Running head: STUDENT ASSESSMENT PROJECT 1

Student Assessment Project

Casey Haggerty

Franciscan University of Steubenville

EDU 325

Student Assessment Project

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A Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment was

administered to John Smith, a first grader, on October 23, 2017. This assessment tool is used to

identify his present level of performance (PLOP) in reading as measured against the 1st grade

benchmarks. The results of the assessment indicated two areas of literacy needs. The results

help to form instruction and the selection of Evidence-Based Practices (EBP) for instructional

interventions.

John is six-years-old and is the fifth oldest out of seven (soon to be eight) children. In

addition to homeschooling him and four of his brothers and sisters, his mother is a part-time

nurse and John’s father is employed by the local university. The family lives in a house located

in a suburban neighborhood community.

John is a very competitive little boy. He enjoys games of all kinds, but most especially

video and computer games, frisbee and soccer. Much of his free time is spent playing with his

brothers and sisters. Mr. and Mrs. Smith describe John as a very sweet and attentive child.

Behaviorally, I observed John to be very compliant as demonstrated by his conduct during the

assessment probes. For homeschooling, John receives one-on-one instruction with his mother, as

well as completes independent practice assignments. John’s primary homeschool instruction is a

mix of different curricula selected and tailored by his mother to meet his needs. His mother is

worried about his current performance in all subject areas but most especially in the area of

reading fluency and comprehension. She is concerned that his current performance in language

arts is not meeting Ohio state and national benchmark standards. Moreover, Mrs. Smith’s

worriment is that John’s current language skills will impact his beginning stages of reading. This

made John an ideal individual to participate in a DIBELS assessment.

Procedures
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The mother was very eager for John to complete the assessment and was interested in

receiving the results to help better inform his homeschooling instruction.

I went to the family’s house on the afternoon of October 23, 2017 to administer the

assessment. I greeted John and spent a few minutes talking with him to build rapport and make

him feel more comfortable. I have been involved with the family for many other occasions and

therefore was a familiar face for the student to interact with. We used the dining room table

which doubles as their homeschooling space for the testing area. Although this space sufficed,

all the other children and the parents were home during the assessment. This made the house

very loud and provided many distractions for John. However, based on my own observations

during this assessment session and through other previous tutoring experiences with the student ,

the noise does not seem to affect John’s focus or attention during educational tasks. I started

with the Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) probe. John correctly identified 24 letters. During the

one-minute assessment, his only two mistakes were calling the lowercase letter “b” a “d” and

skipping over a lowercase “j.” John was very confident when naming the letters and went slowly

to ensure that he identified everything correctly. Next, I administered the Phoneme

Segmentation Fluency (PSF) probe. He correctly pronounced 31 phonemes. His mistakes were

due to blending multiple phonemes together instead of segmenting them. Lastly, John completed

the Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) probe. His total Correct Letter Sounds (CLS) was 39 and

the total number of Whole Words Read (WWR) was 13 words. John did not have trouble

following the directions on the probes and did not hesitate when giving responses. I provided

sensory reinforcement in the form of a high five and verbal reinforcement after every probe. We

took a two-minute break between each assessment. John asked how he performed at the

conclusion of each probe and I reassured him that I was very proud of him for doing his very
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best reading. Finally, I tangibly reinforced John in the form of a sticker when we finished the

entire assessment.

Assessments Given

The DIBELS assessment is a series of one-minute probes that are designed to evaluate

the various areas of literacy skills that typically are cultivated during a child’s language

development (Elliott et al., 2001). These include but are not limited to phonological skills, letter

naming, oral fluency, comprehension, etc. (Elliott et al., 2001). For this assessment, John was

measured using the beginning of the year first grade probes of Letter Naming Fluency (LNF),

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF), and Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF).

