Catch Them Before They Fall

1. Catch Them Before They Fall New York Reading First DIBELS Professional Development April 2004 Eastern Regional Reading First Technical Assistance Center Randee Winterbottom Stuart Greenberg Ruth Gumm Roland Good Ruth Kaminski Pat Howard Joe Torgesen

2. Objective of Reading First • “To provide assistance to state educational agencies and local educational agencies in establishing reading programs for students in kindergarten through grade 3 that are based on scientifically based reading research to ensure that every student can read at grade level or above not later than the end of grade 3.” NCLB, 2001, Part B, Sec. 1201

3. What is the purpose of assessment? What is the purpose of screening early literacy skills? What is the purpose of progress monitoring early literacy skills?

4. Goal of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) Ensure that children have the necessary early literacy skills so that reading instruction can establish a trajectory of satisfactory literacy acquisition.

5. • Brief assessment that focuses on critical reading skills strongly predictive of future reading growth and development, and conducted at the beginning of the school year with all children in grades K, 1, 2, and 3 to identify children likely to need extra or alternativeforms of instruction.• Used to classify children as at risk or not at risk forreading failure• Used to identify children who need additional support SCREENING ASSESSMENT

6. PROGRESS MONITORING ASSESSMENT Assessment conducted a minimum of 3 times a year or on a routine basis (i.e., weekly, monthly, or quarterly) using comparable and multiple test forms to (a) estimate rates of reading improvement, (b) identify children who are not demonstrating adequate progress and therefore require additional or different forms of instruction, and/or (c) compare the efficacy of different forms of instruction for struggling readers and thereby design more effective, individualized instructional programs for those at-risk learners. •Describes rates of improvement within the academic year to determine adequacy of progress. •Purpose is to modify programs as needed to insure year-end goals.

7. Objectives All readers by 3rd grade 1. Make data-based decisions about the needs of their students and the adequacy of their core curriculum in meeting those needs. 2. Select students who need additional instructional support to attain benchmark goals on time. 3. Administer, score, and derive instructional recommendations from Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills 4. Participate as a member of an Early Literacy Team

8. CATCH THEM BEFORE THEY FALL Early Literacy Assessment and Beyond: A Vision of 100% Established Readers "The probability of remaining a poor reader at the end of fourth grade, given a child was a poor reader at the end of first grade, was .88 .... the probability of remaining an average reader in fourth grade, given an average reading ability in first grade, was .87." (Juel, 1988)

9. Agenda Who dares to teach must never cease to learn Introduction Letter Naming Fluency Measure Initial Sounds Fluency Measure Phoneme Segmentation Fluency Measure • Nonsense Word Fluency Measure • Oral Reading FluencyMeasure • Wrap-Up

10. Websites to Note http://www.fcrr.org http://dibels.uoregon.edu

11. Training Supplies Manual PowerPoint Guide Stopwatch

12. DIBELS Measure Area of Literacy Initial Sounds Fluency Phoneme Segmentation Fluency Phonological Awareness Nonsense Word Fluency Alphabetic Principle Letter Naming Fluency Risk Indicator Children scoring poorly on this measure may have difficulty acquiring crucial reading skills Oral Reading Fluency Accuracy and Fluency with Text What DIBELS Measure

13. The Importance of Fluency Automaticity means the less effort students devote to sound/word identification, the more attention they have available to devote to meaning. Students who lack fluency may not easily acquire more complex skills; this holds true in other academic areas as well. It is a worthwhile outcome measure for judging the effectiveness of instruction.

14. Research Says... Shaw, R. & Shaw, D. (2002) DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency-Based Indicators of Third Grade Reading Skills for Colorado State Assessment Program (CSAP). (Technical Report) Eugene, OR: University of Oregon. Buck, J. & Torgesen, J. (2003) The Relationship Between Performance on a Measure of Oral Reading Fluency and Performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. (FCRR Technical Report #1) Tallahassee, FL: Florida Center for Reading Research. Barger, J. (2003). Comparing the DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency indicator and the North Carolina end of grade reading assessment. (Technical Report). Asheville, NC: North Carolina Teacher Academy.

