CUBED™ Assessment Overview
CUBED™-3 is a family of screening and progress monitoring tools that accurately, reliably, and efficiently measure language comprehension, decoding, and their product, reading.
Informed by extensive empirical research, CUBED-3 represents advancements in language assessment that help educators measure all of the critical dimensions of literacy, including listening comprehension, reading comprehension, expressive language, phonemic awareness, word identification, decoding, decoding fluency, and writing. Because reading comprehension and listening comprehension reflect the same construct of language, CUBED-3 can assess reading comprehension of young students even before they have learned to decode. Lear more about the subtests of CUBED-3 below.
Explore the two subtests of CUBED™-3
Language comprehension, decoding fluency, and reading comprehension are assessed using the Narrative Language Measures (NLM). The NLM is comprised of two subtests: NLM Listening and NLM Reading. Targets within these two subtests measure expressive oral language through narrative retell. Additional targets of the NLM measure decoding fluency (rate and accuracy), story grammar comprehension, inferential word learning or word use, and inferential reasoning.
Word recognition is assessed using the Dynamic Decoding Measures (DDM). The DDM is comprised of four subtests which use a ‘testing the limits’ dynamic assessment approach to identify a student’s current level of performance on multiple decoding skills: Decoding Inventory, Orthographic Mapping, Phonemic Awareness, and Phoneme Manipulation. This testing the limits dynamic assessment helps educators pinpoint where intervention should begin.
Purposes of the CUBED™-3
- Benchmark screening (PreK-8th Grade)
- Progress monitoring (PreK-3rd Grade; 4th-8th grades currently unavailable)
- Identification of students performing significantly below peers
- Intervention planning
CUBED™-3 Benefits
- Quick and efficient to administer and score
- Serves as universal screening (or benchmark assessment) and progress monitoring measures
- Identify students in need of more intensive decoding, language, decoding fluency, or writing intervention
- Evaluate the effectiveness of interventions
- Plays an integral role in a multi-tiered system of support focusing on both decoding and language