auditory processing | Smart Speech Therapy

Posted on February 10, 2024February 22, 2024 by Tatyana Elleseff — Leave a comment

SPELL-Links™ Wordtivities Word Lists Review and Giveaway

In 2020 I reviewed a product kit (instructional guide and cards) from SPELL-Links™ Learning By Design, Inc. entitled Wordtivities: Word Study Instruction for Spelling, Vocabulary, and Reading. Today, I am reviewing a companion to that product kit: SPELL-Links™ Wordtivities Word Lists. This 180-page guide contains sets of pattern-focused word lists for whole class, small group, and 1:1 word study instruction purposes. Each grade-level word list supports the simultaneous development of pattern-specific phonological (sound), orthographic (letter), and semantic morphological (meaning) skills. The aim of this guide is to systematically address spelling, reading, speaking, and listening all together by developing a neural network for literacy and language.

SPELL-Links™ Wordtivities Word Lists are useful for students 5+ years of age who have or are in the process of developing the following knowledge and skills:

Letter-name knowledge
Alphabetic letter writing ability
Mastery of early phonological awareness (PA) skills by being able to segment words into syllables, understand and create rhyming words, and isolate sounds in words
Basic concept knowledge of directionality (left/right; top/down)

The book is organized by patterns and grade levels (K-6 grade) and by the instructional focus. For each pattern, word lists are organized to support a specific instructional focus: phonological code, orthographic code, morphological code, storage and retrieval of orthographic representations, and writing application.

The Word Lists feature 128 patterns across grades K through 6. The number of patterns taught at each grade level ranges from 9 (K) to 25 (grades 4 and 5).

Here’s an example of a 4th-grade instructional overview:

Overview of Weekly Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Pattern: Prefixes pre- (before); mid- (middle); post- (after) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Pattern: Prefixes over- (above, more than); super- (superior, exceeding); under- (below, less than);
sub- (under, subordinate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Pattern: ‘l, r’ Clusters ‘lb, ld, lf, lk, lm, lp, lt, lth, lve, lse’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Pattern: ‘l, r’ Clusters ‘rd, rf, rm, rn, rp, rt, rsh, rch, rth, rve, rge’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Pattern: ‘l, r’ Clusters ‘rse, rce’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Pattern: Homophones Set 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Pattern: Suffixes -ion, -ation, -ition (N) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Pattern: Suffix -ment (N) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Pattern: Suffix -en (V, ADJ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Pattern: ‘m, n, ng’ Clusters ‘nd, nt, mp, mph, nth, nch, ngth, nge’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Pattern: ‘m, n, ng’ Clusters ‘nk, nc’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Pattern: ‘m, n, ng’ clusters ‘nce, nse’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Pattern: Homophones Set 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Pattern: Syllabic-r Vowel Sound as in bird, father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Pattern: Suffix -ward (ADJ, ADV) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Pattern: Unstressed Vowels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Pattern: Syllabic-l Vowel Sound as in bottle, pencil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Pattern: Suffix -al (ADJ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Pattern: Suffixes -able, ible (ADJ) …………………………………………….. 109
Pattern: Suffix -ous (ADJ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Pattern: Suffixes -ive, -ative, -itive (N, ADJ)………………………………………. 111
Pattern: Suffix -ure (N) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Pattern: Contractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Pattern: Prefix tele- (far); micro- (tiny) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Pattern: Prefixes mono-, uni-, bi-, tri-, quad-, oct- (number affixes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Pattern Review

The weekly instruction will look as follows:

Monday-Tuesday: Review of Phonological and Orthographic Codes (these word pattern lists are organized into 3 groups to support differentiated instruction)
Wednesday–Thursday: Morphology
Friday: Mental Orthographic Representations and Application to Sentence Writing

The book comes with access to digital Materials Library, which contains access to the following materials:

List of pattern-loaded stories
SPELL-Links™ Pattern Inventory & Analysis Tool (PIAT)

The appeal of the product for me is that it offers numerous group-based opportunities for the solidification of evidence-based instructional practices. The book comes with very detailed implementation instructions. A variety of daily activities allow students to further advance their abilities in the areas of prefixes and suffixes, numerous homophones and clusters, unstressed vowels and even contractions. The kit also offers several appendices that review the spelling rules for word roots prefixes and suffixes, as well as detailed recommendations for pattern-loaded reading materials. To me, the appeal of this curriculum is rather multifaceted. It continues to be very difficult to find an evidence-based group instruction curriculum, and Wordtivities Word Lists once again fit the bill for it. Because it focuses on skills integration of spelling, reading, speaking, and listening it allows the students to engage in contextually based opportunities to become better listeners, speakers, readers, spellers and writers.

