Informal Reading Assessments for Middle School Students With Blending Sounds Disability

Diagnosing Dyslexia

This guide is intended for those of you who are new to the world of dyslexia. We highlight the areas that you volition desire to evaluate in order to make a diagnosis of dyslexia.

The basics to evaluation include a comprehensive case history, an observation of speaking and reading, and a specific battery of assessments targeting spoken language, phonological processing (including awareness, memory, and rapid automatic naming), reading, spelling, and writing. We await for strong linguistic communication comprehension skills with poor performance in phonological processing, decoding text, reading fluently, spelling, and/or writing that is non in concert with the private'south predicted performance.

Yous will demand to help the individuals with dyslexia and parents empathise that reading, spelling, and writing are linguistic communication-based skills. Examples of how an individual's phonological awareness and knowledge of orthography, vocabulary, morphology, semantic relationships, and mental orthographic images contribute to the reading and spelling procedure volition aid explicate the relationship between oral and written language.

The Case History
Ascertainment
Assessments
Language
Phonological Sensation
Rapid Naming or Word Fluency
Reading Fluency
Reading Comprehension
Spelling
Writing
Multicultural Considerations
School Problems
Dyslexia Diagnosis

The Case History—Pre-assessment Information

If you don't already have a case history template, hither are some areas to accost. The case history grade should include questions on:

personal information
birth complications
languages spoken
medical history
educational history
family unit history of dyslexia or suspected dyslexia, learning disabilities, voice communication and language delays or other factors that may be related.

You will want to review the individual education plan (IEP) if at that place is one.

Reports from other professionals volition as well be pertinent to your evaluation and will aid in selecting assessment tools that will non only assist in the accurate diagnosis of dyslexia, merely will too assist in peradventure identifying concomitant disorders and in making authentic recommendations.

Observation of Advice Skills

A conversation with your client or student will exist very beneficial. This breezy ascertainment of communication serves several purposes; getting information about the speech, linguistic communication and pragmatic language in an informal setting; giving information near what will take identify during the testing; and developing a rapport to make the assessment process every bit relaxed as possible. By the time a child is in second class, sometimes earlier, they may be aware that they are having a challenging time learning to read. Discussing these challenges with the individual is invaluable. The questions, "Exercise you like to read?" and "What have you read?" often provide additional valuable insights. Asking well-nigh favorite classes/subjects and least favorite classes/subjects also provides data about strengths and weaknesses.

Battery of Assessments Targeting Linguistic communication and Reading

Prior to testing, it is common practice to rule out any hearing acuity difficulties. The following list outlines the foundational areas to be tested to make a diagnosis of dyslexia:

Linguistic communication
Phonological awareness
Rapid naming/word fluency
Reading fluency
Reading comprehension
Spelling
Writing

Language

We know that oral linguistic communication provides the foundation for the evolution of reading and writing and individuals with oral language problems often develop disorders of literacy. You volition want to include a examination of language that volition give information virtually an individual's receptive and expressive language abilities, language processing, morphological skills, and pragmatic linguistic communication skills. Typically, an individual with dyslexia volition non have a concomitant language disorder, especially when they are younger, although challenges with verbal expression may be present. Past definition, an private with dyslexia has average receptive language skills. However, the inability to read and write often prevents an individual from using language at higher levels and as a outcome vocabulary development may be compromised. Over time, dyslexia limits reading, which may also artificially depress IQ scores. A formal cess of linguistic communication with a standardized test may as well be accompanied past an informal cess such every bit a language sample and questions to parents and teachers about an individual'south pragmatic language skills.

Phonological Sensation

The nearly distinguishing feature of dyslexia is poor phonological awareness, which manifests in an inability to identify and blend together individual phonemes in words. Clinical expectations of phonemic awareness vary depending on an individual'south historic period. Individuals who have difficulties in phonemic awareness may have difficulties producing rhymes and recognizing words that rhyme, counting phonemes in a word (segmenting), deleting, adding, or moving sounds effectually in a word (elision), and hearing sounds in isolation and blending them together to course a word (blending).

The lack of phonemic sensation had been found to be a loftier predictor of a reading disability. Phonemic awareness is often confused with phonics and information technology is of import to make sure that you accept a clear understanding of each and practice non confuse the two. The systematic teaching of phonemic awareness is critical for individuals diagnosed with dyslexia. Phonological awareness skills can be taught at whatever age and have been shown to ameliorate decoding, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling.

