Writing a Comprehensive Report

1. Writing a Comprehensive Report EXED 530

2. Practical Guidelines • Write the report in the third person using phrases such as: • According to the examiner… • It was felt that… • There seems to be… • It is the professional opinion of this evaluator that… • Single space your report to condense the length (3-5 pages).

3. Continued… • Try to separate your recommendation section into three parts. • One for the school. • One for the teacher. • One for the parents. • Write in the past tense as often as possible.

4. Continued… • Separate sections by skipping two lines. This is done simply for clarity. • Underline, bold or italicize paragraph headings so that they stand out and are easy to locate. • Write reports using complete sentences.

5. Parts of a Comprehensive Report • Identifying data. • Reason for referral. • Background history. • Behavioral observations. • Tests and procedures administered. • Test results. • Conclusions. • Recommendations.

6. Name Address Phone Date of Birth Grade School Parents Names Teacher Referred by Date of Testing Date of Report Examiner Chronological Age at Time of Testing Identifying Data

7. Reason for Referral • Explains why the evaluation is taking place. • Comprehensive but brief. • BRIEF

8. Background History • Family history. • Developmental history. • Academic history. • Social history.

9. Behavioral Observations • Includes a description of the child’s behavior during the testing sessions. • Look for clues to a learning style.

10. Tests and Procedures • No explanation needed at this point. • Just list.

11. Test Results • Test by test. • Takes each test and evaluates and analyzes the child’s performance on each. • Content area by content area. • Takes all content areas tests (reading, etc) and analyzes the results by content area.

12. Conclusions • Essence of the report. • The examiner explains the trends in the testing results, strengths and weaknesses, modality strengths and weaknesses, process strengths and weaknesses, overall diagnosis and level of severity of the problem.

13. Recommendations • Usually the most valuable for the reader. • Recommendations to the school. • Recommendations to the teacher. • Recommendations to the parent.