DIBELS and the QRI-5

I first approached this assignment trying to prove one assessment's worthiness over another. In truth, both assessments can and should be used because they complement each other and provide unique information. Having a variety of assessments and individual student profiles are important to get a well rounded perspective on each student in the classroom.

The DIBELS focuses more on letter/sound association and phonemic awareness. The DIBELS assessment only goes up to grade six and  measures a student's fluency with regard to Initial Sound Fluency (ISF), Letter Naming Fluency (LNF), Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF), Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF), Oral Reading Fluency (ORF), Retell Fluency (RTF) and Word Use Fluency (WUF). The DIBELS software was cumbersome and somewhat frustrating, but over time with updated (iPOD touch) software some of those issues can be resolved. The DIBELS is a very quick screening tool and can help provide teachers and administrators with measurable results in terms of a student's phonemic awareness and approximate reading level. Because of the speed of this assessment, it can be done quickly to accommodate large numbers of students. DIBELS can help identify any potential letter/sound recognition problems which would be scored as a miscue on a QRI assessment. The information gathered by administering DIBELS can hep guide instruction for those students who may need additional instruction on letter/sound associations. Students who improve on their phonemic awareness will improve on the QRI miscue analysis assessments as well.

The QRI-5 is a much more in-depth and comprehensive assessment which measures a variety of literacy factors including prior knowledge, miscue analysis, re-telling, and comprehension by answering explicit and implicit questions. With practice it can be administered rather quickly but the scoring of the QRI is a time-consuming process. Due to the time factor, it would be impossible to administer the QRI- more than three times per year. However, the information the assessment provides on the student is comprehensive. I noticed the reading selections of the QRI-5 are very similar to reading selections found on ELA state exams. I would encourage my students to use reading selections from previous ELA exams to help them prepare for the state ELA exam.

I think DIBELS would be more effective to develop basic literacy skills for young readers whereas the QRI-5 would seem to be more effective to administer to students with more advanced literacy skills.