Speech evaluation for 4 year old...

josie402

Gavin is going to have a speech evaluation (hopefully) in January.  I've just started the paperwork with the school district after his 4 year check up.  If you've been through this, what does the evaluation consist of?  Can I stay there with him?  He's pretty shy and I'm afraid he won't talk much.  His preschool teachers say he rarely talks and he rarely talks to strangers even with me, so I'm not sure how it will go.  I'm going to ask them some more questions when I set up the appointment, but was curious about other's experiences.

Carol*Brady

My DD#1 had one at 3.5 & one at 6yrs.  The ST took her from me & talked to her alone in her office.  My DD easily separates so it wasn't an issue.  I think if she hadn't the ST would have let me go with but I know they prefer alone.  Basically from what I can tell--they'll point out photos/drawings & ask questions about them.  Have them finish sentences, etc--just things to see how their communication (vocab, actual articulation, comprehension, etc) is both active & receptive.  

jlw2505

I think it might vary from district to district but my DD had hers when she was 3 and a few months but since it was through the Early Childhood Special Ed department and not EI (you age out of EI at 3), I think it would be the same.  They were evaluating her for a few things besides speech but speech was the big issues.  She had already gone through the general early childhood one that all kids here go through before Kindergarten.  Her test took place over a month period and we went in about 4 different times.  I think the speech stuff was over 2-3 visits (trying to remember as it was over a year ago).  For speech, they did a lot of things like ask her to name items in pictures, to tell them a story based on what she saw.  They asked her some basic questions and would just listen to what she said.  They often had her play games which involved them, being able to see/hear more than her just doing one thing so they were able to test different areas all at once.  They did reading compression type of things, had her find items in a picture in a set amount of time.  SHowed her a picture for a certain amout of time and then had her name what she could remember from the picture.  All of it was done in a very playful mood and it was made fun for her.  I was always (or my DH) with her but often sat at a different table and where she could not see me.  This was helpful for both her and me as I was not able to prod her along and answer for her as I know is so easy to do.

championmama

I'm a school based SLP.  Generally, I evaluate once they are in the school.  I've evaluated one child on parent referral and the parent did stay in the room. 

I give a quick artic test called the goldman-fristoe.  in KY, and I assume all states, two informal observations are to be coonducted showing the adverse affect and proving that the speech delay affects learning and classroom participation.  so, I do that in the classroom.  For the child who came to me for the eval, we just put him in the pre-K class for half a day for me to observe in there.

I prefer the parent not be there, but for an artic eval it's not as big a deal as for a language eval.  When I'm evaluating language, I need the child only to respond, but parents tend to be overly helpful.