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
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
Enrollment Process
Send your Request
Fill out your school information and submit the request
Get Your SARD Account
SARD team will review your request and send you your SARD account to the registered email
Load your students data
Upload the students’ details whom you choose to take the SARD assessment
Start Assessment
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
Prof. Hanada Taha
Professor Taha Thomure designed the first system for leveling Arabic texts which is currently used by regional and international publishers to level their Arabic children’s books, with more than 8000 books leveled thus far. She also developed the Arabic language arts standards that have been used by more than 100,000 students all over the Arab world. She is the senior author for Pearson’s Arabic language Arts K-9, a state-of-the-art curriculum that is standards, literature and inquiry-based. She has reviewed the national Arabic curricula for Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, and Bahrain and is an adviser for Arab Thought Foundation, Queen Rania Foundation, USAID, DLI, the World Bank, and many others. Her research is in the field of Arabic language teaching and learning, oral reading fluency, Arabic children’s literature and teacher preparation and curriculum studies.
Prof. Haitham Taha
Prof. Haitham Taha is a researcher in the field of learning disabilities, reading psychology and cognitive skills. His main research interest is in investigating the basic cognitive and neurocognitive process in reading among typical and disabled native Arab readers. Prof. Taha published different publications about reading in Arabic from cognitive, neurocognitive, and developmental points of view. Beside to his research work, Prof. Taha has a clinical specialization in diagnosis learning disorders and disabilities.
Rabab Saleh
After graduating with a degree in Computer Science from The American University of Beirut, Rabab Saleh pursued her career in the media field and worked as a senior programming manager at Orbit Communication Group (now OSN) where her role included working closely with the VP of Programming and Marketing to build promotional plans for the content drivers and the research team to maximize content utility and viewership. Rabab earned her Masters of Business Administration with an emphasis on International Marketing from The American University in Dubai in 2019, and decided to make a career change so she began working as a research assistant in Zayed University. Under the tutelage of Dr. Hanada Taha, Rabab designed, managed, and collected research at the College of Education at Zayed University in addition to training other research assistants. Amongst other projects, Rabab has spent two years working as a consultant for the World Bank working on KSA digital and distance education study. Rabab has contributed to many publications related to education, and her expertise relies in research, planning and project management.
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.