Quantitative growth refers to what and how much students know and can do. This type of growth is specific, measurable and represented through various numerical values. This data is then analyzed to monitor progress and assess instructional practices in order to create rigorous yet attainable goals that will open doors for students. While data is used within all my decisions as both a director and teacher, for the purpose of this section, I will be presenting my first grade DIBELS data from the 2019-2020 school year, as well as the Learning Without Tears PreK Assessment from my current position.

DIBELS Assessment:

DIBELS, or Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, measures key components of early literacy and provides valuable information on students' reading skills to ensure all children are successfully reading and comprehending grade-level texts or beyond by the end of the academic year.

1. Phonemic Awareness: Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words and is a powerful indicator of successful reading.

   • • Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF): In order to gauge a child's understanding of first, middle and last sounds in words, they are asked to segment three to four phoneme words into their individual sounds.

       • Example: The student would separate the sounds within the word chop into its three phonemes - /ch/ /o/ /p/).

2. Phonics: Phonics focuses on the relationship of written letters and spoken sounds, otherwise known as alphabetic principle. Phonics helps children learn how to read by recognizing that letters represent sounds, and the combination of those 44 sounds within the English language produces words and meaning.

   • • Letter Naming Fluency (LNF): This section assesses how many letters a student can name, both upper and lower case, in randomized order.

       • Example: The list of letters may read, "l, g, v, p...' rather than "a, b, c, d...".

     • Nonsense Words Fluency (NWF): NFW measures letter-sound correspondence and the ability to blend sounds to create words through a series of nonsense words, such as bif, to assess the student's knowledge of decoding.

       • • Correct Letter Sounds: This analyzes how many correct letter sounds the student presented throughout the evaluation.

           • Example: The child will be given a made up word, such as bif, and then give the correct sounds - /b/ /i/ /f/.

         • Whole Words Read: Whole Words read refers to how many words the student was able to correctly read without sounding out (i.e., reading the word 'bif').

           • Example: While the child will be given points for correctly identifying the sounds within each nonsense word, the goal is to be able to decode the word as a whole (i.e., reading "bif" as a whole).

3. Accurate & Fluent Reading: Accurate and fluent reading refers to the student's accuracy and speed while reading text.

   • • Next Oral Reading Fluency (DORF): This component asks students to read a passage and measures how many words were read and whether the child was able to retell what the text conveyed.

       • Example: The child reads a passage while the teacher denotes reading behaviors such as, self-correction and omitted/ added words. They are then asked to retell for comprehension.

4. Reading Comprehension: Reading is nothing without comprehension. In order for students to succeed and understand the content of the text, comprehension is crucial.

   • • Text Reading and Comprehension (TRC): TRC measures print concepts, reading behaviors, word recognition and comprehension to provide rigorous, yet appropriate student texts.

       • Example: Similar to DORF, the student reads a text while the teacher measures reading behaviors, accuracy, fluency and comprehension. The TRC provides a reading level that is rigorous, yet attainable based on results.

LWT PreK Assessment:

Pre-Kindergarten is one of the most critical years of a child's academic experience. PreK helps children establish positive relationships with school by providing a flexible structure in which students can discover their interests and capabilities, as well as begin to see themselves as unique learners with distinctive skill sets. The Learning Without Tears PreK assessment utilizes both quantitative and qualitative measures to not only assess critical math and literacy skills, but the imperative soft skills such as collaboration and communication needed to acquire strong academic foundations.

The quantitative component of this assessment begins by measuring students' vocabulary and asks them to name six common objects. They are then guided to describe and color the pictures in more detail allowing us to record color recognition and gain additional qualitative information. The students are then asked to identify, trace and copy shapes giving teachers valuable data concerning the ability to name shapes, as well as critical pre-writing skills. Letters and numbers are assessed through a randomized series to demonstrate true recognition, rather than rote memory. The evaluation concludes by having children write their name to the best of their ability.

DIBELS Preparation:

In order to ensure I was setting my students up for success, we used the Fundations curriculum for phonics instruction and Wit & Wisdom for comprehension and writing.

DIBELS Guidance:

DIBELS is an exceptional measure that, when implemented correctly, grants a wealth of information that can be interpreted to enhance instruction and improve reading. However, the assessment must be done with fidelity in order to gain accurate data.

