Acadience Reading Test

Kindergarten and first grade students are given a page with letters and asked to name each one. This test measures the number of upper and lower case letters a child accurately reads in one minute.  For information and resources to support students with this skill, see our Letter Skills page.

By the middle of kindergarten, children should be able to say or recognize the beginning sounds in words automatically. To measure this during Acadience testing, students are given a series of words and asked to identify the beginning sound of each word.  This test is timed for one minute.  For information and resources to support students with this skill, see our Phonological Awareness page.

This is a measure of children’s awareness of the many sounds that make up words we speak.  It is given to kindergarten and first grade students and is a skill that should be mastered by the end of kindergarten. The child is told a word like “cat” and asked to say all of the sounds in the word. There are three sounds in “cat.” This test is timed for one minute.  For information and resources to support students with this skill, see our Phonological Awareness page.

* Phonemes are the individual sounds in spoken words.  

The ability to blend together the sounds represented by letters to read words is an important skill in learning to read. This skill helps children in kindergarten, first and second grade to use their knowledge of letters and sounds to read unfamiliar words, like “tob” or “miv”. During testing, the child is asked to read the whole word or identify the individual sounds in the word. This test is timed for one minute.  For information and resources to support students with this skill, see our Beginning Reading page.

This is a measure of how fluently and accurately children can read passages written at their grade level. This is given from the middle of first through the end of fifth grade. Children who read accurately and fluently are better able to understand what they read. Children are given three passages and asked to read each one aloud for one minute.  For information and resources to support students with this skill, see our Reading Fluency page.

Students are asked to say as much as they can remember about each passage they read.  Retell is scored on how much the child says and also the quality of what they say. For a maximum quality score of 4, students retell more than 3 details in an order that makes sense and captures the main idea of the passage.  For information and resources to support students with this skill, see our Reading Comprehension page.

The MAZE test is a 3 minute test where students 3rd-5th grade read a written passage silently.  The passage has missing words. For each missing word there is a box with three word choices and students circle the correct missing word.  For information and resources to support students with this skill, see our Reading Comprehension page.