Transcript Notes

Non-Word Spelling

• Assesses sound symbol.

• Student must speak and spell a recording of a non-word.

• Important to use nonsense words rather than real words because:

  • Helps the student encode sounds and correspond them with letters.

  • Students have no prior knowledge like little.

  • Student cannot do well on this test just because they have memorized words.

  • They truly have to use their active letter-sound correspondence knowledge to spell nonsense words.

• If assessing for potential dyslexia, it is informative.

  • Tells if the student is effectively using letter sound correspondences.

Written Expression Word Score

• Assesses the student's written expression skills at the word level and at the sentence discourse level using sentence combining tasks.

• Has a basic level and a more cognitively complex linguistic group.

• Test taker is given a short story with choppy sentences and their task is to rewrite the story to make it less choppy.

• Three different scores can be calculated based on this that pertain to different aspects of language.

• The word score pertains to spelling.

  • Calculates the proportion of words that the test taker wrote that were correctly spelled.

• Important to administer this subtest when thinking about dyslexia.

  • Want to do both nonword spelling and written expression words for to get different types of information.

  • Nonword spelling assesses the skill without context.

    • Do they have it or do they not.

  • Spelling through written expression gives context.

    • Other words that they might be familiar with or familiar patterns.

    • Gives a more complete picture of the child's overall spelling abilities.

    • Words are written in front of them, all they need to do is copy it.

• Context is a keyword.

  • Words in passages are simple, not very challenging.

  • Students should be familiar with the words and able to spell them.

  • They have the visual (can copy if they don't remember).

• Nonword spelling taps into the process.

  • Can the students rely on letters of correspondences without context.

• Written expression words for tap into the student's knowledge.

  • Do they know how to spell a certain number of words that are familiar.

• A student may do fairly well on the written expression of words for because they have memorized sight words and have the visual.

• On a school assessment like this, they might do fairly well, but do very poorly on the non learning studies and the community awareness.

• That is the pattern of performance expected in a student with dyslexia in early elementary grades.

  • They have built up a stock of words that they have memorized and they can spell them correctly.

• Their cognitive skills are lacking; their ability to use cognitive skills and their knowledge of the alphabet to spell correctly is not as efficient.

• Students with dyslexia typically have challenges with the group studies.

  • Comparisons with dyslexia: students with typical skills typically do much more poorly on those two subscales.

• Vocabulary awareness is just word knowledge.

• Vocabulary knowledge is an aspect of reading and writing.

  • If you know more words, you will be able to learn how to spell more words and understand more words.

• Average range for subtest scale scores is 7-13.

  • 7 is one standard deviation below.

  • 13 is one standard deviation above.

Leah's Scores

• Based on the results, Leah might have dyslexia because phoneme awareness and nonword spelling is hard for students with dyslexia, and those two being below average could mean dyslexia.

• The test was designed by experts on dyslexia and language disorders to help clinicians and professionals tease skills apart.

• Results are consistent with concerns noted in the referral.

  • She struggles with reading and spelling less frequent words, especially if they have not been explicitly taught, which is consistent with nonword spelling results.

• Always double-check the results of the test scores and interpretation of the test scores with the referral information.

Broader Language Impairment (DLD)

• Might also be interested in knowing whether she also has a broader language in here.

• There is room for overlap and comorbidity for someone to be diagnosed with both dyslexia and DLD.

• Want to test for what language skills, to see whether in addition to potentially having dyslexia, Leah might also have a broader just language disorder.

  • Receptive language (comprehend language).

    • Based on the vocabulary awareness, you have a glimpse because she is being given those words auditorily.

    • Want to know her complicate comprehension skills beyond just the vocabulary.

  • Story retail on the tales could be a good one.

    • Retail also has a big memory component.

    • Test for comprehension with shorter stimuli to make sure that this is truly just the comprehension instead of increasing cognitive load and memory load.

  • Listening comprehension subtest of the tools that could tap into the receptive language.

    • Looks at their ability to comprehend complex syntax of academic language, draw inferences, and metalinguistic knowledge.

How to Assess Receptive Language

• Have her tell you something that she's learning about in school and see if she comprehends the information; create a language sample and see if you have any questions.

• Curriculum-based: listen in on a class presentation or the directions that the teacher is giving in the classroom, or have her read a text that's being used in the classroom and assess your comprehension of what is being covered in the classroom.

