A closer look at the different components of observational screening

Practitioner observations

As you and your learner move through the journey of discovery, together you will begin to gain insight into potential learning barriers (emotional, cognitive, affective and skills and knowledge) and ways of learning that work best for the learner. As you review your documentation, observations and screening results, look for areas that both of you have noted on several occasions. Generally you want to observe academic performance, attention, organization, social and emotional strengths and weaknesses.

The following checklist is an excellent tool to help guide the observation process. The checklist was taken from Screening for Adults with Learning Disabilities: The Role of the Practitioner in the Assessment Process (1995), produced by the National Adult Literacy and Learning Disabilities Center accessed at the OTAN Data Bank at (OTAN Doc. Code: DP0024 | OTAN Ref. ID: 1620)

Practitioner observations and academic performance

Reading

The learner:

• Shows marked difficulty in oral and silent reading
• Has slow and deliberate reading patterns
• Appears to be re-reading or reading very slowly when reading silently (skips words, re-reads lines in oral reading)
• May substitute, delete, add or transpose letters and syllables
• Cannot use basic phonics to sound out words
• Loses place on page
• Reads with an overdependence on guessing and, as such, comprehension is compromised, evidenced in errors in answering questions related to the text
• Avoids reading out loud
• Reads words or syllables backwards; e.g., was for saw, net for ten
• Has a halting and jerky reading style