My first grade daughter is going to be tested by the school for ld. A child dev. specialist evaluated her and indicated she has ADD-inattentive type and language LD. She began ritalin (generic) this week and so far with improvements. Heres the question: the testing the CDS did was called PEEX and one Q was to write down all the letters of the alphabet you can recall in one minute. My daughter was taught the spalding method which is phonetic and based on frequent usage so she learned B then S etc.. so on the test she didn’t write a,b,c,d… and consequently scored poorly. Now the school is going to do formal testing and I am curious about what they ask. She freezes when she’s nervous. If I can tell her you’ll be asked to draw a picture and to look at pictures and say what you see, etc… I think the scores will be truer to her abilities. The problem is I really don’t know what is on the tests. I believe it is IQ and achievement based. I’ve done google searches and still don’t know what’s on the tests. Any help appreciated.
Re: whats on the tests?
I agree - if the testing is done correctly, the child should feel good about what’s happening. We have 8 yr old son who is currently undergoing testing for LD (especially for dyslexia/dysgraphia).
I would be glad that the school is so willing to go the full formal route already. Our first year of K, there was informal OT eval results showed borderline. There was to be a test the following year. After repeat of K, 1st and into 2nd we are finally getting testing done. We learned you need to be an advocate and let them know that you are probably better aware than the teacher of LD’s and if you daughter is having problems. It was only after they keep saying - he’s doing fine and we put it down in writing we wanted a full evaluation that things have really started moving forward.
We were really concerned about how it would affect him - after all - he’s a highly emotional child. The psych. told us that if he came home from school after one of the testings and was really upset or having hard time with to contact him immediately. He’s been out for testing 3 times now and with the first day he was very excited - finally somebody is going to help me figure out why this seems so hard & the next 2 he didn’t even remember to mention until a day or two later - and each was a positive attitude. Hope all goes well for you.
They will test her on lots of things. The VMI Developmental Test for Visual-Motor Integration is the picture test and it is fun.. The testing should seem like a game but some of the items will be timed. She will be given things orally so they will see how well she can attend.
On the WIAT they have these kind of subtests on basic reading, spelling, maththematic reasoning, Reading comprehension, numerical operations she will be given oral directions asking her to show specific numbers, adding numbers, sutracting, multiplication if she is old enough to grasp that, listening comprehension, oral expression she will be given pictures and asked to describe what she sees.
On the WISC there are these subtests, picture completion, she will be shown a picture and has to determine what is missing. Information she has to tell what she knows about certain words that she is given as a prompt, coding is a timed test and essentially it looks to see is how fast she can see patterns and duplicate them, Similarities she will be given two words and has to tell how they are similar or different, picture arrangement looks at how she arranges pictures in a sequential order, and arithmetic is timed and she will be given pages where she has to add items on the pages and give her answers orally, Block design she sees a pattern and has to duplicate it from memory, vocabulary, she will be given a stimulus and have to tell what the word means, object assembly she has to put a pieces to gether to make up an object and there is a comprehension where she is given a senario and what she would do in that situation, symbol search she has to find and circle symbols on a page and digit span she will be given numbers forward and backward orally and she has to give recite them back.
She shouldn’t feel like there is pressure if the examiner is good. What you might want to do is to give her tylenol before the testing just so she won’t have test anxiety. Believe it or not, this helps.