[MOSAIC] Dibels

[Margy Hillman]

interesting article in this week edweek on how govt pushed dibels. it's not as you say intended to measure comprehension but because it was lauded all reading first grants included it. 

Mholley112 at aol.com wrote:  Our state (NM) requires kindergarten to use DIBELS- as for other grades it's 
at the discretion of the districts. Our district requires us to use it K-3. 
We are fortunate in that the district has provided all the teachers with 
Palm Pilots on which the reading passages are loaded. We can connect to the 
computer to download the testing info. I have to say I'm not a huge fan of 
DIBELS, but I do try to make good use of the information I get from it. 

There was a question about the aim line. On the printouts of the graphs on 
each student's reading, there is a big green circle at each of the benchmark 
times. The aimline is drawn from the first circle to the next, and then to the 
last. It shows the projected progression for the student. If the progress 
monitoring passage is read below what that child should be at in that time 
period, then it falls below the aim line. 

This year I wanted to do something different with my third graders than just 
pulling small groups up to read to me for fluency practice (I did other 
things also). I read some research by Dr. Steven Stahl and Timothy Rasinki. There 
were several recommendations. The one thing I have done consistently from 
the first of October is to record a short story on a cassette tape and put 
groups of five at the listening center. The group has to be monitored- it's not a 
self-controlling situation. The first day, they just listen to the story as 
they follow along the first time. They rewind and attempt to read along with 
the tape out loud. I do this every day of the week with them reading 2 times 
each day orally. The pace is slow enough for them to read and turn pages. I 
took the kids from my Intensive and Strategic levels of DIBELS and worked with 
them on this. I also put one ESL student on it even though she was at 
Benchmark level (she went from 74 wpm to 105 wpm). One young lady has gone from 24 
wpm on her first benchmark to 68 wpm on the second in Dec. There are several 
others who made huge leaps from the first to second benchmarks, but I also 
have 3 who have not made progress. One came into my class reading at a preprimer 
level. The research I am going by said that students who are reading at 
preprimer level or who are already high level readers won't show growth. It seems 
that it's bearing out that way. When I compared my results from DIBELS last 
year to this year, 66% of my students are at Benchmark as opposed to 45% 
last year. I will definitely do this again next year.



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