The importance of targeted assessments for school aged children Thanks so much Kristin for this opportunity! Today I'd like to write a few words on a topic of speech language assessment preparation. In both my hospital based job and in private practice I do a lot of testing. During staff/caregiver interviews I used to get a laundry list of both specific and non-specific problems by the parents and teachers, which did not always accurately reflect the students true deficits. Experience quickly taught me that administering general comprehensive language testing to every student simply did not work. Oftentimes the administration of such testing revealed one of two things:
- Child's performance was within normal limits on a general language test but the child still presented with significant deficits in other language areas (e.g., problem solving, social pragmatic language, word-finding, etc)
- Child scored so low on a general comprehensive language test (e.g., CELF-4) that it was very difficult to decide which goals should be targeted in therapy first. Had a test of decreased complexity been administered first, several language strengths could have been identified, based on which therapy goals could have been structured and build upon.
- Page 1 Title
- Page 2 Directions
- Pages 3-6 Checklist
- Pages 7-8 Suggested Speech-Language Test Selection for School-Aged Children
- Page 9 Select Language Testing Battery Suggestions
- Page 10-12 Supplemental Caregiver/Teacher Data Collection Form
- Receptive Language
- Memory, Attention and Sequencing
- Expressive Language
- Vocabulary
- Narrative
- Speech
- Voice
- Resonance
- Phonological Awareness
- Problem Solving
- Pragmatic Language
- Social Emotional Development
- Executive Functions
- Project efficient and professional image via detailed preparatory process
- Save time by sending the checklist to the caregiver/teacher instead of conducting lengthy interviews
- Quickly determine the child's most significant deficits areas
- Base test selection on accurate staff/caregiver report vs guesswork
- Assess only the RELEVANT areas of difficulty via administration of targeted tests or select test subtests
- Quickly access list of speech-language tests categorized by area of focus in one place
- Review testing battery suggestions if uncertain regarding specific test administration
- Quickly tally the results of supplemental caregiver/teacher data collection form for students with severe language deficits in order to pinpoint the starting assessment point