Although formal assessment provides the data necessary for placement in special education, we all know it is not always appropriate to use with ELL's. Has anyone had difficulty getting the school to accept information from dynamic assessment if results are not normed? I am familiar with the articles and Dynamic Assessment Intervention tool mentioned in a previous posting. Does anyone have experience using other kinds of dynamic assessment tasks, particularly with school age children? With that, does anyone have any insight into how they have interpreted results and distinguished difference vs. disorder for this age group?
Ninfa
Comments
Certainly some complex issues here, think the previous post shows great insight.
Leather Wallets
Posted by: Chris Morgan | March 11, 2008 10:01 AM
Totally agree, especially with family members.
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Posted by: John Lomax | April 26, 2007 7:50 AM
To create a comprehensive and valid assessment without the use of standardized tests, it's often helpful to use multiple sources of information, such as observational reports from teachers, family members, and others who interact with the child. Structured language tasks, such as story retelling with wordless picture books, can provide some basis for describing the breadth and depth of vocabulary, sentence length, syntactic complexity, and other features. Although these dynamic assessments require careful explanation to qualify children for services, they are indeed essential to providing a valid assessment.
Regarding the question of difference vs. disorder, it is vital that one examine performance in both languages, via interpreter, parent/family/caregiver report(s), and other sources. Whenever parents or other native speakers describe language problems that would be considered deviant or disordered, it's critical that we investigate and NOT simply assume a delay due to second language learning. The same features that would raise red flags for monolinguals (impoverished vocabulary, decreased comprehension or production, even deficient performance compared to siblings or peers) are also warning signs in bilinguals. Much of this information is described in greater detail, with references, in the Gateway tutorial on this web site. You may wish to have a look at that presentation. It takes less than an hour, total.
Posted by: Leslie | April 26, 2007 7:14 AM