Appendix 3: Assessment
These are some of the "symptoms" of LDs your student might exhibit:
Reading:
confusion of similar words, problem with multi-syllable words
slow reading rate
difficulty with retaining, comprehension, remembering
difficulty picking out important themes or points
skipping words or lines of printed materials
difficulty reading for long periods of time
Writing:
difficulty with sentence structure, poor grammar, omitted words
frequent but inconsistent misspelling errors
difficulty copying from overhead, board
poorly formed letters, spacing, capitals, punctuation
difficulty planning and organizing a topic, putting thoughts on paper
difficulty with proofreading and revision
composition long and rambling or very short
difficulty in varying sentence structure
sentences in an illogical sequence
writes and prints in the same document
very slow writing
writing off the lines
difficulty with expressive, creative language
Study/Organization skills;
poor organization and time management
difficulty following directions
poor organization of written materials
turns things in late
slow to start tasks
inefficient use of library and reference materials
Other Signs:
difficulty reading facial expressions, body language
inappropriate, impulsive behavior
has a hard time grasping subtlety
spatial problems (cannot navigate a small class room, trips)
quickly "overloads" and "shuts down"
distracted
trouble sustaining attention
hyper or hypo activity
Specific informal assessment results indicating problems in Summarizing/Revising
Summarizing
inability to summarize from organizer chart
not knowing how or where to begin
inability to find main idea
inability to separate main idea from supporting details
inability to see connections between points
inability to link reading to prior knowledge
cannot understand context clues in text
Revising
difficulty when asked to scan or discuss what is written
difficulty identifying errors in own writing
inability to use a dictionary successfully to check for errors
different spelling of the same word
inability to understand or use grammatically correct sentence structure
