4: Evaluations
We discuss the evaluation process and which tests we use frequently. Since every program has their own protocol, we discuss what we have done and some tips for making the process more efficient. We also discuss using this information for determining placement.
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episode 4: Evaluations
Transcript
Intro: Welcome to the TOD Podcast, or as we like to say, the “TOD POD.” We chat about all things Deaf Education while you drive around. I’m Kimmy from The Hard of Hearing Teacher and I’m Deanna from Listening Fun, and let’s get started!
K: This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I really enjoy doing evaluations. I love figuring out the puzzle of what supports a student needs to succeed.
D: I do not share that opinion. [both laugh] I'm glad you enjoy doing evaluations. I'm sure you'll be able to make this topic a little less boring than it appears to be. We're not going to be doing a PD on assessments right now, um, but rather just have a conversation of what the evaluation process could look like based on, you know, what we've done.
K: Yes, and I like that you use the word could because the evaluation process looks very different in every school, district, state etc. So today Deanna and I can only speak from our own experiences with assessments that we've done. Where I am, we call our process the Functional Hearing Evaluation. But this process looks different for every student even within just the districts that I work in.
D: Can you go through, what does a functional hearing evaluation include for you?
K: So, it can include a variety of components. My favorite part is that the evaluation process is completely customizable to fit the student's needs, and can be a mix of anecdotal and informal assessments along with standardized testing. Some of the items always included are an audiogram and report from the students's audiologist, a parent interview including history of the student's hearing loss and education, what communication the family/student uses and parent concerns/questions. I'll also do a teacher interview and or SIFTER. And a review of their overall school or EI records.
D: Yeah, that all sounds like important information to have. What are some of the actual assessments that you use?
K: So the rest of the assessment pieces are going to be mixed and matched based on the information received from the required steps of the process. So typically we include an in-class observation and a student interview. This can be conversational or using a self-assessment such as the LIFE-R. If the student needs testing for auditory or language skills, we might do word or phrase lists in different listening conditions. This could be the WIPI or the CID lists. We might also do auditory memory tasks, the Listening Comprehension Test, some vocab testing (maybe the Peabody) and maybe even the TAPS. Some of these might be done by the SLP too, depending on the student and district. So this, again, really varies based on the student and where you're at.
D: Yeah, so that's like a lot of different pieces. So maybe an example would be helpful if we want to visualize this. Can you tell us what this might look like for an incoming kindergarten student, for example?
K: Sure! So I've actually done this with quite a few little kindergartners and I think they're quite possibly the most fun because they're coming in kind of blank slate, right? You're putting together this whole program for them. So for an incoming kindergarten student or preschool, it really depends on the state. I would start with the audiogram, audiology report, and parent interview. The background information from these 2 pieces is going to tell me a lot about why the student was referred for an evaluation and then I can start to plan what assessments I'm going to do next. If applicable I'm going to do a teacher interview. This could be from preschool. This could be from daycare. This could be from EI. And this is really important since I'm likely doing this the week or two before school starts. Depending on the state, maybe the week that school starts. So I'm trying to get an IEP in place before the student gets to class on the first day, if I can. When I meet the little student, I want to take detailed anecdotal notes from the beginning. I want to note: how do they respond to noise and speech? What do they know about their hearing loss? What do they know about their devices, if they have any? I also want to see if the student shows any needs for auditory skill development. And if they do I'll likely start with the Peabody for vocab for some language testing and then some word lists, again in those different listening conditions, so I can look for phonemic awareness patterns. And that's kind of where I'm going to start with this process.
D: How long does all that roughly take? For like a younger student.
K: So, I'd say it takes about 2 to 3 hours with the student and all together 6 hours including all of the paperwork and adult interviews. So 2 to 3 hours with the student direct. But then another, let's say, 2 to 3 hours for all of the additional work that goes into it before you even get to the IEP.
D: That makes sense when I do our version of this, sometimes, you know, it's a combination of the SIFTER and like 5 minutes of like tell me what I need to know.
K: Right. And sometimes that's all you can do. It really depends on the student and the situation. But sometimes I've also scheduled time to sit down and interview the parents one-on-one over a Zoom call, phone call or in person with the parents or the teacher. This could even happen for a kindergarten student, like in our example. I've even done this during kindergarten orientation in between the classes that were coming in.
