dysTalk Reading And Maths Assessments - Talks - dysTalk

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About this talk: Veronica Bidwell gives an insight into what reading and maths assessments entail. The talk covers how assessments are scored, what scores mean and the implications.

About the speaker: With over 40 years experience Veronica has been undertaking private assessments since 1996 and during this time has advised around 2,000 families. From 1998-2001 she was the Consultant Psychologist at Fairley House School (catering for pupils with Specific Learning Difficulties). Between 1988 and 1996 Veronica worked as an Educational Psychologist for two of London's Local Education Authorities. Before becoming an Educational Psychologist, Veronica taught in both mainstream and special schools. The latter catered for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties and pupils with serious physical disabilities.

Talk Topics - Dyscalculia - Dyslexia - Dyspraxia

Further information about this Talk

For more information about Veronica Bidwell and her practice please click here.

Key Points Covered in This Talk:

• Reading Assessment: Even if you are told the child can read, it is always important for an assessor to check that up. In the WYATT reading test the reading is in three parts.
  - Reading accuracy: Where children read through a list of individual words so there is no context to give any hints. Through this you can notice how persistent a child is and how hard they have to work to decode their words. This gives a view as to how well a child is reading relative to his or her peer group. A child will get a score compared to the national average of children within a three month age band. This is called a standard score where 100 is average.
  -  Pseudo word decoding: This involves a list of nonsense words. It is very effective at picking up dyslexic children who will stumble on these words.
  - Reading Comprehension: Children read (silently) long texts followed by questions. They read some short texts aloud allowing the assessor to tick off target words. The longer text is timed.
• Maths Assessment: The test goes up very rapidly from 2+2 to sums that A-Level students might do. It is important to observe children doing it to find out if they are having difficulty with the process and to see what kind of mistakes they are making. 
• Conclusions: These assessments give an idea of how a child is functioning relative to other children their age. You can get bright children whose reading accuracy and pseudo word decoding may be well below average but their comprehension score will be well above or similar discrepancies. Therefore unless all three are done you don't get the complete picture.