Tips for good assessment and report writing - 6

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.