior knowledge about a subject, structural and context clues, and an understanding of letter-sound relationships to decode difficult words

The second student that I administered the QRI-5 to was a 9^th grader living in Israel. English is her first language, but I thought that she would be below grade level in writing and reading English because the English language is not a focus in her school. They learn English as a second language starting from 4^th grade. I was wrong; this 9^th grader read like a high school student who lives in an English-speaking country. I was really impressed with her reading skills.

I began with the upper middle school reading list. When she got 18 out of twenty words correct, I gave her the high school word list to read. She was able to read all of the words but she mispronounced three of them, putting her in the instructional level for high school reading. She read the first part of “Where are the Ashes”. She was only 40% familiar with the concepts that I asked her, so I thought she might have a little trouble understanding the story. She read the story really well with only 4 miscues out of 707 words. She read about 170 WPM. She only recalled about 7 out of 45 ideas. She knew 6 out of 10 retelling questions. She knew part of the details of two more questions.

I think that if we would have stopped to talk about it as we went along then she would have remembered more details after she finished reading the story. She didn't look back to answer any questions but I'm sure that if she did she would have scored much higher. I would still put her on the instructional level for high school reading. If I were her teacher, I would have her research the topic before reading a story like this. When students know about what happened during a specific period of time in a given place, then they'll have an easier time understanding this kind of story.

I planned a lesson on vocabulary because although she was able to read all of the words from the word list, she mispronounced them because she didn't know what they meant. Knowing the meanings of key words in a story could make a big difference in how well the student understands what she is reading.

Lesson Plan:

1. Students receive word list of new vocabulary words
2. Students are assigned two words to create “posters” on the computer
3. Posters must include the word, definition, picture/symbol clearly showing an understanding of the word's meaning, sentence to explain the word and they must look neat and attractive
4. Students will share their presentations with the class and hang them up to decorate the classroom
5. After students have reviewed each others work, they will take a quiz on the new vocabulary words

Standards:

NY- New York State Standards

Subject: English Language Arts

Learning Standard 1 : Language for Information and Understanding

Students will listen, speak, read, and write for information and understanding.

As listeners and readers, students will collect data, facts, and ideas; discover relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generated from oral, written, and electronically produced texts. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language to acquire, interpret, apply, and transmit information.

Level: Intermediate

Key Idea: Listening and Reading

produce a summary of the information about a famous person found in a biography, encyclopedia, and textbook
- use facts and data from news articles and television reports in an oral report on a current event
- compile a bibliography of sources that are used in a research project
- take notes that record the main ideas and most significant supporting details of a lecture or speech.

Performance Indicator:

Interpret and analyze information from textbooks and nonfiction books for young adults, as well as reference materials, audio and media presentations, oral interviews, graphs, charts, diagrams, and electronic data bases intended for a general audience.

Performance Indicator:

Relate new information to prior knowledge and experience.

Performance Indicator:

Understand and use the text features that make information accessible and usable, such as format, sequence, level of diction, and relevance of details