The DIBELS comprise a developmental sequence of one-minute measures: naming the letters of the alphabet (alphabetic principle), segmenting words into phonemes (phonemic awareness), reading nonsense words (alphabetic principle), reading real words (orthographic knowledge), and oral reading of a passage (accuracy and fluency). DIBELS also includes a three-minute reading comprehension measure that uses the maze approach, which is a modification of the cloze test approach that provides students with answer choices for missing words.
