[senco-forum] WRIT

Dear Janice,
               I bought this mainly to have something in school to use with prospective pupils who have obvious difficulties just to give me an indicator of their capabilities in extreme cases to make sure that we, as a school, could cope. I have Ravens but find it doesn't give a standard score so I don't find it helpful in such cases. I don't have BPVS - mainly because in the newer versions the ceiling is, I think, 15 or 16yrs and I teach up to 18 yrs also i#these tests are so expensive you can only afford so many.
      I have used it with one student for her DSA assessment and practised using it on my 2 boys before hand. I've also used it on a very dyspraxic 9 yr old girl I taught and a 12 yr old who had real general learning difficulties - she didn't even get the first task right in one of the sections - starting at age 4!
     I have therefore only used it a few times - I've found that it takes longer than it says in the instructions - obviously the more you use it the slicker you get but even so I think it takes longer than it says - can't be too specific here because a colleague has it at the moment.
    From memory: there are 2 visual sections - it's meant to be similar to tests used by educ psychologists - eg you have to recreate a given shape from separate diamond etc shapes, the other visual is like Ravens, Naglieri etc - matrices. There are 2 verbal tests - one is one of those awful verbal reasoning tests that dyslexics find so difficult x is to y like p is to q...and the other asks them to define a word eg chocolate.
    You obviously get individual scores from each of the 4 tests but you can also come up with a visual IQ, a verbal IQ and an overall IQ.
      I think, if you can afford it moneywise and if you can afford the time it takes ie you are not after something you can do in minutes and if you need something similar to that which Ed Psychs use then it's probably worth having.
     Although I haven't used it much - I am glad that I have it. Sometimes it is just good to have something that shows the person you are working with has potential underneath all the difficulties which is what your teaching is telling you anyway.
     As an aside the 13yr old who scored so low , also scored really low with the ED Psych - scores he hadn't seen in a long while - I think will actually do reasonably well in the end because of her stickability, willingness to listen, supportive school etc etc whereas from the results the Ed Psych said you would think she should be in a special school - it goes back to what we all do on the Forum which is to offer the human touch that hopefully makes the difference and go with our instincts.
  Best wishe,
  Janet

Janrolnick at aol.com wrote:
  Does anyone know who publishes the WRIT? Also any feedback about it would be 
welcome. How does it compare to BPVS/Ravens?

Many thanks

Janice Rolnick
SENCO/AST