Development of a group emergent literacy screening tool

Abstract

It is important to identify children who are struggling with emergent literacy skills as early as possible to provide them with the support they need to prevent future academic failure. Screening tools administered in groups are more cost-effective than those administered individually, but few are available in Portugal. The goal of this study was to explore the psychometric properties (difficulty, reliability, and validity) of a group emergent literacy screening test for Portuguese-speaking children. The test includes two phonological awareness tasks, one vocabulary task, and one concepts of print task. The sample comprised 1379 children from pre-K (n = 314), kindergarten (n = 579), and first grade of primary education (n = 486). Measures of emergent literacy, reading and writing skills, and academic achievement were used to test the validity of the screening test. The Rasch model results suggest that the tasks were suitably difficult for the kindergarten group, but had varying levels of difficulty for pre-K and first grade. Reliability was adequate for the tasks with an appropriate level of difficulty. Scores for the screening test were highly correlated with measures of literacy and with academic achievement. These findings suggest that the presented emergent literacy screening test is valid and reliable, making it a useful tool for practice and research.