I recently had the chance to take a look at the product “Narrative Assessments of Preschool and School Aged Children” by Tatyana from Smart Speech Therapy. A parent recently consulted with me on her son’s reading abilities so this presentation certainly came in handy!
First, Tatyana explains why narrative assessment is so important. My favorite point was this:
That you can tap into multiple language features and organiatzational abilities simultaneously.
Then, she explains all of the different types of narratives. I know that I sometimes forget just how many different types of narratives we can elicit! I love how Tatyana describes whether or not the listener is a participant in the narrative (by prompting with questions, etc.).
Next, Tatyana lists and describes all of the different types of standardized tests there are to assess narratives. I’m sorry to admit that I’d never heard of most of them. Tatyana does a great job of succinctly describing all of the elements of each. My favorite part is the pros and cons. Some of these pieces of information are the things you just might not think of!
This product goes into great detail about all of the elements of language that we can observe while looking at narratives: sequencing, grammar, memory, word retrieval, pragmatics, and more!
Another great feature is a list of behaviors that we can expect to see from language impaired students, like fewer words total and failure to use many elements of story grammar.
There’s even a hidden gem – a description of each type of word finding error! I know I always have to look these up. Here they are in one great slide! Also included are the implications on the student’s narrative with respect to word retrieval difficulties.
Perhaps the most valuable slides, in my opinion, are at the end of the presentation. Each “level” of narrative ability is described and broken up according to age. There are also sample goals included – Who doesn’t love that?! It’s all well and good to do a narrative assessment, but now what? Well, these slides will help with this dilemma tremendously!
An appendix is also included, with short little snippets of the key information presented in an easy to read chart.
If you’re interested in adding this great product to your assessment toolbox, find it here!
Tatyana also did a review of one of my book companions: “If You Give a Pig a Pancake”. Check out her review here.
In honor of out product swap, we are doing a giveaway of each product on our respective blogs. Eneter to win a copy of my companion to “If You Give a Pig a Pancake” using the Rafflecopter below. And head over to the Smart Speech Therapy blog to win a copy of “Narrative Assessments of Preschool and School Aged Children”.
