I recently completed the DIBELS assessment on all our first grade students - I'm a Reading Specialist. This year something really stood out for me when I did the scoring. At first, I thought it was just a fluke, but as I continued through the three classrooms, a pattern began to emerge. I'm just wondering if anyone else who uses the DIBELS has had a similar experience.
First, let me clarify the instruction used by our classroom teachers. All of our teachers have attended and implement their instruction with the Teachers College format for both reading and writing. Each teacher has a minimum of 1-2 read alouds each day and devotes at least 45 minutes or more each to reading and writing workshop on a daily basis. Word study is also a component with teachers using the format of Words Their Way instruction. The word study or phonics component from the previous year (kindergarten) was with the Fountas and Pinnell program. This program is not district-wide - some of our elementary schools are using Fundations in both kindergerten and first grade. Our end-of-year DIBELS showed that across the three first grade classrooms, 62% of the students had a drop in their Phoneme Segmentation Fluency. Knowing these students personally, I was surprised at first but then realized that these very students were among the strongest readers. Within this same 62% who droped in PSF, 49% had gains in the Oral Reading Fluency section. And, while I'm not putting in a plug for DIBELS (I think it is quite invalid, especially based on how we are instructing our students), I was surprised at these results. Has anyone else who administers DIBELS had a similar experience? Thank goodness my principal doesn't have the sun rise and set on DIBELS, but this information goes to our central office and I'm just concerned at what their response might be? Does anyone know if there is valid data to support that strong readers do not necessarily need to be good at separating sounds? Thanks for your anticipated responses. Linda _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
