Assessing Phonemic Awareness in Preschool and Kindergarten: Development and Initial Validation of First Sound Fluency

This article presents initial findings from a study examining First Sound Fluency (FSF), which is a brief measure of early phonemic awareness (PA) skills. Students in prekindergarten and kindergarten (preK and K) were assessed three times (fall, winter, and spring) over one school year, which resulted in multiple reliability and validity coefficients. In addition, a subset of students in both preK and K was assessed monthly between benchmark periods using alternate forms of the FSF measure to estimate delayed alternate-form reliability. The FSF measure displayed adequate reliability and validity for decision making in early literacy for students in both grades. Implications of these findings are discussed.