Pilot Phase

About SARD

Remote learning and home schooling has grown remarkably over the past years and the pandemic has contributed to this to a great extent. Young children had to adapt to the new learning style of grasping information remotely through a screen and an online teacher. Despite the numerous practicalities and necessities of this new reality, this has created a gap in the learning levels of students which were difficult to identify and assess for teachers through remote teaching.

With schools returning to their normality of face-to-face classroom, comes a need to ensure that students are at the required level especially when it comes to Arabic language capability.

To bridge this gap and identify these learning gaps on a mass level for schools, comes SARD SARD will enable schools to recalibrate and to individualize the attention to each student to curate the learning needed to make sure each student gets the adequate attention and to ensure their success in the grade they are at.

Through SARD’s online screening tool, the Arabic language reading and spelling difficulties for children from grade 1 to grade 6 gets assessed and evaluated and reported back to the school to make informed decisions on the level of each student.

The SARD tool can predict, based on speed and accuracy of processing and performance,a range of reading difficulties, including reading difficulties that are pedagogical in nature, in addition reading disorders that are developmental, in addition to Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and spelling disorders.

SARD uses analytical reports and charts to present student performance data on the reading skills assessments.

This enables teachers to benchmark the student’s results against previous assessments taken and to also compare them against their peers who are in the same age group or grade level.

Online Assessment

SARD is a cloud-based tool that is accessible anywhere and instantly from any device in any location

Instant & Automated Results

SARD uses machine learning to analyze assessment results. For that, results are instant and automated for swift data manipulation and action

Research Based Tool

SARD derives its methodology from proven academic research, and it compares the student assessment results to norms benchmarks to ensure alignment with high standards and to derive learning gaps

Diversity Learning

Young students are at different and diverse levels of learning even if they are in the same grade. SARD enables schools to ensure inclusion happens for all students throughout the classroom

How SARD works?

SARD’s foundation is based on academic research and a benchmarked database depending on the age group and grade level of the student.

The aim of SARD is to evaluate the level of the student and flag learning gaps. It does that through having the student go through a series assessments comprised of 13 to 16 tasks depending on grade level.

The assessment is taken online using a microphone and headphones and has the feature of allowing the student to pause and continue the assessment at each assessment section, thus having the option of conducting the assessment in multiple stages rather in one go.

The assessment eases the student in by giving the sample tasks and explanations on what is expected from them thus ensuring the clarity of instructions. Once the full assessment is completed the teacher or administrator receives the assessment report results for the review and analysis. This will enable their teacher to tweak the kind of learning support and aid they need. This makes education more individualized in a way that every child gets the information they may need be on the required level in comparison to their peers.

SARD Assessment Goals

Reading Skills

SARD assesses the reading skills of the student, that is, the ability of reading fluency of letters, syllables, words, and texts in addition to reading comprehension skills

Listening Comprehension Skills

SARD assesses the ability of listening comprehension of verbal information in the “Fusha” language of Arabic

Speed of Naming and Processing

SARD assesses the ability of automatized naming of of objects, letters, and numbers through a given time limit

Phonological Awareness

SARD assesses the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of and words

Phonological Memory

SARD assesses the short verbal and phonological working memory skills

Orthographic Knowledge and Spelling

SARD assesses the ability to recognize correct spellings of written words

SARD Tasks

READING LETTERS

READING LETTERS IN THE BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND END OF WORDS

READING SYLLABLES

READING REAL WORDS

READING REAL WORDS WITH TASHKEEL

READING PSEUDOWORDS

READING TEXT

PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

LETTER NAMING

NUMBER NAMING

OBJECT NAMING

LISTENING COMPREHENSION

READING COMPREHENSION

IMMEDIATE SHORT TERM MEMORY

PHONOLOGICAL WORKING MEMORY

ORTHOGRAPHIC DECISION

Enrollment Process

Send your Request

01.

Fill out your school information and submit the request

Get Your SARD Account

02.

SARD team will review your request and send you your SARD account to the registered email

Load your students data

03.

Upload the students’ details whom you choose to take the SARD assessment

Start Assessment

04.

Now you are ready to assess your student Arabic reading and spelling abilities

Are you ready to launch the SARD program in your school and increase your learning impact?

Request Now

Our Team

Research & Sponsorship

This tool was developed by Prof Hanada Taha Thomure and Prof Haitham Taha with funding from Zayed University, Grant number R21106 and under the supervision of ZAI center for Arabic research.

Frequently Asked Questions

SARD is a cloud-based tool that is accessible anywhere and instantly from any device in any location hence it is accessible in all countries and only through schools for now.

The SARD assessment is made up of 13 to 16 tasks based on grade level, each task takes less than 20 minutes to complete. Administered all together, the entire SARD assessment can take between two and three hours. The SARD assessment can be administered any time at the school as long as each student has access to an internet-connected computer, headphones and a microphone.

SARD will equip school with educational guides and resources once you enroll. This will provide you with the necessary information to take off with the program.

No, SARD is an assessment tool and is not intended as a substitute for a qualified specialist.

We take participant data privacy and confidentiality seriously. All assessment data is stored securely on our servers. If your school is enrolled in the SARD program, assessment data is accessible at your fingertips through your School Portal section.

We are invested in your learning impact and for that we have extended a complimentary enrollment to Grade 1. This will enable you to test drive the program and plan how you want to roll it out across all the remaining grades. So as a next step for Grades 2 through 6, you will need to purchase a license so that your students take the assessment.

SARD is not a cognitive or IQ test, however, it does measure cognitive skills that are linked to reading such as: rapid naming and working memory.
However, SARD is in no way a cognitive test that can replace an IQ or aptitude test. SARD is concerned with early reading (decoding), fluency, reading comprehension, and the cognitive foundations to reading. It does not measure all 4 language skills and it is meant to be a diagnostic tool for early reading (grades 1-6) that can give with a high degree of precision a detailed report of what students are able and not able to do in reading and what is it that they need to be supported with be it at school, home or with a specialist/clinician.

Because this test is quite granular in the sense that it is testing skills and subskills, the report will help schools know with a good degree of detail what Arabic reading skills and subskills the student has mastered and which ones need to be worked on more.
If the student performance is below the 25th percentile, the report will recommend referring the student to a specialist. If the student is above the 25th percentile, the teachers receive a list of suggested research based strategies that are based on the detailed descriptions of subskills needed. In phase 2 of the SARD (2024-2025), we will add research based strategies suggestions to the tool.

In the pilot phase, we are collecting data that will enable us to norm results across grade level, age and countries. However, until we have a good data bank to enable us to draw such conclusions from, we will not in Pilot Phase suggest what growth over time looks like in the sense of ranges and brackets. However, in the pilot phase schools will be able to see how students did in comparison to their peers in the same school and other schools that have taken the pilot.

There will be only one report generated at this stage, shared with the schools. The schools will then discuss relevant results with the parents as needed.

Because this test is quite granular in the sense that it is testing skills and subskills, the report will help schools know with a good degree of detail what Arabic reading skills and subskills the student has mastered and which ones need to be worked on more.
If the student performance is below the 25th percentile, the report will recommend referring the student to a specialist. If the student is above the 25th percentile, the school then can plan interventions that are based on the detailed descriptions of sub skills needed. In phase 2 of the SARD (2024-2025), we will add intervention suggestions to the tool.

Yes we will add some information (KPIs) on the school dashboard to see some results per class level, school level, gender and others.