STUDENT ASSESSMENT PROJECT

Student Assessment Project

Anna Telepak

EDU 325
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Student Assessment Project

DIBELS stands for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. These are

assessments that help measure student’s performance on certain reading skills. These

skills include phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

This assessment was practiced by a third grader by the name of Katie Nelson. Katie

attends a very small private school in Irving, Texas. It is located in a suburb of Dallas.

This catholic school teaches students from preschool to eighth grade. Katie is the sixth

child and only girl in a family of seven. She is very independent, silly, and loving. She

excels in math and science but struggles sometimes when it comes to reading. On

October 9th, 2019, the student was assessed with the DIBELS testing materials.

Procedures

This student was found to be assessed through being related to the assessor. Katie is my

cousin and is very close to me. Her brother goes to school with me at Franciscan

University and visited with her family to see us during family weekend. I asked her mom,

my aunt, if she could participate in the testing while she was here. I was told that Katie

would be very excited to work with me. She was staying in a hotel room with her

siblings, so the test was taken at the desk in the room when her siblings were not present.

This was a good thing considering her siblings would not be there to distract her. I sat

down with Katie and went over the procedures of the DIBELS assessment. I explained

how it worked and what was expected of her so that she understood how the assessment

worked. I then began to administer the assessment which took half an hour to complete.

When reading a passage during the test, we had taken one break because she was getting

distracted as she started to get up and sing. I gave her a snack and we did ten jumping
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jacks together. This got all her jitters out and we began the rest of the assessment. Once it

was completed, I looked over Katie’s scores that same night to compare them to grade

level benchmarks in third grade.

Assessments Given

Four assessments were given to the third grader. These assessments included Oral

Reading Fluency (ORF), Retell Fluency (RF), Word Use Fluency (WUF), and Word

Reading Fluency (WRF). Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) measures accuracy and fluency

within text. It is the ability to translate letters to sounds and sounds to words. Retell

Fluency (RF) focuses on the student’s comprehension based off a reading passage that

has been read (Furgerson, 2018). The student is asked to repeat back to the assessor what

was read in the story. During this assessment, the assessor is not only looking for what

the student remembered and read from the story, but how many words the student uses to

retell what was read. Word Use Fluency (WUF) assesses the student’s expressive

vocabulary skills. It measures the ability for the student to use words to convey certain

meaning for a particular word. The last assessment is Word Reading Fluency. Word

Reading Fluency (WRF) observes the student’s ability to read aloud from a long list of

words. The score recorded is based off of the number of words read aloud from the list by

the student. These assessments help educators know how the student is progressing and

where help is needed. It is also a good way of showing if a student is at risk in a certain

reading area. From this information teachers can know where and how to help students

improve in these specific areas. Teachers are able to continually check and help the

student progress in these struggling areas well.

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Results & Analysis

Overall Katie did well on the assessment. Her score for Oral Reading Fluency

(ORF) came out to be an 89. When comparing her scores to the average for her grade, she

reached the benchmark for third grade. She scored an 89 percent in words read correctly.

However, she still is in need of some core support. Katie read the passage very clearly

and well, but sometimes started to speed up when she was excited. She knew what the

words were so she became excited, but she would immediately slow down after.

ASSESSMENT TYPE SCORES

Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) - Words correct: 89

- At benchmark level

- Core support needed

- 97% accuracy
Retell Fluency (RF) - Score of 9

- Well below benchmark

- Intensive support needed

- Retell quality of response- 1

Word Use Fluency (WUF) - Score of 50

- Above benchmark
Word Reading Fluency (WRF) - N/A

Katie’s Retell Fluency score ended with a total of 9 words which means she is

well below benchmark. This needs to be a focused area and calls for some intensive

support. I noticed she struggled with paying attention and really understanding the words

being read. She was very excited about being able to understand what the words were,

but could not seem to put them all together. Her retell quality of response score was a 1.