D: Hm. That makes sense. Um, so what about if there's like a middle school student or someone who's up for a re-eval or their hearing changes or someone transferred midyear. What kind of assessment protocol would you do for them?
K: So for this older student who has some changes going on, I'm again going to start with my audiogram and audiological report. I want an updated report to see if there's any changes or why we're starting this evaluation process process at the time that we are. I'm going to ask the parents for some information and give the student's teachers a SIFTER. I really like to use a self-assessment, especially for older students, because I want to know about their self-advocacy. I want to know where they're at. So I might use a LIFE-R or I have one in my TPT store that I developed that can really help show where they're at with their self-advocacy and compensatory skills, knowledge of their hearing loss. All of that is really helpful information. I also want to do an in-class observation. I always try to schedule this so I can see a transition time, like coming into class. Or sometimes I'll go in between classes so I see the last 20 minutes of a class and the first 20 minutes of the next class because there's a lot of listening that's happening. There is likely some peer social interaction that's going on, and there's some more challenging listening situations that I can observe them in during that transition time. I might also administer the secondary version of the Listening Comprehension Test and this is going to help determine if I'm going to further test their language or auditory skills.
D: I think that's really helpful for people to hear who are like the only TOD in their district and the administration is like "okay, assess this child" and you just have to like come up with something on your own. I like hearing how other people do it, like what information they gather and what tests they use.
[Music]
K: This episode is brought to you by the Itinerant Caseload Planner from The Hard of Hearing Teacher. If you're looking for a way to manage your crazy caseload, I have a time-saving, auto-calculating, all-in-one solution just for you. My digital planner will help streamline your planning process and simplify your data collection. With all of the student's sheets linked together, you can find information quickly. Get started organizing your caseload at the link in the show notes and at listentotodpod.com . Now let's get back to the show.
[Music]
D: For people who are strapped on time, which is all of us I would say. [chuckles] Do you have any tips for making this process faster, easier, more efficient?
K: Some helpful tips are to have all of the copies made in advance, and fill out whatever information you can from the get go. So when you get that referral and you're starting your evaluation process, combing through and trying to have as much information in place in the beginning is going to make the rest of it a lot easier and then you're not scrambling for that information at the end. I also use email templates for sending out the parent interviews or the SIFTERs. So I'll do a little copy and paste, attach my document, and go - obviously change the student's name. For sending the finalized report to the case manager or supervisor I have an email template for that too. I also think it's really helpful if you have a report template. So some teams build this together. I adapted our team's template as needed, um, in a way that fit my evaluation style, having that template still makes things go a lot faster.
D: So for your email templates, I'll tell you what I do, I don't actually save them in my email. I just have like a Word document of templates, which is just like random paragraphs I've written, and then I just go through and like copy and paste them. I find that's faster than doing it through email, because then I have to go into drafts, I have to find it, I just like having all my templates in one place and I love using email templates like anytime I have to send an email like twice, I'm making that into a template so that way I don't have to do it again. I can't share them because I've stolen half of them from my coworkers, [Kimmy chuckles] so I haven't actually like written them myself, but it's kind of like, if you write an email and you think you're going to send it again, just copy and paste what you've written in and drop it into a Word document that's easily accessible. That saves me a bunch of time.
K: Right. And if you have it in your Google drive. You can also search for the keywords in the email or label it whatever you want your keywords to be so when you need to go find it, it's right there.
D: And this is slightly different but when I do assessments for kids getting into early intervention, there's like 5 forms that I need for every single kid. It's like the actual assessment, the consent form, like the suggested activity - it's like certain forms that I need for every single kid. I have a folder on my desktop with all of the blank forms and then I just duplicate that folder every time I have to do a new assessment so that way, like, I have all the forms in one place every single time I have to do a new one. And that does made it a lot easier than like even clicking and dragging or copy and pasting. It's just duplicate the whole folder, I d- I'm assuming you could do that on all computers. But you can definitely do it on a Mac. And then, yeah.
K: Yeah, you can do that on a PC.
