speech test results

I was able to speak to the teacher about Esme's evaluation today. Overall, the results were good. The hearing test was normal. The receptive language test (how well they can identify things when asked to point to the pictures) was 100%. The teacher stopped that test at 'age 9' when Esme was still getting every question correctly. She had the vocabulary to identify all of the pictures they presented when the word was said for her. Then, they did the expressive langauge test - where they show her pictures and ask her to produce words - to describe what is in them - or some aspect about the picture. She scored '2 years 11 months' on that test, although most of her answers were 'on topic' they were not hitting the points the test required to continue. It was mostly a difference of opinion - she said a starfish was an octopus, and could not identify category words to describe what things shared in common (clothes for a page of clothes pictures, animals for page of animals etc.). They did a test of over/under/behind/front/by/near/far etc and she did not get many of those correct, mostly opposite of expected.

All of this put her at the threshold for what they would recommend 30 minutes of instruction per week to help her develop those skills. The further reccommendation was one day a week 'half-time' in their preschool, with the 30 minutes of speech therapy being included on that day. Very mild - the only thing we have to worry about is transporting her there and back. She will have to have a backpack with a change of clothes and a folder to put any take-home information in. The teacher did note that Esme participated a lot more on those tests than most children do, especially to do all four tests in one hour. She was very cooperative and attentive, and she could tell there was 'a lot to Esme' beyond the surface level. We did an 'individual education plan' or IEP to mark that she was doing some reading and writing, a 'visual learner' and the proposed language development skills.

speech evaluation

Esme had an evaluation with two speech therapists today, lasting about fifteen minutes. They said her pronunciation was good for her age, and that she needed a language evaluation, not a speech evaluation. She introduced me to Miss K, the langauge evaluator. Miss K. asked for me to bring Esme in again next week for a longer evaluation. They are treating this as a 'get ready for school' and say since Esme was cooperative with the conversation-based testing today it should be something they can help with.

Esme liked it! She thought she was going to school, and was very happy about being 'a (big) kid now'. She got two stickers and was told she had done a good job :)