Jennie Sjursen 0:00
Okay, I need some answers. I've made the decision, I'm going to get my child evaluated.
Jennie Sjursen 0:06
What does that even look like? What should it include?
Jennie Sjursen 0:11
Where do I even start?
Jennie Sjursen 0:15
I'm Jenny Sjursen X special educator turned dyslexia interventionist. And wasn't so long ago that I too, was overwhelmed by balanced literacy versus structured literacy, education speak, and everything in between. Fast forward after many, many hours of self driven education. And you'll see I've built a thriving dyslexia practice helping students from ages six to 18. My specialties, working with a quote unquote difficult almost always to the student, and breaking down the complexities of dyslexic to everyday language strategies and action steps.
Jennie Sjursen 0:53
You've come to this point, you know, your child is struggling with reading, you suspect dyslexia, and you've decided you need to get your child assessed. But now that you've made the decision, you realize you don't actually know what an evaluation looks like, or should include. Last episode, we talked about how to get an evaluation and who should be doing the evaluation. Today, we're going to delve into what exactly a good evaluation should include.
Jennie Sjursen 1:27
Before we get into deep, I want to take a few minutes to talk about the difference between a dyslexic screening and a diagnostic evaluation.
Jennie Sjursen 1:37
screenings are made up of short tasks that focus on key reading skills, final logical awareness, letter sound knowledge, reading fluency, etc. Common screeners used in schools are the dibbles, the AIMSweb, and the Shaywitz. Dyslexia screener. The primary focus of a screening is to find and identify students who show they're struggling with foundational reading skills, or maybe in the future, these students are considered at risk. If your child's scores show they need some extra or intensive support, the school should begin the process of placing your child into a tier two instructional program. A screener does not lead to a diagnosis for your child. For that, you need a diagnostic evaluation.
Jennie Sjursen 2:31
Diagnostic evaluations are individually administered and look specifically for your child's strengths and weaknesses, and how greatly their skills differ from their peers. Diagnostic evaluations are also used to drive instruction. In other words, they help determine what type of instruction or intervention your child requires. The assessments neuropsychologist, school psychologists and other trained professionals typically administered during an evaluation, our norm reference standardized measures, a norm referenced assessment uses an individual scores to compare their performance to that of their peers. Is the individual scores on par with their peers? Are there any anomalies, and if so, where it's important to note there is no one assessment for diagnosing dyslexia. Instead, an evaluator uses several different measures to make their final diagnosis. Some of the most commonly used assessments are the C top to the past to the Wyatt for the Woodcock Johnson for the key to three, the court five and the far. So, what should a good overall evaluation include? It should start with a thorough review of all current medical, developmental, and educational records. What are the events that led to your child sitting in front of the evaluator? Medically, the evaluator also wants to rule out any hearing or vision problems. Dyslexia is neither of these. The evaluator also needs to know if the school has tried any interventions with your child, and which ones. Prior interventions can influence how a child approaches a task or response to a question. An experienced evaluator can quickly pick this up and will note the effectiveness of the intervention in their final report. Was the child able to complete a task because they received intervention services? Or were the intervention services lacking? When I have a student in front of me who has received intervention services, they're solid in their responses up to a point and then they hit a wall. The wall usually appears right at the same point they are at in the intervention or where they stop receiving services is usually a very clear line.
Jennie Sjursen 4:59
Next The evaluator needs to know if someone else in the family struggles to read or has dyslexia. This includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. It does not have to be in the nucular family unit. Dyslexia is genetic and runs through families. All three living generations of my family have at least one dyslexic. The evaluator needs to have this information and take it into consideration when analyzing your child's results. Okay, now we're down to the assessments, what skills should the actual assessments test? First, the evaluator needs to look at phonological processing. phonological processing covers three areas, phonological awareness, the ability to recognize and play with sounds, rapid automatized naming the ability to quickly retrieve words and names, and phonological working memory, the ability to hold the sounds in memory long enough to put all the pieces together. Next, the evaluation needs to include single word and nonsense word reading sub tests, these sub tests should be timed and untimed. As an interventionist, I am most interested in the nonsense word reading sub test. The scores from this test can show me if a child is truly able to decode or is really relying on their memory when asked to read. The next two pieces of evaluation should include our fluency and comprehension sub tests, these two skills are closely tied together. If you read slowly, there is a very high chance by the time you get to the end of the sentence, you won't remember the words at the beginning of the sentence, fluency and comprehension can be tested together. However, comprehension should always be assessed with a passage, followed by comprehension questions, so that the evaluator knows you really did understand what you just read. A complete diagnostic evaluation should also include sub tests related to oral language skills, vocabulary, listening comprehension, oral expression, etc. Spelling and written expression, and examiner wants to be able to compare oral expression skills with written expression skills. By doing this, they can see if your child has an overall language expressive issue, or if it's just isolated to writing. Outside of reading and language skills, a diagnostic evaluation should also test for skills in mathematics. students with dyslexia often struggle with basic math facts. Finally, a well rounded evaluation should include an IQ assessment. An IQ assessment is not required to diagnose dyslexia, but they can be really useful, especially the sub tests around working memory, processing speeds, long term retrieval, and fluid reasoning. So let's recap. Your child can be screened for a suspected reading disability. But a screener is not a diagnostic tool. A diagnostic evaluation looks for your child's individual strengths and weaknesses and should include the following analysis of the child's full medical, educational and family history. All three components are the phonological processing, word reading, both real and nonsense, fluency and comprehension sub tests, oral and written language, sub tests, mathematics, and finally, a full IQ assessment. As you can see, a full evaluation is quite comprehensive, and should provide many insights into how your child takes in processes and then outputs different forms of information. Now you have a better understanding of what your child's evaluation should include. But what you do after you get the diagnosis and final report, and our next regular episode, we'll look at what to do once you've received your child's official dyslexia diagnosis. Our very next episode, in honor of October being dyslexia Awareness Month, we're stepping out and celebrating the Dyslexics in our life. Come paint the town silver with us. I hope you enjoyed this episode of literacy untangled if you love this episode as much as I did, head on over and rate and subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you want to continue the conversation or share your takeaways, head on over to our Instagram at literacy untangled and comment on your favorite part. I can't wait to hang out with you again soon. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
