It’s been nearly 10 years now that our schools have been using the Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy (DIBELS) Next as a school-wide reading assessment. DIBELS was first introduced as part of Reading First and fit so nicely into our new Response to Intervention initiative. … [Read more...]
Dolch 220 Sight Word Assessment
The Dolch 220 sight words make up between 50-70% of the words we encounter in text. Most of these words cannot be sounded out and students need to be taught to instantly recognize these words in order to be fluent readers. Because recognizing these words is so important during … [Read more...]
Making the Most of the DIBELS Next Nonsense Word Fluency Data
My good friend, Jen, teaches a college level reading assessment class and asked if I could talk a bit on aligning intervention with data. Of course, I was thrilled she asked. I decided to take a grade level and focus on the assessments typically administered in the winter. … [Read more...]
Teaching Sight Words
A few months back I posted the 10 Activities for Learning Letters and Sounds activity kit that I developed for a few first graders who hadn't yet mastered letters and sounds. The idea behind the kit was to provide fun, hands-on activities for either classroom voluteers or … [Read more...]
DIBELS Next and the Benchmark Goal Controversy
I have to say this fall started in an absolute chaos. All of our elementary buildings use the DIBELS Next universal screener to identify students who may be at-risk for reading difficulties. Shortly after our first few days of school we received Part II: DIBELS Next Benchmark … [Read more...]
Four Types of Reading Assessments
Assessment and intervention is the heart and soul of Response to Intervention (RtI). Prior to beginning either a school-wide program or developing an intervention plan for a particular student, it is critically important to have assessment data. There are 4 types of reading … [Read more...]
Assessing and Progress Monitoring Sight Words
One of the many benefits of my job is that I have the opportunity to travel to many different elementary buildings. I know you may be sitting there thinking, "I'd hate that", but it's actually tons of fun. Each building has it's own unique personality so every day of the … [Read more...]
DIBELS Next Parent Handouts
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 … [Read more...]
Helping Students Move to Blending Consonant-Vowel-Consonant Words
Our seven school districts changed from using the DIBELS 6th Edition to the DIBELS Next this school year. Following each benchmark assessment we were just a little bit nervous (actually, really nervous) as to what our data would look like. Would any changes we see be a result … [Read more...]