Running head: STUDENT ASSESSMENT 1

Student Assessment Project

Katie Burke

EDU 325
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STUDENT ASSESSMENT
Student Assessment Project

When assessing students and analyzing their results, it is important to consider the

student’s background. The student’s background can greatly affect the student’s performance and

the specific outcomes of the assessment. John (name changed), is a 7-year old male who is

enrolled in first grade at East Garfield Elementary School in Steubenville, Ohio. John lives with

his mother, his mother’s boyfriend, and his five siblings. Despite his seemingly normal family

dynamic, John rarely discusses his life at home and does not mention his relationships among his

siblings. Although he rarely mentions his family, his relationships and social dynamic at school

are proficient. John is able to interact with his peers and is able to maintain healthy friendships.

While he performs well socially, he lacks organization in his school work. He is often

inconsistent and makes impulsive decisions. When asked for worksheets he has worked on or

other assignments, he sometimes misplaces those items and lacks the organization aspect when it

comes to his school work. To help John be motivated to perform well in school because of his

poor academics, he is given Behavior Specific Praise (BSP) as often as possible and is given

positive notes to send home to his mother. With this in mind, it is often difficult to work with

John because there is inconsistency at home, and been proven that John’s education achievement

is not a priority.

Academically, John is at-risk. While he currently does not have an Individualized

Education Plan (IEP), he is in need of serious intervention. It has been shown; however, by his

mother, that there is little to no dedication regarding his academics. Due to this lack of

encouragement at home, John is well below grade level in reading, despite having satisfactory

grades in other core subjects. Academics is not a priority in his household, and it reflects through

his work at school. While he is satisfactory in his spelling, writing, and math, he is well below
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grade level in reading. He has trouble making connections between what he learns to what he

reads, particularly connections between letter sounds, letter blends, and segmentation. The

majority of his difficulties arise from his behavior problems. In an effort to improve his behavior

to better his academics, John takes his assessments on a bouncy chair to help contain his

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) tendencies. With this in mind, John has not

been given a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP), nor has he been given specific interventions to

improve his reading abilities. Despite his parents’ lack of effort to put his academics in high

regard, his teacher would like to see him improve his reading abilities and reach a point where he

reaches the benchmarks.

Procedures

John was assessed using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBLES)

Next procedures. When receiving this assignment, it was not difficult to find a student to assess

because I assessed a student whom I see twice a week through a literacy tutoring program I

participate in for another class. John is one of the students I tutor in reading using the Success for

All (SFA) program. I thought it would be interesting to assess him due to the information I have

already gathered on him. Since I already tutor him in reading, DIBLES was the perfect

assessment to give John to see his progress and what I should focus on during our tutoring

sessions. His teacher was more than happy for me to conduct a DIBLES assessment with John

and asked me to give her the results when he is finished. Before the assessment date, I read

through the probes to be prepared and to be efficient as possible during the assessment. As well

as reading through the assessment, I also practiced administering the assessment on three friends

so I could become comfortable with this assessment.

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Before I went to pick up John from his classroom, I prepared everything I would need for

administering the assessment and everything that John would need. I made sure I had my

assessment booklet, timer, and pencil ready as well as ensuring I had all of the student

assessment materials prepared for John. When it was time for me to assess John, I presented the

assessment as a way to help me “at my school”, which make John more inclined to cooperate.

We took our seats in the spot we usually tutor because I wanted John to feel comfortable when

doing this assessment which was out of the norm for our usual activities. While the room is

usually occupied by other tutors, on this particular day there were no other tutors in the room.

The environment was great for John to focus and succeed in each probe without too many

interruptions. I told John that some of the assessments will be focusing on what we have been

learning and that this assessment should not take too long. I explained to John that I had

confidence in his ability to do well on this assessment. After asking John if he was ready and our

usual “encouragement fist-bump”, I began to explain the first assessment probe. I carefully

explained the directions for each probe and administered the assessment according to the

DIBLES script within the scoring packet. While it was different using this form of assessment, I

was able to administer all six probes during the time that John and I had together. I found that the

most efficient way to administer each probe was to score later on and to quickly mark what John

got correct or incorrect. It was difficult to use this form of assessment because there were

multiple times I wanted to help John; however, the DIBLES assessment only allows the

administrator to correct once during each probe. Once we finished with the assessment, I

rewarded John with two stickers, which I have found reinforces him the most, and then returned

him to his classroom. Later on, I scored John’s assessment according to the DIBLES scoring

guide. The scores were aligned to the first-grade benchmarks. This was helpful to see exactly
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where John struggles and where he needs guidance. Unfortunately, John’s assessment results

were below benchmark and he is in need of much improvement. While each assessment had a

low score, I found it interesting how well he scored in the SFA program and how poorly he

scored on the DIBLES assessment. With his scores in mind, I decided that John needs focused

instruction on phoneme segmentation and oral reading fluency. When he is able to effectively

individually segment each letter sound or letter blend, his oral reading fluency will improve

because both reading strategies correlate to each other.

