Learning Evaluation for Dyslexia
Have you ever wondered if you child might have dyslexia or another learning disability?
Getting an evaluation for a learning disability usually costs thousands of dollars and many torturous hours for your child to endure. And, all too often, the results are hard to understand and not explained in a way that guides you to getting specific help that your child needs.
If you’re looking for a fast, affordable way to find indications of dyslexia and other learning issues, then you’ve come to the right place. The Bravo! Learning Evaluation will divulge exactly how your child learns, reveal indications of dyslexia and dysgraphia, provide you with information on visual and auditory processing levels, and display phonemic awareness abilities.
Straight Answers. Immediate Results.
The Bravo! Reading Learning Evaluation has been used for over twenty-three years, giving parents straight answers and immediate results. It is administered by Lisa Harp, the founder of Bravo! Reading, Harp Learning Institute, and Harp Learning Academy.
Lisa, a Dyslexia Expert, has been an educator for over forty years and delights in helping you pinpoint exact strengths and weaknesses in your child’s learning foundation.
Lisa knows exactly what it’s like to search for answers for a child with learning issues. She faced huge hurdles back in the 1990’s as she searched for ways to help her son overcome dyslexia, ADD, and significant auditory processing issues.
The schools did little to help, so she went on a mother mission to help her son, creating a system of learning that capitalized on his strengths and filled in missing or weak learning gaps. Within a year, he was an honor student. Soon, he was reading three years above grade level! Since then, Lisa has helped tens of thousands of children reach reading and academic success.
Lisa knows exactly what you are going through and wants to help you. She can pinpoint learning weaknesses, guide you on how to help your child overcome them, and diagnose specific gaps in your child’s learning foundation.
You receive this information in an easy to read report – instantly!
How it Works
The Bravo! Reading Learning Evaluation is not a technology-based, artificial intelligence created survey where you answer questions about your child’s learning habits and then receive a generic report.
It is a real learning evaluation performed via video conferencing. It is administered by a real person – Lisa Harp.
At Bravo!, we believe in the personal component of reading and learning. Our evaluation is a true pencil and paper test, not a computer-generated test that has no way of knowing your child or how your child learns. We also gather anecdotal evidence from our time with your child. This gives us more information and helps you understand your child’s learning strengths and weaknesses.
Not all forms of learning can be captured on a computer-generated test!
Once a time to meet is scheduled and payment is processed, you will receive materials in your email box – specific to your child’s age and grade level – that you will need to print before the evaluation. You can print them on your home computer or get them printed at a print shop or an office supply store.
It’s very important that the materials are printed and ready to go on the day of the evaluation, or we won’t be able to proceed!
In addition, will send you a questionnaire that we need you to fill out and return to us before the evaluation. It helps us determine your child’s learning style, sensory weaknesses, and clumps indications of dyslexia and dysgraphia into categories.
It will personally be reviewed by Lisa as well.This questionnaire is not the actual learning evaluation, only the starting point in painting the picture of how your child learns and how we can help. Your parental input is important, and the questions we ask are different than most you’ve ever answered!
From there, we will meet via video. Lisa will personally evaluate your child for specific learning gaps that affect reading and learning. These are not typical reading and writing activities that will give you “academic” information such as what level of reading your child is working at.
You already know this information from reports you get from your child’s school. Instead, we evaluate your child on sensory-based learning activities that will give you information as to why your child is struggling and what to do about it.
This is all done in the privacy and comfort of your own home for a fraction of the cost of traditional learning disabilities testing.
Exactly What You’ll Discover About Your Child with the Bravo! Learning Evaluation:
- indications of dyslexia
- indications of dysgraphia
- precise level of visual memory – how many shapes your child holds in memory
- visual motor Integration
- visual tracking
- visual discrimination
- auditory memory – how many nonsense words your child holds in memory
- auditory processing
- auditory discrimination
- phonemic awareness
- reading fluency score
- reading comprehension score
*Please note that we cannot formally diagnose your child with a specific learning disability. This would have to be done through your child’s school or a licensed psychologist.