15. DIBELS Measures - Grades K-3rd Letter Naming Fluency Predictor of later reading skills, taps into letter knowledge and rapid naming ability. One-minute timed task. Initial Sounds Fluency Taps into emerging phonological awareness with beginning sound identification tasks. About 3 minutes to administer. Phoneme Segmentation Fluency Measures a child’s skills in breaking short words into individual phonemes, or sounds. One-minute timed task. Nonsense Word Fluency Taps into alphabetic principle skills by measuring letter-sound correspondence skills as well as decoding skills. One-minute timed task.

16. Assessment Schedule

17. Recommended Uses of Student Data By Teachers To determine whether students are improving with extra assistance • To set up reading groups and make changes if needed To identify students in need of more assistance To enhance parent conferences

18. Recommended Uses of Student Data By Principals To evaluate the effectiveness of building-level strategies for organization and management • To evaluate the effectiveness of new or continued curriculum, • specialized curriculum, and instructional strategies To identify where extra resources and support are needed in specific classrooms, grade levels

19. Recommended Uses of Student Data By District Staff To identify schools in need of additional resources (personnel, curriculum materials, instructional techniques) To compare student outcomes across grade levels where resources are the same and different • To enhance professional development opportunities targeting student • outcomes and student needs

20. Recommended Uses of Student Data By the State • Provide statewide profiles of reading performance of K-3 students • Redefine predictions of later reading performance based on DIBELS data • Use in research on improvement of student reading skills Evaluate effectiveness of the Reading First grant

21. Standardization Priorities First Priority: Minimize departures from standardized administration. Every child gets the same opportunity, every time if you • Give directions verbatim, without elaboration • Time carefully • Use standard scoring system Second Priority: Maximize the child’s performance by • Engaging the child • Making eye contact • Using business-like (but not unfriendly) approach • Being sensitive to child’s needs and responses

22. Stopwatches 101 Use a good stopwatch Use non-dominant hand (you will be writing with your dominant hand) Click right side of your stopwatch to start and stop Click left side of your stopwatch to reset stopwatch to 00:00 Stopwatches tell time in seconds and hundredths of seconds (23:57 seconds can be rounded to 24 seconds)

23. Letter Naming Fluency

24. Materials LNF Probes • Each probe is random upper and lowercase letters • Each row is underlined to help students keep their place Student copy of probe Examiner scoring sheet Stopwatch Pencil or Pen Clipboard

25. Directions 1. Place the student copy of probe in front of the student. • Place the examiner scoring sheet in front of you but shielded so that • the student cannot see what you record. 3. Say these specific directions to the student: Here are some letters(point).Tell me the names of as many letters as you can. When I say “Begin,” start here(point to first letter)and go across the page(point).Point to each letter and tell me the name of that letter. If you come to a letter you don’t know, I’ll tell it to you. Put your finger on the first letter. Ready, begin.

26. Directions 4. Say ”Begin" and start your stopwatch. If the student fails to say the first letter after 3 seconds, tell him/her the letter and mark it as incorrect. 5. Follow along on your copy. Put a slash (/) through letters named incorrectly (see scoring procedures).

27. Directions 6. If a student gives the sound of the letter, say “Remember to tell me the letter name, not the sound it makes.” (Only once) 7. At the end of 1 minute, place a bracket (]) after the last letter named and say, "Stop.” 36

28. Scoring Rules 1. Discontinue if student does not name any letter in first row (10 letters). 2. If student corrects an error within 3 seconds, write “sc” (self-correct) above the letter and count as correct. 3. If student stops or struggles with a letter for 3 seconds and you provide the letter, that is an error.

29. Scoring Rules 4. If student substitutes a different letter for the one on the page, it is an error. 5. If the student omits or skips a letter, put a slash through it and count it as an error. 6. For some fonts, the upper case “i” and lower case “l” are very similar. Count either response (“i” or “L”) as correct.

