NORMATIVE DATA FOR LETTER SOUND FLUENCY AND ORAL READING FLUENCY PROBES
GRADES ONE THROUGH FOUR

Deborah L. Speece, Lisa Pericola Case, & Kristen D. Ritchey
Department of Special Education
University of Maryland

Sample | Development | Grade 1| Grade 2| Grade 3| Grade 4

SAMPLE

Participants were children in grades one through four from three elementary schools in a suburban school district in the Middle Atlantic States. The schools were selected for comparability on school size (Mdn = 724 children, grades 1 to 5), ethnic distribution (Mdn % Caucasian = 55.3), free and reduced meals participation (Mdn = 24.9%), mobility rate (Mdn = 15.0%), English for Speakers of Other Languages (Mdn = 2.5%), and percentage of children meeting the local third grade reading standard (Mdn = 62%).

The children were initially selected from first (two cohorts) and second grade (one cohort) classrooms. All children in these classrooms were screened on CBM measures in late September/early October to select at-risk (AR) and purposive sample (PS) children. The lowest 25 % of each class was deemed AR. PS children were those who scored at the 30th, 50th (2 children), 75th, and 90th percentiles in each classroom. First grade children were administered two Letter Sound Fluency probes; second grade children were administered two Oral Reading Fluency probes. The mean of the scores on these probes was used.

The children were followed for two or three years depending on cohort. The sample size for AR and PS children, respectively, was: Grade 1, 145, 122; Grade 2 179, 179; Grade 3 102, 119; Grade 4 42, 54.

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DEVELOPMENT OF NORMS

The design of the study under sampled PS children. If we had simply combined the groups, the norms would be skewed toward the lower end of competence in this sample. Thus, the norms were developed by weighting the PS children to reflect their proportion in the population from which they were selected. It is probably still the case that the norms underestimate the skills of the children in the population because we did not include the highest scoring children (i.e., above the 90th percentile).

Children were administered the CBM probes initially on a weekly basis. The children continued on either a weekly or monthly basis. First grade children began testing in January and received both Letter Sound Fluency and Oral Reading Fluency probes. Second grade children began testing in November and received the ORF probes. The data were divided as follows: Fall = November and December; Winter = January and February; Spring = March, April, and May.

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GRADE ONE
LETTER SOUND FLUENCY LEVEL NORMS

GRADE ONE
ORAL READING FLUENCY LEVEL NORMS

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GRADE TWO
ORAL READING FLUENCY LEVEL NORMS

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GRADE THREE
ORAL READING FLUENCY LEVEL NORMS

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GRADE FOUR
ORAL READING FLUENCY LEVEL NORMS

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