Getting started with PAT Early Literacy

The following topics are covered here:

• About PAT Early Literacy
• Strands
• Strand processes
• Text types
• Acknowledgements
• Supporting documents

The following articles provide more detailed information about using PAT Early Literacy effectively:

1. When to test with PAT Early Literacy
2. Choosing the right PAT Early Literacy test
3. Administering PAT Early Literacy tests
4. Using results from PAT Early Literacy

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About PAT Early Literacy

The ACER Progressive Achievement Tests in Early Literacy, commonly known as PAT Early Literacy, are a set of assessments that allow teachers to accurately and efficiently measure students’ level of proficiency in early literacy, to diagnose gaps, strengths and weaknesses in student learning, and monitor student progress over time. The assessments have been developed especially, but not exclusively, for use in Australian schools. The PAT Early Literacy construct is appropriate for broad international use.

The assessments are designed to be engaging and to encourage students to interact with the content to the best of their ability. Each assessment uses a narrative, character-guided format. Students work their way through narrated story content with encouragement prompts from a digital character, with practice and test items presented in between.

Phonics and Related Skills comprises 3 linear (non-adaptive) test forms of increasing difficulty, allowing teachers to select the most appropriate test for each student.

 

In contrast, Listening Comprehension and Reading Comprehension are two-stage adaptive assessments that automatically adjust the difficulty of content based on student performance. Both assessments begin at one of two entry levels and include an in-test branching point that directs students to more suitable content, providing a targeted measure of their comprehension abilities.

 

Related article: Choosing the right PAT Early Literacy test

The PAT Early Literacy construct is the organising principle of the assessments; it is used to guide test development and structure the PAT reports. This structure is also part of the Progressive Achievement approach because the knowledge, skills and understanding represented in the assessments is designed to support educators in identifying student needs.

Three overarching elements guide assessment development in each learning domain:

• Strands
• Strand processes
• Text types (Listening Comprehension and Reading Comprehension only)

The PAT Early Literacy Assessment Framework document linked at the bottom of this page provides further detail about these components.

The PAT Reading Assessment Framework describes in more detail the reading comprehension skills assessed across the PAT Reading suite. PAT Early Literacy Reading Comprehension aligns with, and provides a foundation for, later PAT Reading assessments (PAT Reading 5th Edition and PAT Reading Adaptive).

Strands

Strands are the skills that students use when engaging in the act of listening to or reading text. The strands are the core competencies that form the foundation of textual understanding. As core competencies, they are essential to growth in student learning across a range of disciplines. Each test item is targeted to one strand. The PAT Early Literacy strands are an organising component of the PAT reports, so that educators can analyse the performance of students according to these different skill areas.

Together, these skills form a developmental progression: phonological awareness provides the foundation, phonemic awareness develops precision at the sound level, and phonics enables the application of this knowledge in reading and writing.

Progression in the PAT Early Literacy Phonics and Related Skills strands is reflected in the reports. However, these reports are not accompanied with achievement band descriptions. This is because skill development in learning area is closely tied to which skills are taught when. See the reporting section for information on how the Phonics and Related Skills reports can be used diagnostically.

Phonics and Related Skills

There are three strands used in PAT Early Literacy Phonics and Related Skills:

• Phonological awareness
• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics

Listening Comprehension

There are three strands used in PAT Early Literacy Listening Comprehension:

• Recall
• Interpret
• Reflect

Reading Comprehension

PAT Early Literacy Reading Comprehension uses the same four strands as PAT Reading:

• Retrieve
• Interpret explicit
• Interpret implied
• Reflect

Strand processes

Strand processes offer a way of further focusing learning intentions. By being able to identify the processes by which students retrieve, interpret, or reflect on texts, you can achieve a finer grained understanding of students’ gaps and strengths within each of the core skill areas, and are therefore better able to target students’ learning needs.

Phonics and Related Skills

Listening Comprehension

Reading Comprehension

Text types

Phonics and Related Skills

Text types are not part of the Phonics and Related Skills assessments.

Listening Comprehension

PAT Early Literacy Listening Comprehension items assess four text types:

• Word or sentence
• Narrative
• Information
• Persuasive

Reading Comprehension

PAT Early Literacy Reading Comprehension items assess four text types:

• Word or sentence
• Narrative
• Information
• Procedural

Acknowledgements

Sandra Knowles led the test development, supported by Alison Hall, Kath Glasswell, Prue Anderson, Greta Rollo, Jude Alexander, Simone Griggs, Kellie Picker, Marc Barrett and Karin Halpin, who made valuable contributions to the development of the assessment content. Yan Bibby led the psychometric work, with support from Ling Tan. Other staff who made valuable contributions include Kathy He and Deema Witwit.

Supporting documents