Indications of Dyslexia
The first thing we check for in the Bravo! Learning Evaluation are indications of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a complicated condition with many different symptoms. Having a label of dyslexia can help you understand your child better and get the specific help you need to help your child become a better reader and student.
Kids with dyslexia usually want to do well and truly aren’t lazy students. They often learn coping mechanisms – such as acting like they don’t care, becoming the class clown, or retreating – so they can survive horribly long days at school.
Right from the start, Lisa will put a lot of thought, personal attention, and energy into determining exactly what’s keeping your child from succeeding in a school setting!
Lisa will also look for specific actions your child might engage in while performing the evaluation – things that kids with dyslexia do. These are anecdotal behaviors that most tests fail to pick up on, such as tipping the head to one side while working or forming circles incorrectly.
If you want some specific symptoms and information on dyslexia, go to our page on it through this link: DYSLEXIA
Indications of Dysgraphia
Reading, spelling, and writing are closely intertwined. Often a child with dyslexia will also have dysgraphia. Dysgraphia, is in essence, a type of writing dyslexia. According to the dictionary, the formal definition for dysgraphia is the inability to write coherently, as a symptom of a neurological condition or as an aspect of a learning disability.
Lisa will perform writing activities with your child to determine if dysgraphia is part of the learning problem.
Like with the dyslexia evaluation, she will also be watching for anecdotal behaviors such as how your child holds a pencil or sticking out the tongue while working to help you understand if writing issues are part of your child’s inability to thrive academically.
Visual Memory
Visual memory is one of the numerous visual processing skills that affect reading and learning. Visual memory, simply put, is the brain’s ability to hold onto an image, even after it’s gone. It’s expected that children should be able to recall seven images in visual memory by the time they are seven years old.
Kids with dyslexia struggle significantly with visual memory. Even though they are usually very verbal and can probably tell you the plot of a movie in great detail, these kids have a difficult time recalling letters/sounds for decoding, multiplication facts, how to spell words, and basic math formulas. These academic skills all require visual memory for success.
If you think about it, each letter of a word is a symbol that the brain needs to recall via visual memory in order to sound out or decode the word. Through Lisa’s extensive experience with learning disabilities testing, she’s found that most kids with dyslexia can only hold two or three shapes in visual memory.
This means that these kids will, in turn, plateau when trying to decode three-letter words!
Think back to each letter in a word as representing a single symbol. When children can recall multiple images in visual memory, it prepares them for sounding out multi-syllable words! If a child can only recall three symbols in visual memory, then decoding multi-syllable words is like climbing Mount Everest!
Can you see the disadvantage a child with dyslexia or poor visual memory is at – right from the start?
Weak visual memory skills have nothing to do with intelligence. Visual memory is just a skill like riding a bike or tying a shoe! It’s something that can be practiced until more and more shapes can be held in memory. And here’s the good news. We can guide you how to raise your child’s visual memory abilities after Lisa determines if it is part of the problem.
To wrap it all up, during your child’s Bravo! Learning Evaluation, Lisa will pinpoint the exact number of shapes your child can hold in visual memory. This will give you a game plan on how to move forward and fix this problem!
Visual Motor Integration
Although most people think visual motor integration primarily affects writing, it’s also important for reading and other academic skills. In a nutshell, visual motor integration is the communication between the brain, the hands, and the eyes. It is the translation of a visual image or visual plan into an accurate motor action.
Both reading and writing skills involve the performance of accurate visual motor integration through motor planning, cognitive skills, perceptual skills, and the processing of tactile information.
If a child has weak visual motor integration skills, both reading and writing can be a challenge. As the student takes in visual information, it somehow goes awry, and the output is skewed, distorted, or incorrect.
Kids who struggle with visual motor integration have a difficult time copying shapes, are usually poor at artwork, and have poor reading fluency scores. They struggle with perceptual and spatial skills, which spills over into academics.
