What are the components of the Spanish assessment?

Amira offers a reliable and valid Spanish language Dyslexia screener for the detection of reading and language disorders. Coupled with the Dyslexia screener is a reading mastery assessment that assesses early Spanish literacy skills (fluency, phonemic awareness, decoding, accuracy, vocabulary, and comprehension). Like the English language assessment, this assessment typically takes a student 10 minutes or so to complete.

In this article, you will learn about the basis for the Spanish assessment and how to enable it for your dual-language students or Spanish-first learners.

Origins and Design

By providing comparative information on reading in both languages, Amira's dual language assessment aids in instructional decision-making. The assessment "items" are short text passages developed by the psychometric team at the UTHealth Medical system. The team has worked on these items for more than 15 years and they are incorporated into the widely-used Tejas Lee.

Student Experience and Configuration

The student may be tested first in Spanish and then in English, first in English and then Spanish, or in Spanish only. For students being tested in both languages, this testing can occur either:

• In a single session, where the student first goes through the tasks in the first language and then Amira immediately presents the next one; or

• In two sessions, where the first session is a reading mastery assessment in the first language followed by the student being logged out, and the second is an assessment in the next language after the student logs in again.

Dyslexia screening items will mirror the configuration your school or district has set up for the English screening items. For example, if your district configuration has the RAN task, letter sounds, NWF, and reading comprehension tasks enabled, these tasks will be presented to students assessing in Spanish.

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