The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) are a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of early literacy skills from kindergarten through sixth grade. They are designed to be short (one minute) fluency measures used to regularly monitor the development of early literacy and early reading skills. There are 5 areas that students get tested on: phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle and phonics, accurate and fluent reading, vocabulary, and comprehension.
My 5th grader came home one afternoon and announced that she was "stupid and never wanted to read again" She went on to say that she hated the Read Naturally program. I was stunned, what program was that? Something I had never heard of before... so I made an appointment with her teacher for the next afternoon. The rest of the evening I quizzed my daughter on this program. She informed me that when the other kids in her class have reading circle, she leaves and goes elsewhere. Her spelling words also changed from 5th grade words to words like "make" and "toss"
The next afternoon when I met with her teacher I asked about the program and why I hadn't received any info about it. I was told that it was a new program they were trying to get going for struggling readers and that notices were being sent home next week. I then asked what qualified my daughter to be a struggling reader? The teacher said it was because she did poorly on her oral reading for the DIBELS testing.
"Was she able to comprehend what she read?" I asked
"Yes, she answered all questions correctly. But she didn't pause at any punctuation, she read with out a voice"
"Is it possible that she knew someone was timing how far she read with a stopwatch?" (this I knew because as a parent volunteer I had to do this testing for a teacher the previous year.)
"Maybe, but her words still had no flow to them, it was a bit jumbled, hard to understand."
I then brought out the info I had on my daughter.. always been a grade level reader, MSP scores showed her as "advanced" in reading comprehension, and her AR level was a 5.7 as of last week.
"How could a one minute DIBELS test trump all of these other things?" I asked. "Not only that, but I have a child who loved to read and now won't pick up a book because she thinks she's dumb based on a standard test. We need a new plan."
This made me realize that as a future teacher you HAVE to look at everything a student does or has done. That you can't take a one minute test and make a big decision on a student and their learning based just on that test. It can cause detrimental damage in some way or another. Teachers need to take their time, look at the students past, talk with former teachers the student had and make sure this is really the right move. Also look at the test that was given. Maybe they don't do well with a stopwatch ticking away in front of them or maybe they're nervous to be tested in front of their peers. The decision of the teacher has everything to do with a student and getting them to love to learn. Not all parents are like me, involved and willingly to be an advocate for their kids. What if my daughter never informed me of this program or I had kept my daughter in this program? She would have lost her love to learn, to read.
My daughter? She was pulled from the program, placed back with her class and is reading a 6th grade book and taking 6th grade spelling tests and most important... is loving to learn!
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