Assessments Given

The DIBLES Next provides teachers with a variety of assessments for each grade level

that determines students’ needs regarding literacy. Since John is in first grade, he can participate

in five different assessments that DIBLES offers. The five assessments include Letter Naming

Fluency (LNF), Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF), Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF),

DIBLES Oral Reading Fluency (DORF), and the Oral Retell. These assessments help determine

reading problems (Smolkowski & Cummings, 2016).

The first assessment in the first grade DIBLES assessment is LNF. According to Good III

and Kaminski (2002), the Letter Naming Fluency assessment measures a student’s ability to

name a series of randomized letters in one minute. The student receives his or her own sheet with

the letters on it which include both upper-case and lower-case letters. Before the assessment

begins, the student is told that if he or she does not know the letter, then he or she will be given

the letter (Good III & Kaminski, 2002). If the student says the letter sound instead of the letter

name, the test administrator can prompt the student to say the letter name and not the sound;

otherwise, if the student says the letter sound after this prompt, it is incorrect (Good & Kaminski,

2002). Students also have three seconds to respond to each letter name or they must move on to
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the next. This is carried throughout the other assessment probes. The LFN assessment

demonstrates the student’s letter recognition ability in both upper-case and lower-case forms.

The next probe given was the PSF assessment which measures the student’s phonemic

awareness. Phonemic awareness, a subset of phonological awareness, is when a student is able to

isolate phonemes in speech (Kosanovich & Foorman, 2016). While LSF involves printed letters,

PSF does not involve printed levels (Kosanovich & Foorman, 2016). In this assessment, a

student’s ability is measured on how well he or she can segment three to four phoneme words

into their individual sounds (Good & Kaminski, 2002). PSF is given orally where the scorer

provides the student with a word and he or she has to segment that word. This assessment has

been proven to be a good predictor of future reading achievement (Good & Kaminski, 2002).

The assessment that followed the PSF probe is the NWF probe. According to Fien et al.

(2010), the NWF probe is designed to screen whether the student has decoding problems and

measure their ability to decode effectively. In the NWF probe, the student is given a series of

“make-believe” words to decode and read. This assessment measures the student’s ability to

utilize their understanding of the alphabetic principle in learning to read (Fien et al., 2010). The

student has one minute to read each “make-believe” word in the series; however, the student is

scored based on both the Correct Letter Sounds (CLS) read and the number of Whole Words

Read (WWR). The NWF assessment not only measures the alphabetic principle and decoding

but also the student’s automaticity to read accurately (Fien et al., 2010).

The final DIBLES probe includes both the DIBLES Oral Reading Fluency (DORF) and

the Oral Retell. According to Van Dijk (2018), the DORF includes short passages that are

specifically chosen for each grade level. The student has one minute to read as much as they can

with accuracy and fluency. While the student is reading, any hesitations, misinterpretations, or
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omissions, are marked as errors (Van Dijk, 2018). When one-minute passes, the student’s

number of words read correctly per minute (WCPM) is his or her score on this DORF (Van Dijk,

2018). For each administration of the DIBLES assessment, there are three DORF passages for

the student to complete (Van Dijk, 2018). Scorers must be familiar with the DIBLES guidelines

because if a student reads less than ten words within one DORF probe than the scorer does not

administer the retell or passages two and three.

The Retell probe directly follows the DORF probe. In the Retell probe, the student is

asked to tell the administrator all about what he or she just read (Riedel, 2007). The student then

has one minute to retell what he or she remembers about the passage. While the student is

talking, the administrator counts the number of words the student speaks, excluding like and

“um” (Riedel, 2007). If the student retells a story that he or she did not read, then the words still

count; however, the quality score is low. The retelling is not administered if the student reads

less than ten words. The score for the retell is a mean score of each retells for the three passages

(Riedel, 2007). Both the DORF and the Retell probe provide one of the best assessments to

measure a student’s reading competence and reading comprehension (Good III & Kaminski,

2002).

