Kindergarten Language Benchmark Assessment {Product Review}

Back in November at the ASHA conference, I was able to meet so many sweet people and talented vendors.  One of these talented ladies gave me a copy of a brand new assessment to review.  It’s called the Kindergarten Language Benchmark Assessment (KLBA).  After reading up on it and trying it out, I am SO excited to tell you about this one.

The KLBA was created by Naomi R Konikoff, MS CCC-SLP and Jennifer Preschern, MA CCC-SLP.  It is “a universal screening and progress monitoring tool for early language skills.”  It consists of three assessments for students enrolled in kindergarten and geared for fall, winter, and spring.  For me, this is perfect for the Response to Intervention (RtI) process especially since I have to include specific RtI data in every evaluation (state requirement).

One thing that I love about it is that each assessment only takes about 3-4 minutes to administer or maybe a little longer at first.  This  works out great if you’re on a tight schedule like me (and probably every other school-based SLP out there).

The skill areas included are: auditory comprehension, following directions, categories receptive, categories expressive, and narrative language.  The test gives you a raw score for each skill as well as a total score.

To administer the KLBA you use the picture prompts and record form booklet.  The instructions are straightforward and the pictures are colorful and easy to identify.  A couple of the pictures could have a little better quality; however, they were still clear enough for the students to easily understand.

I like that the verbal prompts are included inside the picture book to allow for quick delivery.  Most of the subtests include a training item and specific directions on what to say if the answer that’s given is correct or incorrect.

Inside the test manual are specific scoring guides for each skill area as well as an answer key and scoring practice items.

There isn’t any standardized data included, but you can still measure progress made throughout the year using the 3 assessments.  I will probably use 2 of the assessments as a pre- and post- measure for my RtI kindergarten students.  Check out this post on how you can use the KLBA more specifically in the RtI process.

The manual does give you the data from a recent pilot study, which allows you to compare your students’ scores to the averages of the participants given in a table form.  You can find more info on the research involved in the KLBA here.  And this post explains how you can even use this test to differentiate SLI from ELL difficulties.

Overall, I thought this was a great tool to gather lots of language rich data from kindergarteners.  It can definitely be a go-to for progress monitoring, IEP goals, interventions, ELL concerns, and more.

 What do you think?  Is this something that you could use in your speech room?