ProPA

The Profile of Phonological Awareness (Pro-PA) was developed for the purpose of evaluating and describing the phonological awareness skills of children. Phonological awareness skills are related to speech sound and literacy development and should be assessed in children with difficulties in speech, language and/or reading (Catts, 1993; Gillon, 2002, 2005). Describing phonological awareness skills in students can make it easier for educators and clinicians to target early, and even later, reading difficulties as these foundational skills are strongly related to early and later reading skills (Catts, 1993; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; Stanovich, 2000), writing skills (Clarke-Klein & Hodson, 1995), and speech and language skills (Carroll & Snowling, 2004; Gillon, 2000, 2002, 2005). This evaluation can be considered as part of a full speech, language, and/or literacy evaluation or can be stand alone.

Uses
The Profile of Phonological Awareness can be used to:
-Collect information regarding an individual’s phonological awareness skills.
-Help educators and clinicians choose areas of skill development to target, if required;
-Measure treatment effectiveness and skill growth over time;
Features
-Ability to enter students’ information and track their progress overtime;
-Tests most areas of phonological awareness development with separate information about consonant clusters;
-Offers ability to choose which sections to administer and ability to skip sections without compromising totals;
-Ability to see students’ skill levels at a glance with colour coded scores;
-Ability to see a group of students’ average skill levels at a glance with colour coded scores;
-E-mail and/or print test results immediately after its administration;
-Color changing counter included to help students visualize segmenting and provide support to students when attempting segmenting;
-Automatic analyses of the following skill areas:
1. Rhyming - Identification and production
2. Blending - Syllables and sounds in words (including consonant clusters)
3. Isolating - First, last, and middle sounds in words
4. Segmenting - Words, syllables, and sounds (including consonant clusters)
5. Deleting - Syllables and the first sound in words (including consonant clusters)
6. Substituting - First and last sound in words
-Compatible with iPad running iOS 4.0 or later;
-Add notes throughout the assessment, with prewritten common errors or answer patterns available for faster administration;

The Pro-PA aids in obtaining a complete picture of a student’s individual skills in phonological awareness by assessing and analyzing errors and providing information about the approximate skill attainment in each individual area. An understanding of the profile of skill attainment as well as specific types of errors made by a child, which can be outlined in the notes, will result in an intervention plan that can more appropriately and specifically target the child’s phonological awareness difficulties.

The Pro-PA was developed by Tanya Coyle, a Canadian speech-language pathologist, and published by Smarty Ears. It can be used with individuals of all age groups.

A full manual is available at www.smartyearsapps.com.