Phonological and Print Awareness Scale (PPA Scale)

Phonological and Print Awareness Scale (PPA Scale)- early childhood literacy assessment.
Item Product Price QTY
31620 Phonological and Print Awareness (PPA) Kit $577.00
31620A PPA Scale Form A, Pk/25 $56.00
31620B PPA Scale Form B, Pk/25 $56.00
31620C PPA Scale Form C, Pk/25 $56.00
Phonological and Print Awareness Scale (PPA Scale) measures early literacy skills and allows tracking the development of these skills

Measures early literacy skills, and allows tracking of development of these skills.

The PPA Scale helps identify children who may benefit from early intervention. Results are useful for any professional who measures early literacy skills, including speech-language pathologists, psychologists, reading specialists, educational diagnosticians, early childhood specialists and teachers.

Kathleen T. Williams, PhD

  • Age Range: 3.6-8.11 years
  • Time: 10-15 minutes

  The Phonological and Print Awareness Scale (PPA Scale) assesses two important literacy skills that consistently demonstrate a strong, predictive relationship with later measures of reading and writing:

  • Phonological Awareness–recognizing and manipulating individual sound structures of a whole word, without relying on print
  • Print Awareness–understanding the elements of print, including alphabet knowledge, and concepts about print

The PPA Scale uses a receptive, multiple-choice response format, ideal for assessing young children.
Using a colorful easel, the examiner reads instructions, and the child simply points, to indicate the answer. No verbal responses are required. This format makes the PPA Scale useful for evaluating who have speed impairments and/or expressive language difficulties.

The PPA Scale has 69 items, representing six tasks. The tasks measure:

  • Rhyming–recognizing rhymes, and early phonological skills requiring recognition of the sound structure of language
  • Print Knowledge–recognition of important elements of print, including capital and lower-case letters
  • Initial Sound Matching–isolating, and matching, the first phoneme in a pair of words
  • Final Sound Matching–isolating, and matching, the last phoneme in a pair of words
  • Sound-Symbol–isolating the initial, or final, phoneme, and matching it to the corresponding symbol
  • Phonemic Awareness–segmenting the individual phonemes in a word

Based on early literacy research with preschoolers and early elementary school children, the items were written to provide a narrow focus on phonological and print awareness, without placing demands on other cognitive skills.

Three Parallel Forms
The Forms (A, B and C), each with an accompanying Easel, allow examiners to identify areas need improvement, and track progress. Because of its focused age range, research-based content, and parallel forms, the PPA Scale has many applications in school and clinical settings:

  • Screening to identify children who are behind their peers
  • Identifying strengths, and areas needing improvement
  • Tracking progress over time
  • Researching the effectiveness of early literacy programs

The PPA provides a standard scores for comparing a child’s performance to that of typically-developing peers. A growth score indicates the child’s progress, along the continuum of phonological and print awareness abilities, measured by the PPA Scale. A Descriptive Summary, on the Record Form, offers a qualitative way to evaluate the item- and task-level performance. This allows easy review of the missed items, identifying areas of strength, and those in need of improvement.

The Phonological and Print Awareness Scale (PPA Scale Kit) includes 25 each of Forms A, B and C; Easels A, B and C; Building Early Literacy Skills: Phonological and Print Awareness Activities, and a Manual, in a sturdy bag.