Inside the Autism Classroom Assessment Challenges & Adaptations Amanda McGuinness Elaine Fitzgerald Episode 6

I think so.

I think that it's something that, you know, I've had a really lovely two years and a really happy, successful in lots of ways, two years in the class.

I really enjoyed it.

And I feel like assessment is something that I'm still not doing enough of or.

that the stuff that I'm doing is not enough quality.

I don't know.

I don't know.

And I think it's very important for anyone that's listening that, that you are going to not know things and you're going to get to a point where you're like, I'm just struggling.

And I have to say, I am a little bit, I'm surprised.

I have to admit by the lack of assessment options, I suppose from, you know, there are, there are formal assessments.

You've got your certs and your ables and your raffles and your PEP three and all those that they are, they have their place.

They are, some of them are more probably for younger children, some for older children.

And you just want to make sure that whatever you do is kind of meaningful and it's heading in some direction.

But even in terms of, you know, there are children in my class who I know, I know they can do things, but I have yet to find a way to display that.

And I think that, you know, my brother is big into

software.

I don't exactly know what he does,

but to do with ICT and apps and I don't know, but I rang him one day and I was coming away from an NCSE course about assessment.

And I said, you just, you need to, you need to get on this.

You need to create something that's appropriate because we've got these children who are, they could, they could buy and sell me on an iPad without a shadow of a doubt.

They know exactly what they're like.

They, I get stuck on the iPad and they're like, you know, they can't speak, but they're here and not bothered.

Like as if to say, you just, why did you do that? And I'll have gotten mixed up on the iPad.

So if this is, if this is a strengths based approach, and if this is what they're good at, why are there not more apps that you know maybe assess their you know their academia or numeracy or literacy and that's nice but that that's where I'm at I think that what I do find useful is um checklists and they can be brilliant as well and there are some I used to have a book about I think it was like assessing additional needs or something like that but it's so old now and a lot of them are so old and you'll even find excuse me you'll even find um some of the um slt stuff from the hse is still quite stated in some of its language so when you are sharing it or you are talking about with parents or anything you say just clarify this is the hse one it is hasn't been updated in the last couple of years because i know that's big rigmarole too so it will still encourage you to check and see if the child is making eye contact and all these things that we don't care about anymore that's all gone so um Yeah, so I would tend to actually, again, use AI to create a neuroaffirmative checklist for, it could be, I think it was actually for reading skills.

Think about what was one of them.