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Gauging the skills of a child with special needs with the Brigance IED Toolkit:
Gauging the skills of a child with special needs can be very important for determining the right kind of early intervention and for tracking progress. One of the ways to do so would be to use the Brigance Inventory of Early Development (IED).
The IED is an inventory of 55 items to assess a child’s skills in five key developmental areas – physical, language, cognitive, adaptive behavior, as well as social and emotional development. It provides standardized scores for educators to compare a child’s performance to other children of the same age. With these scores, educators and parents can identify areas in which their child excels or struggles. This will be helpful in choosing the required early intervention for effective progress in learning and development. Here’s a picture of the book, the toolkit and the scoring sheet.
This is currently used in centers that offer the Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Children to study the impact of early intervention for children with special needs. Children are tested twice: once before early intervention and once again some time later in the programme. Testers prompt the child according to instructions in the book to keep the test as accurate as possible and one point is awarded for every item that the child can accomplish. For example, in the sample of the scoring sheet above, the more blocks used by the child to build a tower, the more points are awarded. The assessment of skills such as naming objects or basic arithmetical abilities enables educators and parents, to gauge what the child is capable of. This is very beneficial as it is unfortunately too common to underestimate the abilities of a child once they are labeled “a child with special needs”. This also helps educators to sort the children into classes based on their similar abilities and learning requirements. The specific items and scores provide a form of concrete measurement of improvement, which is more accurate than subjective evaluations by teachers in tracking a child’s progress.
Although this assessment has its benefits, there are also potential drawbacks. The score can be very discouraging for parents if it shows that their child is unable to do many of the items that other children are capable of. It is thus imperative that conversations with parents be respectful, supportive and encouraging.
There may also be many difficulties in administering this test to children with specials needs. Most children with autism can have a short attention span. As a result, testers would have to know the instructions by heart and administer the various items quickly. Furthermore, the child may get restless and distracted by other items in the classroom. One particular technique that I found helpful was to use a toy or figurine that the child likes, to bring the child’s attention to the assessment. For example, if the child is reluctant to identify the alphabet, I would encourage the child by saying, “Can you teach your dinosaur the letters of the alphabet?” Other times, a bubble gun can prove to be immensely helpful as a form of reward after every few sections of the assessment.
Bringing “speech” to non-verbal children:
Some children with special needs, especially autism, may be non-verbal, with little or no communication abilities. With limited ability to communicate verbally, it can be extremely difficult to communicate your wants and needs. However, the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) (pictured above) helps these non-verbal children speak.
The PECS was developed in 1985 for individuals with autism and is now widely used as an alternate form of communication. Individuals using the PECS are taught to give someone else, usually an educator or parent, a picture of a desired item with the aim of communicating a request. The PECS is used in many EIPIC centers and schools for children who are non-verbal. A packet of pictures with items printed on it should be readily available for the child. The child simply lines up the photos onto a velcro strap to form a somewhat coherent sentence and this rapidly builds sentence structure. A non-verbal child can thus use the PECS to communicate.
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