Anna Dangerfield talk on next Wednesday evening June 13th

Anna who has been doing psychological assessments with us for many years has vast experience as teacher and both primary and upper secondary level as well as wide experience as an educational psychologist. When a school refers a pupil for psychological assessment, it is with a view to ‘drilling down’ into the pupil’s learning style, learning pattern, his perception of the world around him, difficulties he may be having in particular areas as well as a searching audit of his learning strengths and learning needs.

Anna’s reports are distinctive in that her recommendations are concrete and have the remediation of difficulties as their focus. Such reports rarely contain much good news, coming as they do on foot of concerns expressed by teachers at both class  and learning support level. In a previous existence, I have read quite a few reports which were comprehensive in their analysis of where the pupil was at in terms of school progress, but light in terms of what improvements strong intervention by school and home might bring.

One of the recurring patterns which she has reported is a problem with sub-skills of reading readiness. Elements such as auditory memory- being able to recall events from a story- and auditory sequencing- being able to remember and retell events in order- need to be established before children start school. As a society, we have become time-poor and she feels that this is reflected in not as much time being spent talking with our children as heretofore with the knock-on effects on language. Anna will present her observations and recommendations at next Wednesday night’s talk and I highly recommend that at least one parent from each home should attend.