LASS 8-11 (Lucid Assessment System for School)
For ages 8 years to 11 years 11 months
Test duration 30-45 minutes
Online test format
LASS 8–11 is a multifunctional literacy and cognitive skills assessment.
LASS is designed to give a full diagnostic profile foreach student, which enables the teacher to identify cognitive strengths as well as weaknesses, and therefore to formulate a more precise programme of educational support to overcome the student’s problems. In addition, LASS gives an estimate of the student’s reasoning capabilities, which allows the teacher to determine the amount of discrepancy between expected and actual literacy attainment.
These are the principal applications for LASS 8-11:
- routine profiling of students’ abilities
- screening for special educational needs
- assessment of dyslexia
- monitoring of literacy progress for all students
- evaluation of response to intervention
Results are generated as clear graphical profiles that can be compared with percentiles, and age equivalent scores. The easy-to-interpret reports also include suggested next steps.
Use LASS 8-11 as a diagnostic follow-up to Rapid, with automatic integration of results from the earlier assessment. Rapid provides a quick, initial screening tool with the results from this test feeding directly into the CoPS 4–7 and LASS 8 –11 tests for those children who require additional testing.
LASS 8–11 comprises nine subtests, each of which has a different function.
A great deal of research and careful thought has gone into the development of LASS 8-11. Each and every subtest is there for a specific purpose and each subtest can give the teacher valuable information about the student.
Test | Category | Type | Description | |
Sentence reading  | Attainment | Adaptive | Close reading – completing sentences by identifying the missing word from a choice of five alternatives. No spoken assistance is given. | |
Single word reading  | Attainment | Adaptive | Reading individual words out of context – identifying the printed word, from a choice of five alternatives, that corresponds to a spoken word. | |
Spelling  | Attainment | Adaptive | Spelling individual real words that are spoken by the computer. | |
Non-verbal reasoning  | Ability | Adaptive | Non-verbal intelligence – analogical reasoning where the correct item, from a choice of six alternatives, has to be selected in order to complete a spatial matrix. | |
Verbal reasoning  | Ability | Adaptive | Verbal intelligence – conceptual similarities where the correct word, from a choice of six, has to be selected that provides the best conceptual link between two pictures. | |
Mobile Phone  | Diagnostic | Progressive | Auditory sequential memory (digit span) - recall of between two and nine digits in correct (forwards) sequential order, and recall of between two and seven digits in reverse order. | |
Sea creatures  | Diagnostic | Progressive | Visual memory – immediate recall of objects and their spatial positions, beginning with two items and progressing to seven items. | |
Funny words / Non-Words  | Diagnostic | Adaptive | Reading individual non-words – a pure measure of phonic decoding skills. For each non-word there is a choice from four spoken alternatives. | |
Word chopping / Segmenting  | Diagnostic | Adaptive | Phonological processing ability – segmentation and deletion of syllables and phonemes in real words. For each item there is a choice from four spoken alternatives. | |
The full suite of nine core digitised subtests takes about 45 minutes, on average, to administer. Most of the subtests are adaptive tests — that is, the computer automatically adjusts the difficulty of the items to suit the ability level of the student. This means that assessment is faster and more efficient, and also prevents students becoming bored by items which are too easy or frustrated by items that are too difficult.
LASS 8–11 enables teachers to:
- obtain a reasonable estimate of the student’s intelligence
- assess the student’s attainments in reading and spelling and identify students who are under- performing in these areas
- measure discrepancies between actual literacy attainment and expected literacy attainment based on intelligence
- identify underlying problems in memory or phonological processing skills that could be the cause of under-performance in literacy
- identify students with dyslexia (specific learning difficulty)
- monitor development in reading and spelling on a regular basis
- assess improvements in memory, phonological and phonic decoding skills brought about by appropriate training or intervention.