Student Assessment Project

Mark Fioramonti

EDU 325
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Introduction:

Nicky is a kindergarten student at East Elementary school in downtown Steubenville. He

is five years old and is one of two kids in his family. He has two parents and lives on the outside

of the inner city of Steubenville. Little Information about his home life was found but he does

live in a good environment and he is healthy. Nicky does have an IEP. He has been diagnosed

with autism but is very high functioning. This is his second year in school and has come a long

way since he has started. Throughout the first year of his schooling in preschool, he struggled

with many different aspects of the classroom. He would often hide under a table in the corner of

the room for the first half of the day until he went home. Nicky would rarely participate in any

group instruction and avoided any interactions with his peers. The only time Nicky would come

out would be when breakfast, lunch, or snack was being served.

Although Nicky struggled with different aspects of his behavior which included

avoidance and disruptive behavior, he was very receptive to anything being taught. He would

absorb information being taught even when hiding under a table in the back. Slowly and with

the help of interventions and data collection, Nicky has become more a part of the class and

learned a great deal. He is proficient with his letters, both upper and lower case and can also

spell simple words as well as his name. Nicky’s present levels of academic performance is

described as average to above average in regards to his reading and spelling. He does not excel

as much in math and writing but he can write out his name, write letters, and rote count.

Nicky has a vast amount of potential and has really improved since his first days in

school. Nicky is also interesting because although he has autism, he is very naturally smart and

mostly struggles with school because of his behavior. Some of these behaviors, as mentioned

before, include avoidance, disruptive behavior, and a lack of independence. His ability to
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interact with his peers is somewhat nonexistent unless he is urged to be involved. When it comes

to his interactions with other students, many of them do not understand why he might act a little

differently, and he struggles to make consistent friends. A day that is scheduled and structured

are the days Nicky has his best behavior. When something happens outside the typical schedule,

he can become frustrated and upset. Reinforcements that Nicky finds motivating include snacks,

a time table of when the task will be completed, and positive reinforcement. He responds really

well to all these motivators.

Procedures:

Administering the DIBELS was relatively easy all around. I volunteer at East Garfield

twice a week and have access to the kindergarten classroom there. The general education teacher

in the class had no problem with me taking Nicky and was happy that someone could work with

him one on one. She made it very easy for me to take Nicky whenever I was around but

suggested that for me to work with him after labs and before lunch. This was the case because

Nicky’s behavior was often positive during this time period and also working with him one on

one then did not break from his daily schedule. Getting off track his daily schedule could often

frustrate Nicky with unpredictable changes and cause him to be disruptive and before lunch is

when Nicky usually worked with someone one on one.

I chose to work with him right outside his classroom at a little table in a hallway. I did

this so that he was not distracted by what was going in the classroom but also so that he was

close to the classroom so that he felt comfortable. Throughout the testing, Nicky was very

responsive to the tests and did a great job receiving and following through with directions.

Before administering the test I had followed some advice from my peers to get familiar

with the booklet before delivering it to the student. I spent an hour or so looking through the
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booklet and testing material the day before administering it. Each probe within the DIBELS

Next assessment was one minute long. Completing the whole assessment took two sessions to

complete with each separate session being done on separate days. For each probe, I gave Nicky

clear and concise instructions on what he is expected to do. He was very compliant and excited

to show off all the things he has learned in kindergarten especially his letter skills. On the first

day we completed both probes of First Sound Fluency and all three probes of Letter Name

Fluency. On the second day we did the Phoneme Segmentation and Nonsense Word Fluency

probes. Between each probe, Nicky was given a brief rest time of a minute or two. He would

either like to talk about what we just did, talk about something that was on his mind, or run and

get some water when I asked if he wanted some. This suggestion as well as spacing the whole

assessment over the course of two days was a suggestion by his teacher who said he might get

overwhelmed by the assessment. Administering the assessment like this worked really well.

