Assessment Plan

Introduction
Purpose of Assessment and Evaluation:
 Include the process of collecting and interpreting information for:
1) identifying and verifying an educational disability,
2) making educational recommendations in keeping with the learner's strengths and needs.
 When conducting any assessment, professionals need to make sure that:
 Tests and other materials used are selected and administered in a non-discriminatory manner
following the standards provided by the test developer. If not, include a description of how many
accommodations or modifications were used in the written report.
 Tests and other procedures must be administered in a learner's native language and mode of
communication unless not feasible.
 A single criterion may not be used for determining a disability (e.g., An audiogram alone cannot
be used to determine if an individual needs special education services).
 A comprehensive assessment includes all areas appropriately related to all areas of concern or
potential need, not just those commonly linked to hearing loss.
 Assessment results must be technically sound (valid and reliable)
 Relevant functional and developmental assessments about the learner must include information
from the parent.
 Identifying learners who are deaf/hard of hearing as eligible for special education services
typically requires formal, standardised, norm-referenced testing that reflects multifaceted aspects
that impact learning, e.g. Sensory and intellectual evaluation.
 Informal assessment data (e.g., Observation data, interviews with parents and learners) also plays
a critical role in determining a learner's strengths and needs.
 Assessments conducted for educational planning purposes include a variety of assessment
procedures that may or may not include traditional norm-referenced, standardised assessments,
direct observation, and progress monitoring procedures.

Assessment Plan
Case History Interviews
 Parent input be obtained as part of the initial and three-year re-evaluation process.
 Structured interviews, behavioural checklists and rating scales may be used.
 During the interview, the Team member must obtain information about issues or behaviours relevant
to the reason for the referral, situations in which the behaviours occur and the impact on the student's
academic and social profile.
 Perspectives from the student's teachers and support staff (e.g. tutor, speech pathologist) are
considered an essential component of the assessment process.
 The D/HH teacher may design interview questions that are specific to the student.
 Commercial teacher interviews, developed for students who are deaf/hard of hearing, can be used,
such as the Preschool SIFTER, SIFTER, Secondary SIFTER, FAPI, and LIFE,

Audition
 Erber's 4 levels: Auditory Functioning
 DETECTION/ATTENTION- 1st stage refers to the awareness of sound
  DISCRIMINATION- the ability to distinguish between sounds.
 IDENTIFICATION- requires memory but not necessarily understanding of the word
 COMPREHENSION- most important of development. Not only repeat or identify stimuli but also
show an understanding of the sound.

Receptive Language
 Develops from an increasing awareness of and attention to the verbal signals to which a child is
exposed
 Features of language to which the child attends are imitated.
 This stage is not connected to meaning; the absorbs information
 In the comprehension stage, the child behaviourally demonstrates understanding.
 These stages are ongoing and are how children and adults process the components of language

Expressive Language
 Passes through orderly, predictable stages of development
 Each stage appears for a short time and then becomes an integral part of the next stage

REFLEXIVE CRYING & COOING

BABBLING CONSONANT/VOWEL CHAINS
COMBINATIONS
IMITATIVE VOCALISATIONS CARRY MEANING- SINGLE WORDS
INFLECTED JARGON- COMBINE BABBLE & SUPRASEGMENTAL IMITATIONS INTO LONG VOCALISATIONS

INCREASES SINGLE WORDS- TWO AND THREE WORDS INTO PHRASES

COMPLETE SENTENCES

Speech
 Speech is the verbal means of communicating. Speech consists of the following:
 Articulation: How speech sounds are made (e.g., children must learn how to produce the "r" sound
to say "rabbit" instead of "wabbit").
 Voice: Use of the vocal folds and breathing to produce sound

Three phases:
1. Exhalation: air stream from the lungs goes through the trachea and the oral and nasal cavities
2. Phonation: at the level of the larynx -the vocal fold (produces voicing)
3. Articulation: airflow shaped by the oral cavity, which acts as a resonator, and by articulators (lips,
teeth, tongue, roof of the mouth)
Terminology in Speech development:
  Phonetics: The study and classification of speech sounds.
 Phonology: The study of how speech sounds are used in a language.
 Phonological development is the gradual process of a child acquiring adult speech sounds.

SPEECH RECEPTION
 Determine whether children can detect, identify & discriminate elements of speech and how well
running speech is perceived.
 Includes performance with amplification.
SPEECH PRODUCTION
 Measures speech intelligibility through listener judgements and rating scales.
 For therapy purposes: use a test that assesses each child's ability.
SPEECH READING
 SR is speech recognition using both auditory and visual cues. It is a process of understanding a
spoken message.
 Speech reading refers to watching the speaker obtain information from visible movements of their
articulators, facial expressions, gestures, etc., not just the lips.
 Speech reading can be assessed formally by presenting the test to the child with and without auditory
information- the clinician will determine how well the child uses the visual modality to support
speech perception
 Lipreading is a process of recognising speech using only the visual speech signal and other visual
cues.
 Speech reading is not easy- it can be learnt or improved, but it is still a subtle art
What to know:
o For therapists to facilitate progress in spoken language for children with hearing loss, they must first
understand the following:
 The hearing loss diagnosis
 The limitations imposed by hearing loss on the acoustic characteristics of speech.
 The benefits of the amplification device
 The limitations of the amplification device
 This understanding must be available to parents.
What we know:
 The ability to develop spoken language is closely related to the ability to perceive sound.
 The reception, perception, and understanding of spoken language is the prerequisite to expressive
spoken language.

Play

Cognition
  Cognition refers to developing knowledge through experience, the senses and thought.
 This domain lists skills related to acquiring knowledge through experiences and thought.
 Skills include observation and interaction with the world around the child, object permanence,
experimentation, imitation, matching, sorting, interpretation, and memory.
 The identifier of OBJECT PERMANENCE has been marked.
 OBJECT PERMANENCE is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot
be seen.

Pragmatics/Communication
 Sometimes misuse questions.
 May not know how to initiate or maintain a conversation
 May not know how to repair communication breakdowns- may nod and bluff, pretending to
understand.
 May not know many of the social aspects of a conversation, such as how to acknowledge that a
message was heard.
 Poor turn-taking skills.
 Unable to change the topic during a conversation.
 Reasons for poor pragmatics
 Do not receive extensive practice in using language. Unfamiliarity with many language structures
and limited vocabulary limits conversations.
 If using signing, you may have fewer conversational partners who can sign
 No incidental learning
 Do not receive the same formal instruction as normal hearing children-rules of. Politeness (do not
interrupt, say "please and thank you," wait until the person finishes their sentence before talking,
etc.)- can be attributed to limited signing skills of parents of children with hearing or child's limited
language.

Literacy
 This domain provides a list of skills related to reading and writing development.
 The skills include attending to books, listening to stories, and phonological awareness.
 The identifiers of PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS and WRITING have been marked.
 PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS is the ability to recognise that words comprise various sound
units.
 Phonological awareness is critical for learning to read. The term covers several sound-related skills
needed for reading.
 Children should be exposed to books and read early to help foster and develop language and literacy
skills.