District staff explains DIBBLES screening and new Spanish 'lectura' for K 4

At a Buffalo City School District work session, a district specialist explained how the district uses the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, commonly called DIBBLES, as its universal screening tool for students in kindergarten through fourth grade and described the district s new Spanish assessment, lectura.

"DIBBLES is a test that we use as a screening measure and it tells us a lot about skilled reading," presenter Bachelli said, describing the tool s a composite of several one-minute probes that feed an overall score. She outlined the reading "rope" framework—language comprehension at the top and word recognition at the bottom—and said DIBBLES focuses on the word-recognition strand: phonemic awareness, decoding and sight-word fluency.

The district administers benchmark assessments three times a year (beginning, middle and end of the school year) within multi-day windows, Bachelli said, and uses brief probes between benchmarks to monitor students receiving interventions. "The benchmark period is about two weeks long," she said, adding that teachers have flexibility to catch students who are absent during the test window.

Bachelli described common probes: letter-naming fluency, phoneme-segmentation fluency, nonsense-word fluency and word-reading fluency. She emphasized that most probes are one minute long, while the comprehension "maze" takes about three minutes as a group-administered task.

For students instructed in Spanish, the district has started using lectura this year, Bachelli said. She explained that Spanish is a more transparent orthography—letters map more directly to sounds—so lectura includes syllable- and letter-sound tasks aligned with Spanish reading instruction.

On questions from board members, staff said the district does not assign zeros when a student is absent during a benchmark window; teachers can retest within the window or later as needed. On language coverage, Bachelli said DIBBLES assesses English and lectura assesses Spanish because those are the languages of instruction; she said other home languages are not screened in their native language because instruction is not provided in those languages.

Why use nonsense words? "They're asking them to read it. They don't have to know what it means because it doesn't really mean anything," Bachelli said, explaining that nonsense words prevent memorization of sight words and isolate phonics skill.

Next week the board will receive the district s midyear DIBBLES data; staff said the presentation was intended to give members context for interpreting those scores and for a future third-grade–focused discussion.

The district did not announce changes to screening policy at the meeting; staff framed the presentation as context for data the board will review in an upcoming meeting.