DIBELS
Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy
DIBELS are a series of short tests given to children in kindergarten through third grade to screen and monitor their progress in learning the necessary skills to become successful readers. Many elementary schools in Florida are using DIBELS as part of their Reading First grant and to meet the reading requirements of No Child Left Behind.
All DIBELS measures are timed with most taking only one minute. The reason for the timing is to find out if a child is able to answer the questions automatically and not take a long time to think about how to answer the questions or read the words correctly. Having these basic reading skills at the automatic level allows children to focus on understanding the meaning of what they are reading. This is the primary goal for all Florida's children.
Letter Naming
Kindergarten and first gradestudents are given a page withletters and asked to name eachone. This test tells us if thechild is likely to struggle or be asuccessful reader in the future.It only takes one minute to givethis test.
Initial Sounds
By the middle of kindergarten,children should be able to sayor recognize the beginningsounds in words automatically.To measure this with DIBELS,students are given a page withfour pictures. They are askedto find the picture that startswith a particular sound or tosay the beginning or initialsound in a word. It takesabout three minutes to givethis test.
Phoneme Segmentation
This is a measure of children'sawareness of the many soundsthat make up words we speak.It is given to kindergarten andfirst grade students and is a skillthat should be mastered by theend of kindergarten. The childis told a word like "cat" andasked to say all of the soundsin the word. There are threesounds in "cat." It takes onlyone minute to give this test.
Nonsense Words
The ability to blend together the sounds representedby letters to make words is an important skill inlearning to read. This skill helps children inkindergarten, first and second grade to use theirknowledge of the relationship between letters andsounds to read unfamiliar words. Children are showna page of make-believe words, like "tob" or "miv," andasked to read them by saying the individual sound ofeach letter in the word or the whole word itself. Ittakes only one minute to give this test.
Oral Reading
This is a measure of how fluently and accuratelychildren can read passages written at their grade level.This is given throughout the first, second, and thirdgrades. Children are given three passages and askedto read each one aloud for one minute. Children whoread accurately and fluently are better able tounderstand what they read.
If your child is just beginning to learn to read
At home you can help your child by...
- Practicing the sounds of language. Read bookswith rhymes. Teach your child rhymes, short poems,and songs. Play simple word games: How manywords can you make up that sound like the word"bat"?
- Helping your child take spoken words apart andput them together. Help your child separate thesounds in words, listen for beginning and endingsounds, and put separate sounds together.Practicing the alphabet by pointing out letterswherever you see them and by reading alphabetbooks
- Practicing the alphabet by pointing out letterswherever you see them and by reading alphabetbooks
If your child is just beginning to read
At home you can help your child by...
- Pointing out the letter-sound relationships yourchild is learning on labels, boxes, newspapers,magazines and signs.
- Listening to your child read words and booksfrom school. Be patient and listen as your childpractices. Let your child know you are proud of hisreading.
If your child is reading
At home you can help your child by...
- Rereading familiar books. Children need practice inreading comfortably and with expression usingbooks they know.
- Building reading accuracy. As your child is readingaloud, point out words he missed and help him readwords correctly. If you stop to focus on a word, haveyour child reread the whole sentence to be sure heunderstands the meaning.
- Building reading comprehension. Talk with yourchild about what she is reading. Ask about newwords. Talk about what happened in a story. Askabout the characters, places, and events that tookplace. Ask what new information she has learnedfrom the book. Encourage her to read on her own.
From "Put Reading First" 2000
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development - United States Department of Education
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