Our Story

New America Foundation (Carnack, 2016) summarizes the need for more meaningful assessment dual language learners (DLL). Phonological awareness [PA] is among the earliest and most essential early literacy skills (Paris, 2005). Assessment and monitoring of PA as it develops in emergent and early readers is a key component of the Science of Reading (SoR). Data from PA assessments drive instruction in preschools in US contexts, but the assessments may not accurately capture this skill for DLLs because of the cognitive and task-related demands that exist in commonly employed PA assessment tools (Cassano & Steiner, 2016; Cassano, Paciga, & Ciaramitaro, 2021). The Individualized Phonological Awareness Test (I-PAT), ensures preschoolers, particularly preschoolers who are DLLs, are familiar with the words on the assessment, thus ensuring the performance is related to PA and not vocabulary knowledge. An assessor shows images of words (e.g., ball) and asks “Do you know this word?” as a screening measure before the PA tasks are initiated. Then, the PA task items are populated with words known by the child to provide a picture of PA that is disentangled from word familiarity. The test will provide assessment results for [PA skills] for teachers and parents that include recommendations for practice and instruction.



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The Tool

Phonological Awareness

Parlance is excited to announce the development of a Vocabulary Individualized Phonological Awareness Tool. Oral vocabulary (OV) and phonological awareness (PA) are essential for reading development. Preschool levels of PA strongly predict word recognition beginning in the first grade, when decoding is the major reading challenge and kindergarten levels of OV predict reading comprehension, beginning in the third grade, when background knowledge and oral language skill are required to understand grade-level texts. This tool will be the first opportunity to get a real assessment of a child’s vocabulary. Utilizing word pictures presented to the child based upon their respective age using AoA knowlegde. The diagnostic assessment that utilizes an individualized familiar word bank to assess children’s phonological awareness knowledge. The assessment provides teachers and parents insight into the child’s vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness skills.

WHY AoA or Vocabulary Matters

3 button - Vocbulary, PA, & Technology

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Expert Team

Dedicated to Early learning

Spearheaded by educational experts Christina Cassano and Katie Paciga, and partnering with award winning experience designer, Randall Sckaål, Parlance is developing a web-based individualized Phonological Awareness tool. This tool is to function intuitively with easy to use navigational elements geared towards preschoolers and dual language families with a goal to provide assessment results for teachers and parents that include recommendations for practice and instruction. We have been very pleased to have been awarded a grant by the US Department of Education to jump start our research and tool development.

The Parlance Leadership Team has decades of experience in early childhood education, all with measurable success. At Parlance, we believe that our team is an extension of the learning process. The entire Parlance Team is driven to provide educators and parents the best tools to improve the teaching of Phonological Awareness.

Parlance at

The NAEYC ’22 Convention

We are exitied to be part of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Annual conference in Washington, DC this November. We will be located in the Exhibit Hall, booth 1638, at the conference. Stop by, or better yet, schedule a brief session to experience a sneak preview of the revolutionary tool to leverage vocabulary in the teaching of Phonological Awareness. We invite you to participate in our research and schedule a short time to see the assessment in action and provide us with your insight, we’ll deliver you a gift certificate to Scholastic for use at the conference.
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PO Box 40
East Kingston, NH 03827
Tel: +1-603-642-7511

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