preLAS®

Butterfly
GRADES: Pre-K (Age 3)−1st Grade
FORMS: 2 English and 1 Spanish

Capture and hold the attention of young children with playful activities and colorful materials that help you assess language proficiency, and identify instructional placement. preLAS uses graphics and stories based on early childhood literature and kindergarten readiness skills. You will see firsthand how your students’ language skills compare with those of fluent native speakers and identify those who would benefit from special instruction to succeed in a mainstream English-speaking classroom.

preLAS: The English Language Proficiency Assessment for Early Learners:

    • Consists of an oral language component and a pre-literacy component
    • May be used to assess students ages 3 to 6
    • Produces test results that may be used to:
      • Identify incoming students
      • Place second language learners in appropriate classroom settings
      • Monitor student progress along the stages of language acquisition
      • Report language acquisition/skills in early childhood dual language programs
      • Provides a standardized language proficiency measure for all students

preLAS enables your program to:

      • Access both English and Spanish editions
      • Utilize tools to identify students’ academic strengths and instructional needs
      • Assess students using a playful, child-friendly interface for stress-free testing
      • Administer pre-literacy assessment (optional)

Assess pre-literacy skills with a fun board game and; see receptive and expressive language skills in action. As the child moves around the board, the program assesses the following skills:

      • Upper and lowercase letter recognition
      • Number recognition and concepts
      • Color recognition
      • Shapes and spatial relationships, such as “in front of,” “under,” and “over”
      • Reading two-and three-letter sight words, such as “and,” “is,” and “up”
      • Writing name, age, and two-and three-letter sight words

Introduction to preLAS

    • Utilize 5 subtest components-to report oral language scores
    • Includes a pre-literacy component (separate score for students).
    • Administered individually—–approximately 15 minutes per student.
    • preLAS reports five performance levels ranging from levels 1 (non-English speaker) to level 5 (fluent English speaker).
    • Each level is further broken down into total scores, used to measure progress over time
    • Student performance profile sheets are included in the preLAS testing kit.

preLAS Kit Contents

  • 50 Student Answer Sheets
  • 1 CD or Audio Cassette
  • 1 Cue Picture Book
  • 1 Game Board
  • 1 Examiner’s Manual
  • Quick Reference Guide

preLAS Subtest Descriptions
Part 1 – Simon Says: This section tests receptive language, listening comprehension, following directions, and total physical response (TPR). This section utilizes simple directives typically encountered in early kindergarten classrooms.

Part 2 – Art Show: This section assesses expressive language and utilizes graphic stimuli to elicit labels for a number of concrete nouns. The lexical items assessed in this subtest include concrete nouns and single-word responses. This section of the test shows a student’s ability to produce oral vocabulary and verb phrases at appropriate levels of development.

Part 3 – Say What You Hear: This section assesses a student’s receptive and expressive abilities with morphological and syntactical features and focuses on grammatical features.

Part 4 – The Human Body: This section asks students to name 10 parts of the human body and focuses on lexicon commonly acquired by native-speaking children.

Part 5 – Let’s Tell Stories: This section assesses expressive language and represents an integrative approach to language testing. Students demonstrate their ability to produce complete sentences and retell simple narrations with picture cues.

Scoring preLAS
• Teachers score parts 1-4 using a number correct, recorded the bottom of each subtest.
• Teachers score part 5 using the rubric found in the Examiner’s Manual.
• Scores are tabulated on the front of the student answer sheet.