Assessments Given:

As previously discussed, Nicky is a Kindergarten student, so he was given the kindergarten

DIBELS Next Assessment. DIBELS stands for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy

Skills. This standardized assessment is given to one student at a time and tests a student’s

reading accuracy and fluency (Cummings, Yonghan, & Schaper, 2013). These tests can be given

to students ranging from kindergarten to 6th grade and contain multiple probes each lasting one

minute. The data collected from these assessments can help educators identify students’ needs as

well as progress monitor and set goals for students. (University of Oregon Center on Teaching

and Learning, 2016). The DIBELS Next benchmark assessment for kindergarten contains four

different probes. These probes include First Sound Fluency, Letter Naming Fluency, Phoneme

Segmentation Fluency, and Nonsense Word Fluency. The assessment would be administered at
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the beginning, middle, and end of the year. In the beginning of the year a student would be

assessed in First Sound and Letter Naming Fluency. In the middle, the student would be

assessed for First Sound, Letter Naming, Phoneme Segmentation, and Nonsense Word Fluency.

Lastly, at the end of the year the student would be given the Letter Naming, Phoneme

Segmentation, and Nonsense Word Fluency probes.

The First Sound Fluency probe is a probe aimed at measuring a student’s phonological

awareness. Phonological awareness is a critical skill that enables students to analyze, manipulate,

and identify spoken words. A study in 2007 by Foster and Miller found that kindergarten

students who fell behind their peers in reading struggled with comprehension in third grade.

Being able to identify students early who fall behind is critical to their success in the future. The

First Sound Fluency probe helps educators identify a student’s phonological awareness abilities.

In this one-minute probe, a word is given orally by the administrator and the student is asked to

identify the initial sound of that word. Two points are given if the student correctly identifies the

initial phoneme of the word and one point is given if they give the correct phoneme blend of the

beginning of the word. For example, the administrator would say “cow” and for a two-point

response the student would respond with /k/. (Goldstein, Olszewski, Haring, Greenwood, et. Al.

2017).

Letter Naming Fluency is a probe which helps identify a student’s reading readiness and

literacy skills but more importantly their ability to identify and name letters. Foulin, in a

comprehensive review argued that letter knowledge promotes the development of critical early

literacy skills in kindergarten students. This knowledge helps students make connections

between the grapheme and phoneme and strengthens the skills that will help them learn how to

read. In this probe, students are given a sheet of letters and asked to identify the name of the
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letter they see in a one-minute time period. This data will help educators identify what letters

students do not know, which letters the students mix up, and if the student mixes up letter sounds

with letter names (Clemens, Lai, Burke & Wu, 2017).

The Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, like the other probes within DIBELS Next, allows

educators to determine a student’s readiness to read. Phonemic awareness skills are critical

when a student is learning how to read. For children who fall behind in these skills, explicit

instruction is needed. Instruction to help boost these student’s ability to separate words into

phonemes, delete specific phonemes in words, or blend phonemes to create words can help

students become better with their phonemic awareness and become proficient readers. In this

specific probe, students are given words that contain three-phoneme or four-phoneme words and

asked to segment them within a one-minute time period. An example of this is if the

administrator gives the word “fox,” for a correct response the student would verbally respond

with each phoneme of the word “fox” saying /f/o/x/. This assessment can be administered to

students in kindergarten or first grade (Martens, Werder, Heir, & Koenig, 2013) (University of

Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning, 2016)

The last probe that is given in the DIBELS Next assessment is the Nonsense Word

Fluency probe. One might think that nonsense word fluency is pointless and other assessments

could be used in place for this. However, nonsense word fluency has a critical role in

determining a student’s ability to decode. More specifically, this probe is used to better

understand how well a student applies their alphabet knowledge to words in a accurate and

speedy manner. This can be defined as automaticity. In Nonsense Word Fluency, a student is

given a set of made up words and the student has to sound through each letter sound to determine

the blending of the word. For example, the administrator would give the word “bim” and the
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student would orally respond by blending the phonemes /b/i/m/ to form the word. In this probe,

the amount of correct letter sounds sounds is counted as well as whole words read (Fien, Park,

Baker, Smith, Stoolmiller, & Kame’euni, 2010).