You can find this kit for purchase on the SPELL-Links™ Learning By Design, Inc. Store HERE.

And now for the fun part. Want to win your own copy of SPELL-Links™ Wordtivities Word Lists? Enter to win here: I want to win SPELL-Links Wordtivities Word Lists! | Learning By Design They’ll send one lucky person a copy of SPELL-Links™ Wordtivities Word Lists. Entries are accepted until 3/1/24 at 5 pm CST. The winner will be notified by email.

Posted on February 26, 2012January 5, 2022 by Tatyana Elleseff — 1 Comment

The Efficacy of the Lidcombe Program for Stuttering Preschoolers

While the prevalence of stuttering varies according to age groups (preschool, school-age, etc), the incidence of stuttering is reported to be at approximately 5%, with the onset mainly occurring during the preschool years. Based on the above, it is estimated that approximately 2.5% of children under 5 years of age stutter (The Stuttering Foundation).

Despite the strides made by the current stuttering research, much confusion and misconceptions exist with respect to the treatment of stuttering in preschoolers. Many clinicians still continue to recommend that the parents ignore the child’s stuttering or use indirect environment modification approaches in the hopes that the child’s stuttering goes away. Further complicating this issue is that oftentimes many preschool children DO spontaneously recover from their stuttering several months post onset.

While oftentimes, it may be prudent to wait a few months to see how the onset of stuttering progresses, waiting too long may be quite problematic. This is especially true for those children who become increasingly frustrated with their stuttering or those who begin to develop secondary stuttering characteristics (reactions to stuttering such as gaze avoidance, facial grimaces, extraneous body movements, words avoidance, etc).

When it comes to preschool children one intervention approach which has been highly successful to date is The Lidcombe Program. Developed in Australia, the Lidcombe Program is a fluency shaping program, which is highly effective for children 2-6 years of age who stutter.

It’s goal is to eliminate stuttering. The program focuses on behavioral feedback provided in response to a child’s fluent speech. However, it’s not the therapist who provides the treatment but the PARENTS. The researchers who developed the program firmly believe that the intervention has to take place in natural environments, and there’s nothing natural regarding the therapist’s office!

Based on theories of operant conditioning, the premise of the program is simple: parents praise stutter free speech and request for correction of stuttered speech. The Lidcombe focuses on raising the child’s awareness of stuttering and encourages verbal reactions to stutter free speech.

To start, child and parent/s attend therapy sessions once a week. The therapist teaches the parents the types of verbiage to use with their child in treatment as well as how to rate their child’s weekly stuttering incidence on a 10-point stuttering severity scale in order to obtain a percent of stuttered syllables (%SS). Parents and therapist compare severity ratings (SR) and discuss discrepancies, if any. Therapist then supervises as parent administers treatment in session. For the rest of the week parents administered treatment in structured home setting in short increments (10 to 15 minutes each) 1 to 2 times per day. As child’s awareness improves, parents’ switch from structured to unstructured settings in an effort to initiate generalization.

For more information about whether the Lidcombe Program is right for your child, visit their website or contact the speech language professionals specializing in this approach in your area.

Posted on May 27, 2016March 16, 2022 by Tatyana Elleseff — Leave a comment

The Limitations of Using Total/Core Scores When Determining Speech-Language Eligibility

In both of the settings where I work, psychiatric outpatient school as well as private practice, I spend a fair amount of time reviewing speech language evaluation reports. As I’m looking at these reports I am seeing that many examiners choose to base their decision making with respect to speech language services eligibility on the students’ core, index, or total scores, which are composite scores. For those who are not familiar with this term, composite scores are standard scores based on the sum of various test scaled scores.

When the student displays average abilities on all of the presented subtests, use of composite scores clearly indicates that the child does not present with deficits and thereby is not eligible for therapy services.

The same goes for the reverse, when the child is displaying a pattern of deficits which places their total score well below the average range of functioning. Again, it indicates that the child is performing poorly and requires therapy services.

