Assessment is essential when a child exhibits signs of a learning difference or difficulty. It’s easy to assume underlying causes, but only a certified diagnosis can help pinpoint the issue and provide struggling students with the support they need. Dyslexia is the most prevalent learning disability among all people groups and requires specific testing.
What To Look for in a Dyslexia Evaluation
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Choose an assessment created by a reputable company that requires training and certification to administer. The best Tests of Dyslexia (TOD) are thorough and address these key areas.
Personal Background
It’s imperative to consider all influential factors, including health history, family history, and other medical or learning conditions, as these can directly impact a child’s learning ability. Parents and teachers can provide details paramount in reaching an accurate diagnosis.
Oral Language
This category refers to a person’s ability to not only understand the speech of others but also express their own thoughts. While symptoms can vary from person to person, most students with dyslexia struggle with low-level oral language skills, such as piecing together the sounds in words. However, they are inclined to succeed or even excel at higher levels in categories such as verbal interpersonal communication.
Decoding
An essential skill for reading successfully, decoding is when a student uses prior knowledge of spelling and phonics to identify and read new words. This ability does not rely on context clues, so most decoding assessments utilize nonsense words to test a child’s phonological awareness.
Word Recognition
Children with dyslexia, especially those who have progressed for years without a diagnosis, often rely on clues and sentence patterns to read words. Without the structure and context of a given passage, they tend to struggle to identify words individually. Word recognition assesses a student’s ability to do just that.
Vocabulary
Especially during the younger years, children with this learning disability have a limited vocabulary, relying more on general terms than specific names and labels. This section of a dyslexia assessment helps determine how well a child understands the meanings of words based on age or grade level.
Fluency
Difficulty with identification, decoding, memory, and understanding can clead to slower processing times. Children with dyslexia tend to fall below average in fluency, the speed or rate at which a child should successfully complete a specific learning task, including reading, writing, and basic math computation.
Comprehension
Because dyslexia affects a person’s ability to identify words, most students with dyslexia have little to no reading comprehension abilities. This area assesses how well a child can recall, understand, and apply what they read. A low score in this area often occurs with children who find reading frustrating or cannot remember or restate what they read.
Find the Right Dyslexia Assessment With WPS
It’s crucial to identify and diagnose dyslexia as soon as possible to give children a better overall educational experience. WPS offers a variety of assessment and screening tools for dyslexia and several other learning concerns. Learn more at WPS about how our specialized assessments can help students at your school get the support they need to succeed.