 All right, so welcome this afternoon to the webinar on the test of early language and literacy we are extremely excited this afternoon on behalf of VRLC to share this assessment with you this diagnostic test and We're fortunate enough to be able to have the developers of this diagnostic test with us Doctors Linda Phillips and Denise Hayward and they're going to take us through an overview of this Of the tell as well as as I mentioned earlier provide an opportunity for questions and answers towards the end of our time together today So welcome Linda and Denise and I'll turn it over to you. Thank you very much, Yvonne Hello everybody and welcome to this webinar I'm Linda Phillips and of course Denise Hayward is my colleague and so we will share the webinar presentation I will start and provide some of the interesting Historical background on the initiation and inherent characteristics of tell and explain some of the unique diagnostic features Denise will then discuss how tell is organized introduce the Test booklet provide an overview of the testing options mention some of the technical features and Describe the nature of reporting on an interpretation of the tell results and then finally we will move to your questions and comments So why tell and what did it take in? 2005 a research management committee of the National Center of Excellence held focus groups and invited every department of education every school district and other educational Organizations to name four areas of major concern The need for a Canadian assessment instrument for young children ages three to eight years of age was on the top of the list So in 2006, we were asked to write a proposal and to compete nationally for funding in 2007 we learned we were successful and began a comprehensive literature review and Started the development of tell for the next three years We had a draft of each section in hand when we had a draft of each section in hand we began the pilot testing and Based on the results, we would revise and retest until all aspects were thorough and unambiguous we pilot tested every section of the tell an average of three times and For instance any item that all children could answer had to be thrown out Any item too difficult for any children to answer was also thrown out because they were not discriminating among the children and therefore of no diagnostic value ambiguous items were also revised and Retested then for the next three years. We undertook the tell national normative testing all across Canada and Then came the data analysis and compilation of the many drafts of the comprehensive manual the final copy of tell was completed in 2015 and published by Nelson education in 2016 so you can see that it was a long and extensive period of development and work So the test of early language and literacy is comprehensive Because it addresses the two major aspects of emergent development namely language and literacy It is systematic because it provides all of what is needed for the recording and scoring of each section in a coherent organized efficient manner and all in one test booklet and it is Developmental because all sections proceed in a developmental manner each building on and more challenging than the previous section Each language and literacy section is based on the best that the research and pedagogical literature has to offer and Tell is individually administered to children three to eight years of age inclusive to maximize the quality and quantity of information gathered for effective program planning and tell is unique because it is the first and only Canadian combined language and literacy tests Language and literacy tests have traditionally been separate and frequently administered by individuals with complementary expertise for instance Reading teachers would have to ask Speech language pathologists to complete a language assessment and they in turn would have to ask reading teachers for a reading assessment This was not really the best situation because for the most part Approximately 55 to 70 percent of those with language impairment also have reading problems and vice versa and Speech language pathologists and reading teachers use different tests with different norms a Situation more like comparing apples to oranges Thus it is important for language and literacy to be combined on the same test So that both groups of professionals may use the same test Normed on the same children for both language and literacy purposes Tell provides contemporary Canadian norm or Approximately the last two decades Canadian children have outperformed American children on virtually every measure of reading Canadians rank among the top five countries in the world and the US ranks around the 20th yet Our Canadian children are frequently tested on American tests with American norms and Sometimes those norms are outdated Consequently Canadian children having problems with reading and language are Under identified because Canadian children consistently outperform American children Thus American test norms are not valid for today's Canadian children and We know by three years of age whether children are likely to have language and literacy problems We also know that the first three years of schooling is a sensitive and critical time to be diagnosed and instructed The earlier we diagnose the greater the opportunity to maximize young children's chances to Enjoy language and literacy success So tell is based on the best of what is known in the research and the thorough review of the relevant research Literature is provided for you in the comprehensive manual An examiner may assess sections relevant to language or just the sections relevant to reading or both All are clearly marked in the tell test booklet as well as the comprehensive manual Tell affords direct comparisons for example Listening comprehension may be assessed in the oral narrative section and also assessed in the oral reading and reading comprehension section to provide direct comparisons of children's comprehension on different tasks yet both are on comprehension and Tell is designed to be keyed to remediation as the tell unfolds each Successive section and item in that section is more challenging than the previous section and items in addition each section tests for the fundamental indicators of children's ability for instance items in letter knowledge and naming assess whether a child can distinguish between letters of the alphabet Distinguish between numerals and other symbols and name the letters of the alphabet while pointing to them If a child is unsuccessful You would go back to the prior section and assess the child's print understanding in doing these two sections You will have identified Precisely where the child is having difficulty You would know where the child needs help and you would know what you need to focus on in a remediation plan So tell was designed by a reading researcher a speech language researcher and a test validation expert Dr. Steven Norris So tell affords flexibility the goal of tell is to establish what a child knows and to do so we thoroughly Test the fundamental components of emergent language and literacy We go backwards or forwards regardless of age To establish what a child knows test administration is designed to give students every chance to perform optimally in other words for sections known to be potentially unfamiliar Tell provides practice sessions before scoring start if children do not understand what they're being asked to do they likely will not perform well and Examiners