Running head: STUDENT ASSESSMENT PROJECT 1

Student Assessment Project

Theresa Baldwin

EDU 325
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Student Assessment Project

Introduction

Cody is a first grade student at a public elementary school in the Midwest United States.

He is six years old, lives in an urban setting, and has one younger sibling in kindergarten who

also attends Pugliese West. According to his homeroom teacher, he is on grade level in reading,

spelling, and writing. He is advanced in math. Cody is an eager and focused student who

always follows directions. He is a hard worker and is very kind to his classmates and to

everyone he meets. He gets along well with his peers and easily adapts in different social

settings. His organization and decision making skills are appropriate for a first grader. His

teacher does not need to use motivators or reinforcers because he is eager to please and he never

needs to be pushed.

He does not currently have a behavior intervention plan (BIP) or an individualized

education plan (IEP). However, he is considered at-risk and he does receive additional reading

instruction outside of the classroom four days a week. This tutoring is focused on direct,

individualized instruction in phonemic awareness, letter skills, word reading, spelling, and sight

words. I have gotten to know Cody because I tutor him two days a week. I agree with

everything his teacher said about him; he is very focused during our sessions and is a quick

learner. We have spent many sessions learning new phonemes, working on word attack skills,

memorizing sight words, and working on spelling and reading fluency. He still has a long way

to go in becoming a fluent reader, but I have seen a lot of progress in all of these areas in the past

two months.

Procedures
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Since I tutor Cody with Success for All (SFA), I asked for permission from his teacher to

administer the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment during

one of our tutoring sessions. Once receiving permission, I emailed the teacher and asked if she

would fill out the student background information. She asked me to bring her a hard copy of the

document, so I did. I picked it up from her the following week. She was concerned with privacy

issues and for that reason she was very brief in her responses.

In preparation for performing the assessment efficiently, I practiced the assessment with a

peer and reviewed the probes. On the day of the assessment, October 15, I arrived at the school,

signed in, and went upstairs. I first tutored another student and then picked Cody up from his

classroom and brought him to a table in the hallway outside of the classroom. We sat down

beside each other and I told him we would be doing something different than usual. I made sure

he understood that there might be things he did not know but that he should try his very best. I

asked Cody if he was ready to begin, and he said he was. I assessed him using the DIBELS Next

measures and probes. The assessment went very smoothly. I delivered it exactly how the

manual suggested. Cody was focused and did exactly what he was told. There were some

students passing by and talking in the hallway throughout the assessment, but they did not appear

to distract Cody. We got through all the probes quickly and still had time to get in some

tutoring. I thanked him for helping me out and cooperating so well and then I brought him back

to his classroom. When I returned home, I calculated his scores and recorded them on the front

of the assessment booklet. I compared them to benchmarks and found that, although Cody’s

teacher says he is on grade level for reading, his scores indicate he is below or well-below

benchmark for all assessments except whole words read (WWR) in the Nonsense Word Fluency

probe. In response to this, I chose to target his weakest areas, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency
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and Oral Reading Fluency. I then selected an evidence-based strategy for each, Elkonin boxes

for phoneme segmentation fluency and Readers Theater for oral reading fluency.

Assessments Given

The DIBELS assessment for first grade assesses four measures of early literacy skills.

The first subtest tests Letter Naming Fluency, the second tests Phoneme Segmentation Fluency,

the third tests Nonsense Word Fluency, and the fourth tests Oral Reading Fluency. The purpose

of these assessments is to identify students who may be at risk for reading difficulties, to help

teachers guide their instruction, to progress monitor at-risk students, and to examine the

effectiveness of the school’s instructional supports. All subtests are administered in one-minute

probes that measure the skill (Good & Kaminski, 2011).

Letter Naming Fluency measures a student’s automaticity in recognizing letters and

saying their names (Good & Kaminski, 2011). The assessor gives the student a page of a mix of

uppercase and lowercase letters in a random order and asks the student to start on the first line

and name the letters when the timer starts. The student begins to name the letters and the

assessor marks any letters that are named incorrectly or skipped. This probe is scored by

counting the number of letters that the student named correctly in one minute. Letter naming

fluency is a strong predictor of later reading achievement, but it is not essential for achieving

reading outcomes (Good & Kaminski, 2011). For this reason, it is not a basic early literacy skill

and thus a benchmark goal is not provided. Instruction should not be focused on letter names,

but rather on developing phonological awareness and knowledge of the alphabetic principle

(Good & Kaminski, 2011).

