DIBELS
The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) are a set of standardized, individually administered measures of early literacy development. They are designed to be short (one minute) fluency measures used to regularly monitor the development of pre-reading and early reading skills.
Next DIBELS window- Jan. 29-Feb 11
Initial Sound Fluency (Grades K-1)
The DIBELS Initial Sounds Fluency (ISF) Measure is a standardized, individually administered measure of phonological awareness that assesses a child's ability to recognize and produce the initial sound in an orally presented word (Kaminski & Good, 1996, 1998; Laimon, 1994). The ISF measure is a revision of the measure formerly called Onset Recognition Fluency (OnRF). The examiner presents four pictures to the child, names each picture, and then asks the child to identify (i.e., point to or say) the picture that begins with the sound produced orally by the examiner. For example, the examiner says, "This is sink, cat, gloves, and hat. Which picture begins with /s/?" and the student points to the correct picture. The child is also asked to orally produce the beginning sound for an orally presented word that matches one of the given pictures. The examiner calculates the amount of time taken to identify/produce the correct sound and converts the score into the number of initial sounds correct in a minute. The ISF measure takes about 3 minutes to administer and has over 20 alternate forms to monitor progress. ISF is a measure that assesses phonemic awareness skills. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words. It is essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system. To learn more about phonemes, phonemic awareness, and how to design and implement effective phonemic awareness instruction, visit the Big Ideas in Beginning Reading Phonemic Awareness pages.
Letter Naming Fluency (Grades K)
DIBELS Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) is a standardized, individually administered test that provides a measure of risk. Students are presented with a page of upper- and lower-case letters arranged in a random order and are asked to name as many letters as they can. Students are told if they do not know a letter they will be told the letter. The student is allowed 1 minute to produce as many letter names as he/she can, and the score is the number of letters named correctly in 1 minute. Students are considered at risk for difficulty achieving early literacy benchmark goals if they perform in the lowest 20% of students in their district. The 20th percentile is calculated using local district norms. Students are considered at some risk if they perform between the 20th and 40th percentile using local norms. Students are considered at low risk if they perform above the 40th percentile using local norms.
Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (Grades K-1)
The DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) measure is a standardized, individually administered test of phonological awareness (Kaminski & Good, 1996). The PSF measure assesses a student's ability to segment three- and four-phoneme words into their individual phonemes fluently. The PSF measure has been found to be a good predictor of later reading achievement (Kaminski & Good, 1996). The PSF task is administered by the examiner orally presenting words of three to four phonemes. It requires the student to produce verbally the individual phonemes for each word. For example, the examiner says "sat," and the student says "/s/ /a/ /t/" to receive three possible points for the word. After the student responds, the examiner presents the next word, and the number of correct phonemes produced in one minute determines the final score. The PSF measure takes about 2 minutes to administer and has over 20 alternate forms for monitoring progress.PSF is a measure that assess phonemic awareness skills. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words. It is essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system. To learn more about phonemes, phonemic awareness, and how to design and implement effective phonemic awareness instruction, visit the Big Ideas in Beginning Reading Phonemic Awareness pages.
Nonsense Word Fluency (Grades K, 1, 2)
The DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) measure is a standardized, individually administered test of the alphabetic principle - including letter-sound correspondence and of the ability to blend letters into words in which letters represent their most common sounds (Kaminski & Good, 1996). The student is presented an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper with randomly ordered VC and CVC nonsense words (e.g., sig, rav, ov) and asked to produce verbally the individual letter sound of each letter or verbally produce, or read, the whole nonsense word. For example, if the stimulus word is "vaj" the student could say /v/ /a/ /j/ or say the word /vaj/ to obtain a total of three letter-sounds correct. The student is allowed 1 minute to produce as many letter-sounds as he/she can, and the final score is the number of letter-sounds produced correctly in one minute. Because the measure is fluency based, students receive a higher score if they are phonologically recoding the word and receive a lower score if they are providing letter sounds in isolation. The NWF measure also takes about 2 minutes to administer and has over 20 alternate forms for monitoring progress. NWF is a measure that assess alphabetic principle skills. The alphabetic principle is composed of two parts:
- Alphabetic Understanding: Words are composed of letters that represent sounds.
- Phonological Recoding: Using systematic relationships between letters and phonemes (letter-sound correspondence) to retrieve the pronunciation of an unknown printed string or to spell words. To learn more about the alphabetic principle, please visit the Big Ideas in Beginning Reading Alphabetic Principle pages.
Oral Reading Fluency (Grades 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5)
(DORF) is a standardized, individually administered test of accuracy and fluency with connected text. The DORF passages and procedures are based on the program of research and development of Curriculum-Based Measurement of Reading by Stan Deno and colleagues at the University of Minnesota and using the procedures described in Shinn (1989). A version of CBM reading also has been published as The Test of Reading Fluency (TORF) (Children's Educational Services, 1987). DORF is a standardized set of passages and administration procedures designed to (a) identify children who may need additional instructional support, and (b) monitor progress toward instructional goals. The passages are calibrated for the goal level of reading for each grade level. Student performance is measured by having students read a passage aloud for one minute. Words omitted, substituted, and hesitations of more than three seconds are scored as errors. Words self-corrected within three seconds are scored as accurate. The number of correct words per minute from the passage is the oral reading fluency rate.
DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency (DORF) is a measure that assesses fluency with text, the ability to translate letters-to-sounds-to-words fluently, effortlessly. The fluent reader is one whose decoding processes are automatic, requiring no concious attention. Such capacity then enables readers to allocate their attention to the comprehension and meaning of the text. To learn more about fluency with text, visit the Big Ideas in Beginning Reading: Fluency pages.