However, there’s also a the third scenario, which presents a cause for concern namely, when the students display a pattern of strengths and weaknesses on a variety of subtests, but end up with an average/low average total scores, making them ineligible for services.

Results of the Test of Problem Solving -2 Elementary (TOPS-3)

Subtests	Raw Score	Standard Score	Percentile Rank	Description
Making Inferences	19	83	12	Below Average
Sequencing	22	86	17	Low Average
Negative Questions	21	95	38	Average
Problem Solving	21	90	26	Average
Predicting	18	92	29	Average
Determining Causes	13	82	11	Below Average
Total Test	114	86	18	Low Average

Results of the Test of Reading Comprehension-Fourth Edition (TORC-4)

Subtests	Raw Score	Standard Score	Percentile Rank	Description
Relational Vocabulary	24	9	37	Average
Sentence Completion	25	9	37	Average
Paragraph Construction	41	12	75	Average
Text Comprehension	21	7	16	Below Average
Contextual Fluency	86	6	9	Below Average
Reading Comprehension Index	90			Average

The above tables, taken from different evaluations, perfectly illustrate such a scenario. While we see that their total/index scores are within average range, the first student has displayed a pattern of strengths and weaknesses across various subtests of the TOPS-3, while the second one displayed a similar performance pattern on the TORC-4.

Typically in such cases, clinical judgment dictates a number of options:

Administration of another standardized test further probing into related areas of difficulty (e.g., in such situations the administration of a social pragmatic standardized test may reveal a significant pattern of weaknesses which would confirm student’s eligibility for language therapy services).
Administration of informal/dynamic assessments/procedures further probing into the student’s critical thinking/verbal reasoning skills.

Image result for follow up Here is the problem though: I only see the above follow-up steps in a small percentage of cases. In the vast majority of cases in which score discrepancies occur, I see the examiners ignoring the weaknesses without follow up. This of course results in the child not qualifying for services.

So why do such practices frequently take place? Is it because SLPs want to deny children services? And the answer is NOT at all! The vast majority of SLPs, I have had the pleasure interacting with, are deeply caring and concerned individuals, who only want what’s best for the student in question. Oftentimes, I believe the problem lies with the misinterpretation of/rigid adherence to the state educational code.

For example, most NJ SLPs know that the New Jersey State Education Code dictates that initial eligibility must be determined via use of two standardized tests on which the student must perform 1.5 standard deviations below the mean (or below the 10th percentile). Based on such phrasing it is reasonable to assume that any child who receives the total scores on two standardized tests above the 10th percentile will not qualify for services. Yet this is completely incorrect!

Let’s take a closer look at the clarification memo issued on October 6, 2015, by the New Jersey Department of Education, in response to NJ Edu Code misinterpretation. Here is what it actually states.

“In accordance with this regulation, when assessing for a language disorder for purposes of determining whether a student meets the criteria for communication impaired, the problem must be demonstrated through functional assessment of language in other than a testing situation and performance below 1.5 standard deviations, or the 10th percentile on at least two standardized language tests, where such tests are appropriate, one of which shall be a comprehensive test of both receptive and expressive language.”

“When implementing the requirement with respect to “standardized language tests,” test selection for evaluation or reevaluation of an individual student is based on various factors, including the student’s ability to participate in the tests, the areas of suspected language difficulties/deficits (e.g., morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics/social language) and weaknesses identified during the assessment process which require further testing, etc. With respect to test interpretation and decision-making regarding eligibility for special education and related services and eligibility for speech-language services, the criteria in the above provision do not limit the types of scores that can be considered (e.g., index, subtest, standard score, etc.).”

Firstly, it emphasizes functional assessments. It doesn’t mean that assessments should be exclusively standardized rather it emphasizes the best appropriate procedures for the student in question be they standardized and nonstandardized.

Secondly, it does not limit standardized assessment to 2 tests only. Rather it uses though phrase “at least” to emphasize the minimum of tests needed.

It explicitly makes a reference to following up on any weaknesses displayed by the students during standardized testing in order to get to the root of a problem.

It specifies that SLPs must assess all displayed areas of difficulty (e.g., social communication) rather than assessing general language abilities only.

Finally, it explicitly points out that SLPs cannot limit their testing interpretation to the total scores but must to look at the testing results holistically, taking into consideration the student’s entire assessment performance.

