1. You should know! By: The Kindergarten & Pre-K Team
What is DIBELS?
You should know!
By: The Kindergarten & Pre-K Team

2. Why should you know?
DIBELS is an assessment administered to your child 3 times during the school year.
DIBELS can:
1) Identify students in need of assistance
2) Determine if students are improving
3) Guide teachers in reading group set up
4) Give consistent and reliable data for teachers to use in conferences with parents.

3. DIBELS stands for: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
DIBELS has 5 measures for testing
- Letter naming Fluency
- Initial Sound Fluency
- Phoneme Segmentation Fluency
- Nonsense Word Fluency
- Oral Reading Fluency (1st grade & above)‏

4. Letter Naming Fluency
- Students will be given a page with upper and lowercase letters arranged in random order.
- The students will be asked to name as many letters as they can in 1 minute.
- Students are told if they do not know a letter they will be told the letter.

5. Scoring Letter Naming Fluency
- The score is the number of letters named correctly in 1 minute.
- The students scoring in the lowest 20% will be considered at-risk or high risk.
- The students scoring in the 20-40% will be considered some risk or moderate risk.
- The students scoring above the 40% percentile will be considered low risk.

6. Building Letter Naming Fluency at Home
- Letter flashcards (mix capital & lowercase)‏
Have your child circle or highlight letters they know in old magazines or newspapers
- Using index cards create “GO FISH” with letters – a match would consist of the capital and the lowercase of the letter.
- Create “Old Maid” with letters on index cards. Let your child draw the old maid card to add to the deck. A match would consist of the capital and the lowercase of the letter.

7. Initial Sound Fluency
- The examiner will give and name 4 pictures to the child.
- The examiner will ask the child to identify the sound given.
- The child will also be asked to produce the beginning sound for a given word/picture.

8. Scoring Initial Sound Fluency
- The scorer will calculate the time taken to produce the correct sound and convert the score into the number of onsets in 1 minute.
- 60 x Total Correct = ___ Correct initial Seconds Sounds per minute

9. Building Initial Sound Fluency at Home
- Toy sorting :give your child 3 baskets or grocery bags with 3 different pictures on them. Have your child find toys to put in each basket or bag corresponding to the picture. (ex: turtle basket- truck, train, tractor) Tell them the sound of toy you are looking for /t/.
- Sound it Bag it: with your child label each bag with sound pictures A-Z. Let your child cut out pictures from old magazines and place it in the bag with the same beginning sound.
- Sound Scavenger Hunt: take 1 bag and walk around the house with your child. Tell your child you want them to help you fill the bag with things that begin like “garden” As you and your child walk through the house point and say objects. Does “gum” begin like garden? Yes put it in the bag! Walk around the house making /g/ sound.

10. Phoneme Segmentation Fluency
- This test is administered orally to the student.
- The administrator gives a word and the student needs to break down the word into each individual phoneme for the given word. (The word is “sat”. The child would respond by saying the individual phonemes /s/ /a/ /t/).

11. Scoring Phoneme Segmentation Fluency
- The score is determined by how many correct phonemes were given in 1 minute.
- The benchmark for kindergarten in the spring is correct phonemes.

12. Building Phoneme Segmentation Fluency at Home
- Segmenting Train: On 3 separate cards draw an engine, train car, and a caboose. Lay the train in front of your child. Place a picture above the train (ex: jet). Let the child choose from their letters (could be made on paper or magnetic letters) to build the word on the train. J would go on the engine (beginning letter), E would lay on the car (middle letter), and T would go on the caboose (ending letter sound). Practice making each sound as they build and create the word. ( /j/ /e/ /t/ spells jet)‏
- Make a Word: Use an aluminum cookie sheet or refrigerator for the magnetic letters. Have your child choose a picture card from the pile and have them build the word with their magnetic letters on the cookie sheet or refrigerator. After they build the word with magnetic letters let your child write the word on a piece of paper to keep track of all the words they make.

13. Nonsense Word Fluency
- The student is given a sheet with multiple letter nonsense words.
- The student is asked to produce each individual sound in the word or the word itself.
- They are given 1 minute to produce as many sounds as they can.

14. Scoring Nonsense Word Fluency
- The final score is the number of letter sounds produced correctly in 1 minute.
- Because the measure is fluency based, students receive a higher score if they can say the nonsense word and a lower score if each sound is said individually.

15. Building Nonsense Word Fluency at Home
- Silly sound game: Set a timer for 1 minute. Let your child have their magnetic letters and aluminium tray. Parent will need a paper and pencil. Begin time. Let your child create an silly 3 letter word, if they say the sound to each letter in the word or the actual silly word, you can write it down on paper. Once the word is written the child can move on to making another silly word. See how many words they can create in a minute. Review the list after timer is complete. Start the fun over again!
- Silly sound game in reverse: Parent can make 3 sounds (/t/ /u/ /m/), the child can build the silly word with magnetic letters. Let the child attempt to say the silly word! TUM!

16. Take home Giveaway & Thank you
- Drawing for take home giveaways.
- Thank you for coming. We hope today gave you some insight onto what we expect from your child on DIBELS and strategies to use at home to build your child’s literacy.
- Survey
Thanks again- The Kindergarten & Pre-K Team