Deputy Principal

DIBELS Assessment at St Michael's

This week, Ms Elise Rimington and myself attended online training for a new Literacy Assessment that will be introduced at St Michael's in 2025.

What is DIBELS?

DIBELS ® (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of literacy skills. They are designed to be short fluency measures that can be used to regularly detect risk and monitor the development of early literacy and early reading skills in foundation through to eighth grade.

The measures are consistent with many of the Common Core State Standards in Reading, especially those for Foundational Skills. When implemented as recommended, DIBELS results can be used to evaluate individual student development as well as provide grade-level feedback toward validated instructional objectives.

DIBELS was developed to measure recognised and empirically validated skills related to general reading outcomes. Each subtest has been thoroughly researched and demonstrated to be a reliable and valid indicator of early literacy development. St Michael's chose DIBELS 8th Edition as their assessment solution, because they trust scientific evidence, research-based practices, and decades of experience in teaching and learning on which DIBELS is based. 

On our school closure day next week, our staff will be trained to use the DIBELS Assessment. It is beginning to be widely used through MACS schools as a screener for reading skills.

 DIBELS will be implemented at St Michael's for students from P-6 at the beginning of year testing days in 2025.