Presentation for the Horizon School Division AISI PD Day, regarding the utilization of DIBELS within a Collaborative Response Model. More resources, templates and related blog postings at www.jigsawlearningca.wordpress.com

1. DIBELS:
One Piece of the Puzzle
March 5, 2012

2. Establishing Context
• K-3 Elementary School (became K-6)
• Component of a Collaborative Response Model
• Required a common progress monitoring tool
– Are students progressing?

3. Why DIBELS?
• 5 Thread of Reading
– Phonemic
awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, com
prehension
• Common assessment across grades
• Quick administration – easy to train
• Tools already developed
• Ability to disaggregate data
• Inexpensive

4. Effective When…
• Part of a responsive school-wide model that
includes collaborative team meetings and
pyramid of interventions
• Flag students for conversation
• Focus on trends, not scores
• Focused on student growth
• Indicate students for further investigation
• One assessment within a student profile to build
a complete picture of student reading
achievement

5. Literacy Assessment Profile
• DIBELS
– Benchmark (3 times a year)
– Progress Monitoring
• GRADE (Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation)
– Annual common assessment (May)
– Inform student transition, instructional effectiveness, teacher
PD
• Teacher Assessments
– Further diagnostic information
– In relation to learner outcomes
• Triangulation of Data
– Also included library circulation, home reading survey,
reading attitudes survey

6. Ineffective When…
• Used as the sole or primary measure of
student reading achievement
• Progress monitoring for all students
• Summative (reporting to parents)
• Focus on scores, not trends
• Drives instruction (fluency is more than
words per minute)
• Used as sole evidence of success (or
failure) of school reading programs
• Determine teacher effectiveness

7. What We Learned
• Focus on purpose – Dynamic Indicators of
Basic Early Literacy Skills
• Utilize with a pilot grade when starting
• Determine passages for progress monitoring
• Administer using an assessment team
– Not generally administered by classroom teachers
• Assessment schedule determined annually
– Two days benchmarking
– Progress monitoring every two weeks
• For use by staff – not generally communicated to
families
• Kept student progress at the forefront

8. Questions?
Kurtis Hewson (@hewsonk27)
Lorna Adrian (@lornaadrian)
@jigsaw_learning
jigsawlearning@shaw.ca
http://jigsawlearning.wordpress.com