are then left with the question Did the children get these items incorrect because they did not understand the task or because they truly did not know the correct responses tell is designed To be dynamic by giving children an opportunity To learn the nature of an unfamiliar section before being tested thereby ensuring that the results are valid and We must be careful to provide clear instructional links for children We must be careful also not to overestimate or underestimate what children can do based on their age or gender some three-year-olds can do better than some eight-year-olds and Some boys know more than we give them credit and some girls know less We develop quick charts at six-month intervals for ages four to eight to facilitate test Interpretation at school and district levels Denise will tell you more about this helpful feature So tell Also deals with the co-morbidity of language as we have mentioned prior There is a high probability that anywhere from 55 to 70 percent of children will have both language and reading problems Existing simultaneously So tell screens for children at risk of school failure It reduces the possibility or over of over an under identification of specific language and literacy problems of children who are members of that risk population and it fills a much needed gap in norm diagnostic testing and complements existing tests it also Assessive skills important for social and academic success it enhances diagnosis and intervention capacity building among teachers speech language pathologists educational psychologists and early language and childhood educators it Bills capacity for interpreting children's language and literacy performance Denise we're on the wrong slide if you're listening and Can be used to monitor progress and can be used as a research instrument and Finally the fundamental question Why is tell needed? Because it is important not to wait until children have started school to assess their language and literacy data from US and Canada shows that Approximately 25% of all children starting school are at risk of school failure and cognitive ability scores of low SES children are 60% lower than those of SES up high SES children It is critically important not to wait for children to fail once they are in school Delays and diagnosis and intervention make it next to impossible for these children to ever catch up So tell makes it possible to test children prior to at the beginning of and during schooling and to develop specific Intervention plans to give children every opportunity to succeed now to you Denise So the tell consists of eight early language and literacy sections the sections have been organized Developmentally with sections at the beginning of the test Focusing on earlier developing literacy and language skills and the sections towards the end of the test focusing on Later developing skills. So we begin with print understanding followed by letter knowledge and naming Then phonological awareness which you can see here is listed as supplementary and This means that you may choose to include or not include this section in your assessment Next we have oral vocabulary oral narratives Word reading oral reading and reading comprehension and finally written spelling and writing This photograph provides an overview of the tell testing components There are two easels Four story books for story pages a comprehensive manual and a test booklet In the next few slides We want to point out to you how each section is organized and also describe some of the unique features of the tell So this is the front cover of the test booklet This is one of the summary of score pages I'm just gonna use my little arrow here one of the summary of score pages from the tell test booklet and you can see that some sections the print understanding the letter knowledge and naming and the word reading Have one component that children Complete but other sections the phonological awareness the oral vocabulary and the oral narratives Have several components for children to complete Also children at different ages will complete some components within these sections and not others This may be because we assume they already have skills being tested For example, we would assume an eight-year-old has letter knowledge and naming skills and in other cases We assume that the skill is developmentally beyond what we expect of children For example, we would not expect a three-year-old to be able to write a story However, if you have an eight-year-old who has significant difficulties on age-level reading tasks You would want to go back and administer the letter knowledge and naming We also would like you to notice that each section is a unique color And we've used this feature in every component of the test to help you know which to test components to use for administration and Scoring of each text sorry each section of the test So here you see the second of the summary of score pages and you can see the color coding for the Oral reading and reading comprehension and written spelling and writing sections So this diagram shows the administration options that are available for you for children who are aged four and five So if you just wanted to administer the oral language section The children would complete all four sections from oral vocabulary and two components within the oral Narratives and this would take you approximately 30 minutes to administer if you chose to administer the literacy section Alone that would include print understanding letter knowledge and naming and word reading all of which are single component sections Along with two components from oral reading and reading comprehension and one component in the written spelling and writing and again this would take approximately 30 minutes and you may complete the entire test which is the oral language and Literacy sections and it's shown here as combined and then finally there's phonological awareness for these age groups that would involve completing all six components and again This can be administered separately combined with oral language testing or combined with literacy testing Now this is just another diagram to show you what these options would look like for Seven and eight year old children so you can see how they look a little bit different for different age groups So to complete oral language to complete the oral language section The children would complete all four components within oral vocabulary and all three components in oral narratives To complete the literacy section the administration would include word reading one component with within oral reading and reading comprehension and the two components that make up written spelling and Writing you'll notice that print understanding and letter knowledge and naming are not included here And this is because we assume that seven and eight year old children have acquired these skills However as mentioned previously if you had a childhood performed very poorly on the reading tasks You'd want to go back and administer one or both of these sections and again You can administer both the language and literacy sections, which is shown as combined and Finally phonological awareness which for these age groups Involves four components, but similar to the younger age groups You can administer it separately or in combination with oral language testing or literacy testing So comprehensive manual provides a very detailed description Of all the technical features of tell but first to give you a brief overview our sample included 1061 children