The Emergent Literacy Assessment Package

This Package comprises the following components:

1. the Life By The River Phonological Awareness Story; and,
   
2. the Dinosaur Non-Word Repetition, Spelling and Reading Activity.

Details of each component follow.

The Life By The River Phonological Awareness Story

The acquisition of phonological awareness skills has been well cited in the research literature as correlating strongly with later literacy development (National Reading Panel, 2000).

The Life by the River Phonological Awareness Assessment allows the examiner to obtain phonological awareness assessment data using a captivating and engaging story format. Through reading the story while taking in the beautiful illustrations created by the very talented Aboriginal artist, Fern Martins, the examiner is able to engage the child in demonstrating his or her phonological awareness capabilities.

Format

The Life by the River Phonological Awareness Assessment is a story book consisting of an original story accompanied by six full-colour illustrations. Each page depicts a different scene showing a group of First Peoples children and their families celebrating life by the river. Each colour picture is accompanied by a line in the story which allows the examiner to elicit the required response from the child. The target phonological awareness item is then reflected in the picture.

Target areas

The phonological awareness areas targeted in this assessment include:

• Syllable Segmentation
• Rhyme Production
• Onset Identification (Single Consonants)
• Final Sound Identification (Single Consonants)
• Syllable Deletion
• Onset Deletion (Single Consonants)
• Final Consonant Deletion (Single Consonant)
• Initial Sound Identification (Clusters)
• Sound Deletion Initial Clusters
• Phoneme Blending
• Phoneme Segmentation
• Phoneme (Consonant) Manipulation
• Syllable Blending

The scope of the story and the illustrations also allows the examiner to target any other specific phonological awareness skills requiring examination. This assessment tool can also be used flexibly to provide the child with teaching experiences for each stimulus item.

Also included within this assessment is the capacity for speech pathologists to assess the following skill area:

• Naming Words Within Categories

Sample page

The following image is an example of a page from the story book.

References

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Reports of the subgroups. Washington DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Clearing House.

The Dinosaur Non-Word Repetition, Spelling and Reading Activity

Target areas

The Dinosaur Non-Word Repetition, Spelling and Reading Activity allows the assessor to examine a child’s development in the following areas:

• Non-word repetition
• Non-word reading
• Non-word spelling

The evaluation of these skill areas has been well documented in the research literature as providing valuable information regarding a child’s speech processing and literacy development (Snowling, 2006; Coltheart, 2005; Stackhouse & Wells, 2001). This assessment tool has been specifically designed using the ‘take and place’ format recommended when assessing these skills with First Peoples children (Gould, 2008).

The wonderfully talented Aboriginal artist, Lena Rigney, has created the beautiful silk painting that Aboriginal children will enjoy exploring while completing the tasks contained within this assessment tool.

References

Stackhouse, J. Wells, B. (2001). Children’s Speech and Literacy Difficulties 2: Identification and Intervention. London: Whurr.

Gould, J., (2008) Non standard assessment practices in the evaluation of Australian Aboriginal children. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 22(8), 643-658.