The Phonological Awareness Screening Test

Kilpatrick, D. A. (2018). The Phonological Awareness Screening Test (PAST)

Research has shown that phonological awareness skills are critically related to decoding English written language. Exposure to an alphabetic language promotes phonological awareness, but phonological awareness skills are important to developing fluent print decoding. A number of phonological awareness assessments are available. The Phonological Awareness Screening Test (PAST) is available for free and can be downloaded from https://www.thepasttest.com/. There are four forms, A, B, C, and D, which allow educators to do a formal assessment four times a year to track a student’s progress. Kilpatrick uses the name PAST not only as an acronym for this assessment but also to acknowledge the work of others in the past, for example, the PAST originated as the Auditory Analysis Test (AAT) of Rosner and Simon (1971). Philip J. McInnis revised the AAT by adding substitution items (the AAT only used deletion items) and adding levels to make it more developmentally appropriate. McInnis first called his version the Language Processing Assessment (LPA) and then the Phonological Processing Test (PPT). Kilpatrick has modified the PPT in several ways to what is now the PAST.

From the website (thepasttest.com), download the PAST Forms, Appendix A, Appendix D, and instructions. Kilpatrick has a book, Equipped for Reading Success, that includes the instructions for the PAST and describes methods to teach phonological awareness skills and letter sound learning. The PAST assesses four levels of phonological awareness that represent increasing developmental levels. These four levels are subdivided, resulting in 15 sublevels:

Basic syllable (preschool to kindergarten)

Onset–rime level (kindergarten to mid–first grade; resulting words are riming words)

Basic phoneme level (early to late–first grade; resulting words are not riming words)

Advanced phoneme level

All items are timed. The child must respond within 2 s to receive credit for an automatic response column. If the child responds correctly after 2 s, the child receives credit in the correct (not automatic) column.

A unique aspect of the PAST is that children receive corrective feedback for every incorrect item. Children will not develop phonological awareness skills in the brief time it takes to administer the PAST, yet they may get items incorrect because they are confused about the task expectations given that the tasks are unusual for most students. The examiner is not to teach the skills but simply inform the child of what the correct answer is.

Students are not administered all PAST items. For younger children, many of the later items are too difficult. A discontinue rule is provided. A level is considered passed if either all items or all items except one are correct (e.g., 4 out of 5, or 2 out of 3 for the syllable levels). A level is considered automatic if all or all but one of the items at that level were responded to automatically. Each level yields two scores: a correct score and an automatic score. Students commonly pass a level with their correct score but not with their automatic score. The author suggests scores that would be of concern or that are likely to represent phonological deficits. Chapter 6 of the book, “Equipped for Reading Success,” provides activities for teaching phonological awareness skills at each of the levels.