Measuring Success by How Far We Travel

It is hard to believe that we have surpassed the half-way mark of the 2013/14 school year. In fact, sometime this week (weather pending) we will celebrate the 100th day of school at Riverside Elementary!

At Riverside Elementary School, our students complete benchmark assessments in the fall, winter, and spring to see how they are progressing throughout the year. This helps us in determining how students are responding to instruction so that we can make necessary changes to instruction. We recently completed the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment, which is our Reading benchmark.

The DIBELS results show that there is substantial growth and improvement taking place amongst our students throughout our building. This speaks volumes for the hard work put forth from our students, teachers, staff, and parents. Thank you. Your work is appreciated.

The following data, which is a testimonial to everyone's hard work, is worth sharing and celebrating!

Correct words refers to how many correct words students can read in one minute
DORF is an acronym for DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency

Accuracy refers to the amount of errors that students make when reading for one minute

Retell refers to how many words students can retell, in one minute, about the passage they just read

Last week, University of Iowa Football Strength and Conditioning Coach, Chris Doyle, Tweeted, "Weight room success is not measured by how much you lift, it's measured by how far you travel." I think that the same rings true when it comes to our DIBELS testing. We want improvement, and, overall, our results are very positive in this aspect.

Please be sure to check-out more of the building-wide and grade specific data that has been updated and is on display inside the glass case across the hall from the office at Riverside Elementary School. For child/student specific fall data, winter data, as well as grade-level expectations for throughout the year, please be on the lookout for a note that should be coming home on Friday, January 31st.