Hello,

Is anyone familiar with this free on-line reading assessment called the
Harrison Test? www.theharrisontest.com. It is an Australian company and they do
not charge for the test or the report. It is designed for schools and parents
to help determine word-guessing skills as well as phonics skills. They claim
their test is unique because it measures the word-guessing skills and, they
claim, this is a skill that should be measured to see if it is being under or
over-utilized.

I gave this test to my seven-old son who is a visual learner who is diagnosed
with phonological dyslexia. Although they provide a script, I wish I had
"practiced" on someone else before giving it to myself. I think I may have made
a couple of administration errors. At any rate, our son's phonological skills
-- I think it was his "blending" skills were very low. His word guessing or
"VAS" score -- which I think stands for Visual Attention Span -- was very high.
You can then print out a several page report. Here is the meat of my son's
summary:

"Results

Your results indicate that . performs in the High VAS / Low Phonics
category. The High VAS is not a problem but the fact that the phonic skills are
still not totally reliable is beginning to cause concern because it increases
the chance of the child becoming guess-dependent.

Because of their high VAS these children often initially perform near the top of
the class and are not considered to be at risk. Their struggle doesn't start
until about the age of 9 or 10 when they find that their guess-dependence hasn't
equipped them to read the increasing number of long and unfamiliar words. They
then can often drop back towards the middle of the class.

The development of fast phonic skills should therefore receive priority. The
blending of sounds and syllables need to be fast enough to compete with the
guessing strategies and they need to be put in place quickly before the high VAS
habituates guessing."

I would say that describes our son pretty well. I think his phonics skills are
better than they showed because of a couple of my errors but I know he does need
to improve his word attack skills. He has a very strong sight vocabulary which
makes his remedial reading class seem too easy for him." I do not know how
reputable this assessment is -- but the price is right. I suppose it could be
helpful as some sort of screening tool.

Cathy2NJ

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