"Elision" Phonological Awareness from CTOPP

Hi Lil,

I haven’t seen the CTOPP test itself, but people often speak of the three phonemic skills of blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation. Giving a child an elision test is testing their ability to do phoneme manipulation.

An example would be to ask a child to say “cat” without the /k/ (tester says the sound /k/.) The child should answer “at.”

More complex examples are to have them say “glad” without the /g/, or “brand” without the /r/.

While the ability to correctly answer each of these is to an extent a developmental issue (first graders would have trouble with “brand” without the /r/, more than likely,) if a child has trouble with phoneme manipulation they will generally also be having trouble with reading, with poor phonemic skills probably being part of the reason.

This is because English has many “pieces of code” that can be sounded out in more than one way, such as the “ow” in “grow” or “plow.” Or, the “a” in “rapid,” “racing” and “father.” Testing the possibilities requires the skill of phoneme manipulation, and an elision test is effectively testing half of the process….being able to take a phoneme out of a spoken word.

Rod

Your comment about the Elision testing half the process - the “taking apart” process - made the lights flash and the bells ring in my brain. I have been struggling with special ed for a year and a half for my 4th grade son.

When I read the “half the process” I realized that he understands “half the process” with most of his other academic skills, as well as play and life skills. He understands the “taking apart” but has trouble with the putting together.

He can score 100% on worksheets where he has to identify parts of speech and correct grammar, but he can’t write a correct sentence. He KNOWS his division facts, but still has trouble remembering the multiplication ones. He can pull words apart (>9.7 GE on segmenting), but has trouble putting them back together (GE 1.4 on blending). He has always taken his toys apart, and left them in pieces all over the house - but never puts anything together - puzzles, random lego structures, forts, etc.

So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for saying the magic phrase that made all the pieces fall into place in my head. :-)

Lil

Lil,

I think what you might be talking about generally is a weakness is part to whole reasoning as opposed to whole to part reasoning. My son is like this too. When I looked at his strengths and weaknesses on the performance part of the IQ test (where there was variation from 5 to 12), the pattern was low on part to whole and high on whole to part thinking.

Beth

Any suggestions to help remediate or compensate for the weakness in part to whole relationships?

Very interesting.

My son, the big picture person, is exactly the opposite. He can’t see the parts from the whole.
He scored very high on blending and is consistantly low on segmenting.

How about this? He also has trouble visualizing symbols (parts) as in seeing stars, but has no trouble visualizing gestalt pictures as in VV.

I never put those two things together before either.

Hey Beth,

How do I find out which subtests mean what? I have the scores, and discrepancies from 6 to 14 - but I don’t know how to interpret it - and the evaluator is singularly unhelpful.

Thanks,
Lil

I did some research on Wisc scores but don’t have it handy.

What I do know is picture completion and object assembly measure parts to whole and my son did dreadful on them. He scored high on block completion (is that right) which measures whole to part. It can’t be visual completely with him because he scored high on some tests that require attention to visual detail and low on others. The psychologist couldn’t explain the pattern to me (lots of help he was) so I played detective.

Beth

Use lots of socratic questioning for starters. My son likes to use me as his source of all knowledge. I try to get him to see the implication of facts (pieces). If he doesn’t see the pieces, I try to get him to see the pieces and then go for the implications.

Language Wise by the McGuinesses has exercises in it that are helpful on the verbal end of things.

I have a game called 20 Questions for kids which forces kids to think of an object, place, or thing from clues (pieces).

We work on puzzles together. He is bad at them so can’t get him to do it by himself.

Frankly, I see the implications of his thought style more in the verbal end of things because of the emphasis of school so I have focused there.

Beth

I have always been a whole concept thinker and my husband the type who can’t see the forest for the trees. I think to some degree it is a style issue. I t only is problematic when it is extreme like it is for my son. My husband and I are good at different things. I am very much a conceptual theoretical thinker who isn’t good at details. He is great at details and very concrete in his orientation.

Beth

It is block design not block completion….

That is my husband and I. How funny? It really works out well. He is the one who takes care most of the details of our life. I can’t stand details.

We both value the other’s abilities.

http://alpha.fdu.edu/psychology/CTOPP.htm

Here is just what I would try first. No certainty in life, but this kind of general approach is often effective:

Have him take apart something with not too many parts, a simple toy or a sentence of four or five words. Have him *verbalize* the steps he is using to take it apart. The verbalization is necessary both for him to understand and for you to know how his mind is working. Make short notes and/or diagrams for yourself of his steps. Now, ask him to undo just one step, the last one he did. If he forgets what the step was, remind him from your notes. Repeat doing/undoing that last step until it is fast and easy. Then have him do the second-last step. And so on.
If possible, later get him to make his own notes and diagrams as he goes on. Professional mechanics do this as a regular habit, to be able to put together complex machinery.

It takes some practice, but often a light flashes in the brain after some time practicing doing/undoing and what was formerly impossible suddenly becomes natural. This is an approach that often has to be taught in advanced math, and I have seen many students suddenly get it.

I have here in my notes that Object assembly is part to whole and Block Design is whole to part. My son is relatively weaker in object assembly (8) than block design (13). Its not impossible for him to do the kind of thinking associated with part-whole reasoning, but its an area of weakness compared to his other abilities.

Picture completion is a measure of many things including visual discrimination, visual processing skills, ability to differentiate essential from non essential info. Picture arrangement measures visual analysis and memory and sequencing skills which includes in it a perception of part to whole.

I got this info. mostly from www.patoss-dyslexia.org/epreports.htm.

–