Running head: DIBELS NEXT 1

DIBELS Next Assessment

Miranda Siler

EDU 325
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Savannah is a kindergarten student who attends a small public elementary school in rural

Ohio. Savannah’s parents are divorced which requires her to switch between each parent’s house

every week. Savannah has one twin brother who attends the same kindergarten class as she, and

she has another sibling on the way.

Currently, Savannah’s grades in reading are average. Her classroom teacher administers

regular benchmarks to keep track of the progress which the students make in meeting the

required reading objectives. According to Mrs. Smith, Savannah scored 100% on her last

comprehension benchmark. She seems to struggle with phonics scoring 60% on her last

phonemic awareness benchmark. Also, scoring a 62% in fluency on the last test given seems to

suggest another area of difficulty for Savannah. She was on grade level for both writing and

math. She does not receive any adaptations when taking assessments. However, she is

accommodated at times when tested on sight words. Mrs. Smith felt that Savannah’s academic

strength was working well independently. Mrs. Smith further explained that this was because

Savannah does not seem to give up when faced with a challenging task. She does whatever is

asked of her and is willing to try.

According to Savannah’s classroom teacher Mrs. Smith, Savannah is very well behaved

and does not have any areas for improvement with her behavior. She does not have a behavior

intervention plan (BIP). She is also very social and seems to make friends easily. Mrs. Smith

stated that at school Savannah is organized and responsible. Her desk is neat and she keeps

important papers in her folder to bring home. She also does not have any problems making

decisions. She makes good decisions in the classroom. Mrs. Smith said that Savannah seems to

find adult attention motivating. Her parents’ goals for her this year are just to see her reach grade

level in all subjects.

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Procedures

Arrangements for the assessment were made through a contact I had from another field

experience. I was able to get in touch with the classroom teacher through text messaging and

asked one week in advance if I could come in and give the DIBELS Next assessment to one of

her students. The teacher agreed and we scheduled Friday, March 3 at 11:30 am. That Friday,

after completing an observation for another class, I asked to administer the assessment to one of

the students. The teacher agreed and called the student she had picked, Savannah, over to her

desk. I introduced myself and asked Savannah to follow me. We walked outside of the classroom

and sat at a desk in the hallway to the right of the classroom door. I sat to the right of Savannah

at the desk. I made some small talk with her, asking if she had a good day and if she was doing

anything fun over the weekend. Once a little rapport was established, I decided to start the

assessment. I decided to administer the end of the year DIBELS Next probes since it was almost

the end of the school year.

The first probe given was the Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) probe. I got out the student

sheet flipped to the correct page and then placed it in front of Savannah. I read the prompt from

the scoring booklet and set a timer for one minute on my phone. When the time was up I told

Savannah she could stop. I took the student sheet away in order to prepare for the second

assessment. I administered the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) probe next. I read the

prompt in the scoring booklet and then again set the timer for one minute. I said the words listed

in the scoring booklet, and Savannah told me all the sounds in each word. When the time was up

I told Savannah she could stop. The last assessment I gave to Savannah was the Nonsense Word

Fluency (NWF) probe. I placed the student sheet back in front of Savannah and read the prompt.

I had Savannah place her finger in the top left corner of the page. I started the timer and had her
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read the words from left to right. After one minute I told Savannah that she could stop. After the

assessment was over I praised Savannah for her cooperation. I walked her back into the

classroom. I asked the teacher if I could ask her some questions and gave her the interview

handout to complete.

I did not give Savannah anything as reinforcement throughout the assessment, but I did

praise her after each assessment for doing her best. Savannah was very cooperative. I felt that

verbal reinforcement was sufficient. The assessment was given in the hallway which was a little

noisy. However, Savannah did not seem to be distracted by this. The only time she was

distracted was when a friend passed by her walking down the hall. During the time that I

administered the assessment, the students were watching a movie in the classroom. Savannah

may have rushed through the assessment instead of giving her best effort so that she could return

to the movie more quickly. After I finished the assessment and interview I had to leave fairly

quickly because the person who provided me with transportation for this assessment had another

commitment. I scored the assessment once I made it back to Franciscan University. After scoring

I compared the scores to the benchmarks to determine Savannah’s level of achievement.

