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Assessing Phonemic Awareness Using Children's Writing: What does "BoBiBlokhed" tell us? There is a wide body of research to support the view that children with low levels of phonemic awareness on entering school are more likely to be poorer readers and spellers than those with high levels (Adams, 1990; Bradley & Bryant, 1983, 1985; Frith, 1985; Mann, 1993; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998). Because academic success is largely dependent upon reading, teachers need a quick and accurate way to identify potential problems as early as possible. Current phonemic awareness tests are relatively lengthy and time-consuming because they need to be individually administered. The Astronaut Invented Spelling Test (AIST), however, is a group-administered, single-page assessment device designed to measure children's phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge from their written language. It is a game -like activity that children perceive as fun, and which incorporates familiar tasks used in classrooms every day. This paper provides an overview of the rationale behind, and development of, the AIST, including administration and scoring guidelines. The AIST is presented as a very useful tool for teachers of children in the first three years of schooling, for special educators, and for speech and language therapists. Introduction Research over the past two decades has consistently shown that children with poor phonemic awareness on entering school are more likely to be poorer readers and spellers than those with high levels (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bradley & Bryant, 1983, 1985; Castle, 1999; Juel, Griffith & Gough, 1986; Frith, 1985, Lundberg, Frost & Peterson, 1988; Majsterek & Ellenwood, 1995; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998). Phonemic awareness involves an understanding of the fac t that words are made up of a series of separate sounds (phonemes). Without this awareness, there can be no ability to attach the corresponding letters to individual sounds, and thus the mystery of reading cannot be solved. The impact of poor phonemic skills increases exponentially over time, significantly affecting future reading and academic success (Adams, 1990; Torgeson, 1998). Stanovich (1986) highlighted the consequences of early reading failure. He portrayed the child with poor phonological awareness and spelling-to-sound knowledge as having fewer positive experiences in reading-related activities, fewer opportunities for language and cognitive growth and less practice in developing fluency and comprehension skills which ultimately results in negative attitudes towards reading across all domains. Because the future academic success of students is dependent on reading, teachers need to identify any area of weakness quickly and accurately in the early stages of their reading development so that intervention measures can be implemented. To do this, reliable screening tools are needed. Because of the close relationship between phonemic skills and reading development, and because there is also clear evidence that phonemic skills can be taught (see Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998 for an extensive review), early assessment of these critical skills should be a standard part of early literacy teaching. Only then can teachers be proactive in supporting young children who may be at risk of long-term reading difficulties. Current assessment of phonemic awareness There are several phonemic assessment instruments available that are used to gain detailed knowledge of students' phonemic skills. Lindamood and Lindamood's (1979) Auditory Conceptualization Test (LAC), Muter, Hulme and Snowling's (1997) Phonological Abilities Test (PAT), the Whipp (1991) phonemic awareness instrument and Neilson's (1999) Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test (SPAT) are all currently used to determine individual children's phonemic development. Some of these tests also include some assessment of letter-sound knowledge. They do, however, all share one important characteristic that make them impractical for a busy classroom teacher: they must all be individually administered, with each test taking at least 15 minutes, and in some cases, considerably longer. This is because phonological assessments usually ask children to respond to words in some way – to syllabify words, to provide a rhyming word, to identify an initial sound, to segment a word, and so on. As these responses are spoken, they must be assessed individually. This factor alone means that few teachers are able to systematically assess the phonemic skills of all their students. There is a need for a class-wide test that quickly and easily screens children for phonological weaknesses, so that individual testing may be confined to those who require a more refined assessment of their strengths and areas of need. Using invented spelling to assess phonemic awareness The time-consuming administration of individual tests when pre- and post-testing children undergoing class phonemic training programs led Neilson (2003) to develop an invented spelling task to assess phonemic awareness. This