Learning Checkup™
Understanding how your child learns is the key to ensuring he or she becomes a happy, confident, life-long learner.
Our Learning Checkups™ give you the knowledge to make the best educational decisions for your child. Our Learning Checkups™ identify a child’s individual learning profile, using the Woodcock Johnson IV, in order to help students achieve their greatest potential. The knowledge and understanding of how your child learns can help:
Assess your child's areas of strengths, so that they may be challenged.
Determine how your child's brain is thinking and processing information.
Measure academic growth from classroom instruction or tutoring.
Determine if your child is ready to move on to the next grade level or should be held back.
Identify areas of weakness in order to determine how to best support your child.
Assist with school selection for your child (School Placement Package required for advisement).
Detect any weaknesses in learning in order to prevent the frustration and cost of addressing learning challenges later in life.
Explore options for boosting cognitive efficiency and flexibility.
Ensure your child has all the tools and foundations to be a happy, capable, confident learner.
Our Learning Checkups™ are conducted in two steps:
Two sessions, during which we screen key aspects of your child’s cognitive and academic profile, including areas such as reading, math, processing speed, visual and auditory processing, working memory, cognitive efficiency and more. If your child is 4-5 years old, they may only require one appointment.
Roundtable meeting where the Academics Plus team reviews results, identifies areas of need and works directly with you to create a roadmap to success for your child.
A Learning Checkup™ is not a comprehensive psychoeducational evaluation and it is not intended to be. Should your child's Learning Checkup identify a need for further investigation, we will refer you to a psychologist we know and trust.
schedule a learning Checkup™ now
When scheduling your Learning Checkup™, please schedule both the first and second sessions at the same time and within one week of each other, if possible. If you have trouble scheduling, please give our office a call.
The Learning Checkup™ fee is $1295 for Atlanta clients and $995 for Auburn clients. The cost covers evaluations, consultation and written materials. We look forward to helping your child achieve success!
*There is an additional charge of $200 for Learning Checkups scheduled on Saturdays.
Learning Checkup™ for Preschoolers
Preschool is the perfect time to discover each child’s true learning capacity and provide the tools and strategies children need to tone and prepare their minds for learning success. We believe that, if you can shape the first five years of a child’s education, you can change everything.
Taking a proactive approach means that learning challenges can be easily identified and addressed now, preventing frustration and difficulties in later years.
What can a Learning Checkup™ do for your preschool-age child?
A Learning Checkup™ can identify ways to increase your child’s potential, enthusiasm and stamina for learning.
Our customized learning programs can help your child build the self-regulation, coordination, memory, stamina and auditory processing skills necessary to be a successful, happy, capable and confident learner during the school years.
What is measured?
Here are some of the areas that may be assessed during our Learning Checkup™ using the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities:
Verbal Ability: a measure of language development. It includes word comprehension and comprehension of relationships among words. An important predictor of cognitive performance.
Thinking Ability: includes long-term retrieval, visual-spatial thinking, auditory processing and fluid reasoning.
Cognitive Efficiency: the capacity of the cognitive system to process information automatically. It includes processing speed and short-term memory.
Working Memory: the ability to hold information in short-term memory while performing some operation on or manipulating the information.
Long-Term Retrieval: ability to store information and fluently retrieve it later in the process of thinking (NOT long-term memory).
Visual-Spatial Thinking: ability to perceive, analyze, synthesize and think with visual patterns, including the ability to store and recall visual representations.
Auditory Processing: ability to analyze, synthesize and discriminate auditory stimuli, including the ability to process and discriminate speech sounds that may be presented under distorted conditions. It subsumes phonological awareness and phonological processing.
Fluid Reasoning: broad ability to reason, form concepts and solve problems using unfamiliar information or novel procedures. It includes inductive and deductive reasoning.
Processing Speed: ability to perform automatic cognitive tasks, particularly when measured under pressure to maintain focused attention; an aspect of cognitive efficiency.
Short-Term Memory: ability to apprehend and hold information in immediate awareness and then use it within a few seconds; an aspect of cognitive efficiency.
Learning Checkup™ for Grade Schoolers
Are you concerned that your child is struggling to master key skills in reading, language arts or mathematics? Is your child eager for more challenge in the classroom? Is your son or daughter experiencing learning challenges, being flagged for learning disabilities or struggling and shutting down at school?
A Learning Checkup™ can assess your child’s learning strengths and weaknesses in order to determine educational needs.
What can a Learning Checkup™ do for your grade school child?
The best time to identify learning issues or opportunities is now.
Research has proven that the potential for positive educational outcomes is the highest when children's cognitive abilities are assessed and addressed early in their school careers.
We identify ways to increase your child's potential and stamina for learning. Our proven approaches boost confidence and self esteem, in addition to cognitive and academic strength.
We believe that every child, no matter their challenges, can be a teachable student and a capable, confident, happy learner.
What is measured?
In addition to the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities, our Grade School Learning Checkup™ may also measure the following areas using the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Academic Achievement:
Broad Reading: comprehensive measure of reading achievement including reading decoding, reading speed and the ability to comprehend connected discourse while reading.
Basic Reading Skills: aggregate measure of sight vocabulary, phonics and structural analysis.
Reading Comprehension: assesses comprehension, vocabulary and reasoning.
Oral Language: measures listening ability, expressive vocabulary, reasoning and memory.
Listening Comprehension: evaluates listening ability and verbal comprehension.
Broad Math: determines math achievement including problem solving, number facility, automaticity and reasoning.
Math Calculation Skills: measures computational skills and automaticity with basic math facts and provides a measure of basic mathematical skills.
Math Reasoning: problem solving, analysis, reasoning and vocabulary.
Broad Written Language: includes spelling of single-word responses, fluency of production and quality of expression.
Basic Writing Skills: aggregate measure of single-word responses and identifying and correcting errors in spelling, punctuation, capitalization and word usage.
Written Expression: tests meaningful written expression and fluency.
Academic Knowledge: broad sample of the individual’s range of scientific knowledge, social studies knowledge and cultural knowledge.
Academic Skills: reading decoding, math calculation and spelling of single-word responses.
Academic Fluency: Overall Academic Fluency (speed).
Academic Applications: requires application of academic skills to academic problems.
Phoneme/Grapheme Knowledge: evaluates proficiency with both phonic (sound) generalizations, as well as common orthographic patterns (frequently occurring letter clusters) in both decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling).
Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency (TOSCRF):
This test measures the speed with which students can recognize the individual words in a series of printed passages that become progressively more difficult in their content, vocabulary and grammar. The test assesses students ability to recognize printed words and their meaning; use one’s mastery of syntax and morphology (i.e. grammar) to facilitate understanding the meaning of written sentences and passages; incorporate word knowledge and grammar knowledge to quickly grasp the meaning of words, sentences, paragraphs, stories, newspapers, novels and poetry- in short all contextual material; and read and understand contextual material at a pace fast enough to make silent reading practical and enjoyable.
Our Learning Checkup™ can identify patterns of strengths and weaknesses that are consistent with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), language processing disorder, inattentive ADD, auditory processing disorder, dyslexia, autism, sensory processing disorder and dyscalculia. While it is important to understand each of these specific learning disabilities, our goal is not to label your child, but to help your child overcome their difficulties.