The Bravo! Learning Evaluation will let you know if your child displays weaknesses in visual motor integration. From there, a plan to strengthen this important skill is made.
Visual Tracking
For reading to be an easy, natural process, the eyes need to move smoothly across the page while reading. This is called visual tracking.
All too often, poor readers have weak eye muscles that prevent smooth eye tracking from happening. There is a lot more that comes into play, but you just need to aware that there are six muscles holding each eye in place.
Like with any muscle, weaknesses or misalignment can occur. When this happens, kids have to strain to make sense of text. They might see the letters as having thick halos around them, bouncing up and down, jiggling, or slanted.
Can you imagine how difficult it would be to read when this happens? Kids with weak eye muscles are often misdiagnosed as having ADD/ADHD because they might fidget, struggle to pay attention, or zone out as a way of dealing with seeing print that might constantly be in motion as they perceive it.
When your child takes the Bravo! Learning Evaluation, Lisa will evaluate your child’s eye tracking abilities and you’ll find out if your child’s eye movement speed falls within acceptable ranges.
Visual Discrimination
Visual discrimination is the ability to detect subtle differences in objects, symbols, or shapes. If visual discrimination skills are weak, it can greatly affect reading abilities.
This only makes sense, as reading is such a visual activity. When a child looks at two letters that are similar, such as an “h” and an “n”, it’s easy to mistake one for the other. When reading, the child might have to stop and think about exactly which letter is in the word being read. Is it an “h” or is it an “n”?
This little pause is enough to affect reading fluency – to slow it down. This turns into choppy, slow, or labored reading, which will then, as a result, affect reading comprehension scores.
Once your child takes the Bravo! Learning Evaluation, you’ll find out if visual discrimination skills are strong or weak.
Auditory Memory
Auditory memory is the ability to take in information presented in an oral manner, process that information, store it in the mind, and recall what was heard.
Since most kids sit in classrooms where information is presented in an auditory fashion (lecture format), auditory memory skills are crucially important for academic success. Students need to remember and manipulate the information that was heard in the lecture if they’re to pass tests and comprehend material. It’s like the words the teacher or their friends say just fly out the window! There’s little that makes the words stick.
Once again, this isn’t an intelligence issue; it’s a processing issue. If a child’s auditory memory skills are weak, it’s difficult to keep up not only in class but with peers. Communication is greatly affected by how you take in and remember auditory stimuli.
Kids with weak auditory memory skills also have a difficult time with multi-step directions. They get overwhelmed, not having a clean way to streamline the auditory information they take in.
Nonsense Words Tell a Lot
The Bravo! Learning Evaluation will let you know exactly how many nonsense words your child can hold in auditory memory. Why nonsense (meaningless) words, you might wonder.
For starters, kids with dyslexia and others who struggle academically place a huge emphasis on meaning. These kids will memorize words over decoding them because the meaning of the word is so compelling and familiar to them.
They know what a beaver is – a small animal that builds dams. They can associate with the word from pictures they’ve seen and descriptions they’ve heard. They might even have seen one! They recognize the word when they see it and hear.
Once these kids memorize a word like “beaver”, it’s hard to tell if they are attached to the meaning of the word or the sounds while performing the evaluation. By using nonsense words, we are assured that meaning isn’t the driving force of the answer. We get a true count of exactly how many words your child can hold in auditory memory.
Auditory Processing
We take in sounds with our ears, but process auditory information in the brain. Students who process auditory information incorrectly have a difficult time following directions and focusing. Because of this, they also struggle with the basic skill of communication, often engaging in tantrums out of frustration.
If something goes wrong while processing auditory information, sounds become distorted or skewed. The brain isn’t replicating sounds in their original form.
For instance, kids who struggle to process auditory stimuli may not hear the endings of words or sentences. Or, they might hear only every second or third word in a sentence. Another auditory glitch they might have is having the inability to filter out environmental noises.