• Do this informally by sitting in on a class session and observing how she's responding to directions.

  • Is she right on task, understanding and doing everything the way she's supposed to, or is she kind of looking to the neighbor to see what they're doing, looking for other cues, or sitting and not necessarily engaging with the task.

    • It could be that she's not really comprehending what she needs to be doing.

• Language sample: narrative language sample, like the books that they read to the students, and then they have to repeat it back to you.

• Conversational language: participating in conversations.

  • Ask them about their hobbies and their siblings and what they like to do after school; get an idea of how well they can sequence; ask them how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  • Listen and scribe and take notes.

  • Have a robust language sample on a variety of topics; can they engage; get an idea of their social and pragmatic language skills.

• Even when you're not administering a standardized assessment, you're just having an initial conversation or asking background questions, this is all conversational language.

  • Client is either engaging the way you would expect them to, or maybe not so much.

• If they're engaging the way you would expect them to, then, you have some reason to believe that receptive skills are in place because there are no issues with the conversations and then understanding what you're saying.

• If they're not responding appropriately, then you need to use critical thinking to try and tease that apart and there could be several reasons, but receptive language skills might potentially be an area needed for.

• In terms of understanding the more holistic assessment process, it's not just the standardized tests, it's every aspect of the interaction that you have with the client from the moment they come in to the moment they leave.

• It's every aspect that you could observe if you're doing a classroom observation, or if you're asking the parent or the teacher to complete some kind of a checklist.

Supporting Comprehension

• Before, during, and after reading (BDA) strategies.

• Show them the cover and ask what they think the book/passage is about based on the cover or title.

• Do a picture walk: make predictions of what is gonna happen.

• Have them scan the passage and highlight vocabulary words that they're not familiar with.

• KWL chart: What do you know? What do you want to know? What did you learn?

• Ask questions that they might have based on the vocabulary and write them down.

• While they're reading, stop periodically and do quick comprehension checks or ask them to give a quick summary of what they read.

• After, talk about how well did you predict and how well were you at accurately answering the questions you have.

• Link the topic to a person's individual experience; activate background knowledge.

  • Do you like rainy days? Do you like rainy days in the summer? When was the last day? Where do you experience rain on the summer day? How does it feel to you? How does it feel on a cold day? What are your favorite activities if you can't go outside because of the rain? Do you love to go outside in the rain?

• Questions like this will help activate background knowledge and individual personal experience.

• Helps you allow you to be asking comparison questions (how does your experience compare to this person's experience).

• Helps the student make connections with the text by connecting to: self from personal experiences, others' experiences, the wide world, or future events.

• Learning = fitting the new information with the context of the information that you're already reading.

• Contextualize it somehow.

• Helps students process and understand and integrate this with their background knowledge and learn from what they're reading.

• Have conversations about whether the sentiments that were expressed in the passage were new, surprising, or different.

• Preview vocabulary and anticipate what vocabulary might be challenging.

• Support them in being independent in trying to figure out the meaning of the words from the context of the passage or from the dictionary.

• They can scan and identify vocabulary that they're not familiar with.

• Practice comprehension monitoring.

  • Ask them to stop where they're not comprehending.

• Identify a particular structure, like a passive sentence or a relative clause.

  • Wonderful opportunity if you're teaching structural language.

  • Have the student try and identify relative clauses.

  • Talk out loud as you're identifying the relative clauses to help the student understand how that is done.

  • Help them figure out how to comprehend them and what they actually tell you.

• Support Comprehension at different levels

  • Macro structure level.

  • Global structure.

  • Perspectives: How do we view it from this perspective? How do we view it from that perspective? Perspective taking is also an important aspect of comprehension.

  • If you're focusing on this and you're teaching about this, you are supporting comprehension.

• Supporting comprehension is not just asking comprehension questions.

• Can use comprehension questions at the end or in the middle or post the questions even before they right

• There's so much that can be done of all of these different levels to support students' comprehension overall.

Vocabulary

• Tier 2 words: more challenging, more abstract words that can be used across different domains (not specific to a subject).

• Use the dictionary online (pronunciation). Teach your students to do that.

• Figurative Language: anchors to the literal, the physical, then the figurative makes a little bit more sense.

• Four principles of school-based intervention: curriculum-based, metalinguistic, metacognitive, 4 modalities (hear it, read it, say it, rate it), collaborate (with other professionals or family members).