week 9 assignment 3

A QRI5 stands for the Qualitative Reading Inventory. It is an informal reading assessment that is administered individually to students that are kindergarten through high school. It helps determine the students reading level, group students for guided reading sessions, or to help them choose appropriate books. It is also used to determine if a student can identify words and comprehend texts successfully. It provides word lists and passages to assess the students. The word lists are there to assess the accuracy of word identification. The passages are there to assess a student’s ability to read and comprehend a text.  The QRI-5 measures a student’s comprehension ability by having them retell the story, looking back and asking them questions.

DIBELS stands for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. It is a set of procedures and measures for assessing children’s early literacy skills. They are given to children that are in kindergarten through sixth grade. The DIBELS assessments can be  used for benchmark screening which is the screening of student’s essential skills predictive of later reading performance.  DIBELS provides testing materials and is administered to students individually. Progress monitoring is an important part of individualized reading instruction. Students must be monitored to see if they are improving with they intervention they got or if they need more. Frequent monitoring can also help students not slip through the cracks and get them intervention immediately if necessary.

Both the QRI-5 and the DIBELS assessments are used to identify reading levels, see student’s strengths and weaknesses, and to see if intervention is necessary and if so to what extent. Both assessments are aimed at finding out a student’s literacy skills. They are both administered individually.  The QRI-5 is administered from grade kindergarten though high school, while the DIBELS is administered from grade kindergarten through sixth grade. A QRI-5 is more specific, while a DIBELS assessment is more general and is assessing the big picture. Another main difference is that the DIBELS assessments are timed and most of the QRI-5 assessments are untimed and even if it’s timed, the time is not the main focus.

Both the QRI-5 and the DIBELS assessment can be used in the classroom to help guide a teacher in instructional planning and decisions. It can help a teacher know their student’s strengths and abilities and help her intervene and  gear her instruction towards their needs.