Assessment & EligibilitySemantics

June 2, 2010

**Information obtained from class texts and TN Dept. of Special Education website

Requirements for Initial Evaluations Evaluation materials are in the child’s native language

or mode of communication as much as feasible Information from parents must be included Information must be included related to enabling the

child to be involved in a progress in the general curriculum or appropriate preschool activities

Information must assist in determining whether this is a child with a disability and what the contents of the IEP should be

Standardized tests are valid for the purpose, and administered by trained and knowledgeable personnel according to directions

Any nonstandard uses of tests are reported

Requirements (cont.) No single procedure is used as the sole

criterion for determining if this is a child with a disability or determining an appropriate program

The child is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities

Assessment:

Assessment Areas Speech Language Oral Mechanism Pre-vocational assessment Work Samples Voice Fluency

Speech/Articulation Formal Assessment (GFTA-2, Photo Articulation Test,

etc.) (compare to developmental norms charts) Informal Assessment – conversational sample

Error analysis –compare to single word production Stimulability – use stimulability section of GFTA-2 or

charts on sped website Teacher Input – Sound production

Documentation of adverse affect on child’s academic performance

Oral Mechanism Evaluation Intelligibility Rating Hearing Screening

Phonological Processes

Assessing Stimulability

Interpretation of eval results

Eligibility of Articulation

Gather test results Use severity rating scale Remember to consider your

conversational sample and intelligibility rating

Assessment of Language

A minimum of 2 of the following measures should be used in the evaluation process Criterion or norm-referenced test Functional communication analysis Language/communication samples

Assessment of Lang. (continued)

Assessment of Lang. (cont.)

Assessment of severe disabilities

Conducting a Language Eval

Conducting Language Eval

Conducting Lang. Eval.

Determining Eligibility

Assessment of Fluency

Practice Review test results for test case Age 4, 3 34 errors on GFTA-2 Oral Motor –WNL OWLS – Receptive – 92, Expressive- 90 No dysfluencies No voice issues Conversational speech intelligibility

Good when context known Fair when context unknown

Test Case Goals????? Severity Rating Scale Evaluation Report Easy IEP

Insert data Prior written notice Eligibility report IEP Invitation to meeting

Semantics

Receptive Vocabulary Most assessment batteries have a

receptive vocabulary section…if a student exhibits scores below the normal range, a problem with receptive vocabulary can be identified.

Further evaluation should focus on assessing his/her knowledge of words needed to succeed in the classroom

Instructional Vocabulary Note the kinds of spatial, temporal, logical, and

directive vocabulary the teacher uses. An example would be to use conduct a criterion-

referenced assessment of vocabulary typically used in the classroom.

This could be in a game format. “Let’s pretend you’re a soldier. You follow the

sergeant’s orders and write what the sergeant says to write on this paper. Draw a star in an upper corner of the paper Now draw a tank on the right-hand side of the paper. Write today’s date Number your paper from 1-10 Now draw a line down the left side of the paper Now put a square in the upper left-hand corner

Textbook Vocabulary Look at child’s textbooks for potentially

problematic vocabulary Obtain wordlists from glossaries at end of

chapter, spelling lists (which are often derived from vocabulary from weekly readings)

Remember that students with language disorders not only have difficulty with technical vocabulary but often content vocabulary

Content vocabulary and activities to assess each area

Spatial terms – above, north Make dots above the sticker Make dots below the sticker Make dots around the sticker

Temporal terms – after, following Make a noise after I say “Go” Make a noise before I say “Go”

Connectives – however, consequently Make a noise if I say “Go” Make a noise until I say “Go”

Expressive Vocabulary

Lexical Diversity Ability to use flexible, precise vocabulary

contributes a great deal to the efficiency of our communication

Type-Token Ratio is a measure that has been used to assess lexical diversity Count total number of words (tokens) in a

50 word utterance speech sample and dividing this number into the number of different words (types) in the sample

Expressive Vocabulary Word retrieval

Word finding difficulties are often present in children with language learning disorders A red flag for presence of a word-retrieval

problem would be if a child had a much higher score on a receptive vocabulary test (PPVT or ROWPVT) than on an expressive vocabulary test (EOWPVT)

We might observe word-retrieval difficulties in conversation

Vocabulary

Research by Biemiller, 2003; dole, sloan & Trathen, 1995, has shown that students with more extensive vocabularies do better with reading comprehension as well as oral language activities

5 step program to deepen both receptive & expressive vocabulary(Blanchowicz 1986) 1. Activate what student already knows –

brainstorming 2. Make connections among words and topics –

clinician gives student lists of words from text selection and asks them to guess topic of selection

3. Use both spoken and written contexts – goal is to expose students to the words in a variety of language experiences

4. Refine and reformulate meanings – expose student to words in varying contexts

5. Use words for writing and additional reading

***Listing and defining is just not enough to get the words firmly planted in their lexicon

Word finding activites

Use visual maps Graphical organizers

Semantics and Advanced Language Learners

Literate lexicon – words needed to understand and produce language near the literate end of the oral-literate continuum

Contextual abstraction – infer the meaning of a new word from the linguistic cues that accompany it This can be assessed by having them read a

passage that has some difficult, unfamiliar words. Ask student to guess what the difficult words mean and tell why they think so

Word relations To be competent with words, we need to

know more than what words mean. We also need to know how words are related.

At this level, student need to be able to consider that words can have more than one meaning

They have to be able to substitute words with similar meanings to avoid using the same words over and over in their writing

Compare/contrast

Figurative Language

Advanced language learners need the ability to use language in a non-literal way

Similes Metaphors Idioms proverbs

Review intervention activities for semantics

Basic Vocabulary Figurative Language Multiple Meanings