BEFORE BOOKING PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COURSE IS NON REFUNDABLE

Date:       Tuesday 12th September 2023
Time:       2.30pm - 5.30pm
Cost:       €20.00

Venue:    FACE TO FACE -  Tralee Education Support Centre, Dromtacker, Tralee, Co Kerry V92 HK52

TEST2r is a comprehensive assessment tool used to screen and pin-point the emergent literacy skills which a 5 – 6 year old child should have acquired. It is an objective measure of a child’s performance based on all of the theories of why children fail to learn. TEST2r provides an individual report on each child and pointers to intervention/resources. Divided into two parts, the first part consists of a rapid screener, which is made up of five tasks for use by the classroom teacher. If a child does not perform well in a particular task, then the Learning Support Teacher will administer the second part, i.e. the remainder of the tasks which are more diagnostic in nature in order to clarify any literacy sub-skill needs. The Learning Support Teacher will decide on appropriate interventions to develop these skills. The interventions may be drawn from the teacher’s own resources or from resources and links which can found on the TEST2r section on the Blackrock Education Centre website.

TEST2r is created and developed by Dr Pauline Cogan. Over 400 teachers throughout Ireland voluntarily gave a great deal of time to administering the research instruments over a period of 13 years on circa 1300 children. By such active participation in their own professional development they have ensured the authenticity of the research and have exemplified the best standards of professionalism. This extensive collaboration will ensure that TEST2r will be well received by all educationalists.

TEST2r was launched by the Minister for Education & Skills in June 2017 and is published by Blackrock Education Centre. It available to purchase by contacting the Centre at www.blackrockec.ie

About TEST2r

The Tasks, What they Assess and Research Information

Screener Tasks
Task 1 Letter Knowledge: Upper & Lower Case - Assesses the ability to label letters. Muter and Snowling (1998) found that letter knowledge measures taken at 5 and 6 years of age, were among the three best predictors of reading skill at 9 years of age. Elbro, BorstrØm and Peterson (1998) also found that letter naming contributed independently to the prediction of dyslexia, while Riley (1996) also found that the ability to identify and label the letters of the alphabet at school entry was a powerful predictor of successful reading by the end of the year. Clay (1985) advises that all letters, upper and lower case, should be tested and that a response involving the letter name, sound or a word beginning with the letter may be scored as correct.

Task 2 - Rhyme Recognition Oddity - Assesses a child’s ability to pick out a word that does not rhyme. The research of Bradley and Bryant has demonstrated that failure to learn to categorise sounds has negative implications for reading acquisition and has a causal role in reading disability. Bradley and Bryant used a rhyme oddity task as one way to show this – the child is asked to choose the word that does not rhyme from a group of presented words. The test that follows is adapted from Bradley and Bryant (1983).

Task 3 - Phonetic Spelling - Assesses child’s ability to convert speech sounds into corresponding letters (early sound-to-letter conversion). Snowling, Gallagher and Frith (2003) found that a task involving transcoding sounds to letters can identify 6-year-old high-risk children (i.e. children from dyslexic families). This test, which also involves transcoding is adapted from Goulandris (1996).

Task 4 – Copying - Assesses motor control, hand-eye co-ordination and ability to see detail. The development of copying skills is considered to have implications for the development of later letter formation, writing skills and perceptual matching skills. In fact, shape-copying has been found to be a good predictor of later literacy difficulties (Badian, 1994; Pickering, 1995).

Task 5 - Rapid Automatised Naming : (RAN) Digits - Assesses the speed with which a child can access the names of a series of digits set down in print. Important for later reading comprehension skill. Badian and her colleagues (1990) found that rapid automatised naming of digits by kindergarten children differentiated dyslexics from normal readers at 10 years of age with 98% correct classification. The speed at which children can access their mental lexicon has been shown to bear a strong relationship to expected literacy levels.

