Assessment of literacy development in students is a relatively new domain for many speech pathologists. In the past, SLPs role in student assessment has been limited to language and articulation and has not ventured into the world of literacy development. This is no longer the case for most speech pathologist working in the public schools. The challenge with this shift in scope of evaluation is a limited number of resources available to SLPs for effectively assessing literacy development.

There are many literacy assessment tools currently on the market which are designed for use by speech pathologists and other assessment personnel. We believe the following 3 assessments are essential tools for providing imperative information on development of literacy skills for a wide range of students and provide thorough information from which an intervention plan can be designed.

1. The Phonological Awareness Profile

• Designed to diagnose deficits in phonological processing and phoneme/grapheme correspondence

• Published by Linguisystems

2. Lindamood (auditory conceptualization)

• Determines auditory processing which identifies the student's level of phonemic awareness and auditory conceptual judgment, which relates to the ability to think about the number, order and identification of sounds and syllables within words

• Published by Pearson

3. CELF-3 Rapid Automatic Naming

• Continuous naming of colors, geometric shapes and color -shape combinations

• Continuous rapid automatic naming of familiar targets can be used to screen for students at risk for having word finding difficulties

• These tasks require learners to quickly name pictures of either familiar objects, color words, color words and shapes, or alternating printed letters, numbers, and objects

• Typically students with potential difficulties in word finding are slow in naming the stimuli on these naming tasks

• Published by Psychological Corporation

You might also be interested in...

• What is the SLP's Role in Literacy Development?

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