Literacy and Numeracy

LITERACY NEWS- Reading Assessments

Over the past two weeks, your child would have worked with their teacher to complete a DIBELS Reading assessment. DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a set of rapid, 1-minute fluency tests used by Australian schools to screen foundational reading and early literacy skills from Foundation to Year 8. It identifies early reading risks and measures progress in phonics, phonemic awareness, and comprehension. (taken from website speldsa.org.au)

Instead of evaluating long reading comprehension, DIBELS uses short tasks to target the exact building blocks of reading. Depending on the year level, your child may have completed one or more of the following tests.

• Letter Naming Fluency: Identifying random letters.
• Phoneme Segmentation Fluency: Breaking words down into individual sounds.
• Nonsense Word Fluency: Sounding out fake words to test basic phonics.
• Oral Reading Fluency: Reading a passage aloud to check speed and accuracy.
• MAZE: A fill-in-the-blank comprehension task

We complete these short tests three times a year to make sure all children are progressing as expected. As always, you will be notified if there are any concerns.

If you have any questions, please email me.

katie.schroder@sjvermont.catholic.edu.au

Thanks,

Katie Schroder

Literacy Leader