Listed below is some information on Dibels testing that your child will do throughout the year.
Letter Naming Fluency -
Letter Naming Fluency is not just identifying the letters of the alphabet. Our goal is for a student to be able to read the letters of the alphabet out of order, with upper and lower case letters mixed together, without pause or hesitation. We will be practicing with a row of letters and will time ourselves as we read them through the first time. Each time we read that row, we will be trying to beat our previous time. An example of these letters would look like this:
f o Q P i n b x L A m r u Z
Phoneme Segmentation- Can the student hear all of the sounds in a word? When orally given a word such as 'cat', can he break it apart into three distinct sounds? /c/ /a/ /t/? We will be working on words that have as many as 5 to 6 sounds for practice. This will help students when they are writing unknown words. We ask them to 'chop' the sounds that they hear on their arm and then write those sounds on paper during writing activities.
Nonsense Word Fluency- You may wonder why we ask students to read words that do not make sense. This skill helps when they encounter unknown words because they quickly read practiced 'chunks' of words. It also shows that the student has a solid letter sound mastery when he or she reads the word, not sound by sound, but the whole word. Reading nonsense words without hesitation will increase your child's reading fluency.
Letter Naming Fluency -
Letter Naming Fluency is not just identifying the letters of the alphabet. Our goal is for a student to be able to read the letters of the alphabet out of order, with upper and lower case letters mixed together, without pause or hesitation. We will be practicing with a row of letters and will time ourselves as we read them through the first time. Each time we read that row, we will be trying to beat our previous time. An example of these letters would look like this:
f o Q P i n b x L A m r u Z
Phoneme Segmentation- Can the student hear all of the sounds in a word? When orally given a word such as 'cat', can he break it apart into three distinct sounds? /c/ /a/ /t/? We will be working on words that have as many as 5 to 6 sounds for practice. This will help students when they are writing unknown words. We ask them to 'chop' the sounds that they hear on their arm and then write those sounds on paper during writing activities.
Nonsense Word Fluency- You may wonder why we ask students to read words that do not make sense. This skill helps when they encounter unknown words because they quickly read practiced 'chunks' of words. It also shows that the student has a solid letter sound mastery when he or she reads the word, not sound by sound, but the whole word. Reading nonsense words without hesitation will increase your child's reading fluency.