Assessing Specific Grapho-Phonemic Skills in Elementary Students

This study examines the relation between decoding and spelling performance on tasks that represent identical specific grapho-phonemic patterns. Elementary students (N = 206) were administered a 597 pseudoword decoding inventory representing 12 specific grapho-phonemic patterns and a 104 real-word spelling inventory representing identical grapho-phonemic patterns presented on the decoding inventory. Correlational and quantile regression analyses revealed a moderate to strong correlation between student performance in decoding and spelling tasks, with stronger relations found among more complex grapho-phonemic patterns and weaker relations found among less complex grapho-phonemic patterns. The results of this study support the utility of a spelling assessment with items representing a wide range of grapho-phonemic patterns as a screener for specific areas of grapho-phonemic knowledge weakness and provide educators with an efficient method of collecting the data needed to develop targeted interventions. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)