Saturday, August 30, 2008


Since our district has adopted DIBELS as a literacy measure I would like to share how I use Excel to help me organize and analyse my student data. The Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy Success tests has an online feature that is helpful but I like to keep student data in a format that allows me to group students more meaningfully.

First I create a spreadsheet with the DIBELS Benchmark measures. I add a column for nonsense words recoded. Then I add columns for data from the core phonics survey.

I select each column and then apply conditional formatting to populate the cell with a specific color based on a number range to indicate if the student skill is considered benchmark, strategic, or intensive. I use the DIBELS ranges for the DIBELs measures but I have my own set of cut-off ranges for Core Phonics data.

I then sort the data by Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) and NWF words recoded. Letter Naming Fluency is also a good indicator of reading ability for first graders (though sometimes not a good measure for ELL students). This gives me a general layout that allows me to make general groupings. I use the more specific Core Phonics data to fine tune my groups.

Finally, I set up additional worksheets within the Excel document for progress monitoring and for Winter and Spring Benchmark data. I add a worksheet that details what letter sounds and letter names have not been mastered for each student so that I can differentiate my instruction at the individual level. I add district writing scores and CELA scores so that I can have a very robust data set at a glance.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Moving to block fonts

My school has anounced that we have chosen to move from D'Nealian manuscript to Block style letters for elementary handwriting. Since I think this was a district-wide decision I thought I'd share a few resources for those teachers scrambling to get practice writing sheets together.
I found a couple of nice websites with handwriting sheets to print as well as some websites that allow you to input the text you want to print. I downloaded some for printing as well as for using on the Smart Board:
Handwriting for Kids has a feature helpful for Spanish accent marks and special characters.

Kid Zone has a page that allows you to make custom tracer pages as well.

Also check out the Amazing Incredible Handwriting Worksheet Maker by Tampareads.