had the overwhelming advantage of being group-administered, and completed within 10 minutes. Thus the Astronaut Invented Spelling Test (AIST) was developed. This article will present a description and critical discussion of the AIST. In order to provide a sound theoretical basis for the use of invented spelling for this purpose, some discussion of the relationship between phonemic skills and invented spelling is provided. This is best explained in the context of an overall model of the development of spelling skills. Ehri (1989), Ehri and Wilce (1986) and Bourassa and Treiman (2001) have produced a large body of research relating to phonemic awareness and the development of spelling and reading. The following outline of the stages of spelling development is drawn broadly from their work, as summarised by Neilson (2003). Pre-phonetic Stage Children's early attempts at writing often involve a type of proto-writing, using letters or letter-like forms. Although the children may be using letters, and are aware of the communicative purpose of writing, they are not yet aware of the fact that words are made up of separate sounds. Thus when they write, they are not consciously relating the letters they write to the individual sounds in the words. Semi-phonetic Stage Once children are aware of the fact that words are made up of separate sounds, the nature of their experimentation with writing changes. Children's strategy at this stage of spelling development involves attending to the sounds in words as well as they can, and using whatever alphabetic knowledge the y may have to represent those sounds. They are not yet, however, analysing the words in full phonemic detail and are not yet able to draw on the full repertoire of letter-sound correspondences. Their spelling attempts reflect this partial knowledge, often representing only the most salient sounds such as the first and possibly the last. They may also use whole letter names to represent sounds in their spelling, as in LAD for 'lady' and BNRNA for 'banana'. Phonetic Stage As children refine their analysis of the speech stream, they progress to a more fully phonetic stage of spelling, usually working systematically through the sounds in words as they try to spell them. Their attempts are usually quite decipherable, although problems remain with the more difficult phonemic tasks, such as identifying the separate consonants in consonant blends. Thus WET is a common representation of 'went' for children in this stage. Orthographic Stage This is a complex stage, involving the development and incorporation of many skills. Children move beyond the strategy of sounding out words letter by letter as they attempt to write them. They are no longer reliant only on phonetic strategies to spell words: they have a range of additional strategies to use. Their familiarity with common letter patterns increases and they incorporate spelling conventions such as the "bossy E" rule. They are also able to use their knowledge of syntax to help them spell, thus their knowledge of the –ED ending for the past tense allows them to spell many words correctly, even if the sound of the word is pronounced as a /d/ as in 'hugged'; as a /t/ as in 'picked' or as '–ed' as in 'wanted'. It is clear from this model of spelling development that phonemic awareness becomes a critical component of spelling as soon as children move beyond the pre-phonetic stage. Indeed, children's progress through the semi-phonetic and phonetic stages only occurs as they become better at analysing the sounds in the speech stream, and relating those sounds to particular letters. Invented spelling thus allows children's phonological awareness to be inferred from their written responses. The link between phonemic skills and spelling is clear. Before proceeding with a discussion of the Astronaut Invented Spelling Test, it is important to mention here the children for whom the AIST is appropriate. Clearly children who are the pre-phonetic stage would not be suitable candidates for the test. Children with no knowledge of the alphabet could not make any attempt at spelling tasks. The AIST is designed for those children who are at the semi-phonetic and phonetic stages, usually children in Kindergarten, Year 1 or Year 2. Once children move into the orthographic stage, by which time they have integrated all the different forms of knowledge that assist spelling development, a conventional spelling test would be more appropriate. The Astronaut Invented Spelling Test (AIST) Overview The AIST is a game-like activity that involves four lost astronauts. The children are asked to write a nametag for each astronaut according to clues given by the person administering the test, usually the class teacher. For example, the students are asked to find a fat little astronaut with a sad face and a star on his helmet. They are told his name twice, in this case Tubby Twinkle, and asked to write his name on the tag attached to the matching picture. In order to complete the AIST successfully, children must know how to segment a word into its constituent parts and how phonemes correspond to graphemes. Additional skills needed to complete the AIST include isolation, segmentation and blending of phonemes, short-term memory skills and some knowledge of orthographic rules. At the completion of the test, a scoring system is used to determine if the student is having difficulty in the area of phonemic awareness. Components 1. The "Astronaut Sheet" handed to each child (see Appendix 1) This is the individual test sheet and contains line drawings of four different cartoonlike astronauts, each with a name tag attached to his sleeve. 