Date of Report: 3-24-97

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition 2-24-97

Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement-Revised 3-10-97

Curriculum-Based Measures of Reading 2-24-97

Curriculum-Based Measures of Written Expression 3-10-97

Classroom Observation 2-24-97, 3-10-97

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test 2-24-97

Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration (VMI) 2-24-97

Achenbach Teacher’s Report Form Behavior 2-24-97, 3-17-97

REFERRAL AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Dana is a 2^nd grader at XXX Elementary. She was referred for an evaluation by her current teacher. Mrs. reported that Dana has low reading fluency (median rate of 9 words read correctly per minute at referral), weak phonics skills, difficulty transferring written material, difficulty writing on lines and spacing between words. She also is easily distracted and daydreams. To address these concerns, several interventions were implemented in the general education classroom, including a reading tutoring program before school, providing simpler materials, providing opportunities for extra drill and practice, providing an individualized study guide, modifying the curriculum and teaching study strategies. Dana’s reading and writing did not improve significantly, and so she had been referred to determine whether she is eligible for additional services in special education.

Dana’s parents reported in a Health and Developmental History Questionnaire that Dana is currently in good health and reached developmental milestones at appropriate ages. Their primary concern is that Dana feels comfortable enough with the class work and homework that she can do it on her own. Dana enjoys active games such as biking, skating, and tag. According to both parents and teacher, Dana’s strengths include getting along well with others and a high level of motivation for schoolwork and works hard. In addition, her teacher added that she asks questions when she doesn’t understand, and she gets excited about her good grades and that motivates her to keep them up. He also mentioned that sometimes Dana doesn’t pay attention in class and misses what is being taught. Dana’s vision (with glasses) and hearing screenings suggest that she is performing in the average range in those areas. She is currently enrolled in speech.

BEHAVIORAL OBSERVATIONS:

Classroom Observations. Dana was observed in the general education classroom on two occasions. During the first observation, students were working on the words of the weekly cheering them, and then students wrote and corrected aloud their daily oral language sentences. Dana paid attention during 79 percent of the intervals observed, while peers attended at a rate of 76 percent of the intervals observed. During the cheers, Dana was attending by not participating in the unison oral responses. During the daily oral language Dana volunteered several times to read sentences and she corrected the first word in a sentence from lower case to capital. When she was off task, she was looking around at peers, and at the end of the observation she was out of her seat on her knees on the floor looking around.

During the second observation, the student teacher was reading a story to the students gathered around her on the floor. During the more unstructured time, Dana attended at a rate of 18 percent of the intervals observed, and peers attended at a rate of 54 percent of the intervals observed. When Dana was off task she was looking around, looking out the window, and distracted by a peer’s foot near her head. She was also quite active during this observation, fidgeting with her sweater, moving her elbows up and down.

Taken together, the observations suggest that Dana is more attentive during structured instructional times when tasks are physically involving and instruction is fast-paced. She has more difficulty attending during unstructured more passive times of the day. She also demonstrated a high activity level across both observations.

Testing Observations. During individual testing, Dana cooperated fully and willingly completed all tasks requested of her. She was cheerful and talkative, mentioning that she might take piano lessons and was going to New York.

TEST RESULTS AND DISCUSSION:

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children — Third Edition (WISC-III) is an individually administered test of general cognitive skills, which is typically used to estimate the ability to perform well in school. The WISC-III provides up to 13 subtest scores, as well as separate score for Verbal, Performance, and overall learning aptitude. With a Full Scale Score of 93, Dana performed I the average range of intellectual functioning on this administration of the WISC-III. This score falls at the 32^nd percentile. A percentile rank of 32 indicates that this child performed as well or better than 32 percent of children the same age on the same tasks. Average scores fall between the 25^th and 75^th percentiles. These tasks involve a variety of responses from defining words presented orally to assembling blocks into designs to answering arithmetic questions. Children at Dana’s skill level generally perform adequately in school. Dana earned a score of 94 (34^th percentile) on the Verbal Scale of the WISC-III, which includes tasks where the questions are presented verbally and responses are given orally (such as defining words and describing how thins are similar). On the Performance Scale, she earned a score of 94 (34^th percentile). The Performance Scale is more dependent upon the child’s immediate problem-solving ability, requiring children to approach new non-verbal situations and apply past experience and previously acquired skills to a new set of demands. Dana showed particular strength on the Coding subtest, in which she was asked to copy symbols associated with numbers to a new set of numbers.

