Running Head: STUDENT ASSESSMENT PROJECT 1

Student Assessment Project

Katie Kralovic

EDU 325
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Student Assessment Project

Patrick is a third-grade student attending a nearby Elementary school. He has no siblings

and lives with his mother in a suburban area. Patrick transferred from Steubenville City Schools,

West Elementary, at the beginning of October 2018, bringing with him records indicating serious

academic deficits. At the beginning of the school year, he was reading at a kindergarten level,

receiving D’s in reading and writing. Areas for improvement include comprehension, fluency,

sight-words, and writing. For assessment taking, Patrick has his written assessments scribed for

him as he greatly lacks skills in writing letters, let alone full sentences.

Patrick is performing at an average level when it comes to spelling and math and shows

academic strength, especially in math as he demonstrates a typical understanding of place value,

adding and subtracting. Patrick is a very outgoing nine-year-old who is great at starting

friendships at school, and he works very well one-on-one with the teacher. However, on the

playground, Patrick tends to be competitive and combative and has received several warnings

about name-calling and playing rough. In the classroom, he “shuts down” when work becomes

difficult, and as a result, he turns to others as an outlet and becomes a great distraction to his

peers.

Patrick’s teacher believes he could benefit greatly from having an individualized

education plan (IEP). However, the principle and parent did not, deeming it unnecessary at the

time. Two months from the time of their first meeting and Patrick has made very little progress,

certainly not enough for him to catch up to his peers by the end of the year. As a result, the

teacher has begun to collect data from progress monitoring. She said she hopes that by providing

physical and visual evidence through progress graphing, she will be able to convince the parent

and principle that there is a serious need for Patrick to receive IEP services for academic success.
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Procedures

To find a participant for this assessment, I contacted a teacher I cooperated with for field

experience during the previous year, and obtained information about which student would be a

good candidate for the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills (DIBELS) assessment.

She was happy to help and provided me with information regarding Patrick, and after several

emails, we scheduled the assessment to take place on October 7th, 2018.

On the day of the assessment, I reported to Patrick’s teacher who was being swarmed by

third-graders in a rush to transition between classes. In this rush, she briefly introduced me to

Patrick, who apparently was not aware that he would be testing with me until that very moment.

The teacher reassured him it was not anything he would be formally graded on, and that it was

very similar to the assessments they had done on the computer a month prior. Then, we followed

her to the empty art room where we could test without distractions.

The art classroom was big with four round tables, each with six chairs. Patrick and I sat at

the table closest to the door with the lights on. Before beginning, I spent a few minutes getting to

know the student, asking what he liked to do for fun as well as what classes in school he enjoyed.

I also told him about why I was giving him the assessment so that he was aware of his role

through it all. After it was apparent that the student was more comfortable being one-on-one with

me, I began my 20-minute assessment period by administering the DIBLES Oral Reading

Fluency test (DORF), followed by Retell Fluency (RTF), and finally the Daze probe.

Unfortunately, in the beginning, I forgot my phone for the timer and left the door open when I

returned. This caused a bit of distraction for the first two rounds of the DORF, so after

administering the second round I went and shut the door, and there were no other distractions.
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When the assessments probes were completed, I thanked Patrick for helping me with this

assignment and led him to his next class. I returned to the art room and completed the scoring of

each assessment. When this was finished, I went back to the classroom teacher and we spoke at

length about what interventions the school was currently implementing, as well as what the next

steps would look like if I were to input Patrick’s score into their online DIBELS progress

monitoring system. Additionally, the teacher gave great insight into what areas she suspected

would need more intensive instruction, and informed me that she was currently working to see

about getting Patrick an IEP.

Assessments Given

The DIBELS assessment is a nationally used curriculum-based measurement (CBM)

which involves a number of probes based on school curriculum. These probes align with the five

core areas of literacy—phonological awareness, alphabetic principle, fluency, vocabulary, and

comprehension—and are used to assess early literacy skills (Pavri, 2012). A characteristic of

CBMs is that the procedures are standardized and can be administered in short timed sessions

(Munger & Backman, 2013). As such, each probe in the DIBELS assessment follows

standardized processes and are brief, which makes administration easy and extremely time

efficient (Good & Kaminski, 2011).

