DIBELS 8th Edition benchmark and progress monitoring materials, as well as the Administration and Scoring Guide, are available for download on our Testing Materials page.
DIBELS scores should never be used to grade a student. The measures should only be used for instructional decision-making (i.e., to identify students who need additional instructional support and monitoring response to intervention). DIBELS scores should only be given to parents in conjunction with an appropriate explanation.
University of Oregon (2021). 8th Edition of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS ®). Eugene, OR: University of Oregon. Available: https://dibels.uoregon.edu/
Yes, DIBELS is designed to be administered to all students who are learning to read English.
We don't have any specific guidelines for administering DIBELS to students learning to speak and read English. While the measures are standardized and should be given to all students in the same manner, there are a few accommodations that can be made when necessary and are specified in the chapter on Approved Accommodations in the Administration and Scoring Guide available from our Download Materials page.
Yes, Indicadores Dinámicos del Éxito en la Lectura, or IDEL, is a standardized assessment for early literacy skills for students learning to read Spanish. Review our IDEL Resources for more information.
Yes, DIBELS can be used with special education students. DIBELS is designed to be administered to all students who are learning to read in English and who are physically capable of taking the tests. You would generally only exclude students who are deaf, who stutter, who are completely nonverbal, or who have severe phonological difficulties.
During the benchmark screening of all students, students receiving special education should be administered grade-level materials. When progress monitoring you can use materials at the students' instructional-level if the grade-level materials are too difficult to show response to instruction.
Yes. The benchmark goals increase over time, so a student who meets the beginning-of-year goal is not guaranteed to meet the middle- or end-of-year goal. Screening all students at each time period will enable timely identification of students who are not continuing to progress in their literacy development. Additionally, screening the entire school enables the school or district a complete data set to evaluate how all students are responding to instruction.
Letter Naming Fluency should not be progress monitored. It is different from the other measures in that it is not aligned with one of the five major skill areas in beginning reading. It's used for benchmark screening because it is a good indicator of risk, but shouldn't be monitored beyond that.
If you run out of probes (i.e., finish all 20 probes), you can start over at the beginning of the booklet. Note that you should only repeat a passage when progress monitoring, and only in this specific instance.
No, you should never practice the DIBELS measures with your students, even probes that they won't be tested on for real. You want to keep a clear distinction between "teaching time" and "testing time." You should teach your students reading and pre-reading skills, but you would never practice the DIBELS measures.
Amplify offers online training courses for the DIBELS assessment.
If a student completes the assessment in less than one minute, you end the assessment and record the score.
Using a ruler or straightedge for tracking is an approved accommodation for those children who need it. The Administration and Scoring Guide includes a list of all approved accommodations. Accommodations should only be used with children who require them.
All efforts should be made to minimize the possibility of a child asking for a word to be repeated (e.g., relatively quiet assessment space, sit close to the child, speak clearly); however, there are times when it does occur and, if so, repeat the word. If it happens occasionally, it is "small stuff." If it happens frequently for a particular child, you might want to check into hearing issues. If it happens frequently for many children, look at the assessment conditions and make necessary adjustments.
The Kindergarten and 1st grade benchmark booklets include PSF scoring sheets. There are no student materials for PSF since it's an auditory measure.
You score the last thing that the student responded with based on the directions in the Administration and Scoring Guide, available from our Download Materials page. For DIBELS Next, credit is given for WWR when the blend is the first and only response. For DIBELS 8th Edition and DIBELS 6th Edition credit can be given for WRC when the blend is correct and it occurs after the student says the individual letter sounds.
No, you should teach your students letter-sound correspondences and blending. Once students begin developing these skills, their performance will generalize to the NWF score.
Yes, when scoring ORF you are counting the words read correctly. If a student does not read a word correctly, they do not get credit for it.
If a student skips an entire line during ORF, draw a line through the row and count the words as incorrect when scoring.
You can accept an answer as correct if the student provides (a) a reasonable phonetic pronunciation of the name, or (b) the correct pronunciation of the name if the correct pronunciation of the name is non-regular and the tester knows the correct pronunciation. The developers worked hard to ensure that included names are reasonably accessible. During standardized administration the tester provides the correct pronunciation if the student struggles for 3 seconds.
DIBELS 8th Edition only uses one ORF passage per benchmark period.
DIBELS 6th Edition and DIBELS Next benchmark require three passages and recording the median/middle score. If you are only able to give one passage because of special circ*mstances, then give the second passage. If you are using Retell Fluency, you must give all three passages as the reliability on RTF is too low when using only one passage.
For all editions, progress monitoring with one ORF passage is adequate.
Administering one ORF passage saves considerable testing time, and research shows it provides nearly the same screening accuracy as administering three passages.
No. The directions indicate that you direct the students to the first word of the passage. If they do accidentally read the title and hesitate for 3 seconds on a word, then you should supply the correct word. Do not start the timer until they read the first word of the passage.
If you are interested in a digital version of DIBELS, Amplify offers DIBELS 8th Edition through mCLASS. Learn more about mCLASS with DIBELS 8th Edition.