D: Okay I'm, see I'm a Mac and Kimmy uses a PC so we have like everyone covered. [both laugh] So yeah, just duplicating that every single time is easy. It's faster than duplicating the forms on their own.
D: And then I also, I have an iPad that I use for work, that um my district gave me I just have the forms on the iPad and then I have them sign them on the iPad. So if you have - if you're needing signatures, getting them in person, I think it's easier than emailing things to people, better to do it in the moment if you can. But same thing, I just duplicate the forms on my iPad and have them sign it with a stylus, or their finger. A stylus is easy too. I have a stylus from Amazon that's a generic stylus. It's basically like a finger, like it could work on any touchscreen. It's not like an Apple pencil that's like fancy or anything, but it was a couple bucks and it works great. I use it all the time.
K: That's awesome.
D: And then when I'm done, I just, if I need to I just Airdrop it over because I have because I have Mac stuff.
K: Makes sense.
D: So okay, with all of that in mind, the whole point of this assessment process is to recommend services. So I often refer to the Hearing Itinerant Service Rubric, which if you Google it, it's there. The Hearing Itinerant Service Rubrics are from Karen Anderson. They're wonderful. Very generally speaking preschoolers often get - this is - I'm gonna speak real generally about what I often see just as like a starting point. Preschoolers often get like 2 times a week because they still have a lot of language and auditory skills they need to develop. And they basically have no self-advocacy skills yet. Obviously every student is different. From there if a student requires vocabulary or auditory skill development, I'm likely to keep seeing them weekly for direct service to work on those skills along with self-advocacy. If a student has more than 2 grade levels behind in reading, language, auditory skills, then I'm considering 2 times a week for like elementary students. If a student has strong skills, but needs self-advocacy, we're looking at once a week or twice a month. And usually once a month is reserved for middle and high school students who need monitoring who have demonstrated the ability to self-advocate regularly. Um, like I said that's kind of like a rough rough overview but I just wish someone just told me that when I started um because it's kind of hard to like go off with nothing. And that's pretty consistent roughly with the rubrics that I talked about. If a student is requiring TOD services 3 or more times a week, uh, there should be a discussion about placement because they might need more support than what an itinerant teacher could offer.
D: I'm lucky where I work that we have like a program for children with hearing loss. We have a signing track and an auditory/oral track. So if a child needs more support like that placement is available to them. But I've worked in places in the past where there just isn't a specialized program within a reasonable distance of where the child lives and so like high itinerant support is like kind of the only option and sometimes that's just how it is, but I do think it's helpful when you're going through these assessments and you're observing the child to like kind of keep that loosely in mind. That if they're requiring so much itinerant support that it's important to talk about placement earlier rather than later because you don't want them to just keep developing a delay year after year and they're just getting more and more lost because that's really not great.
K: And more than just a deaf/ hard of hearing classroom should probably be considered in that placement discussion anyway. So hopefully there's some sort of support that they're able to get close by.
D: Yeah, and unfortunately, I mean, I was hesitant to even do an episode on evaluations because the process is so different everywhere like it's even different at my work but I feel like Kimmy's was a lot more comprehensive so that's why we went through hers. But, I do think it's helpful for teachers who don't have a program set up to just hear, like what some of the options are. And so just to wrap it up, like I wanted to know, Kimmy, what are your favorite listening assessments for young students?
K: So for young students I - for a listening, auditory skills assessment - really like the WIPI that's W-I-P-I. And I like doing that in different listening conditions.
D: And then for older students, what listening, auditory assessment would you recommend?
K: My personal favorite is the Listening Comprehension Test 2. That's the secondary version of that test.
D: I Also like that one. I've used it before as well. Okay, great. So this is like not my favorite topic, [chuckles] but I hope that we at least provided some information and made it somewhat interesting for you. If you do other assessments or have a different process, we'd love to know because like I said it's totally different everywhere, and I'm happy to share out like what people tell us because like I said we obviously don't know everything. We only know what we do. So feel free to DM us. Um I'm @ListeningFun and Kimmy is @TheHardOfHearingTeacher on Instagram or you can reach out with any information about assessments that you think would be helpful to share with our audience.
K: And that's the show for today. As always a full transcript and show notes can be found at listentotodpod.com and we'll see you next time
Both: Bye!