What do you think when you hear the word evaluation?
In the beginning of their journey, many parents think: Oh no, something is wrong! or maybe Ugh, another test. Is this really necessary?
Perhaps they find themselves wondering, Why do we need yet another evaluation? Haven't we already done a bunch of testing?
Or maybe: We already go to speech therapy. Why do we need to re-evaluate?
Trust me, if you've thought any of these things, you are not alone. These are all valid questions. Evaluations can be tricky to maneuver, especially when it comes to speech and language services. And often they have a negative reputation for being confusing and overwhelming to understand.
But what if I told you evaluations aren’t “just another test.”
Evaluations are powerful tools to understand your child better and to open doors to important services and opportunities to help your child succeed.
Let’s take a closer look at what evaluations are, why evaluations are an important part of helping your child thrive academically, socially, and emotionally, and how evaluations can look differently across different settings.
What Are Evaluations, Anyways?
Evaluations are more than just a test and a series of scores. They are a “snapshot” in time.
They will never tell you everything about a child, but they can tell a lot about how a child does in a structured environment and with an unfamiliar clinician.
And, if we’re lucky, we can gather information about the child in other settings, too.
As clinicians, evaluations are essential to understand a child’s learning profile, strengths, and the areas they need support. Here’s what we focus on during an evaluation:
You may have heard the term “receptive language and expressive language” —- but what do these terms even mean?
Think of Receptive language as your child’s ability to understand what’s being said to them. It’s more than just hearing — it’s about processing and making sense of the language they hear. Can they follow directions? Do they understand new words or ideas? Do they understand what is being asked of you? Sometimes parents might think “Oh, they’re not listening to me or don’t want to do what I tell them”. Well… Sometimes this may be the case, but other times they may not retain and/or understand what is being asked of them.
Now, Expressive language refers to how well your child can share their thoughts and feelings with others. Are they able to express themselves clearly using complete sentences, or do they struggle to get their point across?
But wait, there’s more!
Clinicians also assess Speech production. How clearly does your child speak? Are they easily understood by both family members and strangers? We also look at other things like the quality of their voice and the rhythm of their speech during conversation. Is it fluent or is it choppy?
But, what about play and social communication? These are important too. Play is more than just having fun but an important part of learning! Through play, children develop important social and cognitive skills, which helps them practice using their imagination, language, and learn social rules when playing with other kids. Play varies greatly from child-to-child depending on their interests and it is important to note that there is no wrong way to play. However, observations of a child’s play can tell us about their communication style, their interests, areas of strength, and areas for growth.
All together, this information allows us to design a treatment plan and create objectives to work on during therapy. It also allows us to provide families with strategies and objectives to carry over at home.
Why Do Evaluations Matter?
All parents want to watch their child reach their full potential. But sometimes, we notice that some kids might need extra support to reach their full potential – whether that's in the classroom, socializing with similar aged peers, or simply expressing themselves. That’s where evaluations come in.
If your child qualifies for services after an evaluation, it opens up opportunities for them to receive speech and language therapy that’s tailored to their needs. This therapy can take place in a school setting or through private practice. The beauty of tailored therapy is that it’s not a “one size fits all” solution. Evaluations help us see your child’s strengths and where they do well, and what supports them to help them succeed.
Understanding your child’s areas of strengths and areas for growth, can open doors to receive accommodations in the classroom. Clinicians can offer recommendations based on evaluation results to collaborate with your child’s teachers and other professionals to ensure they are given tools and strategies designed to help them access the curriculum more effectively. For example, if your child has difficulty understanding instructions or organizing their thoughts, accommodations like visual aid, extra time, or simplified directions can make all the difference.
Let's Talk Evaluations at Talk Time
The evaluation process can look differently depending on the setting.
Wanna learn more about school-based services? Check out this blog post here
Wanna learn more about Early Intervention (EI) services? Check out this blog post here
But wait… What about private practice? No need to evaluate any further, you’ve found the right blog post here!
Here’s a sneak preview of what to expect as you prepare for your child’s evaluation with us!
Getting Started
Review privacy policies and complete intake paperwork, including sharing past evaluations.
We will review your intake forms to get to know your child's interests and your concerns about communication.