Diagnostic Tasks
Task 6 - Letter Sound Array - Assesses ability to provide a sound label for a printed letter. The US researcher Natalie Badian and her colleagues (Badian, McAnulty, Duffy & Als, 1990) found that lettersound knowledge was one of three tests that differentiated dyslexic from normally developing readers with 98% correct classification.

Task 7 - Alliteration Oddity - Assesses the ability to hear similar initial sounds of words and to recognise a dissimilar initial sound in a collection of 3 or 4 words. Earliest introduction to phonemic awareness (fine-grained phonological awareness). Alliteration is a process in categorisation that requires the child to hear the commonality across sounds at the beginning of words. The alliteration
oddity task is adapted from Bradley and Bryant (1983) and requires the child to recognise the initial sound that is different when naming an array of 4 illustrations. The research of Bradley and Bryant has demonstrated that failure to learn to categorise sounds has negative implications for reading acquisition and has a causal role in reading disability.

Task 8 - Alliteration – Initial Sound Matching - Assesses ability to hear similar initial word sounds. Bradley and Bryant (1983) found that the child’s ability to categorise sounds according to the word onset (initial sound) is a good predictor of reading and spelling ability over three years later. Children who have difficulty recognising similar beginning sounds may have difficulty becoming flexible readers.

Task 9 - Timed Rhymed Generation - Assesses ability to reach into long-term memory and retrieve words that rhyme with a provided word. The ease at which children can produce rhymes is known to be a reliable predictor of later reading achievement (Lundberg, Olofsson & Wall, 1980; Muter, 2004). The Timed Rhyme Generation task seeks to establish the level of fluency with which the child can generate words or non-words that rhyme with a given word.

Task 10 - Digit Span - Assesses memory for sounds which is important for decoding and reading comprehension. The Digit Span task is found in many tests, such as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV) (Wechsler, 2004) and the Dyslexia Early Screening Test (DEST-2) (Nicolson & Fawcett, 2004). Poor digit span performance is a powerful predictor of later reading failure (Kerns &
Decker, 1985). Many dyslexic children have poor phonological skills. It is possible that reduced phonological skill may contribute to poor working memory capacity. An example of applied working memory can be found in reading. The information derived from decoding the early part of a sentence (through phonemic or syllabic synthesis) must be retained in memory during processing of later parts of the sentence to give comprehension at the sentence level. On a more macro level, the information from the sentence must be retained, while later sentences are being decoded, to arrive at full textual understanding.

Task 11 Non-word Repetition - Assesses memory for unfamiliar words which is important for decoding and reading comprehension. Research evidence suggests that a test of non-word repetition has the power to indicate those children who will have literacy problems two to four years after being introduced to reading. Gathercole, Baddeley and Willis (1991) found a statistically significant correlation between non-word repetition and reading ability by age 7 to 8 years. Further support for the predictive power of non-word repetition comes from Muter and Snowling (1998); they found that for children tested at age 5 or 6, non-word repetition skill was one of the two best long-term predictors of reading accuracy at age 9. Non-word repetition is understood to be a measure of phonological working memory (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989). An alternative view (Muter & Snowling,1998) is that non-word repetition is a sensitive measure of how clearly phonemic information is laid down in the brain.

Task 12 - Initial Phoneme Deletion - Assesses ability to delete phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) at the beginning of a word. Phoneme manipulation ability is considered a very good predictor of literacy skill and is a remarkably stable indicator of literacy ability. Strong correlations have been shown between phoneme manipulation ability and the literacy achievements of students up to the end of second-level schooling (Calfee, Lindamood & Lindamood, 1973).

Task 13 - Final Phoneme Deletion – Real Word Remaining - Assesses ability to delete phonemes (smallest unit of sound) at the end of a word. Phoneme manipulation ability is considered a very good predictor of literacy skill and is a remarkably stable indicator of literacy ability. Strong correlations have been shown between phoneme manipulation ability and the literacy achievements of students up to the end of second level schooling age (Calfee, Lindamood & Lindamood, 1973).

