Tips for good assessment and report writing - 11

Three more tips 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.

Write about the specific child, and on a blank page

Don't use a prepared report template.  Don't use prepared sentences.  Challenge yourselves!  Write on a blank sheet of paper.  Write about the specific child.  How did he cope with the assessment tasks? What makes his performance unique?

Since each child is unique, each report should also be unique.  The model by which you analyze the data will affect the report's structure and contents (caption, sub-captions, how you conceptualize the findings and present them).  A specific child's assessment results may fit a specific model more than others.  Some children's data will fit the CHC model.  Other children's data will better fit the PASS model, the CPM model or the SNP model.  (Are these models "Chinese" for you?  Read the presentation "A very brief introduction to intelligence theories" in the "Intelligence and cognitive abilities" presentation series in the right hand column of this blog, and the post published on December 5).

Once you've chosen a diagnostic model, you can write the report according to the model.  Within this model, you can decide whether to begin with describing the child's strengths or weaknesses, his social-emotional state and its interaction with his cognitive state, or his cognitive state and its interaction with his social emotional state, and so on.

Leave the data to the appendix

Focus on the child and his key characteristics and not on the numbers.  Try to write with a clear connection to the data, but describe the child, not the data.  Think about the client who will read your report and write clearly and in a way that respects him.

If you have enough grounds, write a clear diagnosis.

Keep it short

Take responsibility and write things that are focused, central, communicative and readable.  The report must be useful.