Marie Clay Concepts Of Print

A Practical Guide to Marie Clay's Concepts of Print Assessment

Marie Clay's Concepts of Print (CoP) is a diagnostic assessment tool designed for early childhood educators. It evaluates a child's understanding of basic print concepts before formal reading instruction begins. The assessment was developed by New Zealand educator Marie Clare Clay, who spent decades researching how children learn to read. It is now used in classrooms around the world. The CoP consists of twelve tasks that measure a child's awareness of how print works. Each task gives the child a score based on their ability to demonstrate knowledge of that specific concept. The results help teachers identify exactly where a child is struggling so they can plan targeted instruction.

Understanding Marie Clay Concepts Of Print

The assessment covers the following areas: concept of word, left-to-right directionality, tracking print with the finger, understanding that punctuation marks separate ideas, knowing the difference between a letter and a word, recognizing the title of a book, identifying the author's name, understanding that print carries meaning, knowing where to start reading on a page, recognizing that the same text is read every time, differentiating between uppercase and lowercase letters, and identifying the first letter of a word. Each task is scored one point for a correct response and zero points for an incorrect response. The maximum score is twelve. A child who scores between zero and two typically needs intensive intervention in print awareness. A score between three and five suggests the child has some partial understanding but is not yet ready for full phonics-based reading instruction. Scores of six or above indicate that the child likely has sufficient print awareness to begin learning to read. I want to be honest about something I have found in practice. The CoP is extremely useful but it is not without problems. The main issue is that it measures what a child can do on a single screening, not what they will retain over time. Some children will perform well on the day of testing because they have been exposed to books at home, even though they may not have a stable understanding of the concepts. Conversely, a child who is tired or anxious on the day of the assessment may perform far below their actual ability level.

The workaround I use is to administer the assessment twice, roughly two weeks apart, with informal observations in between. This eliminates the one-day snapshot problem. I also keep a running log of what each child can do spontaneously during shared reading, rather than relying solely on the scored results. Here is how you actually run the assessment. Gather a small group of children or work individually. Sit beside the child so they can see the book you are using. Use a familiar picture book with simple text, preferably one the child has heard before. The book should have a clear title, author name, and a single sentence per page for the early tasks. Start with concept of word. Open the book to a page with short sentences and ask the child to "read" the story to you. Point to the beginning of the text and ask them to follow the words with their finger as they pretend to read. Score one point if the child tracks left to right and top to bottom without skipping lines. Do not correct them yet. Just observe.

Next, move to the task of identifying the title. Ask the child to point to the title of the book. If they point to the title area, score one point. Then ask them to point to the author's name. This task often trips children up because they confuse the title with the illustrator's name or a prominent word on the cover. I found that one particular child kept pointing to the largest word on the page instead of the actual title. The fix was to first have the child identify the cover features by asking them to point to the big letters versus the small letters, then explicitly teaching that the word at the top is usually the title. For the directional tracking task, point to a word and ask the child which word you are pointing to. This tests whether the child understands that individual words are separate units. Score one point if the child correctly identifies the single word under your finger. Move through several words on the page. A common mistake I see is children counting letters instead of words, which tells you they have not yet segmented print into word-sized chunks. The uppercase and lowercase letter task is straightforward but frequently misunderstood. Show the child a card with both an uppercase and lowercase version of the same letter. Ask if they are the same letter or different letters. A score of one goes to children who recognize they are the same letter. I have seen children aged six and seven still mark this as two different letters. This is not uncommon for children who have had minimal exposure to print at home.

One thing the official documentation does not always emphasize enough is that the CoP is not a reading test. Children do not need to decode anything. They only need to show they understand the conventions of how print works. If a child can point to the title, track left to right, and identify the author, they have demonstrated concept of print awareness regardless of whether they can read a single word. After completing the tasks, record each score carefully. Calculate the total and compare it to the benchmark ranges I mentioned earlier. Use the results to plan your next instructional steps. If a child is missing the concept of word, spend time doing oral language activities where you explicitly connect spoken words to written words. Read aloud frequently while pointing to the text. If the child is missing directional tracking, practice tracking together using a simple pointer or your own finger, slowly moving across the page line by line. I should mention that the CoP is sometimes misused. I have seen teachers administer it once per term and treat the score as a permanent label for a child. That approach is wrong. The assessment is a snapshot tool, not a verdict. Use it to inform instruction, not to sort children into fixed categories.

There is no single official download link for the full assessment materials since the original book and accompanying resources are published commercially. The Concepts of Print Assessment is included in Clay's book "Assessing Reading Difficulty" and is also available through various educational publishers who distribute her materials. For classroom use, many schools purchase the official assessment booklet directly from distributors. Several universities and teacher training programs also provide adapted versions for academic use. If you are looking for free alternatives or supplementary materials, the original publisher's website and professional educational organizations often provide summary documents and practice versions. The New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology also made some Clay assessment resources available for research purposes in the past.

Advanced Considerations

One counter-intuitive insight that experienced teachers pick up is that a high CoP score does not guarantee successful reading acquisition. Some children score eight or nine out of twelve and still struggle significantly with phonemic awareness and decoding. Print awareness and phonological awareness are related but separate skills. Children who can track text and identify the title still need explicit instruction in letter sounds and blending. Another nuance is that the CoP was designed primarily for English-language contexts. When administering it to children whose home language is not English, you need to account for the fact that the directional tracking concept may be unfamiliar if the child's first language uses right-to-left or vertical print. In these cases, score the directional task with more generous interpretation and focus additional instruction on print direction rather than penalizing the child for cultural differences in print orientation. The biggest bottleneck with the CoP is the time required. A thorough administration with individual children takes approximately fifteen to twenty minutes per child. For a class of thirty students, that is nearly ten hours of testing time spread over multiple sessions. Group administration is possible but less accurate because individual children may not get the full set of prompts needed to demonstrate their true understanding.

A practical alternative for large-scale screening is the Concepts of Print Screening Test, which is a shortened version of the full assessment. It covers fewer tasks but provides a quick yes-or-no indicator of whether a child needs further evaluation. I tend to use the screening first and then administer the full twelve-task version only for children who score below the passing threshold on the short version. The most important thing to remember is that the Concepts of Print is not a fancy name for a quiz. It is a diagnostic instrument rooted in decades of research on how early literacy develops. When used correctly, it tells you exactly which foundational skill is missing and where to begin instruction. When used carelessly, it produces numbers that sound impressive but do not lead to better teaching.