The LNF probe measures the automaticity of letter recognition by having students

identify and read the names of letters which are in non alphabetical order and irregularly

alternate between lowercase and uppercase form (Elliott et al., 2001). The student has one

minute to correctly identify as many letters on the paper by reading each line out loud and in

order from left to right (Elliott et al., 2001). The assessment administrator also has a copy of the

paper that the student is reading from. The administrator marks on this sheet any mistakes made

by the student (e.g. miscue, letter/line omission, etc.) (Elliott et al., 2001). The PSF probe is an

assessment administered to evaluate a student’s psychological awareness by asking them to

phonologically segment the each sound within a word (Scheffel et al., 2012). For example, the

administrator would say a word aloud (e.g. dog) and the student would respond by individually

annunciating each letter sound (e.g. /d/o/g/). The student is assessed for sixty seconds while the

administrator marks down any miscues, sound omissions, or mistakes. In the (NWF) assessment

probe, students are tested on the Alphabetic Principle by their capability to blend the letter

sounds together to pronounce “nonsense” words (Scheffel et al., 2012). Ultimately, this is an
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assessment of students’ decoding abilities (Fien et al., 2010). The student is given a paper with a

series of “nonsense” words and the student must read from left to right while blending the letter

sounds together to pronounce the “nonsense” word (Fien et al., 2010).

Results & Analysis

The results of this DIBELS assessment show various areas of need in John’s language

development. The table below shows John’s results in all three of the DIBELS assessments.

Assessment Probe Score At Benchmark Average

LNF 24 No benchmark

PSF 31 40-46

CLS NWF 39 27-33

WWR NWF 13 1-3

Composite Score 94 113-128

Table 1. John’s assessment performance compared to the benchmark range

John correctly identified 24 out of 60 letters in the LNF probe. Out of the 26 letters that John

read, his only mistakes were confusion with the lowercase “b” and “d”. My biggest concern with

John’s performance in this probe was the speed at which he identified the letters. He seconded

guessed many of the letters and took many seconds to identify certain letters. The constant

switch between uppercase and lowercase letters caused an added confusion for John. This shows

his need for more practice in the area of letter recognition. There is no benchmark average

associated with this probe. In the PSF probe, John pronounced 31 correct phonemes. His

mistakes included blending certain phonemes together. He needs additional practice in phoneme

segmentation. Again, my biggest concern is that he is slow in his response during the probes.

We went through less than half of the words because of his hesitation and second guessing of his
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responses. John’s score was 9 points below the low score of benchmark and therefore this is an

area that should be targeted for improvement. The NWF was a probe that John excelled in. He

scored well above the benchmark average for both correct letter sounds (CLS) and whole words

read (WWR). Again, my only concern with this probe was the speed at which he took the

assessment. The graph below compares John’s assessment score to the benchmark average.

Graph 1. John’s assessment results correlated to an average of the benchmark scores.

Areas Targeted for Improvement

As evidenced by the results of the DIBELS assessment, presently, John would require

minimal intervention to help him meet the benchmark standards. First and foremost, it is

important that after this DIBELS assessment, Mrs. Smith continue to collect Present Level of

Performance (PLOP) data to more effectively track John’s language development progress. This

baseline data will be beneficial in recording John’s improvement as adequate and targeted

interventions are integrated into his homeschooling curriculum.

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Letter recognition fluency. Letter recognition is the measurement of letter naming

automaticity. This is a foundational skill in language development. The student only managed

to name less than half of the letters in the LNF assessment probe and made few mistakes.

Ultimately, his challenge lies in gaining confidence and speed in his automaticity. He took the

assessment very slowly and questioned many of the letters instead of moving on to the next

letter. The assessor has two recommendations for strategies to improve John’s skills in this area.

This first strategy is to create a word wall with the alphabet and later begin to incorporate

high-frequency sight words (Beers, 2003). This strategy will allow John to have increased

exposure to visual representation of each letter. Beers (2003) states that word walls are one of the

most beneficial ways to expose students to letters and words for consistent support. This word

wall is something that John and his mother should create together to allow John to take

ownership of his word wall and learn to reference it when needed. It should include both the

lowercase and uppercase graphemes. The word wall should be visually appealing and easily

visible (Beers, 2003). Since John is a very hands-on and kinesthetic learner, it will be most

beneficial if the wall is interactive and includes tactile/sensory elements (Reading Rockets).

Once created, this word wall is something that should be referenced everyday and tailored to

meet John’s growing literary needs. Additionally, this is a strategy that John could share with his

younger brothers and sisters and strengthen his learning by teaching them the alphabet.