To assess Dana’s receptive vocabulary, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test- Revised (PPVT-R) was administered. Dana obtained a standard score equivalent of 80, yielding a percentile rank of 9.

Using Curriculum-Based Measures of Reading (CBMR), Dana read at a median rate of 33 words correct per minute with 5 errors in three randomly selected 2^nd grade passages. These findings suggest that Dana’s reading fluency has increased considerably since the referral when the teacher reported that she was reading 9 words correct per minute in 1^st grade material. During the winter quarter, 2^nd grade students in the average range read between 46 and 106 words correct per minute. These findings suggest that Dana’s fluency is still somewhat below peers, although she has made significant gains since referral. While reading Dana made the following errors: some guessing based on context rather than on the words in the passage (e.g., soon ran out of the barn for soon ran out of numbers, some guessing based on the first letter of the word (e.g., sister for Sarah, getting for going). She did, however, also show the development of good word attack skills at times (e.g., sounding out started and count correctly). These findings suggest that Dana continues to need assistance with strategies for decoding words and word attack skills so that the skills she is developing become more consistent.

Using Curriculum-Based Measures of Written Expression (CBMWE), Dana and her entire class were asked to finish a story that began, "Yesterday a monkey climbed in our classroom window and…" They had one (1) minute to think about their story and three (30 minutes to write the story. During this time, Dana wrote 12 words and spelled 4 of them correctly. The median words written by the entire class was 17 with 13 words spelled correctly. These findings suggest that Dana is in the low average range in terms of writing fluency compared to other students in the class. Her rate of words spelled correctly was the lowest in the class. Dana capitalized her sentence and put a period at the end of it. She had difficulty spelling monkey, stole, something, and apple.

On the Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration (VMI), a measure of coordination between vision and motor skills based on a child’s reproduction of geometric designs, Dana received a standard score of 87, which falls at the 19^th percentile. This score is in the low average rate.

The Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement — Revised (WJTA-R) is a comprehensive set of tests designed to measure achievement in the areas of reading, mathematics, and written language. On this instrument, which was administered by the resource teacher, the scores Dana obtained on the Broad Reading measure place her at the 19^th percentile in relation to a national sample of 2^nd graders. Dana scored at the 17^th percentile on Letter/Word Identification, which involves reading individually presented words and letters aloud. In addition, she scored at the 21^st percentile on Passage Comprehension, which demonstrates comprehension skills by having the student orally supply missing words in visually presented sentences.

The scores Dana obtained on the Broad Mathematics measure place her at the 21^st percentile compared to other 2^nd graders. Dana’s performance within this measure on calculation, which involves calculation and writing the answers to visually presented mixed math problems, was at the 23^rd percentile. It was at the 22^nd percentile on Applied Problems, which involves calculation answers to practical problems such as those dealing with time and money.

Dana performed at the 10^th percentile in relation to other 2^nd graders on the Broad Written Language measure. She performed at the 3^rd percentile on the Dictation measure, which requires spelling, punctuation, and correct usage of works and phrases. She performed at the 16^th percentile when asked to write sentences about pictures, with less emphasis in scoring on the mechanics of writing (Writing Samples subtest).

The Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist is designed to record in a standardized format the behavioral difficulties and competencies of children as reported by their parents, teachers, or other adults who know the child well. The instrument identifies several specific problem areas. The degree to which Dana displayed these problem behaviors was rated by her math teacher. Out of a total of eight behavior categories, Dana was not rated in the clinical range (at or above the 98^th percentile) by either rater. Both raters did have higher ratings on attention problems (above the 85^th percentile) than on any other area. Other ratings fell below the 70^th percentile and well into the average range. These findings suggest that Dana’s teachers see her as experiencing some problems related to paying attention.