The problem is that if SLPs only look at total/core scores then numerous children with linguistically-based deficits will fall through the cracks. We are talking about children with social communication deficits, children with reading disabilities, children with general language weaknesses, etc. These students may be displaying average total scores but they may also be displaying significant subtest weaknesses. The problem is that unless these weaknesses are accounted for and remediated as they are not going to magically disappear or resolve on their own. In fact both research and clinical judgment dictates that these weaknesses will exacerbate over time and will continue to adversely impact both social communication and academics.

So the next time you see a pattern of strengths and weaknesses and testing, even if it amounts to a total average score, I urge you to dig deeper. I urge you to investigate why this pattern is displayed in the first place. The same goes for you – parents! If you are looking at average total scores but seeing unexplained weaknesses in select testing areas, start asking questions! Ask the professional to explain why those deficits are occuring and tell them to dig deeper if you are not satisfied with what you are hearing. All students deserve access to FAPE (Free and Appropriate Public Education). This includes access to appropriate therapies, they may need in order to optimally function in the classroom.

I urge my fellow SLP’s to carefully study their respective state codes as well as know who they are state educational representatives are. These are the professionals SLPs can contact with questions regarding educational code clarification. For example, the SEACDC Consultant for the state of New Jersey is currently Fran Liebner (phone: 609-984-4955; Fax: 609-292-5558; e-mail: fran.leibner@doe.state.nj.us).

However, the Department of Education is not the only place SLPs can contact in their state. Numerous state associations worked diligently on behalf of SLPs by liaising with the departments of education in order to have access to up to date information pertaining to school services. ASHA also helpfully provides contact information by state HERE.

When it comes to score interpretation, there are a variety of options available to SLPs in addition to the detailed reading of the test manual. We can use them to ensure that the students we serve experience optimal success in both social and academic settings.

Helpful Smart Speech Therapy Resources:

Effective Practices for Determinging Eligibility

Posted on June 21, 2013January 5, 2022 by Tatyana Elleseff — Leave a comment

App Review and Giveaway: Speech Therapy for Apraxia – Words

A little while ago I reviewed “Speech Therapy for Apraxia” by Blue Whale Apps. You can Find this post HERE. I liked that app so much so I asked the developer to take a look at the next level of this app “Speech Therapy for Apraxia – Words”.

Similarly to Speech Therapy for Apraxia, Speech Therapy for Apraxia-Words is designed for working on motor planning with children and adults presenting with developmental or acquired apraxia of speech. Continue reading App Review and Giveaway: Speech Therapy for Apraxia – Words

From Wordless Picture Books to Reading Instruction: Effective Strategies for SLPs Working with Intellectually Impaired Students

Posted on January 24, 2013January 5, 2022 by Tatyana Elleseff — 11 Comments

Book Review and Giveaway: My Toddler Talks

Today it is my pleasure to review a book written by a NJ based, fellow SLP, Kimberly Scanlon of Scanlon Speech Therapy LLC entitled “My Toddler Talks“.

What it’s NOT! As Kimberly points out this book is definitely NOT a replacement for speech language therapy. If you are a parent and are concerned with your child’s speech language abilities you should certainly seek appropriate consultation with a qualified speech language pathologist.

What it is! A nice and functional collection of suggestions on how caregivers and related professionals can facilitate language development in children between 18-36 months of age (give or take). Continue reading Book Review and Giveaway: My Toddler Talks

Posted on October 15, 2018January 5, 2022 by Tatyana Elleseff — 2 Comments

Speech, Language, and Literacy Fun with Karma Wilson’s “Bear” Books

In my previous posts, I’ve shared my thoughts about picture books being an excellent source of materials for assessment and treatment purposes. They can serve as narrative elicitation aids for children of various ages and intellectual abilities, ranging from pre-K through fourth grade. They are also incredibly effective treatment aids for addressing a variety of speech, language, and literacy goals that extend far beyond narrative production. Continue reading Speech, Language, and Literacy Fun with Karma Wilson’s “Bear” Books

Posted on April 1, 2016January 5, 2022 by Tatyana Elleseff — 5 Comments

Test Review: Test of Written Language-4 (TOWL-4)

Today due to popular demand I am reviewing The Test of Written Language-4 or TOWL-4. TOWL-4 assesses the basic writing readiness skills of students 9:00-17:11 years of age. The tests consist of two forms – A and B, (which contain different subtest content).

