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What Is an EGRA?

An Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) is a test students take that can measure their skill at both pre-reading and reading subtasks. Usually, EGRAs are given to students in Kindergarten through primary school. EGRAs test children’s skill at different subtasks they need to learn, such as letter names and letter sounds, to be able to read fluently. The test is typically administered by a teacher one-on-one with a student, out loud. Watch the videos below to see EGRA in action in Nepal.

Non-Fluent Reader
Fluent Reader

Why Do We Use an EGRA?

EGRAs can be used for many things. Typical reading tests are done on paper, which means students must be able to read and write at least a little bit to take them. This makes it hard to measure children’s reading early in the learning process, before they have mastered those basic skills. An EGRA, because it is administered out loud by the teacher, solves that problem.

An EGRA can determine an individual student’s skill in the reading subtasks, of course, but when many students are tested together, EGRA results can be used to assess the impact of a reading program or even to measure a country’s progress toward providing a quality basic education in reading.

How Do We Assess Reading with an EGRA?

For an EGRA, individual students are assessed on different reading skill subtasks. An example of a subtask is a test of letter sounds, or a child’s ability to identify a letter’s sound.

Arrow combining Recognizing Words and Understanding Language into Fluency & Comprehension. Illustration. Oral Reading Fluency FLUENCY Reading Comprehension COMPREHENSION Familiar Words FAMILIAR WORDS Nonwords Letter Sounds Letter Names Initial Sound SOUNDING OUTWORDS Recognizing Words Vocabulary Listening Comprehension VOCABULARY Orientation to Print CONCEPTSOF PRINT Understanding Language

Can an EGRA Be Used with Different Languages?

EGRA is designed to be flexible; it can be used in different contexts. An EGRA should always be adapted to the local language and context. Learning to read requires similar basic skills in any language, but the importance of those different skills depends on the language. See the EGRA Toolkit for more details.

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