Results & Analysis:

Nicky’s total composite scores were positive. For the beginning of the year benchmark

he scored a total composite score of 69 which well above the benchmark average. In the middle

of the year benchmark he did not do as well and fell right below benchmark with a score of 118

with the benchmark to hit was 122. For the end of the year benchmark, Nicky scored an 86

which put him in the “well below benchmark” range with the benchmark average being 119.

Although these scores might not seem positive, Nicky did hover around the benchmark for most

of the composite scores and with specific instructional support he will improve and hit

benchmarks.

First Sound Fluency was the first assessment given to Nicky in both the beginning and

middle of the year assessments. In the beginning of the year assessment, Nicky correctly

identified 22 out of 60 first sounds of words given. This score put him above benchmark and the

only support he would likely need is core support. In the middle of the year assessment he

identified 27 out of 60 first sounds. This score put Nicky below benchmark with the need of

strategic support needed for him to improve. In both of these probes, Nicky scored a majority of

one-point responses and had about the same amount of incorrect and two-point responses. He

had a little trouble at the beginning of the assessment trying to understand what was meant by

“first sound” of the word given. However, he did catch on quickly and improved as more words

were given. His thought process seemed to be a little slow, so he was only able to complete a

little more than half of the list for both sessions. First sounds he struggled with the most were
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words that had a phoneme that sounded like it was two phonemes at the beginning of the word.

He would often blend the first and second phonemes of the word.

Letter Naming Fluency was the assessment Nicky excelled in the most. This is the only

probe in kindergarten which is assessed at the beginning, middle, and end of the year but there is

also no benchmark for this assessment. In the three probes Nicky scored a 47, 53, and 46 out of

110 letters given. He was very excited about this probe because he likes to display his letter skill

knowledge. Nicky could have identified more letters, but it did take him a second to identify

each letter. It was surprising that he never switched up a letter name for a letter sound. This was

somewhat of an indication that his letter name skills were much more proficient then his letter

sound skills.

Phoneme Segmentation was where Nicky struggled the most. This assessment was not

given for the beginning of the year benchmark but only for the middle and end of the year

benchmark. In the middle of the year assessment, Nicky scored an 18 out of 79. This score put

him in the below benchmark range where he will need strategic support. In the end of the year

benchmark, Nicky needed a minimum score of 25 to be just at “below benchmark” but he scored

a 22 which put him at the “well below benchmark.” It was suggested that with a score like this

Nicky would need intensive support. With this assessment, Nicky took his time for each word

and would often struggle with the middle sounds of words but did better when it came to the

beginning and ending of words. The most mistakes Nicky would make was when there were two

phonemes in the middle of the word. He would occasionally combine the beginning and middle

sound or miss the beginning sound entirely.

Nonsense Word Fluency was the last probe administered in the set of assessments and

was not one of Nicky’s stronger abilities. Like the Phoneme Segmentation probe, this
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assessment is also only given in the middle and end of the year benchmarks. In the beginning of

the year benchmark Nicky only identified 20 correct letter sounds out of 143 given and 3 whole

words read out of 50. This score would put Nicky at the above benchmark range. In the end of

the year benchmark assessment, Nicky identified 18 out of 143 letter sounds and 4 out of 50

whole words read. Because the end of the year benchmark is a little more demanding it put

Nicky at the below benchmark score which means he will need more strategic support to become

proficient with nonsense words. In this probe, Nicky’s letter sound skills seemed to be very

sporadic. He seemed to recognize some letter sounds but when it came to blending the sounds

together to form the word it became difficult. He would struggle with some vowel sounds and

would miss random letter sounds occasionally.