Multiple probes are used within each grade-level assessment of the DIBELS. For the

third-grade DIBELS assessment, there are two probes that are given: the DORF and RTF, and

the Daze probe. The DORF assessment is often used to track reading performance and predict

future reading fluency in later grades (Sun Kim, Vanderwood, & Lee, 2016). With this probe,

literacy skills in three areas are measured: advanced phonics and word attack skills, accurate and

fluent reading, and reading comprehension (Good & Kaminski, 2011). The assessment entails
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students reading grade-level passages aloud for one minute as the assessor tracks errors, such as

reading a word incorrectly or hesitating for more than 3 seconds. The assessor quickly scores the

student’s performance and moves on to the RTF component (Hale, Hawkins, Schmitt, & Martin,

2011). This process is completed for a total of three times with three different passages. Scoring

the DORF assessment entails tracking the number of words correct per minute (WCPM) and

subtracting it from the total number of words read. The data gleaned from this assessment is

important because it allows the assessor to evaluate the reading fluency and accuracy of the

reader (Hale, et al., 2011). Based on WCPM, teachers can then pinpoint areas in need of

improvement, such as decoding, and develop additional instruction or intervention plans to

support the need.

The RTF assessment, a component of the DORF assessment, focuses more on

comprehension and the ability to easily recall the information just read (Noltemeyer, Joseph, &

Watson, 2014). As fluency proficiency increases, so also does a child’s ability to understand the

material (Noltemeyer et al., 2014). Conversely, just because a student does well on the DORF

assessment does not mean they comprehend the material, and their retell ability ends up being

very low (Hale et al., 2011). The RTF probe is administered directly after the DORF assessment.

The assessor removes the passage and asks the student to tell them as much as they can about the

story in one minute. As the student speaks, the assessor keeps track of how many words are

spoken, as well as the quality or relevance of the retell compared to the content of the passage

(Good and Kaminski, 2011). The purpose of the RTF assessment is to evaluate a student’s

reading comprehension skills, that is, their ability to fluently make connections between what

they have read and what they know (Bellinger & DiPerna, 2011). This is an important literacy

skill for students to develop because one, the ultimate goal of reading is to gain knowledge and
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two, because comprehending what we read motivates us to read more (Bellinger & DiPerna,

2011).

The final probe administered at the third-grade level is the Daze probe. The Daze probe is

the DIBLES version of a Maze procedure which uses cloze passages to evaluate awareness of

linguistic properties, word recognition, and the ability to apply prior knowledge (Good and

Kaminski, 2011). The Maze procedure involves presenting students with a reading passage

where every seventh word has been deleted and replaced with three optional words—two

incorrect, and one correct. (January & Ardoin, 2012). As the student reads silently, they must

determine which word would best fit into the passage they are reading by determining the

meaning of the word and whether the word completes the meaning of the sentence (January &

Ardoin, 2012). The purpose of this probe is to evaluate reading comprehension at the reasoning

level (Good and Kaminski, 2011). In the literary sense, reasoning and decision-making are

important skills for children to develop because it prompts them to make connections and create

meaning with the information from the text (Good and Kaminski, 2011).

Results & Analysis

The following results for the three probes were compared to the DIBELS Next

Benchmark Goals, which provides benchmark goals for three periods during the year. All results

were compared to the Beginning of the Year period for the third-grade reading level since the

assessment was given in October, which is relatively close to the beginning of their school year.

During the first component of the DORF, the student read an average of 33 words with, on

average, 51% accuracy. The student read 48 words in the first passage, with 24 words correct

and 24 incorrect. For the second passage, the student read a total of 27 words, with 12 words

correct and 15 words incorrect. Finally, he read 25 words in the third passage, 15 of which were
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read correctly and 10 of which were incorrect. What is interesting to note is that the average ratio

of words correct to words incorrect, 16:17, is almost equal. Not only does this show that he read

consistently at this level for each passage, but also that the number of words correct to words

incorrect was about the same. As predicted by his teacher, this score indicates that the student is

well below benchmark, reading at a kindergarten or first-grade level, and will need additional

intensive support if he is to achieve grade-level goals.

Although the student did not read more than 40 words on any of the passages, the

assessor used professional judgment and administer the RTF component for each passage. On

average, the student scored a 26. This indicates that he is above benchmark for his grade.

However, after analyzing the data, such a high score may be due to the fact that very little was

read and thus was easier to remember. The quality of the RTF assessment averaged at 1 which

indicates that, while he gave sufficient detail, the detail did not entirely relate to the passage.

