Katie Kalnitz SPED 414 TPBA Reaction Paper Transdisciplinary Play-Based Assessment After discussing play-based assessments in depth

during class and watching informational videos that simulated play-based assessments, I felt eager to have the opportunity to try it with my assigned group. Even though the idea of the arena seating is a bit intimidating, as well as collaborating with so many professionals, I believe that Transdisciplinary Play-Based Assessment is useful and worthwhile. There were six available roles within our group. These roles consisted of parent facilitator, child facilitator, communication and language evaluator, sensorimotor evaluator, cognition evaluator, and social-emotional evaluator. I chose to be the communication and language evaluator because this topic has always intrigued me, especially after taking Kiel Christiansons EPSY course last spring. I feel that I performed this role to the very best of my ability. Part of the assessment was difficult for me to understand because it was immersed with Speech and Hearing Science jargon. A speech and language pathologist would certainly be able to utilize the assessment more thoroughly. However, I did my best to document the conversations and communications transmitted between the target child, his mother Marcie, and our facilitator Kirsten. I also went through the packet and tried to answer as many subsections as I could understand. For example, I noted that Colters primary means of communication was vocalization and his meanings were implied by gesture, vocalizations and verbalizations. A major part of conducting an assessment such as this is collaborating with the team members. Throughout this process I was able to learn things from my group members. For example, I learned from Kirsten that when she called Colters mother she was very relaxed and friendly. She took her time to get to know Marcie so that she felt at ease during the assessment. I learned from Kristin that from her observations, Colter had developmentally appropriate fine motor manipulations as well as gross motor. Finally, I learned from Mallory that Colters use of toys was relative to their purpose, and this signified proper cognitive development. For example, when Colter played with the cars he drove them

around; put them on roads, etc. He did not make the cars dance, which would be an inappropriate action of cars. As for the physical environment, we attempted to set up the space with materials we knew Colter preferred, for example, cars. We allowed Colter to have free reign of the room utilizing all areas as well as the loft. We strategically set up toys that we wanted him to play with. However we did have materials that were not used that could have been helpful during the assessment. For example, coloring pages and colored pencils that would have shown us Colters fine motor skills and more. I think that the overall pace of the assessment was great, and Emily and Kirsten did a nice job staying on track with the assessment. Colter never seemed hurried or forced to do anything. Snack time flowed in casually with the rest of the assessment, and we ended just on time. Although Colter did have trouble leaving, that was not due to the pace of the overall assessment. There is a high quality of information that can be obtained from using the TPBA assessment. By having several different professionals collaborating, this assessment ensures that an expert is evaluating each aspect the child is being assessed on. For example, the communication and language section would be done by a SLP, the sensorimotor section would be conducted by an OT, and so on and so forth. As I stated previously, I do think that the arena process can be intimidating at first for the parents involved. It may seem like the professionals are judging their interactions with their children, or make the parent feel scrutinized. On the other hand, I do believe sitting in the arena style seating is better than all of the professionals sitting together in one corner of the room. That would also be intimidating because a parent may think that they are whispering or talking about his or her child. Overall, I thought the arena process went well with Marcie and Colter. She seemed comfortable as did Colter. I believe that Toni Linders assessment instrument is useful because it has the parent involved, the child is unaware he or she is being assessed, and it is conducted in a relaxed and playful environment. It was apparent that Marcie was prepared for what was going to take place. She did a wonderful job at taking an active role at facilitating some play with Colter and repeating things he said that were difficult to hear for the rest of the team. Marcie was involved in preparing for the assessment because Kirsten called her and asked her some questions about Colter, his family, and his likes and dislikes. Our team did not address any questions

or concerns that Marcie had. The only thing Marcie asked us was what her role was in the assessment, and Kirsten and Emily informed her she could participate as much as she wanted to. I also think that the assessment process in general does encourage sharing by the family and team members because it is such a relaxed setting where collaboration is embraced. However, I will admit that my team members and myself seemed a bit nervous when sharing our findings with Marcie. This may be attributed to the fact that none of us have ever done this before and we did not want Marcie to think we were judging her or her child. The assessment was conducted in English, which is a language we knew Colter and Marcie spoke. Overall, Marcie seemed very relaxed in her role as part of our team. I could tell Marcie was comfortable based off her body language as well as how quickly she jumped in to be a part of the assessment and work with Colter, the parent facilitator, and the child facilitator. If I were to be a part of the TPBA assessment again, I would do a few things differently. First of all, I would make sure that my group members and I collaborated a bit more prior to the assessment. In other words, I would brainstorm more ideas for play for the child facilitator based off of aspects of development that each person needed to evaluate in their packets. This would have allowed each member of the group to get more information that they needed, and be able to report back to the parents with more concrete data. I would have also prepared more for how to speak to Colters mother at the end of the assessment. I think that if I had practiced more and thought about what to say, I would have been less nervous when our group had to discuss what we found. Before conducting this assessment, I had a few concerns. Mainly I was concerned about the arena process and making sure I could document the conversations fast enough. I quickly found that the arena process was beneficial to the TPBA, and I was able to write down the most important aspects of the conversations that were had. Finally, a suggestion I have to improve the TPBA process would be to allow the child to meet the child facilitator one or two times before the assessment. This way, the child would be even more relaxed with the facilitator, which could help ensure that the child is acting typical to his or her normal behaviors. In conclusion, I found that participating in the simulation of the TPBA was eyeopening because it allowed me to gain experience working with a family as well as my classmates. It challenged me to collaborate with others in order to make decisions about

how we were going to conduct the assessment, and also provided me with practice interacting with parents.