Diagnostic Assessment and Intervention Project

Diagnostic Assessment and Intervention Project

Student’s Name

Institution

Diagnostic Assessment and Intervention Project

Background

Benji, 10 years old has Spanish as his Native language at home but is also fluent in social English/ Spanish. Wed a chance to converse with the mother who didn’t seem to have any difficulty speaking English as well. At the initial stages of the interview, we had the necessary overview of who Benji is. He has autism, asthma and gets easily frustrated. His needs were written as comprehension and reading, language arts. His strengths and interests are playing sports and drawing. Through personal observation, I was able to establish that Benji is a very enthusiastic boy. He is quite talkative and joins the discussion during class time. He does have difficulty with writing or spelling and therefore prefers expressing her thoughts verbally than in writing. Since the classroom is discussion based and a lot of talking, it worked to his advantage by giving him more flexibility with doing his wok while still having fun and talking of what to write.

Preparation

For preparation purposes, I assembledthe necessary assessment materials for the phonologic student, these included word lists of various grades.

Administration of Assessment Battery

San Diego quick

The purpose of this test was to get a general measure of the overall reading ability of the student and to measure the ability to recognize words out of context, since proficient readers are usually accurate both in and out of context

This test involved 13 graded word lists obtained from preprimary to eleventh grade, words being of equal difficulty. Normally poor readers rely on context and recognize words in context easier than out of context.

The student read word lists of increasing difficulty until he reached a” frustration” level. Beginning with a list that is two or three grade level below the students current academic placement, I gave the student a test sheet and I told him there were a number of short word list on that page andI pointed to the list he was to begin with while reading each word aloud. Encouraged the student to try reading each and every word no matter how difficult it was.

In the event that the student paused before attempting to pronounce a word, I encouraged him to try but after five seconds I would tell him to move on to the next word. The student read successive lists and in any case he made fewer than three errors I would commend him.

CORE Phoneme Deletion Test

This test included four phoneme deletion tasks that were arranged in order of difficulty, first being asses the student’s ability to delete initial phonemes while the rest assessed the students ability to delete final phonemes such as /t/ in a word like seat.

The core phoneme deletion test was used as a screening measure, progress monitoring measure and a diagnostic measure, whereby it contained tasks that were expected to be mastered in grades k-3.

These tasks would help to determine whether deficits in phonemic, orsound, awareness account for the students reading or spelling delays.

Before I administered each task, I used practice items to teach the task, whereby I praised the student for even close approximation of the correct answers. However I only gave general feedback while administering the test items was keen not to correct errors, instead I consisted praised him for his willingness to participate. I subjected the student to several tests including initial sound (late kindergarten and grade one, final sound (grade 1), first sound of a consonant blend (grade 2), embedded sound of a consonant blend (grade 3) in that order. In the first test I gave two practice items;

I told the student to say aloud the word cat after which he would say it without the /k/ .If the student responded incorrectly I would repeat to him the word emphasizing the /k/ while artificially separating it from the at where necessary I would say each word slowly in a bid to help the student. We repeated the item until the student gave the correct response.

We repeated the process using the word table. When the responded to these two items we proceeded to task 2 whereby I told the student that we were going to play another word game whose rules were abit different therefore he was to pay close attention. We repeated the process in task 1 using the word seat until the student responded correctly and then proceeded to test 3.

I told him that we were to do something different so he would pay close attention. We repeated the previous process but this time the first sound of the consonant blend was to be silent in the practice item “slip”. When the student was able to respond to at least two of the test items we moved on to the last test part.As usual I told the student that we would play yet another word game with different rules we repeated the previous processes using the word play whereby he would say the word aloud and repeat without the /l/.After several incorrect responses he could respond to the practice item.

Core Phoneme Segmentation Test

This was done to test the ability of the student to break a word into component phonemes or sounds, and was also used as a screening measure, progress monitoring measure and a specific skills measure.It provided information regarding his response to instructions, and monitor delays in reading and spelling that could not be attributed to limited English or limited exposure to instructions, this was after giving test of comprehension, fluency and phonics.

