Helping Students Go FAR - Part 1

This is the first in a series about using the Feifer Assessment of Reading™ (FAR) to find out why students struggle with reading. Part 2 discusses dyslexic subtypes and part 3 discusses reading interventions.

Several years ago, when Jacqui Veitch-Richie, a school psychologist in Aiken, South Carolina, wanted to evaluate students for reading disabilities, she cobbled together subtests from a variety of academic instruments to evaluate the things she knew were important to measure, like spelling skills and phonemic awareness.

I cobbled together my own rubric of reading tests until the FAR™ came along!

I actually put together what I considered a rubric of tests that I was separating out myself, she explained. There was no standardization, but I was getting samples of the child's performance. I tried to pull out those processes separately the best I could.

When a colleague learned what Veitch-Richie was doing, she suggested using the Feifer Assessment of Reading (FAR) instead.  

She said, that's pretty much what the FAR does for you. You should take a look at it, Veitch-Richie, the District 504 Coordinator, recalled, and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so wonderful!

Standardized achievement tests, commonly used by school psychologists for initial evaluations, don't typically offer much beyond a reading score and a rating. And while they may indicate that a student has a problem with reading, they don't explain why that student struggles or provide ways to help.

The FAR helps me generate conversations and tools to use

If all I'm showing is a weakness in reading, that doesn't generate any kind of conversation, Veitch-Richie said, and it doesn't give me the tools to help it or fix it any way.  

In contrast, the FAR comprehensively deciphers the neurocognitive processes responsible for reading and measures them within the actual context of reading to explain why a student may struggle with reading instead of merely reporting the level at which a child can read.

Another benefit of the FAR is its robust interpretive report, available only on PARiConnect. Along with student scores and score interpretation, it generates specific recommendations, based on those scores, along with resources designed to help educators develop their own tailored interventions.

The FAR gives me interventions

You have to know what you're doing with your interventions and your remediation, stressed Veitch-Ritchie. I think that is what teachers are missing. What I'm starting to see with the FAR and the interpretive report is there are lots of interventions that we can use.

Learn more about or order the FAR today!