Assessment+Strategies

Assessing a Learning Disabled or Special Needs student can be a tricky situation, considering that the word "assessment" or "test" can often insight butterflies in one's stomach and feelings of anxiety and nervousness that can cause a student to perform poorly. Like Schwarz emphasizes throughout the article, anxiety is a huge factor in student success.

The key to assessing an LD or SpecEd student is creating an atmosphere of comfort. There are many ways to reduce a student's anxiety during an assessment that will help them focus on the task at hand. A few strategies I gathered from the article and from my own experience are as follows:


 * Besides differentiating an exam or quiz to be at the level of the student's understanding, modifying questions and correct answer options to be less complex is essential.
 * Allow the student to have more time to complete the assessment
 * If the classroom environment is not conducive to the student's success (say there is loud yard work or noisy recess/lunch outside the classroom), allowing them to work on something else and come in to take the assessment at another time can be helpful.
 * Read the assessment aloud to the student and have them respond to you orally
 * If the test is to be done on their own, using the "Cover" method can help students to not be overwhelmed by the amount of text on the page and help them focus on one question at a time. To do this, give the student a blank sheet of paper to place over test questions that they are not working on. As they finish a question in order, they can pull the paper down over their paper to reveal the next question.
 * If the assessment is to be done in groups, be sure to place the student in a group that has members who are compassionate and understanding to the student's needs. Also- the smaller the group, the better!