This is the sixth tip written by the
assessment team at the Jerusalem
municipality educational psychology services – with some additions by me. The members of the team are: Rita Baumgarten, Hanna Brimer,
Nadine Caplan , Eynat Cohen Rahman , Etti Daniel Simon , Uri Dar ,
Michelle Lisses Topaz, Betty Netzer, Ruth Oman Shaked , Adina Sacknovitz
, Smadar Sapir Yogev, Anan Srour
and Dahlia
Zayit.
Start
"thinking abilities" - not
"thinking tests"
Don't think: "I'll assess the child with
the Wechsler test, TAT, DST" etc.
Tests
are means, not ends.
Try thinking: "which cognitive
abilities and skills should I assess in depth with this child, in order to
answer the assessment question? Which lowered
abilities or skills might cause the specific difficulties this child has? How do I assess these abilities or
skills?"
Our assumption is that lowered cognitive
abilities may cause difficulties in reading, writing and math, and may also affect
the child's social and emotional functioning (exactly as emotional difficulties the
child has may also affect his cognitive performance). In order to work in light of this assumption,
you should know about the relations between cognitive abilities (fluid ability,
processing speed, short term memory, long term storage and retrieval, visual
processing, auditory processing, comprehension-knowledge), achievement (reading,
writing, math) and social-emotional wellbeing.
You should know how a specific low ability may affect the child's reading, writing, math and social
and emotional wellbeing.
These relations are discussed in the
presentation series "intelligence and cognitive abilities" found in
the right hand column, and in some of the posts in this blog.
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