Running Header: IRIS - ASSESSMENT, CASE STUDIES AND DIBELS

IRIS Module: Classroom Assessment II

Summary

The IRIS Module, Classroom Assessment II, covers assessment and progress monitoring

procedures that are integral for implementing a solid RtI program and that are essential for a

Literary Specialist in both their classroom practices and as a consultant. The module guides

participants through the process so that they can establish reading student reading levels, set

goals, determine if interventions are working, make data driven recommendations regarding RtI

(whether a student should be moved between tiers) and present accurate, evidence-based reports

during parent or IEP meetings. The module stresses the usefulness of graphing data from probes

administered with fidelity, and suggests how graphs can help teachers, parents, students and

other professionals by offering a concrete visual representation of student progress. For teachers,

and for Literacy Specialists, graphing can help make decisions regarding goals, monitor progress

(or lack of progress), and give structure to parent or IEP meetings. For parents, graphing will

enable them to see where their student is in personal progress as well as where their student is in

compared with the rest of their class. Last, but not least, graphing allows students to take

ownership of their progress to set ambitious, but realistic, personal goals.

Several suppliers of curriculum-based measures (CBMs) ready for implementation are

suggested by the IRIS module: ​www.Aimsweb.com​, ​http://www.DIBELS.uoregon.edu​, CBM

Warehouse (​http://www.interventioncentral.org/cbm_warehouse​, and McGraw Hill

(​http://www.mhdigitallearning.com​). All can help RtI programs establish baseline data, give

data to set goals, and monitor student progress if they are implemented with care and fidelity.

Each of these sites offer various assessments that guide teachers through an appropriate battery
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of grade-level measures that will help establish their students’ current reading or

reading-readiness level; some of the measures are free, some are guides in creating custom

appropriate measures, and some require purchasing. Regardless of which set of CBMs a

Literacy Specialist recommends or a teacher, school, or district chooses, the measures cover the

same general areas of reading fluency: letter sound fluency, word identification fluency, passage

reading fluency, and reading comprehension through a CLOZE-type assessment. Once a source

of probes has been chosen, the IRIS module instructs teachers how to administer the probes, how

to determine if they have accurately isolated reading level, how to identify and set appropriate

goals, and how to graph each students data.

Synthesis

Literacy Specialists can help teachers upfront with curriculum-based measures by

providing Professional Development in the use of the DIBELS curriculum-based measure; one

way a Literacy Specialist could do this is to introduce the school to both the IRIS RtI modules

and the DIBELS website. In addition to offering PD, a Literacy Specialist will need to support

teachers initially throughout the entire 6-step CBM process: selecting appropriate probes,

administering and scoring those probes, graphing scores, setting goals, making instructional

decisions based on the data, locating appropriate evidence-based practices to target identified

areas of weakness, and communicating the students’ progress. Once teachers have some

experience, Literacy Specialists will be of particular help in assisting teachers in navigating

through the DDS graphing and report system (if the school purchases it), or in establishing a

non-software driving graphing system. When the chosen graphing system is in place, and a

series of scores have been plotted, the Literacy Specialist can assist teachers in monitoring and
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reading data in order to determine how students’ instruction can best reflect what their probes

results indicate. This may include perusing available EBPs and promising practices,

participating in fidelity check routines, designing adaptations if instructional strategies are not

proving successful, or to help determine if a recommendation should be made for the student’s

intervention to be lessened or intensified.

IRIS RTI Case Study Assessment - DIBELS Recommendations

Level A, Case 1 - Savannah

Savannah's scores predict that she is at some risk for having difficulties with her reading.

Because her score on the Vanderbilt WIF indicated some lag in reading development, it may be a

good idea to assess Savannah with the DIBELS First Sound Fluency probe to make sure that she

has solid Phonological Awareness skills and is able to both identify and produce initial sounds.

If she is not, PA and alphabetic remediation are in order. If Savanah is confident with initial

sounds, then further DIBELS probes will help her teacher, Ms. Hudson, to isolate where she is

having the most difficulty in her reading skills. Ms. Hudson - or a classroom helper - should

initiate the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency probe with Savannah, which will assess her ability to

fluently segment 3-4 phoneme words, followed by the Nonsense Word Fluency/Correct Letter

Sounds probe to check whether her reading is suffering from a lack of automaticity of phoneme

blending in order to make words. Progress monitoring should occur 1-2x/ month, but because

Savannah has shown good progress over the past 2 weeks, no change should be made in her

instructional plan. By week 7, Ms. Hudson is probably working on decoding and sight word

reading, but she may need to backtrack for Savannah in order to make sure that she is strong in
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her sound blending and sound segmentation skills and can fluently produce the sounds for

common letter combinations.

Level B, Case 2 - Samaria

Samaria would benefit from DIBELS monitoring at the Oral Reading Fluency and

DAZE levels. Her teacher, Mr. Braun, is recommended to administer the Oral Reading Fluency

probe with third grade level probes, because that is her current instructional level based on her

past six weeks' progress. With the results on the ORF, Samaria's teacher will be able to establish

an ORF progress monitoring level that is appropriate for her, and he will be able to set an

AIMLINE and end-of-year goal that is specific to her. In addition to the ORF, Mr. Braun should

assess Samaria and her Tier 2 peers together with DAZE to measure their comprehension &

fluency of passages read. Because Samaria is responding well to her current placement in Tier 2

and the instructional strategies that were put into place when she entered Tier 2, no changes to

EBP implementation is necessary.

Level C, Case 1 - Alejandro

The first DIBELS assessment suggested for Alejandro and his teacher is the Non-Word

Fluency (CLS) probe, which will assess letter/sound correspondence and the ability to blend; it

will check if Alejandro is "phonologically recoding" (Good, 2002, Regular Word Reading, para.

3) or if he is sounding out each letter without automaticity. If he does not meet fluency goals for

CLS, Ms. Willaby will know to set an instructional goal that will give him practice with sight

words and automatic word reading. In the case that he meets the benchmark for CLS, Ms.

Willaby should assess his Oral Reading Fluency at grade level, and if he does not meet

grade-level expectations (a raw score of 43 or lower), his teacher should reassess with the next
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level down and repeat this process until his grade level is identified. Once grade level has been

identified, an appropriate EBP implementation plan is in order and Alejandro’s progress should

be monitored 1-2 times each month with monitoring probes. Ms. Willaby is then recommended

to graphs Alejandro’s data and monitor it for progress - or lack of progress - and establish a

personal "AIM LINE" and end-of-year goal for Alejandro.

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References

Brown, J., Skow, K., & the IRIS Center. (2009). RTI: Progress monitoring. Retrieved from

http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdf_case_studies/ics_rtipm.pdf

Good, R. H., & Kaminski, R. A. (Eds.). (2002). Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy

Skills (6th ed.). Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement.

Available:​ ​http://dibels.uoregon.edu/

Guide to Evidence-Based Practice Implementation. (2014). ​TEACHING Exceptional Children​,

47​(2), 85–93.