Results & Analysis

John’s DIBLES assessment was compared with the DIBLES Next benchmarks which can

be assessed three times a year. Ideally, DIBLES assessments are administered at the beginning of

the year, middle of the year, and end of the year to ensure the student is on track for success. The

scores of the DIBLES assessment are placed into three categories which provide the information

to determine the need of the student. Scores that are at benchmark or above are likely to receive

core support which can refer to Tier 1 in the Response to Intervention (RtI) framework. Scores
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that are below benchmark are likely to receive strategic support (Tier 2). Scores that are well

below benchmark are likely to receive intensive support (Tier 3).

John’s scores were compared to the beginning of the year benchmarks. For the LSF

probe, John did fairly well with a score of 30 words in a minute. This is interesting because he

does very well on letter recognition within the SFA program. There were multiple letters which

he should have known, but he was not able to recall some of these letters. The PSF assessment

could have gone better. John continues to struggle with segmentation; however, he can segment

the onset and the rime. For example, if given the word “song”, John will segment the word as /s/

/ong/ rather than /s/ /o/ /ng/. On the PSF probe, John scored a 13 on segmenting words within 1

minute. The next probe was the NWF. John did not do terribly; however, he gave the sounds

rather than attempting to read the whole word. He often segments the word but says the wrong

sound for the letter. For example, if the word was “zad”, John would pronounce the /a/ as /a_e/

or /ai/. Despite the difficulty, he improves with each probe for NWF. John scored a mean score

of 18 for his CLS and a 1 for his WWR. For the DORF assessment, John did not do as well as he

could have. John read slowly, he was hesitant and inconsistent throughout the DORF probe.

According to the DIBLES assessment procedures, if a student read less than 10 words in one

minute, the retell probe and other DORF passages are not attempted. John WCPM score was 4

and his accuracy is at 50%. He had trouble making connections between his prior knowledge and

the material on the assessment. John struggled the most with sight words and with his letter

blend recognition. For example, when he read the word “rope”, he read it as /r/ o/ /p/ /ee/ rather

than /r/ /o_e/ /p/. He could not decipher between the long o and short o sound. John scored well

below benchmark on the DORF probe. The summary of John’s DIBLES scores is recorded in the

table below.
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I
Assessment Score Need for Support
Letter Naming Fluency 30 Intensive Support
Phoneme Segmentation Fluency 13 Intensive Support
Nonsense Word Fluency (CLS) 18 Strategic Support
Nonsense Word Fluency (WWR) 1 Core Support
DIBLES Oral Reading Fluency (WCPM) 4 Intensive Support
DIBLES Oral Reading Fluency (Accuracy) 50% Accuracy Intensive Support
Retell Fluency 0 N/A
As well as his poor DIBLES scores, John also had poor behaviors during the assessment.

Throughout the assessment, there were multiple times John had to be refocused and asked to

slow down. He was also easily distracted which is not his usual behavior during his SFA

tutoring. His behavior was odd and unnormal during time one-on-one. Despite this odd behavior,

John worked hard and was determined to finish the assessment strong. He was very confident in

himself, despite his errors, and he had no trouble reminding himself that, “He can do this”.

Areas Targeted for Improvement

Reading Fluency. John has a great need to increase is reading fluency as shown through

his DORF probe scores. According to Mraz, Nichols, Caldwell, Beisley, and Sargent (2013),

fluency involves the reader reading with adequate speed, appropriate phrasing, and intonation.

Due to John’s low DORF score and his inability to participate in the other DORF passages,

reading fluency must be a targeted skill for John to master. As stated, he was inconsistent while

he read and hesitated often. It is crucial that John improves in this area to attain greater

confidence in his reading abilities and better his performance in his classroom. Research has

shown that Readers Theater is a fantastic way to increase a student’s reading fluency. Readers

Theater involves an oral interpretation of the reading and the reader repeatedly reading short and

meaningful phrases (Mraz, Nichols, Caldwell, Beisley, & Sargent, 2013). The student does this

until he or she reaches a high level of fluency. During this process, a fluent reader provides

explicit feedback and guidance. Readers Theater motivates students to read and allows students
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to improve on their oral reading skills, interpretative skills, and allows them to practice

intonation through the performance of the Readers Theater itself (Mraz et al., 2013). Readers

Theater is an effective way to not only engage students in reading but also increase their ability

to read fluently and with confidence. According to Reutzel and Cooter Jr. (2012), Reader’s

Theater allows struggling readers to participate in a unique opportunity to read along with,

possibly, more skilled readers. These skilled readers act as a ready model for struggling readers

and help struggling readers learn to be good and fluent readers. Readers Theater is beneficial for

all students, especially struggling readers and fosters a sense of teamwork, support, and pride in

personal and group achievement (Reutzel & Cooter Jr., 2012).

