Child Assessment Summary for Parent/Teacher

CONFIDENTIAL

Assessment Summary

Child’s Name: Liam Brown

Date of Birth: 12 February, 2016

Age at Time of Assessment: 9 years, 1 month

School: NovoPsych Primary School

Year / Grade Level: Year 3

Assessor: Sarah Smith, Educational and Developmental Psychologist

Assessment Date: 14 March, 2025

Report Date: 2 April, 2026

Assessments Used:

• WISC-V (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children — Fifth Edition)
• WIAT-III (Wechsler Individual Achievement Test — Third Edition)

Why We Did This Assessment

Liam’s teacher Mrs Kowalski and his parents Helen and Tom had noticed he was finding reading and writing much harder than expected for a child his age. They were concerned about his significantly below-average reading and writing performance compared to his classmates, his difficulty completing and submitting written work, and how he would avoid reading tasks in the classroom. At home, Liam was taking an unusually long time to begin and complete homework, frequently losing track of tasks, and struggling with organisation. With a family history of dyslexia, they wanted to understand what was going on for Liam and how to help him.

About Liam

Liam is a 9-year-old boy living with his parents Helen and Tom Brown and his younger sister. He’s currently in Year 3 at NovoPsych Primary School. Liam is described as a curious, hands-on child with strong interests in science and LEGO construction. His parents and teacher both recognise that he has relative strength in mathematics. While Liam says he dislikes school, his parents believe this comes from his frustration with reading and writing tasks rather than not wanting to learn. His early development was largely unremarkable, except for a mild delay in putting sentences together — he began combining sentences at about two and a half years old and received speech therapy for six months at age three, after which he made good progress.

What the Assessment Involved

The assessment involved Liam completing a series of puzzles, games, and tasks designed to understand how his mind works — his thinking and reasoning abilities, memory, and how quickly he processes information. He also completed reading, writing, and maths tasks to see how his academic skills are developing. These assessments help us understand a child’s cognitive strengths and difficulties in a detailed way that goes beyond what teachers and parents can observe in everyday situations, giving us a clearer picture of why certain tasks might be harder or easier for a particular child.

What We Found

Thinking and Reasoning

• Liam is genuinely strong at verbal reasoning — his ability to understand and work with language, form concepts with words, and draw on knowledge he’s learned before. He was articulate and engaged during these tasks, providing detailed and thoughtful responses. He can hold his own in complex conversations and his general knowledge is impressive for his age.
• His visual reasoning — thinking with pictures, patterns, and spatial information like puzzles and block design — is solidly average and age-appropriate. He performed consistently across these tasks.
• His fluid reasoning — the ability to identify relationships and solve new problems — is also average for his age, with no significant concerns.

Learning and Memory

• Holding information in mind while doing something with it — like remembering the start of a sentence by the time he gets to the end — is harder for Liam than it is for most children his age. This isn’t about attention or effort; it’s about capacity. This is likely why homework feels so effortful, why he loses track of where he’s up to, and why following multi-step instructions is challenging for him.

How Quickly Liam Processes Information

• Liam works much more slowly than most children his age on tasks that require rapid visual scanning and copying symbols under time pressure. This is a significant difficulty for him and explains why completing written work within typical time frames is so hard, why copying from the board is challenging, and why timed assessments feel overwhelming.

Reading and Writing

• Reading individual words accurately is much harder for Liam than expected given how bright he is. He often guesses words based on their first letters or overall shape rather than sounding them out systematically, which reflects difficulty with phonological decoding.
• When text is read to him, his understanding improves markedly, showing that his language comprehension is intact — his reading comprehension difficulties are largely because decoding the words is so demanding for him.
• His ability to decode unfamiliar words using phonics knowledge is significantly below what we’d expect, which is consistent with the phonological processing weakness underlying his reading difficulties.
• His spelling reflects inconsistent use of phonics rules and difficulty with spelling patterns, though it’s somewhat better than his reading.

Maths

• Liam’s numerical operations and maths problem-solving are both age-appropriate and consistent with what his parents and teacher have observed. He approaches multi-step problems systematically and shows solid understanding of mathematical concepts.

What This Means for Liam

Liam is a bright boy with strong verbal reasoning abilities, but he has specific difficulties that make reading, writing, and processing information quickly much harder for him than for most children his age. The gap between what Liam knows and what he can show on paper isn’t a reflection of how hard he tries — it’s a reflection of how much harder the process of reading and writing is for him than it is for most children. This pattern of difficulties, combined with his family history of dyslexia, indicates that Liam has dyslexia — a specific learning difficulty that affects reading and spelling.

• This explains why getting anything down on paper feels like “pulling teeth” and why he shuts down during reading aloud tasks.
• It’s not surprising that he sits and stares at homework pages before starting — the cognitive load of these tasks is genuinely much higher for him.
• His tendency to lose track during tasks makes sense given his working memory difficulties.
• The fact that his younger sister is already performing better academically doesn’t reflect their relative abilities — Liam’s brain simply finds these particular skills much harder to develop.

Liam’s strengths in hands-on activities, LEGO, science, and mathematics show his genuine capabilities and provide important foundations for his learning and self-esteem.

Recommendations

The following recommendations are designed to work with Liam’s cognitive profile and help him access learning more effectively.

At School

• Provide Liam with extended time on all written tasks and formal assessments to accommodate his processing speed difficulties.
• Apply for formal disability provisions through the school to enable ongoing access to extended time and assistive technology.
• Arrange a meeting between Liam’s parents, Mrs Kowalski, and the school’s learning support coordinator to discuss these recommendations and develop an Individual Education Plan.
• Reduce reliance on copying from the board by providing printed notes or digital copies of board content where possible.
• Break multi-step instructions into smaller steps and provide written or visual prompts to support his working memory.

Assistive Technology

• Provide access to text-to-speech software so Liam can listen to written content and reduce the burden of decoding during learning tasks.
• Introduce voice-to-text tools for extended written tasks so Liam can demonstrate his knowledge without the barrier of written output.

Getting Extra Help

• Refer Liam to a speech pathologist or literacy specialist with training in structured literacy approaches, such as those based on the Orton-Gillingham method — this means they teach reading and spelling in a very systematic, step-by-step way that works particularly well for children who find phonics hard.
• Any tutoring support should specifically use structured literacy approaches — general reading practice without explicit phonics instruction is unlikely to be sufficient.

At Home

• Keep homework sessions short and allow regular breaks to manage processing demands.
• Where possible, allow Liam to provide verbal responses rather than written ones.
• Use voice-to-text tools for longer written tasks.
• Continue to support Liam’s strengths and interests in science, LEGO, and hands-on activities, as these are important for his self-esteem and motivation.

What to Do Next

• Review Liam’s progress with structured literacy intervention at six months to evaluate effectiveness and determine whether further adjustment is required.
• A follow-up appointment with Dr. Nair can be arranged if parents or the school have further questions following implementation of recommendations.

Summary

Liam is a bright boy with strong verbal reasoning abilities who has dyslexia — a specific learning difficulty that makes reading and writing much harder for him than for most children his age. With the right support, including extra time, assistive technology, and structured literacy intervention, Liam can access his genuine capabilities and experience success at school. His strengths in mathematics, science, and hands-on learning provide a strong foundation for his continued development.

This report has been prepared to help Liam’s parents, caregivers, and teachers understand the assessment findings and support him effectively. The recommendations are based on current information and should be reviewed as Liam’s needs change over time.

For any questions regarding this report or to discuss the implementation of recommendations, please feel free to contact me.

Yours Sincerely,

Sarah Smith

Educational and Developmental Psychologist