Aimsweb
Assessment Summary
Aimsweb was started by Pearson as a place to store DIBELS data and developed into something more over time. Now it is used as a curriculum based measurement tool for universal screening, progress monitoring, and data collection that aids RtI. The system measures students’ math and reading skill sets as well as provides a subjective way to score students’ writing. It can be used for children K-12 as a way to identify those at risk for academic failure and to monitor students to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention (Aimsweb FAQs).
As a reading assessment, the system focuses on oral reading rate and accuracy in the R-CBM test and comprehension in the MAZE tests. Aimsweb offers various assessments that range …show more content…
One minute fluency assessments, like Aimsweb, are useful tools for discovering reading difficulties but they do not reveal the reason behind these difficulties (Applegate, Applegate, Mcgeehan, Pinto, & Kong, 2009; Ardoin & Christ, 2009; Deeney, 2010; January & Ardoin, 2012; Murray, Munger, & Clonan, 2012). To determine whether or not a student is performing at grade level and is making adequate progress throughout the year, Aimsweb is a good tool to use. However, it should not be used to determine what type of intervention to administer to a student. In fact, relying on measures such as Aimsweb, can generate a misunderstanding behind a student’s fluency and therefore cause the teacher to provide an inadequate intervention (Deeney, 2010). It is important to note that Aimsweb can be a useful tool to determine low performing students. However, teachers need to understand that it does have limitations. Once a child is found to have reading difficulties, the teacher must use additional assessments to determine the exact source of those difficulties in order to inform instruction (Murray, Munger, & Clonan, …show more content…
It is important to analyze the words that the students miss. I believe that it would be beneficial for teachers to be aware of other assessments to determine the underlying cause of the students’ difficulties. For example, the teacher should administer a decoding assessment to determine if that is the issue. If the test results show that this is an issue, the teacher can then guide instruction based on those results. Otherwise, when we administer these one-minute tests we can only see that students are struggling and how do we know what to instruct them on if we don’t know why they are struggling. There is no one-size-fits-all curriculum that will fix all reading problems. However, there are different strategies and programs that focus on more specific reading difficulties. I believe that teachers need to be made aware of ways to assess students for specific difficulties and then strategies and instructional tools that can help students develop these specific missing skills. Once teachers have access to these tools, they can use Aimsweb to continually progress monitor their students in order to determine if the instruction is working or not. Aimsweb should definitely not be treated as an intervention itself, but as a way to assess the success of an intervention. Teachers also need to take into account the individual student’s background. If the student is ELL or
Assessment Summary
Aimsweb was started by Pearson as a place to store DIBELS data and developed into something more over time. Now it is used as a curriculum based measurement tool for universal screening, progress monitoring, and data collection that aids RtI. The system measures students’ math and reading skill sets as well as provides a subjective way to score students’ writing. It can be used for children K-12 as a way to identify those at risk for academic failure and to monitor students to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention (Aimsweb FAQs).
As a reading assessment, the system focuses on oral reading rate and accuracy in the R-CBM test and comprehension in the MAZE tests. Aimsweb offers various assessments that range …show more content…
One minute fluency assessments, like Aimsweb, are useful tools for discovering reading difficulties but they do not reveal the reason behind these difficulties (Applegate, Applegate, Mcgeehan, Pinto, & Kong, 2009; Ardoin & Christ, 2009; Deeney, 2010; January & Ardoin, 2012; Murray, Munger, & Clonan, 2012). To determine whether or not a student is performing at grade level and is making adequate progress throughout the year, Aimsweb is a good tool to use. However, it should not be used to determine what type of intervention to administer to a student. In fact, relying on measures such as Aimsweb, can generate a misunderstanding behind a student’s fluency and therefore cause the teacher to provide an inadequate intervention (Deeney, 2010). It is important to note that Aimsweb can be a useful tool to determine low performing students. However, teachers need to understand that it does have limitations. Once a child is found to have reading difficulties, the teacher must use additional assessments to determine the exact source of those difficulties in order to inform instruction (Murray, Munger, & Clonan, …show more content…
It is important to analyze the words that the students miss. I believe that it would be beneficial for teachers to be aware of other assessments to determine the underlying cause of the students’ difficulties. For example, the teacher should administer a decoding assessment to determine if that is the issue. If the test results show that this is an issue, the teacher can then guide instruction based on those results. Otherwise, when we administer these one-minute tests we can only see that students are struggling and how do we know what to instruct them on if we don’t know why they are struggling. There is no one-size-fits-all curriculum that will fix all reading problems. However, there are different strategies and programs that focus on more specific reading difficulties. I believe that teachers need to be made aware of ways to assess students for specific difficulties and then strategies and instructional tools that can help students develop these specific missing skills. Once teachers have access to these tools, they can use Aimsweb to continually progress monitor their students in order to determine if the instruction is working or not. Aimsweb should definitely not be treated as an intervention itself, but as a way to assess the success of an intervention. Teachers also need to take into account the individual student’s background. If the student is ELL or