Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties

Introduction

• Presenter: David Kilpatrick
• Sponsored by the Exceptional Student Services Unit
• Collaboration with learning disability specialists, Jill Marshall and Veronica Fiedler
• Vision: All students in Colorado become educated, productive citizens
• Mission: Prepare students for success by providing leadership, service, and support.

Overview of Modules

• Total of 13 modules
• Comprehensive learning experience
• Focus on assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties
• Module 6: Introduction to Reading Assessment, which includes three sessions.

Session 1: Introduction to Intervention-Oriented Assessment

• Intervention-oriented assessment: Different from traditional assessments.
• Traditional assessments often focus on determining presence of educational disability.
• Strengths and weaknesses approach lacks grounding in research.
• Intervention-oriented assessment: Based on reading research, focuses on why students struggle.
• Benefits:
  • Less time-consuming.
  • Suggests informed instruction based on research.

Problems with Traditional Assessments

• Traditional assessments are backward looking, often not informed by cognitive psychology or reading research.
• Learning theory-based interventions lack in assessing phonemic awareness and letter sound proficiency.
• Intervention-oriented assessment emphasizes research-based intervention, not just learning theory.

Implementation Challenges

• No standardized test batteries for intervention-oriented assessment.
• Evaluation teams need to use multiple subtests for reliability.
• Emphasizes understanding subtest scores over composite scores.

Interpretation of "Average"

• "Average" often misinterpreted; does not align with base rate of reading difficulties.
• Importance of assessing the nature of a child's reading problems.

Session 2: Issues in Assessing Phonological Skills

• Focus: Phonological core deficit which includes:
  • Poor phonemic awareness
  • Poor phonemic blending
  • Poor rapid automatized naming
  • Poor phonological working memory
  • Poor letter sound skills
• Importance of multiple subtests for assessing phonological skills.
• Distinguishing between phoneme analysis and synthesis.
• Use of phonemic manipulation tasks, which are more indicative of reading ability.

Session 3: Phonological Awareness and Blending Assessment

• Analysis vs. Synthesis tasks:
  • Analysis: Breaking words apart
  • Synthesis: Blending parts of words
• Emphasis on phonemic manipulation tasks for revealing phonological proficiency.
• Avoid blending and analysis subtests in the same composite.
• Importance of separating tasks and correlating phonemic manipulation with reading proficiency.

Recommended Assessments

• Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOP)
• Phonological Awareness Test 2 (PAT-2)
• Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PASS) for phonemic proficiency.

Conclusion

• Phonemic manipulation tasks best assess phonemic proficiency, crucial for reading development.
• Need for tailored evaluation to address specific phonological skills.

Upcoming Topics

• Module 7 will cover assessing letter sound skills and phonics skills.