Aged three to eight inclusive from Western Northern Central and Atlantic Canada With roughly equal numbers of children in each age category Reliability refers to the accuracy consistency and stability of test results and was calculated in a variety of ways And you can see here that ranges on the test sections is very high from zero point seven eight to zero point nine nine and Ranges per composite scores were very high ranging from point nine seven to point nine nine To support the validity interpreting test scores of the tell we examined several different sources And those are all listed here for you and this allowed us to demonstrate the test as being extremely robust and So once you admit had ministered tell the raw scores can be used to compute standard scores and percentile ranks at six month age intervals for each of the test sections and subsections along with language literacy and combined Composite scores Additionally, we provide a series of clinical and classroom case studies the clinical case studies are children who have known language impairments and The classroom case studies are children who have known reading and writing difficulties For all of these exemplars We show comparisons of testing completed with commonly used language and literacy tests and the child's performance on the tell along with an analysis of their tell performance and Suggestions for intervention and instruction And we've also included quick charts at six month age intervals And these are a very useful aid for a test administrator to be able to quickly determine if the child's score is At one or two standard deviations below the mean for their age group and this information is often needed for placement decisions So that brings us to the end of our presentation here And we'd like to offer you the opportunity to ask any questions or offer any comments that you have So I'm just going to turn my mic off For a second and if you have any questions you can go ahead and you can type them in the chat box I see we already have one coming. So just hold on a minute here while the questions are being typed in the chat box. I will let you Actually have a full day session coming up at ERLC on May 2nd with With our presenters and they are going to go through the tell obviously in more and more detail We have the day so they look a little bit at the overview How to administer the tell and the scoring and then also an opportunity to look at the interpretation of the scores so if you are interested in signing up for that you can go on to the ERLC website and Like I said the sessions on May 2nd And I'll turn it back over to Denise and Linda. I see there's a few questions in the chat box I don't see my chat box. I'm going to move on. Yeah, that's fine I'll just read out Diane's question is can Multiple times to an individual student to chart progress example is there a form A? Okay, Linda Did you hear that? Yes, I did Okay, did you want to go ahead with that or do you want me to answer? The more you can answer it you go ahead if you want Okay, so Diane, yes, you can use tell to administer progress of the child We don't have a form A or form B to use so you would administer the same sub test again and So we tend to recommend that if you're going to use it for progress monitoring that you might try doing it two times in a school year and Also, there's going to be some sub tests where or sections of tell where you probably won't need to Use it a second time because the it will be obvious that the child has the skills So one of these areas is as a good example of this is letter naming letter knowledge and naming in that you might give the Tell see where the child's difficulties are Provide some instruction and you'll know from your instruction that the child is now now knows The letters of the alphabet so there would be no point in going back and giving the tell in that case But in other sub tests you could go back and use it to monitor progress Did you want to add anything to that Linda? Well, I would say we do have a form A No alternate forms, but I think your response is perfectly correct on in that case. Yes Thank you. Yes, we have a form A Okay, the next question we don't have nine years to develop a form B Yeah The next question is from Kim and is I'm interested in the reasoning behind the phonological awareness subtest being optional So Kim there's a couple of reasons for this the first is that In designing this as a language and literacy test Not all children who have language difficulties and not all children who have literacy difficulties Also have phonological awareness difficulties. So when we were Compiling the test and we were looking at developing composite scores Then when the phonological awareness was just always in there It actually could mask a Child's overall performance if they had very strong phonological awareness skills So in this case, we have some criteria as to when you would Administer the phonological awareness subtest the other reason is that most phonological awareness tests that are available have very few practice items on them and in My experience doing research in phonological awareness and also in doing many many many assessments in phonological awareness what one of The concerns we had was that many children were sealing out on phonological awareness test not because they had phonological awareness difficulties, but very often because they Didn't understand the past and so they reached sealing before they figured out actually what they were supposed to do And so one of the things that we've done in the tell us Linda mentioned earlier It's a very dynamic a set Assessment tool and so in phonological awareness in particular We actually have a modeling phase a learning phase and then a practice phase Before the child ever gets to test items. And so this is for us is to ensure that children If they are performing poorly on the test items It's because they don't have the skill or don't understand the skill not because they haven't understood the task And so our test is quite different from most others Currently available out there for you to use Any other questions you might have Any comments? Thank you, Jenna What did she say I can see this book the chat Great overview. Thank you. Oh Has just said This is very exciting looking forward to the session on May 2. Oh great We look forward to meeting you to Diane and we'll just hold on a second I see Kim is typing so we'll just see if there's another question that pops up here and Kim has said Linda you've done a lot of work with three exclamation marks and thanks exclamation mark Thank you very much Yes, you're right Kim we have done a lot of work Linda likes to say she didn't have gray hair before she started this Anyway Linda and I would really like to thank you for your interest in tell Participation in this webinar and we'd also like to thank the Edmonton regional learning Consultium for planning this webinar and to the staff of their guidance and thank you all for being here. Thank you very much Thank you, Linda and Denise for sharing Welcome as I mentioned for those of you that are interested May 2nd is a full-day session So it's a great chance for you to come see the materials in action and and see the the test in a little bit More detail. So if you have any colleagues that you think might be interested, please let them know to visit ERLC.ca and they can register through there the registration link will be opened until April 27th so again, thanks for your time this evening and Enjoy the rest of your week.