Involve children in the process of assessment, measuring how they learn, not just what they learn Ages 4+

Improving Learning Through Dynamic Assessment is a practical tool for helping to assess and support children aged 4+ with learning challenges based on an innovative approach.

Contrasting with traditional 'static' assessment methods, this resource enables educational psychologists and related professionals to involve the child actively in the process of assessment - allowing them to measure not just what the child has learnt, but also how the child learns, how responsive they are to attempts to intevene, and what is holding them back from learning. It outlines the relevant theory and offers a staged assessment process to follow, with strategies for assessing cognitive and affective capacity. The resource contains all you need to carry out dynamic assessment, featuring photocopiable activities, checklists, handouts for teachers/parents to use with children and training materials which explain the approach in terms understandable to all participating adults.

The first practical resource on how to carry out this popular and innovative form of assessment, Improving Learning through Dynamic Assessment is an important resource for educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs), specialist support teachers and other professionals working with children with learning challenges.

"The book briefly summarises dynamic assessment and the basic principles... The emphasis of the book seems to be to provide lots of practical ideas and resources...it more accurately suits upper primary children... could be used with some secondary aged students with significant language or literacy difficulties... This book is as it describes, a very practical resource packed full of useful ideas and readymade resources that can be photocopied. These can be used with a variety of different presenting difficulties." - NAPLIC Matters

"The intention behind this book is to provide an accessible and efficient version of dynamic assessment, which can be used by educational psychologists and others in schools to provide ideas for focused intervention... I thoroughly approve of the way this approach has been designed to be very accessible to classroom teachers and to provide a framework for collaboration in which insights from dynamic assessment can be integrated into a simple intervention plan, which is also accessible to the child. The handbook has some notable strengths, I found the checklists of learning and affective principles helpful in structuring observations and the child-friendly versions of the learning principles have been cleverly designed... I found this to be a theoretically-sound and practical handbook. It offers a useful entry point for those wanting to begin doing some dynamic assessment and a helpful additional resource for those with additional experience of the field." - Debate - British Psychological Society

"This is a succinctly written, easily accessible and practical "how to"guide for dynamic assessment... Hard to find anything not to like about this resource as it does what it says on the tin... Recommended for: essential reading for educational psychologists and other professionals working with children and young people who are interested in the dynamic assessment approach." - Educational Psychology in Practice