Task 14 - Final Phoneme Deletion – Non-Word Remaining - Assesses ability to delete phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) at the end of a word. Phoneme manipulation ability is considered a very good predictor of literacy skill and is a remarkably stable indicator of literacy ability. Strong correlations have been shown between phoneme manipulation ability and the literacy achievements of students up to the end of second-level schooling (Calfee, Lindamood & Lindamood, 1973).

Task 15 - Non Word Reading - Assesses ability to decode unfamiliar words. The Non-Word Reading task taps the child’s pure decoding ability. There is a strong association between non-word reading difficulty and dyslexia (Snowling, Gallagher & Frith, 2003).

Task 16 - Spatial Memory - Assesses ability to attend to and remember the location of objects quickly. Stein and Walsh (1997) have outlined widespread evidence for poor spatial memory, attention shifting, spatial localisation, spatial orientation and spatial neglect in individuals with dyslexia. The Spatial Memory task is a culture-fair, ostensibly language-free test that may identify children at risk of literacy difficulties because of poor spatial memory. Poor spatial memory may cause difficulty with attention shifting, spatial localisation, spatial orientation and spatial neglect.

Task 17 - Finger Localisation - Assesses sensitivity of finger tips for learning about line-slope, line-junction, surface texture, edge and curve, which is important for learning letters, digits and shapes. Badian, McAnulty and Duffy & Als (1990) found that a finger localisation test administered in kindergarten, was one of three tests that were predictive of reading

Task 18 - Rapid Automatised Naming (RAN): Objects - Assesses the speed with which a child can access the name of a series of pictures, which is important for later comprehension skill. Slow naming speed for objects is known to be a core difficulty in dyslexia (Wolf & Bowers, 1999). It is known that some children with dyslexia have problems reaching into their long-term memory for speedy access to the labels of common items, such as letters, numbers, colours, shapes and objects etc. They are known to have reduced speed of accessing the names of objects when compared to their non-dyslexic peers. The RAN Objects task is a speed-naming test. It seeks to discover the speed of naming that exists between a series of images and the verbal representations of those images in the child’s mental dictionary.

Bio of Presenter: Dr Pauline Cogan

Pauline Cogan (neé Kiely) is a native of Dungarvan, Co Waterford. She was educated at Mercy Convent, Dungarvan and trained as a Primary School Teacher in Carysfort Training College, Blackrock, Co Dublin in 1967. She graduated with a BA in languages (1970) and a Higher Diploma in Education (1971) from University College Dublin.

Her marriage to Frank Cogan, a Diplomat in the Department of Foreign Affairs brought her to New York, Geneva, Dublin, Brussels, Tehran, Rome and Vienna. She worked as a teacher and studied Psychology, Neurology and Linguistics in these locations. She obtained an MSc in Neurolinguistics from VUB (Free University of Brussels – Faculty of Medicine & Pharmacology) in 1995.

Pauline worked as a Neurolinguist in a multi-disciplinary medical/paramedical team at Brugmann Hospital in Brussels where she was engaged in rehabilitation of individuals with brain trauma and strokes, assisting medical teams on the Locked-In Syndrome and she developed a test to help neurologists recognise the condition.

Pauline has had a life-long interest in social and educational justice with a principal focus on learning difficulties. For over a decade she has intensely studied the causes of literacy difficulties in children and has operationalised this knowledge into child and classroom friendly tasks. She was awarded her PhD by Trinity College, Dublin, in 2012, through research in this field.

With the help of teachers, the school community, the DES and other bodies and driven by research, policy and practice, Pauline has developed TEST2r. This is a comprehensive test used to screen and pinpoint the emergent literacy skills which a 5 – 6 year old child needs to be taught. It also provides an individual report on each child and pointers to intervention/resources.

Pauline is an honorary member of the Board of Dyslexia International Tools & Technologies which is a portal to UNESCO. She is on the National Executive Committee of the Irish Learning Support Association (ILSA) and is the Editor of LEARN – the peer reviewed journal of that body. She is also a Chartered Psychologist of the Psychological Society of Ireland.