LWT Preparation:

The foundational skills learned in PreK provide critical base knowledge of complex subjects to come. Given my experience teaching both 1st grade and kindergarten, I am able to backwards plan to ensure my current students have the skills they need to flourish in the future. The activities outlined by Learning Without Tears helped me create meaningful activities and support my teachers to ensure high-quality instruction.

LWT Guidance:

DIBELS:

Scoring DIBELS can be a bit complicated, but due to the ease of technology, scores are automatically produced after completion. Each subtest of DIBELS has its own benchmark or goal, and those scores are then calculated to create a composite score.

LWT:

Before implementing new assessments with students, it is crucial that educators create exemplars by personally doing the activity. This provides an opportunity to anticipate and plan for misconceptions, as well as examining how students can demonstrate mastery. After completing the exemplar, I used knowledge of my students' abilities in collaboration with my experience and background knowledge to create a rubric denoting goals for the semester.

DIBELS:

This data was collected from my first year of teaching first grade in 2018-2019. I was unable to provide end of year scores, but it was interesting to compare beginning of the year to middle while reflecting on how my own practices have evolved since then. While we analyzed student scores as a first grade team, I believe I put too much focus on individual components of the test, rather than looking at the broader picture. This is evident in the growth of specific skills, yet reading comprehension, arguably the most critical piece of literacy, is considerably lower. As I have continued to grow and evolve as an educator, deeply examining one of my first data points not only serves as a important reminder of how far I have come as an educator, but that hard work really does pay off.

Below you will find detailed reports with specific scores on subtests, as well as composite scores and next steps. I have also analyzed the data and created a quick reference of students who were performing at or above grade-level within these examinations.

Whole Class Data

Individual Student Analysis

Due to systemic inequities, continued damage from Hurricane Katrina, and the inefficient public charter school system, many of my students entered first grade significantly behind where DIBELS expects them to be performing. However, this data provided valuable information our team utilized to create intentional lessons that expand understanding and address misconceptions. In addition to the mentioned opportunity gap, I had five students with IEPs consisting of their own goals within the evaluation. Notwithstanding, it is every transformational teacher's obligation to ensure all students are given instruction that is tailored specifically to their needs and will launch them to future academic success. The data presented demonstrates dramatic academic growth in phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading fluency. By consistently examining student performance, creating rigorous lesson plans, and monitoring progress, I was able to deepen my students' literacy skills and reading abilities through deliberately addressing misconceptions that the data presented.

LWT:

The data below was gathered from the PreK classroom at Learning Leaf Child Development Center. This evaluation was done in September 2021 and November 2021.

As the data above shows, our PreK students are on target to reach their goals well before the end of the year. As I examined the data from the first assessment to the second, I believe the goals I set were a bit too difficult to attain within this short time period. However, students overall showed dramatic growth in each domain. The data gathered shows me that our class needs to continue working on developing the fine motor control needed when coloring and writing, as well as continuing to work on letters, sounds, cardinality and number recognition.

When I first started teaching, the large amounts of data intimidated me and I felt that there was no way I could examine it all to inform my instruction. After implementing DIBELS, I realized that the information assessments provide is critical to the success of my students. This assessment was quick, easy and always made my students feel successful at the end. Furthermore, we were able to monitor progress in a similar style which allowed us to hone in on and build key skills that will provide paths to deeper understanding as they learn. DIBELS also worked well with the curricula we taught making it a seamless, meaningful and rewarding experience for all.

I also enjoyed implementing the LWT PreK Readiness assessment. However, after completing the evaluation, there are several important skills, such as phonemic awareness, print concepts, reading behaviors and comprehension that I must be able to consistently gather data on in order to ensure my students are ready for the upcoming year. Because of the nature of being a new school, we do not have the budget to invest in systems such as DIBELS yet, but given my experience and background knowledge in early literacy, I can add in missing skills to create a comprehensive assessment.

Now that I have learned that data is not daunting, I use it within every lesson. I am able to quickly and immediately gain an understanding of what my students know and then provide appropriate feedback based on specific need. This creates rigorous lessons that challenge, inspire and motivate my students to continue learning.