Kindergarten students need to know what sound objects begin with. This is called Initial Sound Fluency.  Mouse begins with the sound of /m/.  The children do not need to know that mouse starts with the symbol m, in September, but they should be able to distinguish that the sound /m/ is at the beginning of the word.

The children will also be given a list of upper and lower case letters.  They will be given one minute to say the name of these letters as fast as they can. This is called Letter Naming Fluency.

By January, the students will be able to take a word and segment it.  They will be given a word like mop.  They will have to understand that mop can be segmented as /m/ /o/ /p/. They will be asked to say each sound of mop slowly.

Nonsense Word Fluency is another subtest.  The students will be asked to take a nonsense word and say each sound. RIZ is separated into /r/ /i/ /z/.

All of these skills are important for children to learn so they can begin to read.  Once they know their sounds and can manipulate the sounds, they begin reading.