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency measures a student’s ability to orally segment a

monosyllabic word into the correct amount of phonemes (Haughbrook, Hart, Schatschneider, &
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Taylor, 2017). The assessor explains how the assessment works to the student. He/she tells the

student that they are going to say all the sounds they hear in words. The assessor gives several

examples and then has the student practice one before beginning the assessment (Good &

Kaminski, 2011). An example of correct phoneme segmentation of the word ‘bat’ is orally

sounding out the three separate phonemes as /b/ /a/ /t/. The assessor then begins the timer and

keeps track of how many phonemes the student correctly identifies. The probe is scored by

counting the number of phonemes that the student named correctly in one minute (Haughbrook

et al, 2017).

Nonsense Word Fluency measures a student’s ability to decode nonsense words, which

are letter sequences that follow regular phonetic rules but have no meaning, for example, lif or

yom or mib (Marshall, 2018). The measure of Nonsense Word Fluency assesses students’

phonemic awareness, knowledge of grapheme-phoneme relationships, and knowledge of how to

read and sound out each separate phoneme in a word (Cummings, 2011). These separate

phonemes in a word are known as letter sounds, and for this probe, the student is scored by how

many correct letter sounds (CLS) he/she pronounces. According to research, there are distinct

connections between a student’s ability to pronounce correct letter sounds and later reading

comprehension skills (Cummings, 2011).

Oral Reading Fluency tests a student’s reading accuracy and fluency while he/she reads

connected text (Haughbrook et al, 2017). The score is the number of words from a passage that

the student reads correctly in one minute (Cummings, 2013). Words that are not read correctly

and thus not scored are omitted words, substituted words, and words that were not said within

three seconds (Haughbrook et al, 2017). The probe also measures reading comprehension, as the

student is asked to retell what he/she read. By examining a student’s accuracy of reading a
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passage, Oral Reading Fluency measures word attack skills and advanced phonics skills (Good &

Kaminski, 2011). Verbal reading proficiency is one of the most common, effective, and reliable

indicators of reading comprehension (Rasplica & Cummings, 2013). This is because fluent

readers are able to use their brain for comprehending texts rather than for decoding words.

Results & Analysis

Cody’s probe results were compared to the DIBELS Next Benchmark Goals. The

DIBELS assessment is typically given three times a year, at the beginning of the year, in the

middle of the year, and at the end of the year. There are different benchmark scores for each of

these three times of year. Cody’s scores were compared against the beginning-of-the-year

benchmarks, since the assessment was given in October. The only measures that were compared

to middle-of-the-year benchmarks are the Oral Reading Fluency words correct and accuracy,

since these are not typically assessed in the beginning of first grade.

Cody’s Letter Naming Fluency score was 41, which means that he was able to correctly

name 41 letters during the one minute probe. There is no benchmark provided for Letter Naming

Fluency, so this score was not compared to benchmark. In the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency

measure, Cody scored 24, which means that he was able to pronounce 24 separated phonemes in

one minute. His score is well below benchmark because a benchmark score is between 40 and

46. This indicates that he is likely to need intensive support in this area. In the Nonsense Word

Fluency measure, Cody got 25 letter sounds correct and read four whole words without orally

sounding them out first. While the four Whole Words Read is actually above benchmark for the

beginning of the year, the score of 25 Correct Letter Sounds is below benchmark. This signifies

that he is likely to need strategic support in this area. The Oral Reading Fluency probe was

given three times with three different passages. Cody read an average of ten words correctly in
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one minute, which is a score of 10. This score is well below benchmark (23-33). However, this

is a Middle-of-the-Year benchmark since there is not one provided for the beginning of the year,

so he may be able to perform a little better by the middle of the year. His Oral Reading Fluency

accuracy, which is the percent of all the read words that were read correctly, was 70%, which is

considered below benchmark, indicating a need for strategic support. Cody’s composite score of

90 indicates that he is well below benchmark and is therefore likely to need intensive support.

These results are summarized in Figure 1 and Table 1.

Figure 1: Cody’s performance on DIBELS measures compared to benchmark averages

Cody’s Performance on DIBELS Measures

Compared to Benchmark Averages
Cody's Score Benchmark Strategic Average

90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
PSF NWF-CLS ORF Words Correct* ORF Accuracy (%)*

*Assessed in October but measured against winter benchmarks

Table 1: Cody’s need for support based on DIBELS scores

Assessment Score Need for Support

Letter Naming Fluency 41 Core
Phoneme Segmentation Fluency 24 Intensive
Nonsense Word Fluency Correct letter sounds: 25 Strategic
Whole words read: 4 Core
Oral Reading Fluency Correct (median): 10 Intensive*
Errors (median): 3.67
Oral Reading Fluency Accuracy 70% Strategic*
Composite Score 90 Intensive
*Assessed in October but measured against winter benchmarks
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A common pattern in the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency assessment was that, for

almost all of the words, Cody segmented the word into its onset and rime, rather than into its

individual phonemes. For instance, for the word song, he said /s/ /ong/. This pattern continued

for eight of the twelve words he read during the minute-long probe. For the Nonsense Word

Fluency assessment, Cody did fairly well in saying the words correctly after sounding it out.

