CTOPP and TNL results

[mamashark]

So I got the CTOPP and TNL results back on my daughter, I'm not thrilled with the SLP who tested her because she had never even given the TNL before and was more focused on some of the expressive speech things she was hearing (monotone speech, inability to pronounce the letter 'R' correctly, low volume). She's recommending services but wants to focus on goals that look at speech.

So - here are her scores -please help me know how this impacts reading instruction, because the SLP isn't going to be any help there, and while going back to Barton level 3 is my next step, I need someone to break this down for me! 

Elision - standard score 10, 50% - Avg.

Blending words - standard score 8, 25% avg.

Phoneme Isolation - standard score 10, 50% avg.

memory for digits - standard score 6, 9% below avg.

nonword repetition - standard score 8, 25% avg.

rapid digit naming - standard score 5, 5% poor

rapid letter naming - standard score 0, <1% very poor

phonological awareness standard score 96, 39% avg.

phonological memory standard score 82, 12% below average

rapid symbolic naming standard score 55, <1% very poor

 

Test of narrative language - (Note - I used Braidy with her all year this past year. I listened to her take this test and was surprised at how good her scores were based on the narrations I heard her give. I know what I want to focus on next year with her based on my observations.)

narrative comprehension - standard score 13, 84% above average (((this score doesn't surprise me - she's my really aware, street-smart girl)))

oral narration standard score 10, 50% average

Narrative language ability standard score 108, 70% average.

* note - some of the goals that the SLP included are directly related to this test - focusing on sequencing, cause and effect, etc.

[PeterPan]

Are these scaled scores or standard scores? It has been a while since I looked at the CTOPP. Standard scores usually have a mean of 100, where scaled scores have a mean of 10. So then you look at what the standard deviation is for that test to see significance. So like if that elision was a standard score, that's fine. It would be to want to take things up stronger, absolutely. The standard deviation will be 3 on scaled scores, so a 5 or lower would be very significant. I think your scores are on the better side of that because you've been doing Barton. Those low RAN/RAS scores are your lagging indicator. Did you work on RAN/RAS? So clearly you need to, but because you didn't they're still low. 

Just as an aside, have you wondered if she's on the spectrum? If you have insurance coverage for it and the SP was clicking with her, I would let the SLP do things she's good at (the prosody, Rs, other language issues that maybe didn't get tested but that the SLP is seeing) and do the Barton yourself. It looks like her narrative language is coming along nicely. If there are language issues, they can hold back her progress with the reading. How old is your dd? Unless she's so old that she's resistant to speech therapy, I would do services, yes, AND do the stuff on your end. You were making progress but need to go back at it. 

[mamashark]

12 hours ago, PeterPan said:

I think your scores are on the better side of that because you've been doing Barton. Those low RAN/RAS scores are your lagging indicator. Did you work on RAN/RAS? So clearly you need to, but because you didn't they're still low. 

 

Ok that's what I was thinking. But how in the world does RAN/RAS impact reading so much though? No, I haven't worked on those at all... I guess I'm just struggling to understand how these scores indicate the severity of difficulty she's having learning to read. 

No, I've never wondered if she was on the spectrum. Other than some speech issues she's really no where near the diagnostic criteria. I'd say ADHD inattentive type if there is any other diagnosis in there - and I really am looking forward to getting the full neuropsych eval whenever that happens, I feel like that'll give me a better picture of what's going on. 

We have coverage for speech - not thrilled with the place the SLP works (they share offices and are really busy and don't put testing signs on the doors, so another SLP walked into the room several times during the testing) but it'll do for whatever we can get from it. She's 8 and not resistant to the therapy, so we'll continue there as long as they feel they can service her. 

[PeterPan]

Well where I was reading about the importance of RAN/RAS was on what S'Cool Moves which I think is now called School Moves. Anyways, they had an article and a link to some research but have redone their research and poofed it. I guess you could start by assuming it has SOME value since they bother to test it on the CTOPP. LOL The more bizarre thing is the SLPs, etc. saying you can't improve it, which is hogwash. And I guess to see what it will improve, you'd just do it and see. My ds has a reasonably high processing speed relative to IQ, so I can't necessarily tease out what is what. I can tell you that he *used* to do that mess of not knowing a word after reading it many times and now he doesn't. I can tell you that the rapid naming was hard at first and got easier and that it seemed to correlate to his ease in getting stuff out while reading. I can tell you the research is that strong RAN/RAS is highly correlated to strong readers.