Another area of letter recognition that John needs additional practice in is the

identification of uppercase and lowercase letters. During the assessment, he struggled with

identifying which letters were which based on the case of the grapheme. An additional strategy

for helping to promote his automaticity of letter recognition is interacting with letter

manipulatives to distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters. Dobb Santos (2012)
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recommends an intervention activity to target this need would be to have the student match the

uppercase letter with its lowercase letter. It is important that the student can identify that both

graphemes are synonymous with each other. The student can also sort the letters based on their

structure. Have the student sort similar looking letters together and then have him practice

distinguishing between the letters (Dobb Santos, 2012).

Phoneme sound recognition. Phoneme sound recognition is the identification of each

phoneme within a word and being able to segment and pronounce each syllable (Reading

Rockets).

The first strategy recommended to target practice in phoneme sound recognition is

Elkonin boxes. In this strategy, students separate the sounds within the words into boxes to help

with segmenting the phonemes within a given word (Reading Rockets). Elkonin boxes help the

student to identify how many phonemes make up a given word (Reading Rockets). In addition

to helping with phoneme sounds recognition, Elkonin boxes target decoding and spelling skills

as well (Reading Rockets). John could be given a picture card and then segment the phonemes

of the name into the Elkonin boxes. This would be an easy strategy for Mrs. Smith to implement

daily into John’s reading and writing curriculum.

A second strategy and simple strategy that Mrs. Smith could implement and would be

beneficial for John is to have him practice segmenting words while reading stories (PRESS).

This will help John to develop the habit of sounding out unfamiliar words as he progresses to

reading larger texts. The increased reading, segmenting, and word blending practice will help

John to better hear and recognize phoneme sounds.

Conclusion
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Administering the DIBELS assessment to the student was instrumental in gaining data on

John’s academic progress and helping his parents discover his strengths and weaknesses in

literacy development. Also, by researching ways to help him respond to his weaknesses, I

discovered new strategies that he and his parents can use to help him build a response toolkit for

his future literary endeavors.

An aspect of this project that I found important for the future in moving forward with

CBM was to see a concrete manner in which to collect progress monitoring for all my students

throughout the tiers of intervention. It is important to have this PLOP data in order to help better

inform the instruction of my students.

Another aspect of this project that I found important for the future in moving forward

with CBM was to see the individual needs of my student and devise a plan to meet those needs.

It was great practice to see interpret the data identify strategies that would work best for my

student in his educational setting. It was important to me that I recommend strategies that would

be possible for the parent and in this case the parent educator to be able to implement with her

son.

Overall, I value the time I spent in learning about and having the opportunity to

administer the DIBELS assessment. This experience will be exponentially beneficial to me in my

work as a future special educator.

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Bibliography

Beers, G. K. (2003). When kids can't read, what teachers can do: A guide for teachers, 6-12.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Elliott, J., Lee, S. W., & Tollefson, N. (2001). A reliability and validity study of the dynamic

indicators of basic early literacy skills-modified. School Psychology Review, 30(1), 33-49.

Fien, H., Park, Y., Barker, S. K., Mercier Smith, J. L., Stoolmiller, M., & Kame’enui, E. J.

(2010). An examination of the relation of nonsense word fluency initial status and gains to

reading outcomes for beginning readers. School Psychology Review, 39(4), 631-653.

Path to Reading Excellence in School Sites (PRESS). (n.d.). Phonemic awareness. University of

Minnesota. Retrieved from

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http://www.cehd.umn.edu/Reading/PRESS/Docs/Whitepapers/2015_White_Paper_Phonem

ic_Awareness.pdf

Reading Rockets. (n.d.). Alphabet matching. [webpage]. Retrieved from

http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/alphabet_matching

Reading Rockets. (n.d.). Elkonin boxes. [webpage]. Retrieved from

http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/elkonin_boxes

Scheffel, D., Lefly, D., & Houser, J. (2012). The predictive utility of dibels reading assessment

for reading comprehension among third grade english language learners and english

speaking children. Reading Improvement, 49(3), 75-92.