PALS-PreK Training.key - BPS Early Childhood - Weebly

Using PALS-Pre-K for FOUR
Year Olds in the
Boston Public Schools

PALS-PreK is
Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Preschool
A scientifically-based measure of young children’s
understandings of literacy fundamentals
Designed to be administered in fall and spring of the 4year-old
preschool year, but could also be administered
mid-year
A direct means of matching early literacy instruction to
specific literacy skills

PALS-PreK
Measures children’s development early
Offers guidance to teachers for tailoring
instruction to children’s specific needs
Presents information in formats accessible to
administrators, teachers and parents
Can be a valuable part of early literacy efforts
aimed at ensuring all children learn to read

PALS-PreK Administration
One-on-one, administered by teacher
Takes 25 minutes per child
Conducted Fall & Spring
Tasks can be administered in increments

PALS-PreK Tasks
Alphabet Knowledge
Upper-case Alphabet Recognition
Lower-case Alphabet Recognition
Letter Sounds
Beginning Sound Awareness
Print and Word Awareness
Rhyme Awareness
No Longer testing children on Name Writing and Nursery Rhyme.
Children should be given other opportunities to practice name writing daily.
Most children have not been exposed to Nursery Rhymes and do not want to penalize

15 or fewer
Alphabet Knowledge
16 or greater
8 or fewer
Conditional Task Sequencing
9 or greater
Proceed to Beginning Sound Awareness Task
Child is shown a page of letters and asked to name them
Start with Upper Case letters, because they have more distinctive features than lower case
Alphabet recognition has consistently been the best predictor of later readin achievement
Conditional task sequencing is designed to prevent the child from being frustrated

Beginning Sound Awareness
Sound Production task
Instructionally transparent
*Do not administer Rhyme and
Beginning Sound next to each other
Explain task
Gets directly at phonological awareness by requiring initial phoneme segmentation in an oral production format
Can help teach the task, models a good way to introduce and reinforce this skill

Adapted from Justice and Ezell
Print and Word Awareness
Natural book-reading format
Use script to ask questions as
indicated
Administration and Scoring unique
for each item
Ecologically Valid – reading books with kids and calling attention to print are things they should do every day

Explain task – teacher names pictures
Rhyme Awareness
*Do not administer
Rhyme and Beginning
Sound next to each other

Interpreting PALS-PreK results
Spring developmental ranges for 4-year-olds
PALS-PreK tasks Spring
Developmental
Range
Maximum Score
Upper-Case Alphabet 12-21 26
Lower-Case Alphabet 9-17 26
Letter Sounds 4-8 26
Beginning Sound
Awareness
Print and Word
Awareness
5-8 10
7-9 10
Rhyme Awareness 5-7 10
* If child achieves Spring Range in Fall, DO NOT re-test.
Chapter 3 in the PALS-PreK teacherʼs manual talks about interpreting results-instructs teachers to look at the scores and identify areas where
children could benefit from further instruction.
The Spring Developmental Ranges were identified using longitudinal data (which comes next)

PALS Scoring Sheet
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PALS Scoring Sheet
http://bpsearlychildhood.weebly.com/
assessment-tools--resources.html
email to Beth Benoit,
bengel@boston.k12.ma.us
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