Print Awareness — Student must demonstrate understanding of basic concepts about print (e.g. distinguishes letters from words).
Rhyming — Student determines whether or not a pair of given words rhyme.
Segmenting Words — Student must tap once for each syllable in a word.
Identifying Initial Consonant Sounds — Student must repeat the first phoneme (sound) in a word.
Identifying Final Consonant Sounds — Student must repeat the last phoneme (sound) in a word.
Auditory Blending — Teacher reads words aloud with a clear pause between each phoneme, and the student must correctly identify the word.
Naming Capital Letters — Student must correctly identify capital letters.
Naming Lowercase Letters — Student must correctly identify lowercase letters.
Matching Letters — Student must determine whether two letters are identical or different.
Matching Words — Student must determine whether two words are identical or different.
Writing Words — Student must correctly write simple, 3-letter (CVC) words from dictation.
Word Recognition — The student must correctly identify regular and irregular words from increasingly difficult lists of words.
Consonant Sounds — Student must correctly identify the sounds (phonemes) that correspond to different letters (consonants).
Consonant Blends — Student must correctly identify the sounds (phonemes) that correspond to different consonant clusters (consonant blends).
Short Vowel Sounds — Student must correctly identify a variety of different words that all contain the same short vowel sound.
Rule of Silent E — Student must correctly read pairs of words that differ only in that one has a silent-e ending (e.g. HAT – HATE).
Vowel Digraphs — Student must correctly identify words that contain a vowel digraph (e.g. MAY).
Dipthongs — Student must correctly identify words that contain a dipthong (e.g. JOY).
Vowels with R — Students must correctly identify words that contain R-controlled vowels.
Two-Syllable Words — Students must correctly identify two-syllable words.
Polysyllabic Words — Student must correctly identify polysyllabic words.
Oral Reading — Student must read graded passages of text aloud with accuracy. (Optional: fluency can be assessed by recording the time it takes students to read each passage.)
Silent Reading Comprehension — Student must read graded passages of text silently, and then must describe what the passage is about (Levels 1 -2) or answer explicit reading comprehension questions (Levels 3 and above).
Spelling — Words of increasing difficulty are read aloud to the student, and the student must write the words with correct spelling.
Word Meaning — Words from graded word lists are presented orally, and the student must provide an appropriate definition for each word.
For each of the subtests above, a criterion for acceptable performance is provided. For sections of the test, raw scores can be converted to national percentile ranks following tables provided in the Technical Manual. This assessment was standardized nationally on 1,664 students in 1989, and validity measures were determined using the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests (GMRT) in 1990-1991. Reliability and validity measures for this assessment are within expected ranges — complete data is provided in the Technical Manual.
This assessment has a complementary reading program — the assessment and instructional program combined is called the Diagnostic Assessment of Reading with Trial Teaching Strategies (DAR-TTS), so learning needs that are revealed by the DAR can be addressed by the appropriate portion of the TTS.
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