Here are the scores my kiddo got on the WJ-III for her triennial review. Can anyone else shed some more light on this for me. I know speech tests but I am not familiar with the WJ-III. Thanks!!
She has had some increase in scores since she last took the old WJ, with a 20 point gain on broad written language and 25 point gain on writing samples but everything else kind of stayed the same. She was having problems attending and her passage comprehension went down 14 points from the time before. She also made inattentive errors on math fluency and Letter-word ID is low but she still chooses to memorize words even after all the LMB/PACE training she has had. She impulsively guesses even though she knows how to decode..
Broad reading 88
Reading fluency 100
Math fluency 85
Broad written language 93
Letter-Word ID 80
Spelling 84
Passage Comprehension 80
Writing Samples 100
Writing Fluency 101
Applied Problems 90
Broad Math 94
Calculation 106
Thanks!!
pretty much what I was thinking…The SLP did some testing with the OWLS and she scored very high on listening comprehension at 86% which was above average. She got the main idea but missed some inferences. She tests out low on word classes of the CELF, in addition to her language sample she exhibits poor topic maintenance and organization of her thoughts…Which is no surprise to me due to her ADD. However, she is an auditory learner inspite of all the difificulties she has with hearing and her missing background vocabulary she does better when she hears things than when she reads them..Which is just like my dyslexic husband…:-) He misreads things all the time..I guess it is genetic…and the way their brains work…. Give them a pattern that needs to be figured out or something spatial and they are styling…:-)
Patti, several things: it looks like she is having difficulty with multi-syllabic words and could benefit from explicit instruction in decoding longer words. At her age, to achieve a score of 80 on word ID, she had to have fared poorly with words like: tremendous, hesitating, and more, some that are less “phonetic.” Your comments re. her choices are very typical. I deliver almost daily instruction in decoding longer words and I still frequently, too frequently, find my students look, get the first syllable and often the last (esp. if it is a -tion, -ly, etc) and guess across the middle. When I require the child to chunk and sound-out, then the word can generally be read correctly. I haven’t found the fix for this and it is frustrating indeed.
The passage comprehension may or may not have been caused by poor attending (probably a factor). I really do not care for that subtest. The questions that were added to this revision are a “bear” so to speak. I am finding that many of the added questions are not answered correctly by almost all students I test. So, I question the validity of this subtest for younsters beyond about the third grade. You know the format, like a cloze, however I don’t think the context is rich enough to really test reading comprehension on many of these items. So, I strongly recommend an informal reading inventory, administering at least two selections per grade level. I try to use a fiction and a content area selection when I administer.
Reading fluency is assessed as a speeded test using first grade level sentences. So, if your child can read simple words effieciently, she is fine, she does not have to rapidly decode longer words. Thus, I am not entirely convinced this subtest, for an older student, is really telling you that much.
The “applied problems” subtest is really easy. So, I would suggest you get an analysis of her difficulties. Surely there are some IEP goals in that area.