Ongoing Progress Monitoring Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why use ongoing progress monitoring (OPM)?

A. Ongoing progress monitoring (OPM) allows a teacher to document progress in reaching the benchmark goals in the critical components of reading. For those students who are receiving immediate intensive intervention (iii) it is best practice to do more frequent monitoring of their progress to get snapshots of their growth. More frequent assessment will enable you to adapt instruction based on the needs of the child.

In addition, it might be helpful to administer a measure that is not normally given at a particular grade level. For example, a teacher may want to give a 3rd grader who is at risk on Oral Reading Fluency the Nonsense Word Fluency test to get a picture of a student's decoding skills. This will provide additional information in determining why the student is deficient in Oral Reading Fluency. With the teacher giving the assessments, she/he will have the opportunity to take note of qualitative information. For example, if the student consistently missed the medial sounds on the Nonsense Word Fluency test that information will be critical in planning instruction more appropriately for the child.

2. How does ongoing progress monitoring differ from the progress monitoring done during the regular assessment schedule?

A. OPM is conducted by the teacher and can involve more frequent monitoring. Sometimes the use of off-grade level measures can give the teacher important data to inform her instruction so these are included in the ongoing progress monitoring measures. OPM can be administered on a weekly or bi-weekly basis as needed.

3. How does one access the OPM materials?

A. All Reading First regional coordinators have notebooks with hard copies of the assessments that may be used on each grade level. Included in the materials are the scoring booklets and the student materials needed for administration. These materials may be duplicated for classroom use. If you are unable to access these materials you may go to the University of Oregon website and download them yourself.

4. What are the steps for accessing the OPM materials from the University of Oregon website?

A. a. Go to the DIBELS website (http://dibels.uorgeon.edu)

b. From the DIBELS Home Page, click on the "Download" function from the left hand menu under the heading, "Measures".

c. Click on the sign up "here" function or materials account.

d. Fill out the information and hit the submit button. This will give you a username and password.

e. From the DIBELS Home Page, you can go back to the "Down Load" function from the left hand menu, under the heading, "Measures".

f. Log in and hit the submit button.

g. This page has the benchmarks assessments and progress monitoring materials that are available to download for free.
Once you have a materials account you can log in with that username and password whenever you want to access the materials.

Questions 5-11 Continued...