Rapid Naming or Word Fluency

Another strong indicator of dyslexia is rapid naming, also called word fluency. Rapid naming is the ability to name symbols, words, or pictures apace. This discriminating skill is based on speed, not accuracy. Poor readers are usually able to proper name symbols, words and pictures accurately, only they are characteristically slower than skilled readers. They may have more difficulty naming words than naming numbers. Another indicator of a reading inability is difficulty reading nonsense words which would point difficulty with decoding as it relates to phonics and phonemic awareness. When reading a nonsense discussion such as fornalask, an individual with difficulties with the phonemic sensation skill of blending may know the phonics of how to decode each sound correctly, merely may not be able to blend the sounds together to produce the nonsense word.

Reading Fluency

Reading fluency is the combination of the score of the accurateness of reading and the rate (speed) of which one tin can read. Reading fluency may be assessed in children who can read short paragraphs or longer reading passages. Information technology is a measure of the average number of words read correctly per minute. Poor reading fluency indicates possible problems with phonemic awareness, decoding skills, comprehension, or vocabulary. A child who reads accurately only not fluently (at a slower charge per unit) is dyslexic.

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the understanding of the printed word. When reading short paragraphs, children with dyslexia may gain merely enough content to score well on reading comprehension assessments. However, reading comprehension becomes more than difficult with increasingly longer reading material. While some people with dyslexia may be able to read fluently, they may still struggle with reading comprehension. For individuals who are fluent readers an assessment should be made of silent reading comprehension as well every bit oral reading comprehension.

Some dyslexic individuals with concomitant linguistic communication disorders may have good comprehension for literal (who, what, when, where) blazon information, but may accept neat difficulty comprehending inferential (why, how) information. Comprehension questions should assess both types of information.

Spelling

Evaluating spelling proficiency can provide valuable diagnostic information virtually phonemic awareness and language in general. Spelling ability provides insight into other types of knowledge necessary for written advice. Poor spelling may reveal weaknesses in 1 or more of the following linguistic components:

Phonemic awareness
Orthographic knowledge
Semantic knowledge
Morphological knowledge

Poor spelling may besides be a possible indicator of a hearing arrears or auditory processing disorder.

Writing

Writing, in general, is the nigh complex class of language. In many cases, a child's language difficulties are near pronounced in his/her writing. Deficiencies such as spelling errors, syntactic and semantic errors, morphologic errors, omissions of words or word endings, and general incongruities may be present. In general, assessment for all types of writing should focus on:

Productivity: How many sentences are there? How many clauses? How many paragraphs?
Complexity
Ceremoniousness for audience and topic
Cohesiveness
Mechanics
Analytic aspects

More specific analysis of writing takes different forms depending on the audition and the purpose of the writing. Other types of writing that may exist further assessed in older students include: narrative writing, expository writing, and persuasive writing.

Other—Multicultural Considerations

Cultural-linguistic background must be taken into consideration during an cess of literacy. Narrative conventions vary across cultures. Standards of reading and writing in American English are not necessarily the same, or fifty-fifty similar, in other languages. When English is non the principal language spoken in the home, problems may develop with language and therefore learning to read.

Also, some children may be from homes where the parents are not highly educated and the children may not be exposed to literature that facilitates the development of reading and writing.

Other—Schoolhouse Bug

School bug can include: behaving very quietly in the classroom to avoid existence selected to read aloud, selecting books to read that accept been read aloud to them, covering upwardly difficulty of reading by excelling in other ways, or acting out. Information technology is improve to be bad than to experience stupid. Another flag is that a parent is doing homework or it takes the child a long time to finish homework. Terminal, and importantly, despite extra assist in the school, the child is yet not learning to read.

Making the Diagnosis of Dyslexia

As with making whatever diagnosis, y'all will triangulate the information. Using the data from the example history, your informal observation and conversation, and the standardized measures, you lot will identify evidence of difficulty with phonological processing (ie. phonological awareness, phonological memory, or rapid automatic naming), poor decoding, poor reading fluency, poor reading comprehension, and/or spelling and writing difficulties. Working retentivity may be compromised. In addition, exact expressions difficulties may be present, such every bit give-and-take finding and formulating sentences. You'll desire to place strengths and weaknesses. You will want to consider other factors as well such every bit difficulty completing homework assignments or projects for work, poor time direction and organizational skills. Remember that dyslexia tin affect learning in other subjects equally well.

If the individual has good spoken linguistic communication comprehension skills (poor spoken language comprehension would indicate a diagnosis of reading disorder) , but phonological processing (i.e., phonologcial awareness, phonological memory, and/or rapid naming); reading accurateness, fluency, and/or comprehension; spelling; and/or writing skills fall below expectations based on other cognitive abilities; and there has been constructive pedagogy, you lot are most likely looking at someone who is dyslexic. Know that regardless of the individual's age, he or she can larn new skills in these areas of weakness using a structured literacy approach. Key to designing an constructive intervention program depends on a accurate diagnostic assessment. Don't delay. Start today!

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Source: http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/professionals/learn-about-dyslexia/diagnosing-dyslexia