Early Childhood Reading-Benchmark Testing

This morning I had an opportunity to observe a teacher as she conducted benchmark testing in a preschool.  She used a standardized screening test called PALS-PreK (Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening).  The assessment reflects skills that are predictive of future reading success and measures name writing ability, upper-case and lower-case alphabet recognition, letter sound and beginning sound production, print and word awareness, rhyme awareness and nursery rhyme awareness.  The assessment scores indicate children’s strengths as well as those areas that may require more direct attention.  The assessment is designed to be administered to four-year-olds in the fall of PreK in order to guide instruction during the year.  A second administration in the spring of PreK serves to evaluate progress.  The assessment coordinator told me there is also a PALS-K test, which, in addition to the evaluations in the Pre-K test, adds assessments for letter sounds, spelling, concepts of words, and word recognition in isolation.  I was curious to know more about the concept of word measure.  The assessment coordinator explained that the concept-of-word task measures children’s ability to (a) accurately touch words in a memorized rhyme, (b) use context to identify individual words within a given line of text, and (c) identify words presented outside of the text.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could share with parents the kinds of tasks we assess? I can think of some parents who would practice these tasks with their child in an effort to give them a head start on kindergarten early literacy.