According to the manual, the entire test takes approximately 60-90 minutes to administer and examines 7 skill areas. Only the “Story Composition” subtest is officially timed (the student is given 15 minutes to write it and 5 minutes previous to that, to draft it). However, in my experience, each subtest administration, even with students presenting with mild-moderately impaired writing abilities, takes approximately 10 minutes to complete with average results (can you see where I am going with this yet?)

For detailed information regarding the TOWL-4 development and standardization, validity and reliability, please see HERE. However, please note that the psychometric properties of this test are weak.

Below are my impressions (to date) of using this assessment with students between 11-14 years of age with (known) mild-moderate writing impairments.

Subtests:

1. Vocabulary – The student is asked to write a sentence that incorporates a stimulus word. The student is not allowed to change the word in any way, such as write ‘running’ instead of run’. If this occurs, an automatic loss of points takes place. The ceiling is reached when the student makes 3 errors in a row. While some of the subtest vocabulary words are perfectly appropriate for younger children (~9), the majority are too simplistic to assess the written vocabulary of middle and high schoolers. These words may work well to test the knowledge of younger children but they do not take into the account the challenging academic standards set forth for older students. As a result, students 11+ years of age may pass this subtest with flying colors but still present with a fair amount of difficulty using sophisticated vocabulary words in written compositions.

2/3. Spelling and Punctuation (subtests 2 and 3). These two subtests are administered jointly but scored separately. Here, the student is asked to write sentences dictated by the examiner using appropriate rules for spelling and punctuation and capitalization. Ceiling for each subtest is reached separately. It occurs when the student makes 3 errors in a row in each of the subtests. In other words, if a student uses correct punctuation but incorrect spelling, his/her ceiling on the ‘Spelling’ subtest will be reached sooner then on the ‘Punctuation’ subtest and vise versa. Similar to the ‘Vocabulary‘ subtest I feel that the sentences the students are asked to write are far too simplistic to showcase their “true” grade level abilities.

The requirements of these subtests are also not too stringent. The spelling words are simple and the punctuation requirements are very basic: a question mark here, an exclamation mark there, with a few commas in between. But I was particularly disappointed with the ‘Spelling‘ subtest. Here’s why. I have a 6th-grade client on my caseload with significant well-documented spelling difficulties. When this subtest was administered to him he scored within the average range (Scaled Score of 8 and Percentile Rank of 25). However, an administration of Spelling Performance Evaluation for Language and Literacy – SPELL-2, yielded 3 assessment pages of spelling errors, as well as 7 pages of recommendations on how to remediate those errors. Had he received this assessment as part of an independent evaluation from a different examiner, nothing more would have been done regarding his spelling difficulties since the TOWL-4 revealed an average spelling performance due to its focus on overly simplistic vocabulary.

4. Logical Sentences – The student is asked to edit an illogical sentence so that it makes better sense. Ceiling is reached when the student makes 3 errors in a row. Again I’m not too thrilled with this subtest. Rather than truly attempting to ascertain the student’s grammatical and syntactic knowledge at sentence level a large portion of this subtest deals with easily recognizable semantic incongruities.

5. Sentence Combining – The student integrates the meaning of several short sentences into one grammatically correct written sentence. Ceiling is reached when the student makes 3 errors in a row. The first few items contain only two sentences which can be combined by adding the conjunction “and”. The remaining items are a bit more difficult due to the a. addition of more sentences and b. increase in the complexity of language needed to efficiently combine them. This is a nice subtest to administer to students who present with difficulty effectively and efficiently expressing their written thoughts on paper. It is particularly useful with students who write down a lot of extraneous information in their compositions/essays and frequently overuse run-on sentences.

6. Contextual Conventions – The student is asked to write a story in response to a stimulus picture. S/he earn points for satisfying specific requirements relative to combined orthographic (E.g.: punctuation, spelling) and grammatical conventions (E.g.: sentence construction, noun-verb agreement). The student’s written composition needs to contain more than 40 words in order for the effective analysis to take place.

The scoring criteria ranges from no credit or a score of 0 ( based on 3 or more mistakes), to partial credit, a score of 1 (based on 1-2 mistakes) to full a credit – a score of 3 (no mistakes). There are 21 scoring parameters which are highly useful for younger elementary-aged students who may exhibit significant difficulties in the domain of writing. However, older middle school and high-school aged students as well as elementary aged students with moderate writing difficulties may attain average scoring on this subtest but still present with significant difficulties in this area as compared to typically developing grade level peers. As a result, in addition to this assessment, it is recommended that a functional assessment of grade-level writing also be performed in order to accurately identify the student’s writing needs.

