DIBELS

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Home : 2004 : November : 28

DIBELS
By Anon

True, but is sounding out a word the only way to teach a child to read or to assess a child's ability to learn to read? There is more to "reading" than sounding words out and word calling - it's called comprehension. I
didn't learn phonics in school - I learned through sight words teaching, memorizing letter combinations, context clues, word shapes, and picture clues. I eventually taught myself using a dictionary how to sound out words that I didn't know (memorized). I graduated from college with a 3.875 grade point average.
I question the research - it says there is a "correlation" between phonemic

awareness and a child's success of reading. I believe there is a "correlation" but this research seems to be very much understood by people who use it. They truely believe if a child doesn't have phonemic awareness that he/she will fail to learn to read. There is a "correlation" between phonemic awareness and one's ability to read - not having phonemic awareness doesn't mean that one will not learn to read anymore than having phonemic awareness skills assure one will learn to read!!

Oh well . . . if the test is used in the way it was intended - which was to get an bird's eye view of a range where a child "may" be in phonemic awareness skills - and to provide additional phonemic awareness activities that may help the student understand the phonemic skills they lack - all is okay with me. But I've heard that the results of this one quick indicator test is used to determine which leveled reading groups to place students in and other far out uses such as retention in a grade -even at the kindergarten level. That is questionable practice for me.