Schedule the evaluation. Usually appointments are about 1-2 hours depending on your child's age & profile. The evaluation may take place over multiple sessions
How to Prepare
Let your child know that a speech teacher will be playing with them and working with them that day. Prepare to watch! You want your child to do their best, but it’s important to not “help” them during the assessment. The SLP will let you know when you can participate and when testing does not allow for it.
Evaluation Day
The SLP will interact with the child to establish rapport and make them feel comfortable. We will use a combination of standardized measures and qualitative measures to look at your child's profile.
Some of this may look like play, while others may be structured and test-like.
We will ask you and your child (if they are older) about their communication. What are your goals for therapy? What areas would you like to see improve? How do you feel about x’s communication?
Then, we will give you general feedback and a full written report within 15 business days.
Assessments
At Talk Time, we use a combination of standardized assessments and qualitative measures.
While standardized scores are important and help us understand how a child performs relative to a similar age peer, they don’t give us the full picture. These scores often don’t account for subtle nuances and are not typically valid for neurodiversity or bilingual individuals. See more information below on the pro’s and con’s of standardized tests.
The Follow Up
What happens after the evaluation?
Once our clinician has completed the evaluation, they will schedule a virtual meeting to go over the results/ findings with you. They will also provide you with recommendations as to how to proceed next. If you choose to move forward with speech therapy, the clinician will provide a detailed treatment plan, including specific goals tailored to your child’s needs
Scenarios
As clinicians, we are often presented with a variety of cases and circumstances where a child needs an evaluation. Let’s talk about some of these nuanced situations.
Andrea
Andrea has recently been evaluated by Early Intervention (EI). She has the evaluation report from EI, but we will need to evaluate as well.
Why? What will our evaluation provide that EI didn’t?
Great question! While an EI evaluation might have covered general developmental milestones or areas like motor skills and adaptive behaviors, it may not have given us the full picture of the child’s communication abilities. Therefore, a child may need a more comprehensive evaluation of the child’s speech and language skills to determine if there are any specific speech or language disorders. The findings from this evaluation can then be used to develop a targeted therapy plan with clear objectives.
Vincent
Vincent has been at Talk Time for just over a year now. His clinician suggests a re-evaluation because he made so much progress.
What will a re-evaluation provide?
Another great question! A re-evaluation allows the clinician to track the child’s progress, update the treatment plan based on their new level of functioning, and update or add new objectives as needed. Additionally, as the child reaches previous milestones, the clinician can track improvements in other areas such as language development, speech development, and social skills.
Jamal
Jamal came to Talk Time because his parents were concerned he wasn’t easily understood by family, teachers, or strangers. In his initial evaluation, Jamal presented with a speech sound disorder. After a few months of therapy, Jamal's speech was improving, but we noticed he was making grammar errors -- his sentences were often incomplete or fragmented. His therapist suggested an evaluation to update his communication profile.
What will the new evaluation tell us?
We see this often! Jamal was initially evaluated for speech sounds only. But now, we need a comprehensive speech and language evaluation to look closer at his language skills since we are beginning to see some difficulties around expressive grammar. This is essential for the treatment planning process, and it keeps his family and teachers informed about the additional support needed to succeed at home and in the classroom.
Charlotte
Charlotte is a current Talk Time client who recently entered Kindergarten. She is now receiving ELL services but is showing signs of language-based challenges that are not influenced by bilingualism. Her clinician recommends an evaluation to gather more information about her expressive language difficulties.
What will the new evaluation tell us?
ELL services are wonderful supports for bilingual children, but if Charlotte's language-based challenges are not influenced by bilingualism, then she will need additional support for communication. A comprehensive speech and language evaluation is necessary to determine the specific areas where communication breakdown occurs and to piece apart what is influenced by bilingualism and what is part of an underlying communication disorder. This includes examining the child’s abilities at different levels of language processing, such as the word level (vocabulary use, word retrieval), sentence level (grammar and sentence structure), and narrative or conversational level (sequencing events, storytelling).
Final Thoughts
Evaluations are one of the most important tools of an SLP. They are essential for treatment planning, progress tracking, and differential diagnosing.
Are you interested in a speech-language evaluation? Send us an email at info@talktimeboston.com.
Learn more about all of our services in the PDF guide below.
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