PALS-PreK is designed to be administered to four-year-olds in the fall of PreK in order to guide instruction during the year. A second administration in the spring of PreK serves to evaluate progress.
The best interpretation of PALS-PreK results includes using child-level results to help meet children’s specific needs and classroom-level results to guide instruction for the whole group. Scores from an entire classroom can inform teachers’ curriculum planning so that they can provide and enhance opportunities for exploration and language-based literacy instruction for all children.
PALS-PreK Helpful Documents
- PALS-PreK Description of Tasks
- PALS-PreK Materials Checklist
- PALS-PreK Technical Reference
- See the PALS Instructional Resources and Reports page for a list of available reports for PALS-PreK
The PALS-PreK Spring Developmental Ranges Chart can be found in your PALS Online account on the Instructional Resources page and on the PALS-PreK Materials page.
PALS-PreK Administration and Scoring
Please review your PALS-PreK Teacher Set for detailed and step-by-step information about PALS-PreK tasks and scoring.
A Note About PALS-PreK Spring Developmental Ranges
Children arrive at preschool with varying levels of exposure to books, language, the alphabet, and word play.
Many children who begin their preschool year not recognizing any letters soon catch up once they are engaged in early literacy instruction. Others may, for whatever reason, continue to lag behind even at the end of the preschool or kindergarten year.
Preschool is too early to identify a student as “at-risk” for reading difficulties, or as having a significant reading deficiency. Specific benchmarks or cut-off scores are not indicated for PALS-PreK; rather, PALS provides PreK Spring Developmental Ranges that reflect expectations for the spring of the 4-year-old year.
PALS-PreK should be used to learn what students currently know and what they are ready to learn next, and to identify strengths and needs in the PreK program and curriculum.