Have you ever felt like an assessment didn’t truly tell the story of your child? Shellie Bader is an SLP with a really incredible and valuable career. Today she is sharing all about Dynamic Assessment and how we as Speech Therapists can use this to enrich and drive speech therapy.

Oftentimes, formal and informal assessments are not comprehensive enough to determine the “story of the child”. Dynamic Assessment is a qualitative assessment we are able to use, to get the bigger picture. It is an alternative or supplemental assessment, with a method that provides the ability to understand what a student can learn. This tool can help determine whether a child has a learning difference or a learning disorder, and how a child learns and is specifically helpful with students who use English as a second language or have other special circumstances.

Where do you start with intervention when it seems like everything should be a goal? Along with Dynamic Assessment comes a Mediated Learning Experience. In which the therapist picks a skill that is relevant or important to the child. This learning potential observation occurs over one session, so the therapist can determine the abilities of the child within the learning process.

When completing a Mediated Learning Experience, the information collected can drive you directly to the creation of IEP goals. Through working on a skill, the therapist will actually be able to see the prompts that are successful, the supports needed, the targets a student struggles with, and how the skill should be scaffolded.

A Dynamic Assessment and a Mediated Learning Experience is another tool for your SLP tool belt to help determine how a student learns specific skills while always working on meaningful, functional skills for the student and their independence. If you’re interested in finding out more or talking with Shellie Bader, you can reach her via LinkedIn or email!

#autism #speectherapy

What’s Inside:

• How can we have tools that will drive the road map for intervention?
• How can we help students increase their functional communication skills, independence, and joy?
• What is Dynamic Assessment?
• How can SLPs use Dynamic Assessment in the therapeutic and evaluation process?
• What is the distinction between a learning difference versus a learning disorder?
• What is a mediated learning experience?

Mentioned In This Episode: 

Shellie Bader, M.A., CCC-SLP - LinkedIn
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