So can someone SURVIVE without strong RAN/RAS and still read? Oh probably, but why find out? Costs you diddley to work on and takes very little time. Of all the things you're dealing with, it's the easiest, lol.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4rcl6f0uo70esmv/AAAaGAHw3_YTMEQZSw_WI-t_a?dl=0  there' a link to the files I used. I printed then, popped them in page protectors, boom. You could make up similar pages with numbers, sure. I hadn't seen the CTOPP administered when I did mine, so I didn't realize they test it so many ways. My ds has ASD, so he doesn't generalize well, meaning I need to work on skills multiple ways. You're making brain circuits, so just approach it like therapy, doing it 5-10 minutes at a time several times a day and you'll quickly see results.

I'm glad you're going to be able to start some therapy, and I hope the sessions end up better than this testing session was for disruptions, lol. Fwiw, girls don't look like boys on a lot of these things (ADHD, social, etc.) and it's easy for their deficits to get glossed. She may end up in that WISC range with the Social Communication Profiles, where she has some deficits, needs the intervention, functions really well, and goes lots of ways diagnostically with the DSM. That's why it's more important over time to look at what she needs (some language intervention, some social thinking intervention, whatever) than what the DSM is saying at the moment. 

Well good deal. So what's your next move? You have this baseline. Are you going for a psych eval next or beginning intervention?

[Kanin]

Those phonological scores look good! The rapid naming... not so much. Rapid naming affects reading so greatly because it's a measure of how quickly her brain can connect the letter on the page to the sound the letter makes. Even if she KNOWS the sounds cold, if it takes longer to GET those sounds, everything gets thrown off. Imagine being slow at retrieving each sound for p-a-r-t-i-c-u-l-a-r-l-y, and then having to blend the sounds together. It's cumbersome. 

The good scores on phonological awareness are really good news, though 🙂 Many dyslexics have both low rapid naming AND poor phonological awareness.

Practice, practice, practice is going to be important to make words automatic, in addition to teaching her how to decode the words. She will likely need many more exposures to words than an average kid, in order to make retrieval automatic. As much time as you can have her read aloud, I would do. 

[mamashark]

5 hours ago, PeterPan said:

Well good deal. So what's your next move? You have this baseline. Are you going for a psych eval next or beginning intervention?

The psych eval is not until probably January, so I am thinking about doing Barton 3 now, since I have it, but not sure what I want to do after that. I was talking to my sister-in-law about it today, she's a kindergarten teacher whose done 2 masters in reading instruction. Her advice was to try a program called Rime Magic, that teaches kids to recognize the small pieces of a word in order to build bigger words. They are using it at her school with 1st graders who are struggling. 

edited to add - after looking at it, I don't feel like it offers anything more than what I did with spell-links this past year, and that didn't work for us, so I doubt this program would hold the magic key to reading for us as the website would like me to believe, lol.

31 minutes ago, Mainer said:

Many dyslexics have both low rapid naming AND poor phonological awareness.

 

yes, and I think before I did Barton level 1 with her that she would have scored very differently. Level 1 took us a LONG time, and was REALLY hard for her. So I'm pleased that the work we did there was so helpful. 

Edited June 13, 2019 by mamashark

[PeterPan]

You might refresh your Barton screening, just to make sure she currently passes it, and ask Barton to email you the placement tests for Barton 1 and 2, just to make sure she's currently testing out of them.

[Terabith]

I’ve used Rime Magic in the first grade class I student taught in.  Run away from it.  It’s better than NO phonics instruction, but compared to Barton?  Don’t mess around.  It doesn’t compare even to something like SWR or All About Reading or Logic of English.  Just do the Barton.  

[mamashark]

1 hour ago, Terabith said:

I’ve used Rime Magic in the first grade class I student taught in.  Run away from it.  It’s better than NO phonics instruction, but compared to Barton?  Don’t mess around.  It doesn’t compare even to something like SWR or All About Reading or Logic of English.  Just do the Barton.  

ok thanks for the heads-up! I've already got my Barton box back out and am refreshing myself on everything! 

[PeterPan]

You go girl. You've got this!