In a passage containing 50 cloze word-choice boxes, the student encountered a total of 10

choice boxes within his three minute time limit for the Daze probe. Of these 10 word-choice

boxes, two were answered correctly and eight were answered incorrectly. Due to the low number

of words read for this probe, the student encountered less word-choice boxes, therefore causing a

low adjusted score. The adjusted score for the Daze probe was calculated by dividing the average

number of incorrect words (8) by two and subtracting the result from the average number of

correct words (2). This resulted in a score of negative two. Ultimately this indicates a zero as the

scoring guide does not extend below zero. It is predicted that had the student gone for longer

than three-minutes, data obtained would be more useful. It came as no surprise that the student

was not able to read much due to the results obtained from his DORF assessment. The results of

this probe indicate that intensive support is needed to bring the student to grade-level reading
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comprehension. A summary of average scores compared to benchmark goals for each probe is

provided in figure 1.

DORF Probe Results Benchmark Goal Level of Support

DORF Probe Average correct: 17 70 Intensive support

Average Accuracy: 51% 95% Intensive support

Retell Fluency Probe Score average: 26 20 Core support

Quality average: 1 2 Strategic support

Daze Probe Adjusted score: -2 (0) 8 Intensive support

Figure 1.

Areas Targeted for Improvement

Decoding: One of the most fundamental literacy skills a child must develop is the ability

to decode the relationship between letters and their corresponding sounds (Alber-Morgan,

Joseph, Kanotz, Rouse, & Sawyer, 2016). Decoding is one of the components of phonemic

awareness (PHONICS!), which specifically highlights the letter-sound correspondence in words

(Keesey, Konrad, & Joseph, 2015). This skill makes it possible for readers to construct words out

of the appropriate letters and associate meaning to the newly formed word. By analyzing the

student’s DORF results, it is apparent that decoding is a major issue that is preventing him from

being able to read at his grade-level. Evidence of this exists in the fact that phonetically irregular

words and words with more than one syllable were difficult for him to read. He was able to
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identify the sound of the first letter, but blending this initial sound with the other letters caused

great struggle.

One strategy that can help to improve Patrick’s decoding skill is the use of a word box.

Similar to Elkonin’s sound box strategy, the word box strategy (WBS) involves breaking a word

up by its letters and putting them into boxes so that students can see them separately (Alber-

Morgan et al. 2016). The WBS combines three senses: visual, auditory, and physical. To connect

with the visual senses, the student is instructed to place letter tiles into the boxes of a piece of

paper that has been divided into a number of boxes to match the number of letters in the word

(Alber-Morgan et al., 2016). The act of moving letter tiles allows the student’s touch senses to be

activated, thus adding to the visual senses. Finally, as the student moves each letter tile, they are

instructed to pronounce each of the sounds associated with each letter and then say the whole

word (Alber-Morgan et al., 2016). WBSs can be designed in a number of different ways, some of

which incorporate the “I do, we do, you do” approach of direct instruction (Keesey & Joseph,

2015). Research shows that the WBS is an effective way to supplement reading instruction for

at-risk students by increasing reading and spelling of consonant-vowel-consonant words (Alber-

Morgan et al., 2016), and providing more practice with phoneme segmentation, letter-sound

correspondences, and spelling skills (Keesey & Joseph, 2015).

Fluency: In order for comprehension to take place, there are two skills that need to be

developed: decoding, which has just been addressed, and fluency. Fluency is the ability to

recognize words effortlessly and accurately, spending little time on the mechanical processes that

go into reading (Petersen-Brown & Burns, 2011). Fluency is an important part of reading

because it creates a connection between word recognition and reading comprehension; too much

attention on decoding and not enough on developing fluency can cause serious deficits in reading
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comprehension (Reutzel & Cooter, 2012). Upon evaluation, it is clear that Patrick’s reading

fluency has suffered as a result of his poor decoding skills. During the RTF assessment, the

student was so stuck on decoding the passage that he was unable to process what exactly he was

reading. Not only did he fail to read 40 words, allowing for sufficient RTF results, but much of

what he did recall was based on the mistakes he made, such as adding or subtracting words as a

result of the inability to read the word.

One way to support fluency as Patrick improves decoding skills is to use the instructional

strategy of flashcard drills. The goal of flashcard drills is to increase sight word recognition to

the point of automaticity so that the student can spend more time effortlessly reading and thus be

able to understand what it is they are reading (Volpe, Mulé, Briesch, Joseph, & Burns, 2011).

