DIBELS is a very important literacy assessment tool that we use at our school in grades K-3. It stands for: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Success. It essentially just gives us an indicator if a child MAY struggle with reading in their elementary years. There are 4 tests that are given at the Kindergarten level and they are:

Initial Sound Fluency- The student will be shown 4 pictures and told the word for the picture. They will have to answer a set of 4 questions about the pictures and their beginning sounds. This is a timed test. The adult begins the timer after each question is asked and stops it after the child answers.

EXAMPLE- The adult points to 4 pictures-duck, table, giraffe, and lake.1) The adult then asks the child to point to the picture that starts with /g/. 2) Now point to the picture that starts with /t/.3) Now point to the picture that starts with /l/. 4) What sound does "duck" begin with?

Letter Naming Fluency- The student will be shown a page that has rows of random capital and lowercase letters. They will point to each letter and say the name of the letter. They have 1 minute to name as many letters as possible.

EXAMPLE- H t k o L z S m r U

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency - The adult will say a word out loud(the student is NOT looking at any of the words). The student must "break the word down" by saying all the sounds that they hear in the word. This timed test lasts for 1 minute.

EXAMPLE - What sounds do you hear in pot? p/o/t What sounds do you hear in ship? sh/i/p

Nonsense Word Fluenc y- These are just silly words that are used to test a student's knowledge about letter sounds and reading. The student will be shown a page with 2-letter and 3-letter words on it. They have 1 minute to read each sound in the words and/or read the words.

EXAMPLE- lut kic mod fev sal uk nim pon

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Benchmark Goals

Name of test  Beginning of year Middle of year End of year

Initial sound	8	25	X
Letter naming	8	27	40
Phoneme seg.	X	18	35
Nonsense words	X	13	25

 

DIBELS official website: http://dibels.uoregon.edu/

Computer games for Kindergarten DIBELS practice:

http://teachers.cr.k12.de.us/~galgano/dibel2.htm