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LASS Tests
Every student entering the school will take part in a series of assessments called LASS tests.
The purpose of the tests is to provide a profile of the overall cognitive ability of the individual student enabling Barnwell to ensure that students are placed in appropriate groups for their learning to be successful.
Areas of strength and of relative weakness can be identified by the tests which may, in some cases, indicate the need for further interventions or assessments as appropriate. It is possible to reassess individual elements following interventions to monitor the impact of such.
What does Lass screening assess?
1. ‘Cave’ assesses Visual Short Term Memory – diagnostic – progressive – visual memory, immediate recall of objects and their spatial positions, beginning with 2 items and progressing to 7
2. ‘Mobile’ assesses Auditory Sequential Short Term memory – diagnostic –progressive – (digit span) recall of between 2 and 9 digits in correct ,forwards sequential order
3. ‘Non-words diagnostic’ assesses Phonic Decoding Skills – progressive - reading individual non words – a pure measure of phonic decoding skills. For each non word there is a choice from 4 spoken alternatives.
4. ‘Segments’ assesses Phonological Processing Ability – diagnostic –progressive– segmentation and deletion of syllables and phonemes in real words. For each item there is a choice of 4 spoken alternatives
5. ‘Single word reading’ assesses Single Word Reading– attainment – progressive – reading individual words out of context and identifying from a choice of 5 alternatives the printed word that corresponds to a spoken word
6. ‘Sentence reading’ assesses Reading Comprehension – attainment – adaptive – cloze reading, completing sentences by identifying the missing word from a choice of 5 alternatives. We found weaknesses here which will compound if not addressed as comprehension is increasingly challenged by the demands of the curriculum – barking at text (hyperlexia) will not yield results. These are not Learning support students. Have addressed this group with a reading comprehension strategy but we all need to test comprehension all the time.
7. ‘Spelling’ assesses Encoding – attainment – adaptive – spelling individual real words that are spoken by the computer.
8. ‘Reasoning’ assesses Non Verbal Reasoning Ability – adaptive – non verbal intelligence, analogical reasoning where the correct item from a choice of 6 alternatives has to be selected to complete a spatial matrix
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