#1 Beginning #2 Middle #3 End

First Sound 22/60 *Above 27/60 *Below benchmark X

Fluency: benchmark - likely to need strategic
support

Letter Name 47/110 *No 53/110 46/110

Fluency: benchmark

Phoneme X 18/79 *Below benchmark 22/80 *Well below

Segmentation -likely to need strategic benchmark - Likely to
Fluency: support need intensive support

Nonsense Word X CLS: 20 /143 CLS: 18/143

Fluency: WWR: 3/50 *At/above WWR: 4/50
benchmark - Likely to *Below benchmark -
need core support. Likely to need strategic
support.

Composite Score: 69 118 86

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Composite Score Comparison

140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Beginning Benchmark Middle Benchmark End Benchmark

Nicky's Composite Score Benchmark Average

Areas Targeted for Improvement:

1. Phoneme Segmentation

Being able to recognize and utilize phonemes is a critical set of skills for all students

especially for those younger students who are learning to read. This skill helps students make

the connection between letters and the sounds they make. With this ability, students can then

make connections from letter sounds to blending them into words which is the initial stage of

learning how to read. Many students who enter first grade lack this skillset and fall further

behind in the process of learning how to read. (Murray, 1994). Early predictors of a student’s

struggles or achievements in reading is a student’s ability to blend and recognize phonemes

(Hohn & Ehri, 1983)

Recognizing the importance of phonemes and Nicky’s needs in this area of reading, phoneme

segmentation was one of the aspects in which strategies were researched to help him improve his

phonemic awareness. Elkonin boxes are one way in which Nicky can improve his phoneme

segmentation abilities. In a phonemic awareness study in 1973, Elkonin came up with a way to

teach children how to isolate sounds within words. Elkonin had kindergarten students read a
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word and while it was being read put a token in each box for each sound in the word. He found

this strategy to be very effective for these students and improved their phonemic awareness

skills. In a 1993 study by Tangel and Blachman, low-income kindergarten students were trained

in isolating sounds in words using disks and Elkonin boxes from nonsense words. These

students performed much better than the control group. (Carro, 1999). The benefits of Elkonin

boxes can be clearly seen throughout many studies. Nicky could greatly benefit from using this

evidence-based strategy for many reasons. Nicky knows letter names and sounds well for a

kindergartener. He struggles when it comes to taking those letter names and sounds and putting

them into words as well as breaking down those words into phonemes. Elkonin boxes will help

Nicky break down the words so that he can make a connection between the phonemes and the

words they form. This can be done using picture cards or just simply writing the word and

having separated boxes below. These boxes can be modified in different ways as well. Velcro

could be used or marbles or stickers to help keep Nicky engaged and interested.

2. Nonsense Word Fluency

Being able to translate speech to print and print to speech is a critical skill set that is

formed from the very early stages of a child’s education. As previously mentioned, these sounds

are called phonemes and the symbols of these sounds are called graphemes. Phoneme blending

helps students take phonemes and combine them so that they form words. Grapheme parsing is

the opposite of phoneme blending in which words are broken down into their individual sounds.

Making the connection between these two parts of language is crucial when a child is trying to

learn how to spell, read, and write (Piasta, Farley, Phillips, Anthony & Bowels 2018). Nicky

could use improvement with his phoneme and grapheme abilities. One of the areas Nicky needs

improvement in is his ability to recognize the different sounds letters make and recognizing and
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manipulating these sounds so that they can form words. Nicky also often struggled with

identifying the middle sound of a word. One evidence-based strategy that helps students make

the connection between phonemes and graphemes and that would help Nicky are sound bags.

