elementary school, children, phonological awareness, performance reading, performance spelling, 1-4th grade 

For testing phonological awareness in elementary school-aged children for early diagnosis of reading and spelling difficulties. 

Especially during the elementary school years, there is a close relationship between phonological awareness and performance in reading and spelling. This is where the BAKO 1-4 comes in, testing the phonological awareness of children in the first to fourth grade for an early diagnosis of reading and spelling difficulties. The procedure consists of a total of 74 tasks, which can be assigned to the following seven subtests: Pseudoword Segmentation, Vowel Substitution, Residual Word Determination, Phoneme Interchange, Sound Categorization, Vowel Length Determination, and Word Reversal. By simply counting the correct answers, the overall test score is determined. In addition, a performance profile can be created for the scores achieved at the subtest level, providing clues to potential problem areas. For the 2nd edition of this proven procedure, study results have been updated and supplemented.

To compensate for diagnosed weaknesses, the training program PHONIT (Stock & Schneider, 2011) is available, which serves to improve phonological awareness and spelling performance at primary school age.