Highly Distracted Students
Because of this, these students are highly distracted and have a difficult time focusing, especially in a traditional classroom. Often they are misdiagnosed as having ADD/ADHD because of the crossover of symptoms.
It’s important to find out if your child is processing auditory information incorrectly. By discovering this knowledge, you can gain compassion for your child and understand how frustrating this condition can be. From there, you’ll learn ways to cope with this condition and ways to help your child overcome it.
After your child takes the Bravo! Learning Evaluation, you’ll find out if auditory processing skills are up to speed and what to do about it if they aren’t.
Auditory Discrimination
Auditory discrimination is the ability to recognize, compare, and distinguish subtle differences between separate sounds. For instance, the words “sixty” and “sixteen” sound a lot alike, but they have different meanings. Kids who are weak in auditory discrimination struggle to detect these differences.
As these kids read, they mix up words and letters that sound alike. They especially struggle with vowel sounds. For instance, the sounds of long “e” and long “i” are extremely close. When these kids try to sound out or decode the letter sounds in words, they will often say these sounds incorrectly.
This, of course, slows the reader down as well as changes the meaning of the word. By this lapse in speed and the change in meaning, reading fluency is affected. Comprehension goes down the tube as well because the meaning of the word was changed.
Subtle Differences in Words
From there, these kids will often resort to guessing at words because detecting those subtle differences between sounds is just too confusing. Guessing at words makes for a poor, sloppy, reader!
Once again, as with most auditory processing skills, not hearing these subtle differences between sounds can also affect interpersonal relations because the meaning of what was said as compared to what was heard is different.
The child’s perception is “skewed” from the misinformation received, and often, these kids will “die on a hill” arguing with you about what they heard. This, of course, can frustrate peers, leading to arguments and even bullying.
Once your child’s learning evaluation is complete, you’ll know if auditory discrimination skills are strong or weak as well as a game plan for success!
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is crucially important for sounding out (decoding) words. Phonemic awareness (phonological awareness) is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of words. This includes using syllables, initial or onset units of sound in a word, and phonemes.
Phonemes are those small units of sound that are building blocks of language and words. Some examples of phonemic units are “in”, “ob”, “et”, “at”, and “ip”. There are forty-four basic phonemes in our language.
Weak Phonemic Awareness Skills
Kids with dyslexia typically have weak phonemic awareness. Yet, research tells us that these kids do best by having a strong sense of it. This is what helps them build a reading foundation based on decoding instead of guessing at words and other bad habits they pick up along the way.
It’s good idea to have specific knowledge of your child’s phonemic awareness abilities. With this information, you can discover if lack of phonemic awareness is one of the culprits keeping your child from reading fluently, scoring well on tests, an getting excellent report cards.
Reading Fluency
Reading fluency is one of the primary steps that takes your reader to excellent comprehension skills. Reading fluency is the ability to read with acceptable accuracy, speed, and expression. If your child isn’t reading fluently, then reading comprehension – the end game of all reading – is greatly affected in a negative way.
Kids with poor reading fluency stammer over words, read slowly, guess at words, say words incorrectly, transpose words, and lack reading confidence. They usually hate reading, and if they are called upon to read out loud in class, feel like they are put on the spot and flush with embarrassment.
Grade Level Fluency Scores
It’s important to have a proper grade level fluency score that’s done by a professional. This lets you know if your child needs to brush up on decoding skills, engage in sensory building activities, or go all the way back to basics and start with letter sounds.
Lisa also likes to listen to you child read, as she can pick up on anecdotal behaviors that are indications of dyslexia or other learning issues. For instance, she can tell if your child is guessing at words or failing to read small sight words like “is” and “are” yet able to read multi-syllable words.
Of course, a lot more goes into a timed reading with your child. Awareness and specific knowledge of current abilities is the first step you need to take to start the process of letting us turn your child into a true Bravo! Reading Shark!
