Week 9 QRI-5 vs. DIBELS

 The Qualitative Reading Inventory-5 (QRI-5) is an informal reading inventory (IRI) that is designed to provide information about how students can identify words and comprehend text. It assesses conditions that result in unsuccessful word identification or comprehension. The QRI-5 provides graded word lists and numerous passages designed to assess the oral and silent reading and listening ability of students. There are a number of assessment options given by the QRI-5 that can be used to determine students reading levels, how to group students in guided reading sessions, and how to choose appropriate books for literacy circles, reading workshops, or independent readings. The word lists are designed to assess accuracy of word identification, assess speed and atomicity of word identification, and determine a starting point for reading the initial passage. The passages are meant to be read orally or silently and they assess the student’s ability to read and comprehend different types of texts. The comprehension of all passages is measured through retelling and questions and is designed to assess the quality of the readers unaided recall, the readers understanding of the text when prompted with questions, and to examine the quality of a student’s comprehension during reading. The thing I liked best about QRI-5 was that it can be done from kindergarten and go through 12^th grade. Comprehension is bound to be at a higher success rate when the same formality is being done from an early age.

DIBELS stands for the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. They are a set of processes and measures for assessing the achievements of early literacy skills from k-6 grade. They are designed to be short, one minute, fluency measures that are used to monitor the development of early literacy and reading skills on a regular basis.  DIBELS are specifically designed to assess the big ideas in reading that include letter naming fluency, initial sound fluency, first sound fluency, phoneme segmentation fluency, nonsense word fluency, oral reading fluency and retell fluency, daze, and word use fluency.

An effective reading program is designed to accomplish outcome, screening, diagnosis, and progress monitoring. Early screening of children can identify those at risk before they fall further and further below grade level. As teachers, we must make the necessary modifications to instruction or provide additional instructional intervention to keep students on track for at grade level reading outcomes. At grade level is suggestively defined as students who meet expectations for reading proficiency on a state assessment or are predicted to meet expectations. Reliable, valid assessment is essential to phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. The National Reading Panel made it clear that the best approach to reading instruction is one that incorporates explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, systematic phonics instruction, methods to improve fluency, and ways to enhance comprehension.

The QRI-5 and DIBELS are both designed to identify student difficulty in basic literacy skills. can both be used to identify reading levels and can be used to pair students with appropriate texts. Both assessment tools can be used to verify student reading problems, determine student strengths and weaknesses, and guide proper intervention strategies. Although both assessment procedures are designed for similar goals, they do have some differences. The QRI-5 assesses students in grades k-12 where DIBELS assess student from k-6. Although convenient, DIBELS can be administered and scored within 2-3 minutes. DIBELS assesses issues such as phonemic awareness, the alphabetic principle, accuracy and fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The QRI-5 has word lists, concept questions, miscue analysis, retelling, and comprehension questions. QRI-5 is a great tool to use in order to prepare reading passages for students and a great tool in guiding instruction for group activities. DIBELS is a great tool to assess individual fluency and identify areas of weakness. Both assessments supply teachers and districts with information to guide instruction and increase student reading fluency and comprehension.