[00:00:00] All the advice I'm getting tells me I need to get a comprehensive evaluation for my daughter, but I don't know what that means.
I'm Jennie Sjursen, ex-special educator turned dyslexia interventionist. It wasn't so long ago that I too was overwhelmed by balanced literacy versus structured literacy, education speak, and everything in between.
Fast forward after many, many hours of self driven education, and you'll see I've built a thriving dyslexia practice helping students from age six to 18, my specialties, working with a quote, unquote, difficult, almost always to a student and breaking down the complexities of dyslexia to everyday language strategies and action steps.
If you've been listening to me or following me for a while, you know, when I talk about special education evaluations, I always say you want a comprehensive evaluation.
[00:01:00] So what does that mean? Thank you. To help you get a better understanding, I've broken it down into eight key areas that your child needs to be assessed on.
The data from these key areas are then compiled and analyzed for the final written evaluation reports. The reason I said reports is that there are several areas where different specialists conduct the assessments. For example, assessments can be done by the school psychologist, Speech and Language Pathologist, Occupational Therapist, and Assisted Technology Specialist.
Each of these specialists will write a report specific to their area. All of these reports combined make up the comprehensive evaluation. So now, let's look at the eight key areas. One, review of medical, physical, educational records, and family history. A comprehensive evaluation should start with a thorough review of all current medical developmental and educational records.
[00:02:00] What are the events that led to your child sitting in front of the evaluator? Medically, the evaluator also wants to rule out any hearing or vision problems. Dyslexia is neither of those. They also want to rule out any head trauma issues. The evaluator needs to know if the school has tried any interventions with your child and which ones.
Prior interventions can influence how a child approaches a task or responds to a question. An experienced evaluator can quickly pick this up and will note the effectiveness of the interv And we'll note the effectiveness of the intervention in their final reports. Was the child able to complete a task because they received intervention services, or where the intervention services were lacking?
When I have a student in front of me who has received intervention services, they are solid in their responses up to a point, and then they hit a wall.
[00:03:00] The wall usually appears right at the same point they are at in the intervention or where they stopped receiving services. It is usually a very clear line.
Finally, the evaluator needs to know if someone else in the family struggles to read or has dyslexia. This includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It does not have to be in the nuclear family unit. Dyslexia is genetic and runs through families. All three living generations of my family have at least one dyslexic.
The evaluator needs to have this information and take it into consideration when analyzing your child's results. Two, cognitive and intellectual functioning or IQ testing. An IQ test is not required to diagnose dyslexia, but it provides very useful information, especially the subtests. They can give the IEP team and instructor valuable information about a child's working memory, processing speed, long term retrieval, and fluid reasoning.
[00:04:00] The data collected from these subtests directly impact instruction delivery and accommodations. 3. Speech and language, including receptive and expressive language. A comprehensive evaluation should also include assessments related to oral language skills, such as vocabulary, listening comprehension, oral reception, and expression.
Spelling and written expression should also be assessed. An examiner wants to be able to compare oral expression skills with written expression skills. By doing this, they can see if your child has any overall oral language weaknesses, such as articulation, receptive, or expressive issues. Issues in oral language can not only impact foundational reading and writing skills, but also reading comprehension.
[00:05:00] 4. Academic Achievement. The academic achievement portion of the assessment assesses your child's skills In reading, math, spelling, and writing, these assessments compare your child's skills with their similarly aged peers. These assessments are like early childhood benchmarks. Is your child making similar progress as most of the peers their age, or are they falling behind?
And where are they falling behind? Five, social, emotional, and behavioral development. How does your child interact with their peers and adults? Can they emotionally regulate themselves or are they displaying behavioral challenges? It is very difficult to help a child academically if their emotional and behavioral needs are not met.
This is a very important piece towards looking at the whole child. Six, motor skills. An occupational therapist handles this key area. They are assessing your child's fine and gross motor skills. These skills include coordination, balance, and handwriting.
[00:06:00] The outcome of these assessments can not only lead to OT services, but also important accommodations and assistive technology recommendations, such as slant boards and pencil grips.
7. Adaptive Behaviors Adaptive Behavior Assessments measure a child's self care, social skills, and practical life skills in daily life. Think money concepts, telling time, rule following, working in groups, and the ability to read maps and schedules. Other related services such as assisted technology or AT.
It's often forgotten that AT not only covers high tech, such as speech to text and text to speech, but also low tech, such as pencil grips, slant boards, large print books, reading guides, and raised line paper.
[00:07:00] If you're told, oh, we don't do AT until they get older, remind them that AT covers low tech too and is one of the required areas of an IEP for the team to discuss and make decisions on.
Getting a comprehensive special education evaluation, one that covers all of these eight key areas, looks at the whole child, not just the suspected needs. If your evaluator works off the basis of suspected needs, they're working off of feelings and assumptions. Feelings and assumptions are just that, feelings and assumptions.
Not usable data for making decisions and setting up an IEP that truly reflects and meets the needs of your whole child. If you have any further questions about dyslexia or comprehensive evaluations, please feel free to sneak into my inbox. I'd also love your input. What would you like to hear from me in the future?
Is there a topic I haven't covered yet that you really want to learn more about? Or do you have a pressing need and you're not really sure how to handle it or move forward?
[00:08:00] Send me a DM on Instagram or drop me an email at Jennie at literacyuntangled. com. That's J E N N I E at literacyuntangled. com. I can't wait to hear from you.
Until next time. Bye bye.
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I can't wait to hang out with you again soon. Bye!
