The testing and remedial services team provides specialized assessments, tests and remedial services to ensure that that each child is supported to achieve their academic potential. Remedial therapy or special education services help learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities and their families understand their own strengths and areas of need and figure out ways in which they can support each other in their journeys.
Testing
Psycho-educational Assessment
A psycho-educational assessment is a formal and standardized assessment, designed to screen for specific learning disabilities in children. The assessment also helps in determining a child’s learning strengths and challenges and is administered in two parts:
- IQ Assessment
- Educational Assessment
IQ Assessment
An IQ assessment is administered to determine a numerical representation of a child’s intellectual level, which represents their general cognitive ability. The test is conducted by clinical psychologists to measure a child’s intellectual abilities in several specific domains like verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory and processing speed.
The IQ tests administered at Ummeed are:
- Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
(WISC – Age 5-15.11 years) - Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Fourth Edition
(WISC IV and WISC V– Age 6-16.11 years)
Educational Assessment
An educational assessment is a way of measuring and understanding the intellectual ability and the specific cognitive and achievement skills that are necessary for any child to perform to the best of their potential academically in school. The educational assessment is done by a trained and licensed special educator and involves a battery of tests namely:
- Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of cognitive Abilities and Tests of Achievement
- Test of Written Language (TOWL 4)
- Nelson Denny Reading Test (NDT)
- Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT)
- Test of Reading Comprehension (TORC)
The subtests involved in the battery of tests focus on determining the level of a child's oral language, reading accuracy and fluency, reading comprehension, spelling, writing and math skills. In addition, the assessment also includes an evaluation of processing skills (like auditory memory, phonological awareness, visual perception, and visual-motor integration).
Diagnosis and Plan of Action
Once the assessment is completed, the items are scored and based on the scores an interpretation is made. If a child is diagnosed with Specific Learning Disabilities, the examiner/special educator mentions a few recommendations both for the parents and teachers in the school so that some concessions can be given to the child outlined by the government, for children with Specific Learning Disabilities. The child is also referred to a special educator for remedial therapy in order to improve their areas of underachievement.
For children coming to Ummeed from government schools which are following SSC board, the SSC board mandates that the testing is done at the municipal hospitals in Mumbai. Ummeed can provide details about these hospitals so that families can navigate their systems better and get the assessments done on time.
Functional Assessment
Functional assessment refers to an informal way of assessing a child’s current academic level of functioning. This assessment is done by special educators and the items used in the assessment are curriculum based like the use of different kinds of games, teacher-made worksheets and activities which center around the academic and non-academic areas of achievement.
The report which is prepared is not based on scores and norms, but it is interpreted on the basis of the child’s age and the curriculum they are learning in school at that particular age and grade.
Functional assessments are referred for children who :
- Are younger than 7 years and showing signs of learning difficulties
- Score very low on the IQ assessment
- Find it very difficult to read, follow, understand and write English Language as it is not their primary language used at home and the exposure towards it is very less.
Remedial Therapy
Remedial therapy refers to individually planned and systematically followed arrangement of teaching procedures and materials, accessible settings and other interventions designed to strengthen the areas of underachievement and help learners with learning difficulties achieve a higher level of success and self confidence in the school and community. The special educator who provides remedial therapy is not a tutor, but a person who works directly with the child and the family using the family-centered and strength-based approaches to demonstrate specific strategies or techniques which would help the child to improve and perform to the best of their potential.
The areas which are generally worked upon are receptive and expressive language, decoding or reading accuracy, reading fluency, reading comprehension, spelling, writing, math, processing skills like word retrieval skills or visual perceptual skills, sequencing skills and study skills. The remedial therapy involves 45 minutes to an hour-long session, once in a week, where the special educator works one-on-one with the child based on the child’s Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP). Special Educators actively involve parents and caregivers in making plans of action as well as therapy sessions to empower them to work with their child at home
The Team
Mala Mehta
Joyeeta Sen
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