Assessment tools:
When I see children for the first time, I ask their teacher to introduce me to your child as their friend, and I’m known as Ms. Kate. I suggest to parents, and also say to the children (depending on their age), that we are going to play/do a lot of different activities so I can see what they are really good at. Here are some of the assessment tools I most commonly use and often use a combination depending on the child’s individual needs:
Please click on the picture to obtain a website link providing more information about the assessment tool.
Talking to parents and teachers
When a referral comes from parents or a school, I like to get as much information from parents first before talking to the class teacher. You are the expert with your child. I always ask for consent to talk to teachers from the parents. Going forward with gathering information is totally up to you and when you are ready.
Movement ABC
This is a standardised assessment tool and a variety of activities are used, children are compared with peers of their age. Fine motor and gross motor skills are assessed. A traffic light system is one way of scoring and is easy for parents to understand. Scaled scores and percentiles are also presented.
Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (BOT)-2.
The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency Second Edition (BOT™-2) delivers the most precise and comprehensive standardised measure of motor skills, both gross and fine motor. It contains subtests and challenging game-like tasks. It can be delivered as in full form or short form for screeners.
Learning without tears print tool and other fine motor areas.
This is a standardised writing tool that assesses capital and lowercase letters and numbers for memory, orientation, formation (start and sequence), placement (where each item sits on the line), size and how the child controls the pencil. This assessment tool is used in conjunction with reviewing workbooks and consideration of the writing style used at the school. The assessment tool can be used for any writing curriculum and for children aged 6 years and older.
For younger children, I also look at finger movement and strength, hand dominance, midline crossing, bilateral integration and pre-writing skills
Developmental test of speed writing
This is a standardised writing assessment used for 9 - 16 years 11 month children to assess speed and legibility of writing. There are 5 sub tests for this assessment that looks at speed, neatness, fine motor and endurance. It identifies words per minute and children are scored in relation to children in their age bracket
Evaluation of Ayers sensory integration (EASI)
This assesses more areas than the SIPT (see below), is very user friendly and is the most up to date assessment tool for sensory integration, ideal to use in school based therapy assessments, It looks sensory perception (how we process information using our senses including touch, auditory, visual, vestibular and proprioception), posture, ocular motor (eye muscles), bilateral integration, praxis (ideation, body position and sequencing, visual and language based praxis). It also covers several areas of praxis, vestibular, has specific proprioception tools and analyses sensory reactivity, This often helps identify reasons for attention and emotional regulation issues but can help with other areas too.
Sensory integration and praxis assessment (SIPT)
It is a standardised tool for sensory integration using 17 tools to assess areas of processing of the sensory systems including visual, hearing, touch, vestibular/movement as well as sensory perception, discrimination, reactivity, praxis, balance, bilateral integration and sequencing.
Sensory questionaires
Caregiver and teacher sensory questionnaires are used to help develop a picture of what are a child's stengths and possible concerns related to sensory processing and modulation in different situations - home and school. Forms used include the sensory processing measure SPM and the sensory profile questionnaire.
Clinical observations
These are professional observations I am making as soon as I meet a child, based on professional knowledge and understanding of the sensory systems and also age appropriate development of the child's behaviour and movement. I also have specific assessment tools that can assess children’s specific concerns which are non standardised but have average norms to compare children with.
Developmental milestones
As well as using standardised assessments listed above, I also use my vast knowledge of working with children to compare abilities with similar aged peers for gross motor and fine motor skills, organisational ability, emotional regulation, arousal level (high or low arousal) and attention span.