This strategy will help Nicky in many ways so that he can progress and become more efficient

with his letter skills as well as his phoneme and grapheme recognition

Sound bags are paper bags that have pictures of either an object or a letter glued to the

front of the bag. Students can then take cut outs of pictures, names the picture and identifies the

initial sound of the word (eg. “car, /c/). Once the word and initial sound are identified the

student pairs the cutout picture with the appropriate bag with the same sound (Florida State

University, 2019). This activity would benefit Nicky if the sound he needed to identify within

the word was varied. For some pictures he could identify the initial sound of the word but for

others he could identify the middle or end sound of the word. It could also be adapted so that

Nicky has to identify the beginning, middle, and ending sound as well as letter. By conducting

the activity like this, Nicky can work on his phoneme segmentation but also his phoneme and

grapheme connections.

Conclusion:

Administering the DIBELS Next assessment to Nicky was an eye opening and learning

experience for both of us. He was a very engaged and easy-going student. Nicky does have

difficulties when it comes to segmenting and blending phonemes as well as identifying letter

sounds. However, he has a great foundation of letter skills more specifically his letter naming

skills. With the help of Elkonin boxes and sound bags, Nicky can improve in the skills he

struggles with. Along with these evidence-based strategies, if he receives one on one help, he

can improve his phonemic and phonological awareness. It has been great to get to know Nicky
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better and recognize where he excels in school and where he needs extra support. Nicky is a

very impressive student who has a great foundation for his reading readiness. Nicky is a very

naturally smart student who can absorb information very easily and with proper instructional

support he can become a proficient reader so that in the next couple years he is not just learning

to read but reading to learn.

Bibliography:
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Carro, D. J. (1999). The Effects of Phonemic Awareness Instruction on the Writing Ability of

First Grade At Risk Students. Kean University.

Clemens, N. H. Lai, M. H. C. Burke, M. & Wu, J. (2017). Interrelations of Growth in Letter

Naming and Sound Fluency in Kindergarten and Implications for Subsequent Reading

Fluency. National Association of School Psychologists. 46(3), 272-287.

Cummings, K. D., Yonghan, P. & Schaper H. A. B. (2013). Form Effects on DIBELS Next Oral

Reading Fluency Progress Monitoring Passages. Hammill Institute on Disabilities.

38(2), 91-104.

Fien, H. Park, Y. Baker, S. K. Smith, J. L. M. Stoolmiller, M. & Kame’euni, E. J. (2010). An

Examination of the Relation of Nonsense Word Fluency Initial Status and Gains to

Reading Outcomes for Beginning Readers. School Psychology Review. 39 (4), 631-653.

Florida State University (2019). Alphabet Knowledge. Retrieved from

http://www.fcrr.fsu.edu/documents/vpk_activities/AK10_Sound_Bags_color.pdf

Goldstein, H. Olszewski, A. Haring, C. Greenwood, C. R. McCune, L. Carta, J. Atwater, J.

Guerrero, G. Schneider, N. McCarthy, T. & Kelley, E. S. (2017). Efficacy of a

Supplemental Phonemic Awareness Curriculum to Instruct Preschoolers With Delays in

Early Literacy Development. Speech, Language and Hearing Research.

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Hohn, W. E. & Ehri, L. C. (1983). Do Alphabet Letters Help Pre-readers Acquire Phonemic

Segmentation Skill? Journal of Educational Psychology. 75 (5), 752-762.

Murray, B. (1994). Segmentation or Identity? Reconceptualizing Phoneme

Awareness. University of Georgia

Martens, B. K. Werder, C. S. Heir, B. O. & Koenig, E. A. (2013). Fluency Training in Phoneme

Blending: A Preliminary Study of Generalized Effects. Springer. 22, 16-36.

Piasta, S. B. Farley, K. S. Phillips, B. M. Anthony, J. L. Bowels, & R. P. (2018). Assessment of

Young Children’s Letter-Sound Knowledge: Initial Validity Evidence for Letter-Sound

Short Forms. Hammill Institute on Disabilities. 43(4), 249-255.

University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning.(2016). UO DIBELS Data System.

Retrieved October 25, 2016, from https://dibels.uoregon.edu/