Tools for screening preschool literacy
Two screening tools for measuring emergent literacy skills in preschoolers,
Revised Get Ready to Read! (GRTR-R) and the Individual Growth and Development
Indicators (IGDIs), are useful for broadly flagging children's risk status, says
a new study in the Journal of Learning Disabilities. Neither tool was
"particularly good" at specifying the skills where the child was demonstrating a
lack of progress, the researchers write.
The 3 emergent literacy skills that are most predictive of reading ability
are phonological awareness, print knowledge and oral language, according to the
study.
"Overall, these findings indicate that it is possible to effectively screen
preschool children with less-well-developed emergent literacy skills, who are at
higher risk of later reading problems than children with more-well-developed
emergent literacy skills," the researchers write. "In general, the results
indicated that use of the GRTR-R yielded more accurate classification of
children into at-risk or not-at-risk groups with regard to their overall
emergent literacy skills than did the IGDIs."
The screening tools' results were compared to results from a diagnostic
measure of emergent literacy skills, the Test of Preschool Early Literacy
(TOPEL). Diagnostic tests are too time-consuming and expensive to administer to
all children and screening measures are a more economical and practical solution
to the early identification of children who may need more help with their
literacy skills.
TOPEL is based on the past decade of research on the development of emergent
literacy and the final version was normed on a sample of 842 children that were
representative of the national population, the authors write. The diagnostic
test measures print knowledge, definitional vocabulary and phonological
awareness.
The 2 screening tools were administered just prior to preschool entry to 176
preschoolers and TOPEL was administered 3 months later, just after preschool
entry, a span of approximately 3 months.
The GRTR-R is a 25-item test that measures print knowledge and phonological
awareness. For each item, the child is shown a page with 4 pictures. The test
administrator reads the question at the top of each page aloud, and the child
answers by pointing to one of the 4 pictures. The IGDI is a compilation of tests
designed to describe young children's growth and development, including
expressive communication, adaptive ability, motor control, social ability and
cognition.
There is no IGDI test for print knowledge. For this study, the 3 tasks that
were chosen were alliteration and rhyming (for phonological awareness) and
picture naming (for oral language).
"Brief, but accurate, screening tools are an excellent way for educators to
obtain a snapshot of children's emergent literacy skills," the authors conclude.
"Although there are several available measures of emergent literacy skills, very
few of these measures are as simple and quick to administer as the GRTR-R and
IGDIs."
"Identifying Preschool Children at Risk of Later Reading Difficulties:
Evaluation of Two Emergent Literacy Screening Tools," by Shauna Wilson and
Christopher Lonigan, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Volume 43, Number 1, pps.
62-76. Current research briefs
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