Educational assessments at ThinkWise

Have you ever wondered why your child seems to be struggling with reading or with numeracy tasks, or perhaps with learning in general?

Has your child’s school identified that your child is not up to expected levels of learning compared to their classmates?

Comprehensive educational assessments are designed to help you understand the way your child learns and comprehends new information, as well as looking at their unique patterns of strengths and areas of difficulty in their learning.

The common worry that we hear from parents is that despite assisting their child with reading, that their child is struggling to catch on and progress with this skill. We also hear stories of children who show strengths in literacy, however struggle to comprehend numeracy problems. Problems in reading, which include dyslexia, and problems in numeracy, which can include dyscalculia, are incredibly important to identify. Identification of these issues can result in targetted strategies that can be utilised in schools and in the home to assist in helping your child reach their potential despite possibly experiencing a learning disability.

Parents sometimes want an assessment conducted on their child as they notice that their child may be excessively bored at school, which can result in behavioural difficulties as they try to entertain themselves in other ways. Learning assessments are a great way to discover if your bored child is actually gifted intellectually, which again requires specific strategies at school and
at home to manage.

Educational or learning assessments generally involve an interview with you as the parents, to get an idea of the issues that you think your child may be experiencing and some information on developmental history and milestones. Parents are also given a questionnaire to give more detailed information, and teachers can be given questionnaires about your child as well. We would then organise to assess your child using the WISC or the WPPSI (assessment of IQ, verbal skills, memory, numerical and perceptual skills), as well as the WIAT (to assess achievement across various domains), the PHAB (which is a powerful tool to assess phonological awareness) and the ABAS to allow for assessment across three functional domains of conceptual, social and practical. The assessment sessions are conducted in such a way as to assist in your child achieving the best possible results, with plenty of breaks and run over multiple sessions if required.

After the assessments, the clinician scores up all the tests and standardises the results to assist with interpretation. A comprehensive report is then written, including specific suggestions and recommendations for both parents and the school. This process generally takes between 6 and 10 hours of time depending on the complexity of the assessments completed.

Finally, another parent interview is scheduled either in person or by telephone to discuss the results found, the recommendations and to give a copy of the report to the parents. This is an opportunity for parents to ask questions as well.

Learning assessments are a key component in helping your child achieve their potential when they are experiencing issues or difficulties at school.

Contact us at ThinkWise to discuss your child’s needs further.