Predicting Progress in Beginning Reading: Dynamic Assessment of Phonemic Awareness

This study investigates the ability of a dynamic measure of phonemic awareness to predict progress in beginning reading. Thirty-eight kindergarteners who were nonreaders were assessed in the fall on receptive vocabulary, letter and word recognition, invented spelling, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion, and dynamic phoneme segmentation. They were retested near the end of the school year on reading, spelling, and phonemic awareness. The results of the multiple-regression analyses supported the hypothesis that dynamic assessment enhances the predictive utility of a phonemic awareness measure. Performance on dynamic phoneme segmentation was the best predictor of end-of-year reading scores and of growth in phonemic awareness. The study demonstrates the applicability of principles of dynamic assessment to the measurement of phonemic awareness and provides further evidence regarding the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading acquisition.