Academic Testing
I work with individual students, families, teachers, and other support professionals to evaluate and create educational plans for children in elementary, middle, high school and college.
Assessment results are practical and explicit educational evaluations for students. These tests that are included in my academic testing are: The Wechsler Academic Achievement Test-4, the Test of Word Recognition Efficiency II and the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing II.
Each student presents with a differentiated profile of academic strengths and weaknesses and these are described in detail in the written and oral results of testing.
Wechsler Achievement Test assesses:
-Literacy- phonemic awareness, reading individual words, knowledge of spelling patterns and word fluency, reading comprehension and connected text fluency, writing accurate and varied sentences and an essay, spelling, as well as vocabulary skills.
- Mathematics- computation skills, fluency with basic facts and word problems.
- Learning processes, Executive Functioning, handwriting, processing speed , attention skills and working memory are qualitatively observed.
The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing 2 assesses:
The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP-2) is an instrument for measuring three critical aspects of phonological processing: phonological awareness, phonological memory and rapid naming. Phonological processing is an aspect of auditory processing. It is the kind of auditory processing that is most strongly related to the mastery of written language and the lack of this skill is the most common cause of reading disability or dyslexia and spelling problems.
In order to appreciate and utilize the alphabetic principle, to read and spell words fluently and independently, a learner must be able to segment, blend and manipulate sounds (Phonological Awareness). They must also remember sound sequences that are relatively meaningless (Phonological Memory), and perform these skills rapidly (Rapid Naming). Each of these skill sets contribute to efficient processing of sounds in words and are a singularly important factor in determining whether or not a learner will be proficient in reading and spelling and are evaluated with this test.
The Test of Word Recognition Efficiency II assesses:
Reading of real and nonsense words to determine a student’s accuracy and rate of reading individual words and phonics.
Written and oral results of test are shared with the family and their educational support team in order to create a working relationship to assist the student and their family in a stable, coherent plan for educational remediation. Specific educational goals and accommodations are included in the educational evaluation.
Cost: $150 per hour
This includes evaluation, scoring, write up of report and oral results of test with family (approximately 5 hours for literacy testing and 3 hours for mathematics testing)
If you would like to meet virtually to discuss these ideas, please contact me at: howtoteachreadingandspelling@gmail.com
Teacher Mentoring
Being a teacher has always been a blessing and a great challenge. Teachers don’t walk into their careers to make a bundle of money, they go to be of service, to enrich children’s lives, to make a difference in our society.
Teachers’ colleges range in their efficiency of preparing teachers for their work in the classroom. It has been my experience that teachers learn a great deal about theories of learning, programs to teach literacy, mathematics or science, but they do not get on-going support and practical day-to-day, how-to-teach skills to address the learning needs of the varied students in their classrooms.
For thirty-six years, I was the director of a clinic in Los Angeles, The Kelter Center. We served children, adolescents and adults with learning differences who needed to learn the basic skills of literacy and mathematics in order to prosper in their day-to-day work at school.
The teachers whom I worked with had their Master’s degrees in Special Education, literacy or mathematics. When they worked at the clinic, they participated in over one hundred hours of pre-service training to learn to use the educational programs that were based in the Science of Reading and Mathematics such as the Lindamood-Bell programs, Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy of Learning, Step up to Writing, the Bernard Fluency Program, and various reading comprehension programs.
In addition to these pre-service experiences, the teachers at the Kelter Center had weekly peer supervision and problem-solving sessions with another educator on staff in order to help them apply and expand upon what they had learned in the pre-service hours and their graduate work.
I no longer work at The Kelter Center, however, I am still training teachers and students using the Science of Reading and Structured Literacy based programs. I am also mentoring teachers on a weekly and monthly basis to expand and apply what they have learned to their classrooms.
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Cost: $125 an hour
If this type of mentoring relationship is appealing and practical for you, please contact me at howtoteachreadingandspelling@gmail.com