30. Scoring Rules 7. Articulation and Dialect.The student is not penalized for imperfect pronunciation due to dialect, articulation, or second language interference. For example, if the student consistently says /th/ for /s/ and pronounces "thee" for "see" when naming the letter "C", he or she should be given credit for correct letter naming. This is a professional judgment and should be based on the student's responses and any prior knowledge you have of his/her speech patterns. 8. If a student skips an entire row, draw a line through the row and do not count the row as correct or incorrect.

31. Benchmark Goals LNF Kindergarten

32. Benchmark Goals LNF First Grade

33. Triad Procedures Establish a group of 3; each will have turn as examiner, student, observer Each person take LNF Breakout Activity Sheet Determine sequence of roles Each page has roles scripted for you

34. Practice Time Letter Naming Fluency Place student probe in front of “student” Place examiner scoring sheet out of view of “student” Say standardized directions Do not elaborate Start and stop stopwatch at correct times Record responses Record total correct in one minute

35. Stopwatches 102Cumulative Time Click the right side of your stopwatch to start and stop; do not reset Timing procedure used only for Initial Sounds Fluency to time student’s “think time”

36. Initial Sounds Fluency

37. Sample Probe This is tomato, bear, a plate, and jail. Which picture begins with /t/? What sound does “bear” begin with?

38. Sample Probe Materials • Examiner scoring sheet • Student copy of picture probes • Stopwatch • Red pen or pencil • Calculator

39. Directions for Administration • Place the student copy of four (4) pictures in front of the child. • Place the examiner scoring sheet • in front of you, but shielded so that the • student cannot see what you record.

40. Demo 3. Say these specific directions to the child: This is mouse, flowers, pillow, letters (point to each picture while saying its name). Mouse begins with the sound /m/ (point to the mouse). Listen: /m/, mouse. Which one begins with the sounds /fl/?

41. Correction Procedure 1

42. Demo “Pillow” begins with the sound /p/(point to pillow).Listen, /p/ pillow. What sound does “letters” begin with?

43. Correction Procedure 2

44. Administration 4. Show the child the first picture probe. Point to each picture and say the name following the standardized directions. 5. Present the first question as written on the score sheet. After you finish asking the question, begin your stopwatch. Stop your stopwatch as soon as the child responds. If the child does not respond after 5 seconds, score the question as zero and present the next question. 6. As soon as the student responds, present the next question promptly and clearly. Begin your stopwatch after you have said the question, and stop it as soon as the student responds, as above.

45. Scoring Directions 7. Score the child’s response as either correct (1 point) or incorrect (0 points). 8. If the child stops or struggles with a question for 5 seconds, score the question as zero and present the next question. 9 After the first 4 questions, proceed to the next picture probe. Continue until the end of the questions. When the child finishes the last question, record the total time on your stopwatch in seconds and add the number of correct responses. 10. Record the total number correct and the time in seconds on the bottom of the scoring sheet.

46. Calculating ISF Score • Calculate the ISF Score using the formula • For example, if the student has 10 correct responses in 43 seconds, the rate is 14 correct initial sounds per minute. 60 x Number Correct ISF = Seconds 60 x 10 ISF = = 14 ISF 43

47. Reminder 11. If a child has done the examples correctly and does not answer the questions correctly, say “Remember to tell me a picture that begins with the sound (repeat stimulus sound).”

48. Scoring Rules 1. Discontinue rule: If a child has a score of “0” on the first five questions, discontinue the probe and give a score of “0”. 2. If the child names the correct picture instead of pointing to it, score as correct.

49. Scoring Rules 3. If the child names the picture and the name begins with the correct initial sound, score as correct. For example, if the target picture is “hand” for /h/ and the student points at road and says “highway,” score as correct.

50. Scoring Rules 4. If the child names the picture and the name begins with an incorrect initial sound, score it as incorrect. For example, if the target picture is “barn” for /b/ and the student points at barn but says “house,” score as incorrect.