If your child is finding reading, spelling or writing more difficult than expected, a literacy assessment can provide valuable answers.
Many parents wonder what actually happens during an assessment. Will their child be asked to read aloud? Is it like a school test? How long does it take? Most importantly, what will the results tell you?
At Lindsay Fordham Literacy and Speech Therapy, our literacy assessments are designed to identify why a child is experiencing literacy difficulties, not just that they are struggling. By understanding the underlying skills involved in reading and writing, we can recommend targeted, evidence-based intervention that addresses the root of the problem.
Why Have a Literacy Assessment?
Every child has a unique learning profile.
Some children have difficulty connecting letters with sounds. Others can read accurately but struggle to understand what they've read. Some have significant spelling difficulties, while others find organising their ideas into writing challenging.
A comprehensive literacy assessment helps us understand your child's strengths, identify areas of need and develop a therapy plan tailored specifically to them.
Assessing Phonological Awareness
One of the first areas we assess is phonological awareness, which is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate the sounds in spoken words.
This is one of the strongest predictors of early reading success and is often an area of difficulty for children with dyslexia.
During this part of the assessment, your child may complete activities such as:
- blending individual sounds together to make words (for example, hearing /c/ - /a/ - /t/ and saying "cat")
- segmenting words into their individual sounds
- identifying the first, middle or last sound in a word
- manipulating sounds by adding, deleting or substituting phonemes.
Importantly, these are spoken activities. Your child is listening to and working with sounds rather than reading printed words.
Assessing Reading Skills
Reading is much more than simply reading aloud.
We assess several components to understand exactly where difficulties are occurring.
Letter-Sound Correspondences
We assess your child's knowledge of the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent.
Strong letter-sound knowledge is essential for learning to decode unfamiliar words.
Reading Words
Your child will read both:
- real words, which assess recognition of familiar vocabulary and word attack skills
- non-words (sometimes called nonsense or made-up words), which assess application of decoding skills and letter-sound correspondences without relying on memory.
Non-word reading is particularly useful because it shows whether a child is applying letter-sound knowledge rather than simply recognising familiar words.
Reading Connected Text
Your child will also read passages appropriate for their age and ability.
This allows us to observe:
- reading accuracy
- reading fluency
- reading rate
- expression
- use of decoding strategies
- how reading changes when texts become more complex.
Assessing Reading Comprehension
Being able to read the words on a page is only part of successful reading.
We also assess whether your child understands what they have read.
Depending on your child's age, they may be asked to:
- answer questions about a passage
- identify key information
- make predictions
- draw conclusions
- explain the meaning of unfamiliar words using context
- summarise what they have read.
This helps determine whether any comprehension difficulties are related to decoding, language skills or higher-level thinking.
Assessing Spelling Skills
Spelling provides valuable insight into how a child understands the sound structure of words and how they apply spelling patterns.
During the assessment, we look at spelling in two ways.
Spelling Individual Words
Your child will spell words of increasing difficulty.
This helps us assess:
- letter-sound knowledge
- common spelling patterns
- morphological knowledge (how prefixes, suffixes and base words work)
- common spelling errors
- spelling strategies.
Spelling Within Writing
We also examine how your child applies their spelling skills when writing naturally.
Sometimes children can spell words correctly in a list but make different errors when writing sentences or longer pieces of text.
Looking at both contexts provides a more complete picture of their spelling abilities.
Assessing Written Expression
Writing involves far more than spelling.
We assess your child's ability to communicate ideas through different text types appropriate for their year level.
Depending on their age, your child may be asked to write:
- a narrative
- an information report
- a persuasive text
- a recount
- another curriculum-based writing task
We look at many aspects of written expression, including:
- organisation of ideas
- sentence structure
- vocabulary
- grammar
- punctuation
- spelling
- cohesion
- overall structure
This helps us understand whether writing difficulties are related to language, literacy or both.
What Will the Assessment Report Tell You?
Following the assessment, you'll receive a detailed report that explains the results in clear, practical language.
Rather than simply providing scores, the report outlines:
- your child's literacy strengths
- areas requiring support
- how their skills compare with age expectations
- the underlying skills contributing to any difficulties
- recommendations for intervention
- strategies that can support learning at home and at school
The report can also be shared with your child's teacher or other health professionals to help ensure everyone is working towards the same goals.
Developing a Personalised Therapy Plan
One of the most important outcomes of a literacy assessment is a clear therapy plan.
At Lindsay Fordham Literacy and Speech Therapy, we use the assessment findings to develop an individualised program that targets your child's specific needs.
Therapy goals might focus on:
- improving phonological awareness
- strengthening decoding skills
- building reading fluency
- developing reading comprehension
- improving spelling accuracy
- increasing written expression skills
- building confidence with literacy.
Because every child is different, no two therapy plans are exactly the same. Our goal is to provide evidence-based intervention that gives each child the greatest opportunity for long-term success.
Supporting Your Child's Literacy Journey
A literacy assessment is not about labelling a child or highlighting what they can't do. It's about understanding how they learn and identifying the most effective way to help them succeed.
The earlier literacy difficulties are identified, the sooner targeted support can begin.
If you have concerns about your child's reading, spelling or writing, a comprehensive literacy assessment can provide the clarity needed to move forward with confidence.
If you’d like to book a comprehensive literacy assessment, contact me today!