Assessments Given

Three assessments were given to the student: the LNF probe, the PSF probe, and the NWF

probe. The first assessment, LNF, assessed the student’s ability to identify individual letters and

their names. To administer the assessment the student is given an 8.5 by 11-inch sheet of paper

on which randomly placed upper and lower case letters are printed. The student is required to

verbally provide the names of these letters. The student has one minute to identify as many

letters as they can. A score is determined based on the number of correctly identified letter

names within one minute (Dewey, Latimer, Kaminski, & Good, 2012). The LNF probe is
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included in the DIBELS Next assessment for kindergarten and first grade to detect risk of

reading failure (Kaminski, Cummings, Powell-Smith, & Good, 2008). Though teaching letter

names does not lead directly to student improvement in reading outcomes, this probe has a high

ability to predict students who may need further instructional support in early reading skills to

become successful readers (Kaminski et al., 2008).

The next assessment given was the PSF probe. PSF assesses the student’s ability to identify

individual sounds for words given orally (Goffreda, Diperna, & Pedersen, 2009). This

assessment is designed to determine a student’s ability of long-term phonemic awareness and

reading success (“DIBELS Information,” 2008). Phonemic awareness is one of the Basic Early

Literacy skills identified by the National Reading Panel (Kaminski et al., 2008). To administer

this assessment the assessor presents a word orally to the student. The student then orally

identifies each individual sound in the given word (Dewey et al., 2012). For example, if the

assessor says the word “dog”, a correct response for the student would be “/d/ /o/ /g/”. The

assessor underlines each correct phoneme that is identified and then presents the next word. A

score is determined by the number of correctly identified phonemes for the duration of one

minute (Dewey et al., 2012).

The final assessment given was the NWF probe. This assessment involves blending letters

into nonsense words using phonemic awareness skills (Goffredaet al., 2009). NWF is a good

indicator of the alphabetic principle or the ability to identify the correspondence of letters and

sounds and then apply this knowledge to the reading of unfamiliar words (Kaminski et al., 2008).

This assessment is important to measure the development of these skills and indicate whether or

not the student needs additional assistance in this area. It also can predict future reading success

(Kaminski et al., 2008). The assessment is administered by presenting the student with an 8.5 by
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11-inch paper which contains randomly placed VC and CVC nonsense words (Dewey et al.,

2012). The student is asked to provide the individual letter sound in each presented word or to

read the whole word (Dewey et al., 2012). This assessment has two scores, the number of whole

words read in one minute and the number of correct letter sounds identified in one minute

(Dewey et al., 2012).

Results & Analysis

Results of each assessment were compared to the national benchmark goal for the end of

the school year. There was not a given benchmark goal for the LNF probe. Savannah’s score for

the NWF probe was below the benchmark goal for the end of the year while her score for PSF

was well below benchmark. Table 1 below shows Savannah’s scores in comparison to the

benchmark goals.
Table 1
Savannah’s Scores Compared to Benchmark Goals

Assessment Score Benchmark Benchmark Need for Support

Goal Level
No listed
Letter Naming Fluency 30 Not listed Not listed
benchmark

Phoneme Segmentation Well below Likely to need

21 40-55
Fluency benchmark intensive support
CLS: 18 Below Likely to need
Nonsense Word Fluency 28-39 CLS
WWR: 0 benchmark strategic support

Savannah showed accuracy in the LNF probe. She missed only one letter out of a total of

31 letters read. However, she struggled with speed. Savannah identified a total of 30 letters

correctly in one minute. Identifying letters at a slower pace could affect Savannah’s fluency

when reading. There was no given benchmark goal for this assessment. Savannah started by

saying the sounds of the letters instead of the names. I followed the directions in the booklet and
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corrected her once. She identified the letter names after this except for the letter “c”. This was

the only letter that she missed. Overall she did well with this assessment and showed she had

skill in this area.

Savannah struggled with segmenting phonemes. She was only able to successfully

segment one full word. Other words she was able to segment one or two sounds but would blend

the other sounds in the word together. She would also replace a sound with a random sound.

Areas Targeted for Improvement (Concrete v Abstract learning)

Phonemic Awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize individual letter

sounds in spoken words. Phonemic awareness skills include skills such as rhyming words,

counting syllables, isolating sounds, and segmenting and blending sounds (Alber-Morgan, 2010).

Assessing phonemic awareness is the most accurate way of determining a student’s future

reading success (NRP, 2000). Research has shown that phonemic awareness instruction is

effective for young children, English language learners (ELL), students with disabilities, and

students at risk for reading failure (NRP, 2000). Two strategies that can be helpful to teach

phonemic awareness include Elkonin boxes and phoneme manipulation cards. Student progress

can be measured through CBMs and observation.

Elkonin boxes (ie., say-it and move-it) help to make students aware of the individual

sounds in a word (Hall, 2006). For this activity, no print or letters are used. There are boxes

printed on a page according to how many phonemes are in a given word. The student places a

token or points to a box for each target sound in the given word (Hall, 2006). Segmenting and

blending phonemes are two of the most important skills for children to learn to be able to read

(NRP, 2000). To be effective, phonemic awareness strategies should be connected to something

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meaningful and concrete (Vaughn & Roberts, 2007). This is why Elkonin boxes are a good

strategy to use.

