Week 9 Assignment 3

Although these assessments focus on determining a student’s level of literacy skills, and should be used within the classroom, they have different purposes and goals. They are both necessary to administer, depending on the need of the individual child. The DIBELS is mainly used as a screening test, to determine early literacy skills including Phonemic Awareness, Alphabetic Principles, Fluency and basic comprehension. This assessment can locate the struggling students to implement initial intervention immediately. The DIBELS is done through a series of fluency tests, that all take one minute to administer. The test results indicate if a student is falling below grade benchmarks, or if the child’s literacy skills are on par with grade level.

On the contrary, the QRI is a more intensive assessment that includes a combination of miscue analysis, reading comprehension on both expository and narrative texts, fluency, and site words. This test affords teachers with a more complete and deeper understanding of a student’s literacy skills and comprehension. QRI is a great method to help teachers determine the best intervention strategy for the student. Teachers use this assessment as a valuable diagnostic tool, that provides extremely reliable information as to where to begin or change intervention instruction. The results of the assessment can be used to group students for guided reading sessions, to choose appropriate books for literacy circles, reading workshops, and independent reading. 

When deciding when to use which assessment in the classroom, teachers need to decide why they are assessing. The DIBELS is a screening tool that should be done three times a year. It is a quick assessment and provides teachers with an overall picture of the student’s early literacy skills. The QRI assessment is a more detailed and comprehensive test that assists teachers in forming appropriate intervention strategies.