Oh, Yeah! It’s DIBELS testing week. I absolutely love listening to those kiddos read and seeing the progress they’ve made since the beginning of the year. Okay, I’d admit, after the 5th day of testing, I nearly have the story of the “Cocoa Stand” memorized and I am a little giddy. I test over 200 students in a week, and typically first graders, so I can almost recite those oral reading passages verbatim.
Over the past few years we’ve developed numerous versions of our parent handout that we provide for parents following each benchmark period. It’s a little tricky coming up with a handout that explains the assessment and the results in a way that provides them with the information we feel that they need while trying to make it clear and consise. The following handouts were field tested in our schools and found to be helpful.
Click the following link to download your free DIBELS Next Kindergarten handout for parents Kindergaraten DIBELS Next
Click the following link to download your free DIBELS Next first grade parent handout. DIBELS Next- First Grade
Just as an FYI- If you are implementing a Response to Intervention model, documentation of parent communication is required. These handouts assist in that regard.
Click HERE to download free DIBELS Next handouts for Kindergarten through sixth grade.
Thanks Juli! We are feeling a little discouraged about DIBELS Next right now. Our kids were showing great growth mid year, but seem to have declined for the 3rd benchmark, especially in 1st and 2nd grade. Have you seen this trend? Thanks!
Hi Michelle- Look at your first grade data and see which assessment they seemed to have the most difficulty with. I will venture to guess that it has to do with the new benchmark of having to just read (WWR) for the NWF assessment. That was a big change for us as many of our children were quick and accurate in past years with sounding the nonsense word out and then going back to blend it. Now they need to just read 13 of those nonsense words. We saw this as an issue mid year and really worked on just blending (I wrote a post on this using the blending board-check that out if you haven’t seen it). That is a likely explanation for the dip in your first grade data. Even with that focus, our data dipped in first grade a bit–but next year, we are really going to focus on blending much earlier (even end of k). Our second grade data dipped a bit too. I think this is because of the retell. This is the first year we are doing retell and our students weren’t all that good at it. Have you read the new announcement from DIBELS?- next year they are NOT recommending doing the retell and the DAZE will be optional. The person listed as the administrator on your account should have received that notice. You’ll want to be sure you read it, it’s very interesting. Hope this helps. Julie