Katie did well when completing the WUF assessments. She was able to describe 4 words

and use them in very strong sentences. She scored above the benchmark for her grade
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level at a score of 50. The last assessment was WRF, which does not have scoring guides

for the assessor that could compare Katie’s scores to any bench line scores. However, her

words scored correctly were consistent in every section. She performed well during this

section of the DIBELS assessment. If Katie were to take this same test in a couple of

months, her scores and performance could be compared to her current scores. These

scores gave the assessor a good insight as to what the student needs to improve on.

Areas Targeted for Improvement

Comprehension- In the Retell Fluency assessment, Katie struggled very much with

remembering what the story read immediately before was about. She was struggling to

think about what information was just read. When reading the passages, she would

become excited and keep reading the words because of how she knew what they were.

She was not necessarily paying attention to what was actually read all together. A good

strategy that could help with this is a Sketch to Stretch activity. Sketch to Stretch is a

strategy dedicated to improving comprehension (Harste, 1988). This strategy activates

prior knowledge, builds vocabulary, helps make connections, visualize ideas, and

summarize. This can start off by the teacher or student reading aloud a passage to work

off of. Students will then draw pictures of key ideas and parts that stood out to them in

the story. Once the story is finished and the student has things jotted down on their sketch

to stretch paper, the student then uses the pictures and ideas written down to rewrite or

summarize aloud what the story was about. This is a good way to start to work on

improving Katie’s struggles in reading comprehension. It is a fun activity that assists her

in being able to remember and retell what was already read to her.
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Rhythm and Fluency- When working with Katie in the Oral Reading Fluency

assessment, she tended to struggle with keeping a certain pace when reading aloud. She

was not able to keep a steady pace when reading a larger passage. Katie needs help in

being able to keep a steady pace when reading things aloud, not only to help how she

verbally sounds, but to also help her understand while she reads at a slower and steady

pace. Simple strategies can be used to help slow down a student’s vocal reading. Things

such as reading along with a finger or ruler to guide each word and sentence slowly as the

student reads (Cicerchia, 1992). This will help implement a steady pace back in the

students reading habits. Once that steady pace is back, the finger or ruler will no longer

be needed. Having the student read the same thing multiple times can also help improve

rhythm and fluency (Lynne, 2018). This will give exposure to certain words and phrases

and lets the student get comfortable and familiar with reading them.

Conclusion

This assessment gave a good view of Katie Nelsons strengths and weaknesses in

the five pillars assessed in DIBELS. Besides the minor distraction and having to settle her

down for a minute, the assessment went well with the student. It gave the assessor a good

overall look in her reading abilities and what she needed help on. This help was directed

towards her ability to comprehend and retell something that was read aloud. Discovering

her struggles in reading fluency and comprehension helped pinpoint possible strategies to

improve and keep her on track for success. Something that was noticed about this test is

that having the perfect environment is very important when it comes to the success of the

student in taking the assessment. If the student is in an environment that they are not use

to or very comfortable in, they will have a greater chance of not focusing or performing
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as well as they would in an environment, they are familiar with. Katie was in a very

different environment during a very distracting and busy day. I could understand if the

cause of her unsteady pace of reading and distraction was due to this. However, scoring

and distinguishing what Katie struggles with from this exam was good experience. Being

able to find strategies to use as interventions in helping improve her scores and abilities

helped understand how helpful it is with these types of regular scoring materials.

Overall, it was a good experience and I am thankful for the opportunity to work with the

student and figure out ways to help improve her struggling areas.

Resources
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Hallowell, K. (2018). What Do Teachers Do With Students’ DIBELS Reading Assessment

Results?

Cicerchia, M. (1992). 10 Fluency Strategies for Struggling Readers. Touch-type Read

and Spell (TTRS).

Lynn, E. (2018). Developing reading fluency by combining timed reading and repeated

reading. English Teaching Forum, 56,4.

Furgerson, L. (2018). What Do the Dibels Scores Mean. Leaf Group Education, 20(3), 1-

5.

Harste, S., Burke, E.S. (1988). Strategies for Reading in Dibels. Journey North L.L.C.