WSCS

Wheldall Sentence Comprehension Screener

Language comprehension is foundational to the understanding of written text. It is also important in its own right, as language difficulties can limit classroom and social participation.

The WSCS is a new test designed to identify young children who may benefit from targeted language comprehension assessment and/or support. It will also identify children who may benefit from LanguageLift, MultiLit’s new oral language intervention program for children in Foundation to Year 2.

Who is it for?

  • Designed to assess the receptive language skills of students in the first half of the Foundation year of school
  • Suitable for use by classroom teachers, learning support teachers and other school personnel involved in literacy instruction

Key benefits

  • Brief and straightforward to administer and score
  • Child-friendly, engaging and clear stimulus pictures
  • Assesses understanding of a wide range of sentence structures, which can inform an individualised approach to spoken language remediation
  • Associated with valid and reliable Australian cut-off scores, for identification of students who require further support

How is it administered?

Administration of the WSCS involves asking the child to listen to a sentence, then select the picture that best represents that sentence from four options. Stimulus pictures are designed to be child-friendly, engaging and clear. In total, there are 40 sentences of varying length and complexity. The test takes approximately 5-10 minutes to complete, and clear cut-off scores are provided to identify students in need of further support.

Kit components

The WSCS Kit consists of the following components:

  • Manual
  • Presentation Booklet, containing a set of Practice Items and 10 sets of stimulus pictures for different sentence structures, which students use during the test
  • 30 WSCS Record Forms (for screening 30 students)

Please note: The WSCS Record Forms can only be used once. Replacements will need to be purchased from MultiLit once the forms provided in the Kit have been used.

Measuring Reading Progress Professional Development Workshop

It is not enough to simply assess the reading of students – it is important that teachers know what to do with the information.

This Professional Development Workshop will provide teachers with a solid understanding of the importance of using data to monitor students’ reading progress on a very regular basis so that no student gets left behind.

It will also emphasise the need for a consistent school-wide approach to reading assessment, linking the measurement of reading progress to the three tiers of intervention within the Response to Intervention framework.

What the workshop covers

  • How to identify a good test
  • Types of reading assesments
  • What do we need to assess?
  • Problems with Running Records/benchmarking
  • How to create a coherent school-wide reading assessment process
  • Training in the WARP (Wheldall Assessment of Reading Passages), WARL (Wheldall Assessment of Reading Lists), WARN (Wheldall Assessment of Reading Nonwords) and the WSCS (Wheldall Sentence Comprehension Screener). The WARN can be used to predict which students are at risk of not meeting the Year 1 Phonic Screening Check threshold, while WARL and WARP can be used to screen students at risk of reading difficulties and to track their ongoing progress. The WSCS is a screening measure to identify receptive language difficulties in children entering their first year of school.

Who should attend

  • School leaders
  • Classroom and learning support teachers
  • School counsellors
  • Specialist reading teachers/tutors
  • Literacy coaches who are working with students from Foundation to Year 8/9.

Duration

1 Day (6 Hours)

Please note: The use of MultiLit publications and attendance at professional development workshops is for personal education use in schools with State/Territory accreditation (‘Accredited Schools’). Other commercial use, hiring or lending, or other use as part of any commercial, not-for-profit, or fee-paying program of instruction or tuition not carried out within an Accredited School is strictly prohibited.

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