Week 13:  Monitor Progress 

Video:

"Video Chat #6: Progress Monitoring"

Susan Barton talks about the skills to track (phonemic awareness, decoding accuracy, and spelling) and tools to use (unit post-tests, DIBELS deep, or the WIST) to monitor progress.  

Webinar: "How Do You Measure Progress?"

This one-hour webinar with Susan Barton was sponsored by Learning Ally as a public service. 

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"She'll explain the various reading skills that each of the typical progress monitoring tools check. Which reading skills SHOULD be checked in students with dyslexia (known or suspected) and how to convert test scores into percentiles – to see if real growth is being made.  Participants will come away with a better understanding of how academic performance can be assessed for students with dyslexia, how to quantify improvement and how to evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. "

Weekly Assignment:

Ask your child's teacher or tutor to explain how mastery checks are used to determine whether the student is ready to move to the next level in the program they are receiving.  Ask to have copies of the mastery checks sent to you.  Follow up every month or so to ask what level the student is currently on, what decoding and spelling patterns they are working on, and whether a mastery check has been recently given.

More to Explore:

Formal Measures of Progress

The following nationally normed tests can be used to measure progress (or to prove lack of progress).  They would typically be administered by a psychologist or resource specialist. 

  • TOWRE-2 (Test of Word Reading Efficiency, 2nd edition)  This test contains 4 forms so it can be administered 4 times a year

  • GORT-5 (Gray Oral Reading)

  • TWS-5: Test of Written Spelling–Fifth Edition

  • WIST: Word Identification and Spelling Test

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Informal Monitoring at Home

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DIBELS is used in many schools to screen for dyslexia and track reading progress.  It can also be done at home. This video describes the test.

On the DIBELS page, click on "sign up" to get access to free download of DIBELS benchmark and progress monitoring tests.

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Articles

Using CBM-Reading Assessments to Monitor Progress

This article from the RTI Action Network describes tools schools can use to monitor progress of students in RTI programs.

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