It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, ... it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us ...
Charles Dickins, A Tale of Two CitiesThis program brought us the best of times and yet some days (especially during the final count down) it was the worst of times. This program became the spring of hope for our reading and listening difficulties and yet some days seemed like the winter of despair as we struggled to complete another day. This program put everything before us at our fingertips for success and yet we had nothing before us as a concrete formula for guaranteed success. But alas! We triumphed! And I have the numbers to prove it.
In May 2012, I brought my DD to our local school district for an Academic Evaluation. The Special Education Department teachers met with my DD five times for evaluations.
Let me highlight a few of the findings from each Evaluator as particularly pertains to skills addressed in the Fast ForWord program.
Special Education Teacher evaluation:
- (T) provided the sound for lower case i and did not respond to lower case u.
- When given a writing prompt, she wrote a two word sentence but then was able to verbally provide extensive details to her frog narrative.
- (T) required verbal prompting, positive praise, tangible reinforcement and breaks between tasks in order to remain on-task and follow directions.
- (T) demonstrates average grade and age level appropriate skills within reading, math, and writing.
Speech/Language Evaluation:
- Throughout testing, (T) had a difficult time attending to task.
- The CELF-4 and CTOPP tests were administered. She tested in the 47% for receptive language, 53% for language structure, 16%, 3%, and 2% for rapid naming skills. Her Overall Phonological Awareness percentile rank was 77%, Phonological Memory rank was 58%, and her Rapid Naming Composite was 3%.
- On the sentence structure subtest, she demonstrated a relative weakness in her ability to interpret spoken sentences of increasing length and complexity.
- Expressive vocabulary was an area of relative weakness and she used strategies for recall and associative meaning.
- (T) score in rapid naming, the ability to efficiently retrieve information from her long term memory, fell in the poor range. Students who present with difficulties on rapid naming are expected to have difficulty reading fluently.
Psychologist's Evaluation:
- She required frequent redirection from the examiner.
- On the Verbal Composite, which measures a child's ability to process verbal information and apply verbal skills, she was at 45th percentile. Information subtest was 37% rank by age, Vocabulary was 25% by age, and Word Reasoning was 75% by age.
- Her Processing Speed Composite, which measures the speed of mental operations and graphomotor processing, was in the 42nd percentile. She did better on a visual scanning task for matching. The subtest for Coding was 25% by age.
As a parent and and home educator with a strong background rehabilitative practices, these results put numbers to our needed target areas. Personally, I saw "Dyslexia" written all over these results in addition to her auditory processing issues. She relied heavily on visual and context clues for comprehension which was putting a strain on her working memory. I conceded that it was the brain that needed rewiring for her to improve efficiently and effectively.
I compiled the following table for her Fast ForWord results for a comparison.
Skill Groups
|
Starting %
|
Ending %
|
Total Minutes
|
| Listening accuracy and auditory sequencing |
0
|
29
|
553
|
| Phonological accuracy |
6
|
69
|
326
|
| Phonological fluency and sustained attention |
0
|
20
|
313
|
| Vocabulary and auditory word recognition |
0
|
100
|
157
|
| Auditory word recognition and phonological memory |
0
|
100
|
501
|
| Following directions |
4
|
97
|
300
|
| English language conventions |
6
|
100
|
172
|
How amazing is that!