2. The score sheet (see Appendix 2) This is a grid on which the student's responses are recorded. Points or partial points are awarded for letter choices that are considered reasonable. Guidelines which cover plausible alternatives are provided. Students are awarded bonus points if they are also able to use conventional spelling patterns such as /bb/. Subscores for the child's attempts at single consonants, consonant blends, vowels and an orthographic bonus are recorded belo w the scoring grid. This provides a quick indicator of each student's individual strengths and areas of need. 3. A summary page This sheet allows for identifying information on the child as well as the total score, sub-scores of the different phoneme types and orthographic skills, and any qualitative information the administrator may wish to add. Issues of test design Choice of astronaut names When deciding upon the stimulus material (that is, the astronauts' names), and remembering that the point of the exercise is to assess phonemic skills, several issues had to be considered. If the chosen words were too familiar, some of the target group may know the words as sight words, and would not need to decipher the spelling on the basis of sounding out the word. In this case, an orthographically correct word would not provide that window into the child's phonemic awareness that was being sought. The easiest way to resolve this issue would have been to make the stimulus words nonsense words: the astronauts could have been named anything. It is the experience of many teachers and speech pathologists, however, that very young children find the concept of nonsense words very difficult: indeed many have only just come to terms with the notion of real words. Being asked to work with nonsense words in a group context would be confusing, and this would add another confounding element to the task. A further issue is that relatively long sequences of sounds, at least several syllables, are required to assess phone mic tracking skills, and if these are presented as nonsense words, the words become too long for the young child to remember. It is one thing to remember a nonsense word and repeat it back immediately but another thing entirely to hold the nonsense word in memory long enough to segment its sounds and write them down. Another alternative would have been to use unfamiliar or uncommon real words in the hope that no child has learnt it by rote. Unfortunately, if the words are too unfamiliar, they function essentially as nonsense words, and would be just as difficult to remember. The AIST addresses this issue by using real words, but deliberately seeking words that would be familiar to young children from their daily language experiences or from children's songs, rather than by having met them in print. By presenting the words as names for the astronauts, they were made meaningful for the children, and therefore easier to remember. Each astronaut has both a first and a second name, thus providing sequences of sounds up to four syllables long. Assessing a variety of relevant skills In developing the names for the astronauts (Bobby Blockhead, Tubby Twinkle, Fred Fixit and Smiley Sam ), a deliberate effort was made to include a range of phonological and orthograp hic aspects to provide as much diagnostic information as possible. For example, in the final selection: ~ all the short vowels sounds are represented; ~ two long vowel sounds are represented; ~ the four astronauts' names include several different consonant blends which allows exploration of the degree to which children can segment the more difficult phonemes in the speech stream; ~ the orthographic features x, bb, final y, ey, ck, ea, and le are included which allows for identification of those children who have begun to incorporate orthographic knowledge into their spelling; ~ some names, such as 'Sam', are common, and may well have been encountered as real names; some are a little more complex but phonemically quite easy to spell ('Fred'). These easier it ems make the task more accessible to very young children; and ~ one name, 'Twinkle' is quite complex both phonemically and orthographically. Most children would have sung it many times in their lives but are very unlikely to have encountered it in print. The final development of the names was a result of collaboration between speech pathologists, academics, and teachers. Using a written task Assessing phonological awareness using a written task adds another confounding factor: the child must be able to choose the correct letter to represent the sound and to write it down in a recognisable fashion. Both experience in the field and research evidence (Byrne, 1998), however, attest to the fact that children who can identify the sounds also tend to be able