Another strategy to help students learn to segment phonemes is phoneme manipulation

cards. Students should be provided with direct instruction and plenty of practice segmenting

phonemes (Alber-Morgan, 2010). Teachers can show students pictures and prompt students to

identify the sounds in the words that each picture represents. This activity can also be done by

having students identify new words that are made when phonemes are added or deleted (Alber-

Morgan, 2010). This strategy is another way of making segmenting phonemes meaningful and

concrete for students.

Alphabetic Principle. The alphabetic principle is the correspondence of phonemes and their

symbols. Phonics instruction is the most effective way to teach the alphabetic principle (NRP,

2000). Students need to learn letter-sound correspondence, regular-word reading, irregular-word

reading, and reading decodable text (Alber-Morgan, 2010). It has been suggested that explicit

instruction in phonological awareness to young children can reduce the identification of reading

disabilities (Noltemeyer, Joseph, & Kunesh, 2013). Two strategies that can help teach children

phonological awareness skills include word sorts and file folder games. Frequent CBMs can be

administered to track the progress of the student’s learning in this area.

Word sorts allow students to split words into categories according to a certain theme. This

activity can help students to notice patterns in words (Alber-Morgan, 2010). Typically the words

are sorted into two categories. There is usually one word for each category to serve as the

example word. The rest are to be sorted into the categories respectively (Joseph, 2002). This

strategy can be helpful because it makes phonological skills visual and tactile.
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Another strategy that can be useful to teach phonological skills is file folder games. These are

games that can be purchased or made. They generally contain stacks of word cards. Students

must draw a card and are able to move their game piece the number of spaced indicated if they

identify the word correctly. Bingo games may also be included (Alber-Morgan, 2010). This can

be a fun interactive way to use phonological awareness instruction to involve students in the

process of learning the alphabetic principle.

Conclusion

The administration of the DIBELS Next assessment revealed the student’s strengths and

areas in which she needed to improve. The student can be successful in learning phonemic

awareness and the alphabetic principle with the appropriate interventions. The strategies chosen

were based on the student’s results. Overall the administration of the assessment went well and

the results corresponded to the information, gathered from the classroom teacher. One aspect of

the project I found to be important moving forward is the timing of the assessment. I found that

if something fun is going on that the student feels he or she is missing out on that this could skew

the results of the assessment. The student may rush through the assessment to be able to

participate in the activity. The second aspect of this project I found to be important is gathering

background information, on the student. Without background information it can be hard to

determine appropriate interventions. Also without receiving background information it would be

hard to detect if the results of the assessment were skewed in any way. If the student is

uncomfortable with tests or receives certain modifications that are not provided due to lack of

information then this could skew the results. I am glad I had the opportunity to administer this

assessment. It was a great experience and I feel much more prepared to give assessments like this

when I enter the field.

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Bibliography

Alber-Morgan, S. (2010). Using RTI to teach literacy to diverse learners, k-8: Strategies for the

inclusive classroom. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.

Dewey, E.N., Latimer, R.J., Kaminski, R.A., & Good, R.H. (2012). DIBELS Next development:

Findings from beta 2 validation study. Technical Report, 10, 1-65.

General information about DIBELS measures, (2008). DIBELS Data System,1-9.

Goffreda, C.T., Diperna, J.C., & Pedersen, J.A. (2009). Preventive screening for early readers:

Predictive validity of the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills. Psychology in

the Schools, 46(6), 539-552.

Hall, S.L. (2006). I’ve DIBEL’d now what. Longmont, Colorado: Sopris West Educational

Services.

Joseph, L.M. (2002). Helping children link sound to print: Phonics procedures for small-group or

whole-class settings. Intervention in School and Clinic, 37(4), 217-221.

Kaminski, R., Cummings, K. D., Powell-Smith, K. A., & Good, R.H. (2008). Best practices in

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evaluation. Best Practices in School Psychology, 73(4), 1181-1203.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the

scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction.

National Institute of Health, 00(4769).

Noltemeyer, A.L., Joseph, L.M., & Kunesh, C.E. (2013). Effects of supplemental small group

phonics instruction on kindergartners’ word recognition performance. Reading

Improvement, 121-131.
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Vaughn, S., & Roberts, G. (2007). Secondary interventions in reading: Providing additional

instruction for students at risk. Teaching Exceptional Children, 39, 40-46.