The Abecedarian Reading Assessment - Balanced Reading

We have attempted to create a flowchart to represent the way these knowledge domains
relate to each other, and to give some information about how teachers can be strategic in
thier assessment of early literacy skills. Unfortunately , while this flowchart is deceptively
simple, children are diabolically complicated. However, this is still a good place to start.
Keep in mind that the flowchart does not indicate the order that assessments should be
given -- it indicates the order that most children develop these skills and knowledge
domains.
There are six knowledge domains that can be assessed with the Abecedarian, and the
flowchart organizes these domains, top to bottom, from “most advanced” to “most
elementary.” Further, under most of the six knowledge domains the more basic tasks that
can be used when giving the Abecedarian are listed. These tasks, like the flowchart itself,
are also ordered from “most advanced” to “most elementary.”
Using this flowchart, teachers should be strategic about giving assessment. To a certain
extent, it is necessary for the teacher to use his or her discression when determining where
to begin testing different children. However, we have some tips that may be useful.
All children should get the vocabulary assessment, and it is probably a good idea to give all
three tasks of the vocabulary assessment. Vocabulary development is a life-long process,
and all teachers should frequently assess the vocabulary development of their students.
The most advanced children should begin with the decoding tasks -- if a child performs well
on the decoding fluency task, there is probably no need for further assessment with the
Abecedarian (other than vocabulary). A child who can decode words fluently has moved
beyond the basic skills assessed by the Abecedarian and is ready for more advanced
reading instruction. If the child does not perform well on the fluency section, then the more
elementary Abecedarian subtests should be administered.
Most children in Kindergarten and early first grade should begin with the letter knowledge
and phoneme awareness tasks (and vocabulary, of course). With the phoneme awareness
assessment, begin with segmentation. If a child passes the segmentation assessment,
then no more assessment in phoneme awareness or phonological awareness is necessary
-- move on to the alphabetic principle task. The more basic phoneme awareness and
phonological awareness assessments are provided to get more information about children
who cannot do the phoneme segmentation task.
Understanding how these knowledge domains relate to each other and build on each other
will help a teacher to be as efficient as possible in his or her assessment. Ideally, most
children will only need to take a few subtests from the Abecedarian to give a teacher a
good understanding of what instruction would best benefit that child.
Abecedarian Reading Assessment • www.balancedreading.com • Page 3