Normally older students who are significantly behind in reading and spelling have underdeveloped phonemic awareness hence the test can be used to determine whether deficits in sound awareness would account for serious delays in reading or spelling.

I only proceeded to the test items after the student demonstrated understanding of the practice item tasks, while teaching, I consistently praised the student for close approximation of the correct answer, however while administering test items, I only gave general feedback. Neither did I correct errors nor praise correct answers but recorded the students exact response on the blank line the after administering each item I indicated whether the response was correct or not.

Under this test I subjected him to two practice items whereby laid out on the table eight blocks of assorted colors in a horizontal line from left to right. The block color was not important; however I used a different color block for each of the different sounds in the word putting the blocks back in the pile after he completed an item. I explained to him to show me the sounds in the word sit using different blocks for each sound i.e. /s/i/t/.

I gave him another item in which he would use the blocks to show the sounds in the word shop. Where he could not do the segmentation independently I did a demonstration and also reminded him to attend too sounds rather than letters until he could at least point to the block that represented the correct sound and then we would proceed.

CORE Graded High-Frequency word survey

This consisted of five word list that assessed his recognition of words occurring very frequently in text at each of grade k-4.The list took into account the changing frequency of particular words from grade to grade and reflected the high frequency words encountered by the students as they progressed through grades.

This survey was used as a screening measure and also as an outcome measure providing data at the end of an instructional period. This could whether or not he needed instruction in selected high frequency words at his grade level or if further assessment was needed.

High frequency words are crucial for comprehension; their automatic recognition affects the flow and coherence of texts and hence contributes to reading fluency.

Administration of the word list at his grade level was done to test specific skills I continuously monitored his progress to mastery, this included the student reading out words aloud where I would mark errors on the record form by crossing out missed words.

Administration of word list for each preceding grade was done until the student performed satisfactorily.

Assessment findings

Having assessed the student below is a summary of the findings in the four tests that I carried out. The student exhibited various phonological problems in the four tests carried out. These included syllable deletion, phoneme blending and syllable segmentation among others.

Using the San Diego quick assessment reading ability, he suffered consisted “frustration” due to difficulties in reading word lists; however I kept encouraging him to continue trying even in the event that he didn’t utter a word. The student’s response to instruction was not very impressive as the student could take time to respond to instruction given.

In fig.1, In the core phoneme deletion test, I found out that the deficit in phonemic and sound awareness did not account much for students reading and spelling delays, he seemed to respond well to most of the words in this word list except for a few in the final sound and the embedded sound of a consonant blend

In fig.2, CORE Graded High Frequency Word Survey

In this test he exhibited good ability in recognizing words with high frequency at all grade levels. the student seemed to experience difficulties in general coordination between hearing and speech, however he could respond correctly after I gave him more time to repeat the words he responded incorrectly.

(Attach image)

Fig.1

Fig.2

assessment Test Grade level expectations Score

Core phonemic awareness Phoneme segmentation test Bench mark 14-15

Strategic 11-13

Intensive 0-10 11/15 (strategic)

Phoneme deletion Bench mark 5

Intensive 0-4 5(bench mark)

1.phoneme deletion 2.final sound Bench mark 5

Intensive 0-4

4(bench mark)

3.first sound of a consonant blend Bench mark 5

Intensive 0-4 4(bench mark)

4.embedded sound of a consonant blend Bench mark 5

Strategic 4

Intensive 0-3

18

assessment

Overall reading ability test Grade level Score out of 10

San Diego quick Pre primer 10

Primer 10

Grade 1 10

Grade 2 9

Grade 3 6

Grade 4 8

Grade 5 7

Grade 6 5

Grade 7 Grade 8 Grade 9 Grade 10 Grade 11 assessment test List score

Ability to recognize high frequency words Core graded high frequency word survey List k 10 (bench mark)

List I 24 (bench mark)

List II 24 (bench mark)

List III 24 (bench mark)

List IV 24 (bench mark)