Sadly, Felicity, at the educationzone blog, threw a link to an entry on Sue Watson’s Web site about assessing children’s pre-literacy readiness. “Wondering where your readers should be at 5-7 years? Here’s a checklist to determine if the student is at level or has the potential to be dyslexic or learning disabled.” Now, the chances of people finding Watson’s site and it’s misinformation increase.
By discussing it here, I hope to provide users of the Internet with a counter-balancing assessment of the information promoted at that site.
The original checklist to which Felicity refers is composed of 10 items, each of which is s simple statement. Some are typical of pre-literacy assessments (e.g., “The child pretends to read by holding the book correctly, turns the pages and makes reference to the story from memory and from the pictures”). Some are just inferences about motivation (e.g., “The child enjoys participating in songs, chimes, chants, poems and storybook times”). But, there is no clear criterion for evaluation, just a general statement about interpreting the results (e.g., “If you’ve checked most of the boxes, there’s nothing to worry about”).
The only reference to anything related to phonological awareness is presented with squish. Item 9 reads, “Some children will have sound-symbol correspondence, they’ll know that the ‘B’ is what the word ball begins with.” How do you check or not check this one? Recommendations should be based on better information than what’s presented in this site. There are good assessments of pre-literacy.
Ms. Watson doesn’t have to provide formal psychometric data about her checklist, but she ought to note that she’s just made up these items and their meaning. Perhaps she could just label the site, “I do not purport to provide scientfic or trustworthy information about reading, special education, disabilities, or anything else. These pages just represent my opinions.”
Link to the coverage of the checklist and the original checklist.
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