Dynamic Indicators of

Basic Early Literacy Skills:

DIBELS

All DIBELS tests are individually administered by the reading specialist.

 Fall Testing

 In the fall kindergarten students are individually administered two DIBELS tests.  They are:

Initial Sound Fluency Test

• In the initial sound fluency test students are given pictures and asked to tell what sound they hear at the start of the picture. This test assesses a child’s ability to recognize and produce the initial sound in an orally presented word.  The reading specialist calculates the amount of time taken to identify/produce the correct sound and converts the score into the number of onsets correct in a minute.    

 Letter Naming Fluency Test

• In the letter naming fluency test students are given one minute to name as many letters as possible.  The number of correct letters produced in one minute determines the final score.

Winter Testing

In the winter kindergarten students are individually administered the Initial Sound Fluency Test, The Letter Naming Fluency Test and one additional test.  This is:

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency Test

• (A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound). This test assesses a student’s ability to segment three and four phoneme words into their individual phonemes.  The reading specialist orally presents words of three to four phonemes.  This test requires the student to produce verbally the individual phonemes for each word. For example, the reading specialist says, “cat,” and the student says, “/c/a/t/” to receive three possible points for the word.  The number of correct phonemes produced in one minute determines the final score.   

 Spring/End of School Year Testing

 In the spring kindergarten students are administered the Letter Naming Fluency and Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, as well as an additional assessment called Nonsense Word Fluency.  With this assessment the student is shown 2 & 3-letter nonsense words.  He/She may either say each sound in the nonsense word or say the word.  The student is allowed one minute to produce as many sounds and/or read as many words as he/she can.      

If a child scores below the 20^th percentile on one or more of the DIBELS test(s), he/she will be invited to attend Reading Support classes.