Often times people think of flashcard drills in the traditional sense, where a student is presented

with a deck of familiar cards and learns the words through rote memorization. However, in

addition to the Traditional Drill (TD), the Incremental Rehearsal (IR) drill involves adding

unknown vocabulary to the flashcard deck and presenting them to the student in an incremental

manner (Volpe et al., 2011). When an unknown word has been presented between five and nine

times, it gets moved to the beginning of the deck (Volpe et al., 2011). In this way, IR provides

the student with many opportunities to respond (OTR), which research has shown to increase

fluency (Peteresen-Brown & Burns, 2011).

Conclusion

Patrick is a third-grade student who reads at a kindergarten level. Past records indicate

that his reading difficulties were never addressed properly and was allowed to continue on into

each grade without intervention. On the DIBELS assessment, Patrick scored very low in all three

assessment probes. He will require intensive support in phonics, word attack skills, accuracy,
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fluency, decoding, and reading comprehension. In particular, it was determined that Patrick

struggles the most in decoding and reading fluency, which in turn is impeding comprehension.

His current third-grade teacher began progress monitoring and supplementing instruction with

minor interventions, but she expressed concern that the level of reading he is at now will greatly

impede his education if more intense interventions are not implemented. She is working on

gathering data to use as evidence that evaluation for an IEP is necessary for him to succeed.

One aspect of this project that I found to be important regarding the use of CBMs was the

data collection to create a starting point, or “baseline”, for performance analysis. Obtaining

baseline data is important because it allows us to see where a child is at regarding reading level.

With this information, we then compare it to what level they should be at and pinpoint areas in

need of improvement. Without baseline data we would have nothing to base intervention choice

off of, and much time and energy would be wasted with ineffective. Another aspect of CBM that

I found to be important is progress monitoring. After collecting baseline data, it is important for

us to continue to collect data to ensure that interventions are being implemented with fidelity and

validity. Not only this, but the information can be used to inform parents of progress, as well as

inform our own instructional practices in the classroom.

Citations

Alber-Morgan, S. R., Joseph, L. M., Kanotz, B., Rouse, C. A., & Sawyer, M. R. (2016). The

effects of word box instruction on acquisition, generalization, and maintenance decoding

and spelling skills for first graders. Education and Treatment of Children, 39(1), 21-43.

Bellinger, J. M., & DiPerna, J. C. (2011). Is fluency-based story retell a good indicator of reading

comprehension? Psychology in the Schools, 48(4), 416-426.

Good, R.H., III., & Kaminski, R. A. (Eds.) (2011). Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy

Skills (6th ed.). Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational

Achievement. Available: http://dibels.uoregon.edu/.

Hale, A. D., Hawkins, R. O., Sheeley, W., Reynolds, J. R., Jenkins, S., Schmitt, A. J,…& Martin.

(2011). An investigation of silent versus aloud reading comprehension of elementary

students using maze assessment procedures. Psychology in the Schools, 48(1), 4-13.

January, S. A., & Ardoin, S. P. (2012). The impact of context and word type on students’ maze

task accuracy. School Psyschology Review, 41(3), 262-271.

Keesey, S., Konrad, M., & Joseph, L. M. (2015) Word boxes improve phonemic awareness,

letter-sound correspondences, and spelling skills of at-risk kindergarteners. Remedial and

Special Education, 36(3), 167-180.

Munger, K. A., & Backman, B. A. (2013). Taking a “simple view” of the dynamic indicators of

basic early literacy skills as a predicator of multiple measures of third grade reading

comprehension. Psychology in the Schools, 50(7), 722-737.

Noltemeyer, A., Joseph, L. M., & Watson, M. (2014) Improving reasing prosody and oral retell

fluency: A comparison of three intervention approaches. Reading Improvement, 51(2),

221-232.
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Pavri, S. (2012). Effective assessment of students: Determining responsiveness to instruction.

Boston: Pearson.

Petersen-Brown, S., & Burns, M. K. (2011). Adding a vocabulary component to incremental

rehearsal to enhance retention and generalization. School Psychology Quarterly, 26(3),

245-255.

Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B., Jr. (2012) Teaching children to read. (6th ed.). Boston, MA:

Pearson Education, Inc.

Sun Kim, J., Vanderwood, M. L., & Lee, C. Y. (2016) Predictive validity of curriculum-based

measures for English learners at varying English proficiency levels. Educational

Assessment, 21(1), 1-18.

Volpe, R. J., Mulé, C. M., Briesch, A. M., Joseph, L. M., & Burns, M. K. (2011). A comparson

of two flashcard drill methods targeting word recognition. Journal of Behavior

Education, 20, 117-137.