to remember the alphabet letters. Administration Regular teachers, special education teachers, educational psychologists and speechlanguage pathologists can successfully administer the AIST. It does not require specific training - a careful reading of the administration guidelines will suffice. The AIST takes about ten minutes to administer to a class, and less time if assessing an individual. The instructor introduces the activity by telling the students that four astronauts went for a walk and got lost. Luckily they have name tags attached so if they write the names on each one, the astronauts might be found again. The administrator then dictates the name of each astronaut, adding some clues so the children can find the appropriate astronaut. For example, "Look carefully and you will see an astronaut with a hammer in his hand. His name is Fred Fixit." Each child then writes an astronaut's name on the relevant tag. Children may receive assistance in locating the correct astronaut if necessary and the name may be repeated as often as necessary. Children who finish quickly or those who find the task very difficult, can colour the special part of each astronaut (i.e. Fred Fixit's hammer, Bobby Blockhead's big square helmet, the star on Tubby Twinkle's helmet and Smiley Sam's hair) while they are waiting. Applications The AIST has been successfully used to assess the phonemic skills of children in the first three years of school (that is, Kindergarten from about May, Year 1 and Year 2 in New South Wales, Australia). The test becomes quite easy for the majority of students beyond the third year of formal schooling and it is not useful for detecting those students with difficulties in the higher levels of phonemic awareness. It does not provide as detailed infor mation as an individually administered assessment – its purpose is to broadly screen children to identify those who may need a more refined assessment. The recommendation would be to administer an individual test to any child who scores poorly on the AIST. The AIST does not assess higher-level spelling skills; if that is the focus of the assessment, a conventional spelling test, such as the South Australian Spelling Test (Westwood, 1999) should be used. Scoring On the scoring grid, each of the astronaut's names is presented, syllable by syllable. Each student's attempt is scored by circling the relevant letters that the student has written (see Appendix 2). No score is recorded if other letters, or no letters, appear to represent each phoneme. Phonemes are only credited if recorded in the correct order. If out of order, only the first phoneme is credited. Voicing errors, for example writing /t/ for /d/ are given half points. Common vowel confusions are also credited with half points. All the possible acceptable variations (based on the responses of over two hundred children assessed to date) are recorded on the scoring sheet to facilitate scoring. Orthographic bonus points are scored to acknowledge use of the orthographic units of x, bb, final y, ey, ck, ea, and le. Once examiners are familiar with the scoring system, scoring of each child's responses takes less than five minutes. Interpretation The scoring system allows for both qualitative and quantitative interpretation. The sounds in the astronauts' names have been grouped into three "phoneme-types", indicating progressive difficulty. The sub-scores may be used as part of a criterion-referenced assessment of each child's phonemic development. They provide specific information about each student's strengths and weaknesses. The AIST also allows teachers to identify those children who have difficulty tracking the sequence of sounds. These children will keep going back to what they have already written, doing so very unsystematically, and losing their place in the sequence of sounds as they try to write them down. Their efforts will often include a large proportion of repeated extraneous letters. This pattern may also indicate difficulties with sustained attention, thus the AIST has useful additional dia gnostic potential. The total score can be used to compare a student with his or her peers, to compare groups of children with each other or to compare one child's performance on successive testing occasions. The scores are particularly useful to rank students within a class. This information can be used to form groups based on common need and to identify those children most in need of support. Standardised normative data Although data have been collected on over 200 students to date, the range of students has not been broad enough to develop useful norms. Percentile ranks on one group is available, and it is hoped that future follow-up studies may provide a wide enough sample to provide meaningful norms. Currently, the most useful application of the data is to compare individual performances within select cohorts, and thus identify students who are significantly behind their peers. Data collected thus far strongly suggest that children achieve their greatest burst of development within their first year of schooling. This highlights the need to maximise this "window of opportunity", to identify as early as possible those students who are not developing