There are several reading assessments that we use on a regular basis at Pine City. The following is a very brief description of some of them. If you have further questions or would like to discuss any of these assessments, please feel free to contact me at any time.
PAST (Phonemic Awareness Skills Test)
The purpose of The Phonological Awareness Test is to serve as a tool to measure students' (second semester kindergarten through second grade) ability on five phonemic awareness tasks: segmentation, isolation, deletion, substitution, and blending. Additionally, the test measures sensitivity to rhyme, knowledge of graphemes, and decoding skills. This test is administered individually. The test was developed in response to the overwhelming research on the literacy development of young children that has concluded that there is a high correlation between a child's phonological and phonemic awareness and his/her success with beginning reading and spelling. If diagnosed in a timely fashion and provided with explicit/systematic training in phonological and phonemic awareness, students can become competent in this area and improve their chances to experience success with beginning reading and spelling instruction.
DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy Skills)
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.
DIBELS were developed to measure recognized skills related to reading outcomes. Each measure has been researched and demonstrated to be reliable and valid indicators of early literacy development and predictive of later reading proficiency to aid in the early identification of students who are not progressing as expected. When used as recommended, the results can be used to evaluate individual student development as well as provide grade-level feedback toward validated instructional objectives.
Benchmark assessments are done in the fall, winter and spring of each year. The following is a list and explanation of the various parts of the DIBELS assessment:
ISF (Initial Sound Fluency) Assesses a child's skill at identifying and producing the initial sound of a given word. Timing: amount of time taken calculated against the number of correct responses. (Kindergarten only)
LNF (Letter Naming Fluency) Assesses a child's skill at identifying random letters, both upper and lower case. Timing: one minute. (Kindergarten through fall of first grade only)
PSF Assesses a child's skill at producing the individual sounds within a given word. Timing: one minute. (Winter of Kindergarten through end of first grade)
NWF Assesses a child's knowledge of letter-sound correspondences as well their ability to blend letters together to form unfamiliar "nonsense" (e.g., ut, fik, lig, etc.) words. Timing: one minute. (Winter of Kindergarten through fall of second grade)
ORF Assesses a child's skill at reading connected text in grade-level materials. Timing: one minute. (Winter of first grade through fifth grade)
High Frequency Word Assessment
The Elmira City School District has developed seven lists, of thirty-five words each for a total of 245, of the most commonly used words in text, starting with the easiest and increasing in difficulty. By the end of kindergarten, students are expected to master the first 35 words; by the end of first grade, 105; by the end of second grade 175; and by the end of third grade, 245. The students should be able to read the words without hesitation or sounding them out.
Letter / Sound Recognition
Students are asked to identify both upper and lower case letters (a total of 52), give a sound for each letter (a total of 33) and give a word that begins with the sound (a total of 33). The assessment is administered individually and is not timed.
Running Records
Students are asked to read a leveled and unknown book or text. The teacher observes how the student reads, the strategies that are used, the errors that the student makes and also the overall fluency. After reading, the student's comprehension is also assessed. The student is then scored based on their reading accuracy and comprehension. The levels are as follows:
Difficult: less than 85% accuracy is considered a difficult level, text the student would not be able to read on their own.
Instructional: 90 to 94% accuracy is considered instructional level, text the student would be able to read with minimal assistance, the level we would use with strategy and content lessons.
Independent: Above 95% accuracy is considered a level at which a student is able to read and comprehend text without any assistance. This would be the level of the text they should be using for self-selected books.