What Skills are Assessed on Literably's Phonological Awareness assessment?

Overview: Both phonological and phonemic awareness are important skills that help students better decode and make meaning when reading texts.

Phonological awareness is the understanding that oral language can be analyzed and changed at the word and syllable level.  When extended to the individual phoneme level, this is called phonemic awareness.

The below table describes the different phonological awareness skills found in Literably's foundational skills assessment. Further information about these skills can be found at the bottom of this article.

Skill	Definition	Example prompt/question
Deletion	Remove a syllable or phoneme from a word.	T: Say RAINBOW. Take away RAIN and say what’s left?
Addition	Combine a syllable or phoneme to a base word.	T: Say AIR. Add PLANE at the end. What is the word?
Isolation	Identify, and then produce, the initial or final phoneme, or the medial vowel, in a given word.	T: Say HAT. What is the first sound in HAT?
Segmentation	Identify and produce a word’s individual phonemes.	T: Say AT. Say the sounds you hear.
Blending	Combine syllables or phonemes to create a word.	T: What words do these sounds make? BASE-BALL
Substitution	Delete a phoneme or syllable from a word.  Then, add a different phoneme or syllable to that same word.	T: Say CLASSROOM. Change CLASS to BATH. What is the new word?

Additional information:

• During each assessment, we plan to ask students 4-7 questions per skill.
• The average length of time it takes to complete each phonological awareness (PA) screener is around 13 minutes. Custom PA assessments may be taken more quickly.