7. Story Composition – The student’s story is evaluated relative to the quality of its composition (E.g.: vocabulary, plot, development of characters, etc.). The examiner first provides the student with an example of a good story by reading one written by another student. Then, the examiner provides the student with an appropriate picture card and tell them that they need to take time to plan their story and make an outline on the (also provided) scratch paper. The student has 5 minutes to plan before writing the actual story. After the 5 minutes, elapses they 15 minutes to write the story. It is important to note that story composition is the very first subtest administered to the student. Once they complete it they are ready to move on to the Vocabulary subtest. There are 11 scoring parameters that are significantly more useful for me to use with younger students as well as significantly impaired students vs. older students or students with mild-moderate writing difficulties. Again if your aim is to get an accurate picture of the older students writing abilities I definitely recommend the usage of clinical writing assessment rubrics based on the student’s grade level in order to have an accurate picture of their abilities.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:

Strengths:

A thorough assessment of basic writing areas for very severely impaired students with writing deficits
Flexible subtest administration (can be done on multiple occasions with students who fatigue easily)

Limitations:

Untimed testing administration (with the exception of story composition subtests) is NOT functional with students who present with significant processing difficulties. One 12-year-old student actually took ~40 minutes to complete each subtest.
Primarily useful for students with severe deficits in the area of written expression
Not appropriate for students with mild-moderate needs (requires suplementation)
Lack of remediation suggestions based on subtest deficits
Weak psychometric properties

Overall, TOWL-4 can be a useful testing measure for ruling out weaknesses in the student’s basic writing abilities, with respect to simple vocabulary, sentence construction, writing mechanics, punctuation, etc. If I identify previously unidentified gaps in basic writing skills I can then readily intervene, where needed, if needed. However, it is important to understand that the TOWL-4 is only a starting point for most of our students with complex literacy needs whose writing abilities are above severe level of functioning. Most students with mild-moderate writing difficulties will pass this test with flying colors but still present with significant writing needs. As a result I highly recommend a functional grade-level writing assessment as a supplement to the above-standardized testing.

References:

Hammill, D. D., & Larson, S. C. (2009). Test of Written Language—Fourth Edition. (TOWL-4). Austin, TX: PRO-ED.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are the personal impressions of the author. This author is not affiliated with PRO-ED in any way and was NOT provided by them with any complimentary products or compensation for the review of this product.

Posted on October 21, 2013January 5, 2022 by Tatyana Elleseff — 8 Comments

Birthday Giveaway Day Twenty One: First Grade Common Core Daily Language Workout

Wrapping up third week of my Birthday Month Extravaganza is a giveaway from Speech Universe called First Grade Common Core Daily Language Workout.

This product was designed to track progress using an RTI approach. It spans about 10 weeks and include the following 18 First Grade Common Core State Standards :

Phonological Awareness

RF.1.2b Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds, including consonant blends.
RF.1.2c Isolate and produce initial, medial vowel, and final sounds in single syllable words.
RF.1.2d Segment spoken single syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds.

Conventions of Standard English

L.1.1b Use common, proper, and possessive nouns.
L.1.1c Use singular and plural nouns with matching verbs in basic sentences.
L.1.1d Use personal possessive and indefinite pronouns.
L.1.1e Use verbs to convey a sense of past, present, and future.
L.1.1i Use frequently occurring prepositions.

Vocabulary Acquisition and Use

L.1.4a Use sentence level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.
L.1.5a Sort words into categories to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent.
L.1.5b Define words by category and by one or more key attributes.
L.1.5c Identify real-life connections between words and their use.
L.1.5d Use synonyms of verbs and adjectives.

Speaking and Listening

SL.1.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about first grade topics and texts with peers and adults in small and large groups.
SL.1.4 Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.

Key Ideas and Details

RL.1.1 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
RL.1.2 Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.
RL.1.3 Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

Packet Contents:

State Standard Checklist
Pre/Post Test
Daily Workout Sheets
Note Sheet

You can find this product in Speech Universe’ TPT store by clicking HERE or you can enter my one day giveaway for a chance to win.
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