these crucial skills at the same rate as their peers, and so intervene quickly with targeted phonemic development programs. Reliability In the only reliability study conducted thus far, Bryant (2002) administered the test to 99 children in the first two years of school, scored the responses and then submitted her data to the test developer for blind re-scoring. The percentage of agreement on individual scoring was 92%, with disagreements decreasing in direct proportion to the legibility of the child's handwriting. On several items there were disagreements regarding which word a letter should be assigned to, and these changed the scores for consonants as opposed to consonant blends, without making a difference to the Total Score. Validity In three separate studies (Bryant, 2002; and Neilson, 2003), children completed the AIST in a whole class setting immediately before a standardised phonological awareness test that has been in wide use in Australia for several years. The correlations in these three studies were .83, .81 and .89. These consistently high correlations in three different samples suggest that the Astronaut Invented Spelling Test can confidently be used as an initial whole-class phonemic awareness screening test. Conclusion While the AIST could have benefited from the inclusion of at least one female astronaut to inspire all those little girls who reach for the sky, it does provide a systematic and replicable way of documenting the spelling skills of children who are in the semiphonetic and phonetic stages of spelling development. It incorporates classroom practices with which teachers and children are familiar, such as "having a go" at spelling unknown words. It encourages young children to take risks in their writing, and to listen carefully to the sequence of sounds in words. Naming four little lost astronauts has also proved popular with the young children with whom the instrument has been piloted – it is regarded as a "fun" activity. Thus the Astronaut Invented Spelling Test has exciting potential to assist teachers of young children in one of their most important responsibilities – the identification of children at risk of reading difficulties and the opportunity to help them avoid the lifelong consequences of such difficulties. References Adams, M.J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ball, E.W., & Blachman, B.A. (1991). Does phoneme awareness training in kindergarten make a difference in early word recognition and developmental spelling? Reading Research Quarterly, 26, 49-66. Bradley, L., & Bryant, P.E. (1983). Categorising sounds and learning to read – a causal connection. Nature, 301, 419-421. Bryant, D. (2002). The Astronaut Invented spelling Test: A validation study. Unpublished Honours thesis, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong. Bourassa, D. C., & Treiman, R. (2001) Spelling development and disability: The importance of linguistic factrs. Language , Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 32, 38-50. Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorising sounds and learning to read – a causal connection. Nature, 301, pp.419-21. Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1985). Rhyme and reason in reading and spelling. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan press. Byrne, B. (1998). The foundation of literacy: The child's acquisition of the alphabetic principle. Hove, UK: Psychology Press. Castle, M. J. (1999). Learning and teaching phonological awareness. In G. B. Thompson & T Nicholson (Eds.), Learning to read: Beyond phonics and whole language (pp. 55-73). New York: Teachers College Press. Ehri, L.C. (1989). The development of spelling knowledge and its role in reading acquisition and reading disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22, 356-365. Ehri, L. C. & Wilce, L. S. (1986). The influence of orthography on readers' conceptualization of the phonemic structure of words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1, 371-385. Frith, U. (1985). 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The Phonological Abilities Test. London: Psychological Corporation. Neilson, R. (1999). A discussion on approaches to phonological awareness. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 22, 88-102. Neilson, R. (2003). The Astronaut Invented Spelling Test. Jamberoo: Author. Neilson, R. (2003). Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test-Revised. Jamberoo: Author. Snow, C.E., Burns, M.S. & Griffin, P. (Eds). (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington DC: National Academy Press. Stanovich, K.E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360406. Torgesen, J.K. (1998). Catch them before they fall: Identification and assessment to prevent reading failure in young children. American Educator, Spring/Summer. Torgesen, J.K., & Burgess, S.R. (1998). Consistency of reading-related phonological processes throughout early childhood: Evidence from longitudinal-correlational and instructional studies. In J. Metsala & L. Ehri (Eds.). Word Recognition in beginning reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Westwood, P. (1999). Spelling: Approaches to teaching and assessment. Melbourne: ACER.