One issue, which I know is an area of difficulty for him, is that he often mixes up the letters b

and d. He pronounced the word deg as /beg/.

The Oral Reading Fluency assessment was clearly a struggle for Cody. He was only able

to read an average of ten words in a minute. He was not distracted, but would stare at a word for

a few seconds before orally attempting to sound it out. Once he did sound it out, he still only got

the word correct 70% of the time. When I asked him to retell what he had read, he just started

listing some of the words that were in the passage in no particular order and with no meaning.

This is understandable, as it is hard to comprehend text when focusing so hard on decoding

words. His average retell score was 3.6, which means he was able to provide 3.6 words that were

relevant to the passage that he read. Although Cody performed below benchmark on most of the

assessments, he gave his full attention to the test and certainly gave his best effort, even when he

was clearly struggling.

Areas Targeted for Improvement

Based on the results of the DIBELS assessment, two areas were targeted for further

improvement: phoneme segmentation and reading fluency. Proficient phonemic awareness, the

ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words, by first grade is a strong

indicator of later reading success, and phoneme segmentation is a significant aspect of phonemic

awareness (Keesey, Konrad, & Joseph, 2015). That is why it is critical for a first grader to be
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proficient in phoneme segmentation. A strategy that has been shown to improve phoneme

segmentation fluency is Elkonin sound boxes (Elkonin, 1963; Keesey et al, 2015). This is a

strategy in which words are orally broken into their phonemes by pointing at or pushing tokens

into boxes. For the word sheep, for example, a student would push a token into each of the three

provided boxes as he/she verbally segments the phonemes /sh/ /ē/ and /p/ (McCarthy, 2008). The

strategy is done orally and nothing is written, as the goal is not to practice spelling or writing but

to increase phonemic awareness. Keesey, Konrad, and Joseph (2015) conducted a study to

examine the effects of sound boxes on phonological, reading, and spelling skills of three at-risk

kindergarteners. They found that sound box instruction increased the students’ segmenting skills

and letter-sound correspondences, which in turn improved their reading and spelling skills. In

addition, the students maintained these skills after intervention. If this strategy were to be used

with Cody, progress could be monitored by administering the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency

probe continually throughout and after the intervention.

The second target area for Cody is Oral Reading Fluency, because he demonstrated a

need for intensive intervention in this area. A strategy that has been shown to significantly

improve reading fluency is Readers Theater (Martinez, Roser, & Strecker, 1998/1999). In

Readers Theater, students perform a written script. There are no costumes, props, or scenery

involved, so the students must rely on voices to convey meaning (Young & Rasinski, 2009).

This requires them to interpret the author’s intended meaning of the text and deliver that

meaning to an audience by oral interpretative reading. This strategy provides struggling readers

with an opportunity to improve their reading fluency in a non-threatening environment (Mraz et

al, 2013). The strategy incorporates repeated and assisted reading until the student reaches a

high level of fluency before he/she performs (Mraz et al, 2013; Young & Rasinski, 2009).
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Students are provided with guidance and feedback from their teacher and peers which helps them

improve further. There are many benefits to this strategy. It improves reading performance,

prosody, accuracy and automaticity in word recognition, oral reading fluency, interpretive skills,

and comprehension. It is also a highly engaging activity that can motivate students to read (Mraz

et al, 2013; Young & Rasinski, 2009). If this strategy were to be used with Cody, progress could

be monitored by administering the Oral Reading Fluency probe continually throughout and after

the intervention.

Conclusion

The information and data gathered from this assessment were very beneficial and useful

in gaining an understanding of Cody’s reading levels. Assessment is important because it

signifies where growth is needed and helps teachers plan instruction around their students’ needs.

Cody is below benchmark in most areas of reading, and so his teacher can make instructional

decisions and offer him the support that he needs to be a successful reader and a successful

student. Cody is an intelligent boy and a quick learner, and if he is given additional support, I

think that he will be able to reach benchmarks by the end of the year.

This project gave me practice with a widely-used Curriculum-Based Measurement

(CBM) which was a very valuable experience. I learned how important it is to be sure that

students are receiving the instruction that they need, and the only way to know what they need is

through assessments such as DIBELS. I also got practice using assessment data to make

hypothetical instructional decisions and justify the rationale behind why I chose the specific

strategies. Overall, this project taught me a lot and helped me to feel more prepared to be a

teacher.
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Bibliography

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