To ensure that the student would be making progress, it is important to assess frequently

and explicitly. According to Reutzel and Cooter Jr. (2012), one of the best ways to assess reading

fluency is by utilizing curriculum-based measurements (CBM) such as DIBLES and AimsWEB

often. It is crucial that the student is frequently assessed on his or her reading fluency to ensure

he or she is making progress. The teacher can also implement a student self-assessment to

progress and self-monitor. Two ways the teacher can apply self-assessment is through a simple

thumbs-up/ thumbs-down assessment of how the student felt he or she did and them implement

the “fix-up” strategy. The “fix-up” strategy involves the student replacing one aspect of their

reading with a fluent strategy (Reutzel & Cooter Jr., 2012). For example, if the student gave a

thumbs down for accuracy, he or she can pick the “fix-up” replacement strategy of listening

carefully to ensure the word that was read makes sense (Reutzel & Cooter Jr., 2012).

Specifically, with Readers Theater, the teacher can implement this self-assessment strategy to

keep track and monitor a student’s progress on fluency. Both forms of assessment can be

beneficial to John and his success in the classroom regarding his reading fluency.
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Phonemic Awareness. While John performs well in other aspects of phonemic

awareness, he specifically needs help with phoneme segmentation. John does well when asked to

segment onset and rime; however, he struggles with phoneme segmentation in regard to the

whole word. John has difficulty identifying individual phonemes within a word and struggles to

remember that each letter has an individual sound. It seems that John’s problem lies with his

understanding of the alphabetic principle. According to Keesey, Konrad, and Joseph (2015), the

value of phoneme segmentation lies within its relation to the alphabetic principle (i.e. the

understanding that each letter corresponds to the sound in words). To best benefit John, he must

master phoneme segmentation and the alphabetic principle to succeed in literacy. Research has

shown that the use of Elkonin boxes (i.e. sound boxes or word boxes) can benefit a student’s

ability to master phoneme segmentation. A sound box teaches a student to hear phonemes in

words by pushes tokens into boxes that represent each phoneme in a given word (McCarthy,

2008). According to Keesey et al. (2015), when word boxes are implemented, there is an

increase in the student’s ability to segment phonemes and achieve a greater understanding of

letter-sound correspondence. It phas also been found that utilizing sound boxes is a way to

incorporate a kinesthetic aspect to this auditory process that scaffolds a student’s learning and

ability to manipulate phonemes (McCarthy, 2008).

To ensure that the student is making progress, it is important for the teacher to routinely

progress monitor and assess the student throughout the school year. As stated before, utilizing

the DIBLES assessment throughout the school year is beneficial to keep track of the student’s

progress. Another way to assess is by utilizing phoneme segmenting tests (PST). A PST involves

a student to listen and isolate sounds in orally given words (Reutzel & Cooter Jr., 2012). This is

an effective way to measure whether a child is progressing or needs more instruction. The test
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should include fifteen, three-phoneme words such as feet or loop (Reutzel & Cooter Jr., 2012).

During a PST, the teacher models phoneme segmentation and then asks the student to segment

the words given to him or her. Each response is recorded and reviewed to check on student

progress (Reutzel & Cooter Jr., 2012). This assessment can easily be implemented into the

majority of classroom settings and can help keep track of John’s progress regarding his phoneme

segmentation abilities.

Conclusion

John has been struggling to succeed in reading for the majority of the school year. While

his teacher works hard to ensure his literary success, it continues to not be enforced at home. It is

crucial that both John’s parents and his teacher are on the same page regarding his reading

instruction to help him succeed and reach the first-grade benchmarks. Due to John’s

circumstances, I am not surprised that he did poorly on the DIBLES assessment. He was below

benchmark for the majority of the probes and is in need of intensive support. While it can be

difficult to see John’s potential through these scores, John is more than capable of success in

reading and simply needs more explicit instruction in specific areas. Administering the CBMs

within the DIBLES assessment has shown me one way that I can assess my future students in the

area of literacy. I learned that assessment is an integral component of the classroom and must be

conducted multiple times a year to ensure a student’s growth and success. I also learned that

there are a variety of evidence-based practices that can be applied to increase the success of

students. Overall, I learned that a student’s success should always be the top priority of every

teacher and that a student’s success takes time, commitment, dedication, and love.
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