Hatsumi Mann

Professor C. Schull
CHD 119
February 19, 2013

My assessment was conducted using the DIBELS Kindergarten benchmark

assessment scoring booklet. I assessed a Montessori Kindergarten student named
Brice, who recently turned six years old. This is his second year at the school and he is
currently reading chapter books. The assessment was conducted on February 19, 2013
at 130 p.m. in his Montessori classroom.
The three areas I focused on were phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle,
and accuracy and fluency. The first assessment I chose falls under phonemic
awareness; the K.1 Initial Sound Fluency. I started with the first set of pictures: tomato,
cub, plate, and doughnut. When I asked him to name the first three pictures by initial
sound: /d/, /t/, and /k/ he was able to point to the correct picture in less than 2 seconds
each time. The last question was, What sound does plate start with? He was able to
answer this question in less than 2 seconds by answering /pl/. He was able to complete
the remaining three areas of this assessment with ease, answering in 1 1/2 to 2
seconds. The benchmark goal, stated in the scoring guide, is 25 to 35 initial sounds

correct by the middle of kindergarten. Brices final score was 30 correct initial sounds
per minute. He did very well in this area of assessment.
The second assessment conducted was the K.1 Letter Naming Fluency. It is
stated in the scoring guide that this assessment does not correspond to any of the five
big ideas, but I feel it gives a good understanding of how proficient the child is in
recognizing letters. Brice was able to name each letter fairly quickly and without much
pause. The only mistake he made was in the second row; letter j, which he instead
named g. It was a simple mistake and not due to lack of recognition of the letter. He
continued throughout the rest of the list with no problems and naming any later js
correctly. When he first started naming the letters he was giving me the phonics sounds
of each. This is because in Montessori they focus mainly on phonetic sounds over letter
naming. When I asked for the letter, he was able to name them just as effortlessly. No
benchmark goal is given for this particular assessment, but based on the results, Brice
did very well and is familiar with his phonics sounds and letter recognition.
The third assessment I conducted falls under alphabetic principle; K.2 Nonsense
Word Fluency. I explained to Brice that these were nonsense words which meant they
were made up words. I asked if he would read them to me. He agreed and I had him
read the first four lines and he did very well. He completed all four lines correctly. He
read each word fluently and took no more than 5 seconds per line. According to the

scoring guide, the benchmark goal for Nonsense Word Fluency is 50 correct letter
sounds per minute by mid first grade. I only had him complete 20 words and he was
able to read those in 20 seconds. He fluency was excellent and he did not need to self
correct any of the nonsense words.
The fourth and last assessment is the K.1 Word Use Fluency. This assessment,
in my opinion, was the most difficult for me to gauge. There was a lot to score and most
of his sentences contained long responses or multiple utterances. He was able to form
sentences with most of the words. The ones he looked puzzled over, I skipped. The
sentences he formed were longer than the ones I gave him as an example. The guide
gave sample sentences such as, The grass is green. and I like to jump rope. For
example with the word listen his sentence was, I listen to my dad so I can get a toy.
For the word opened his sentence was, I opened the door and there were other
people inside. For the word rained he said, It rained so I could not go outside to play.
It took about an average of 5-8 seconds for him to complete a sentence for each word.
There were a few that stumped him such as ago and ones. He did take longer on this
assessment than the other three, but I feel his sentences were well thought out and
exceeded the average sentence that the assessment was asking for. The scoring guide
states, A benchmark goal is not provided for WUF because additional research is
needed to establish its linkage to other big ideas of early literacy. I feel that Brice did a

good job and was able to take a majority of the words and from sentences that were
intelligible.
The overall assessment results for Brice were excellent. Although I was unable
to get final scoring results on several tests, I was able to obtain a better understanding
of his literacy skills. I feel he is very advanced for his age and could possibly score high
in more difficult assessments. As a teacher, this assessment is a good guide in
assessing where a child is at in their literacy skills. It gives me a very clear picture of
what areas need work and what areas need to be more challenging. The assessment is
a very useful tool. I would be able to plan for each child accordingly based on the
amount of information I received from the results.

References:
DIBELS benchmark assessment materials. Univeristy of Oregon DIBELS Data
System. 2012. web. 19 February 2013. www.dibels.uoregon.edu