Assessing & Tracking Auditory Skills {Using FREE Tools!}

A child's auditory skills are acquired in a developmental and progressive sequence, although their pace may vary depending on many different factors!  There are lots of different free tools available to assess and track auditory skills.  They give you a good idea of the child's baseline, as well as provide you with an appropriate sequence for instruction, tracking and writing goals.

My FAVORITE tool to track auditory skills is the Auditory Learning Guide by Beth Walker (my professional idol!)  This tool gives you a really nice sequence of listening skills up to 4 years post-amplification.  You can find the ALG here:  Auditory Learning Guide

The Auditory Skills Checklist was developed by Nancy Caleffe-Schneck (and adapted by Karen Anderson) to assess functional listening skills in young children with hearing loss.  It can be found here:  Auditory Skills Checklist

Two parent interviews about home listening behaviors are the CHILD (Children's Home Inventory for Listening Difficulties) and the ELF (Early Listening Function).  Both of these were developed by Karen Anderson and are available from Phonak here:  CHILD and ELF

The FAPI (Functional Auditory Performance Indicators) is a tool to assess functional auditory skills.  The skills are arranged in a hierarchical sequence and are very specific (nice for writing goals).  You can find the FAPI here:  FAPI

The IT-MAIS (Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale (IT-MAIS) and the MAIS (Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale) are parent report scales each containing 10 questions about a  child's listening behaviors.  The IT-MAIS can be found here:  IT-MAIS and the MAIS can be found here:  MAIS

The PEACH (Parents' Evaluation of Aural/Oral Performance of Children) and the TEACH (Teachers' Evaluation of Aural/Oral Performance of Children) are questionnaires for evaluating/reflecting on a child's listening behaviors at home and school.  They were developed by Ching and Hill and can both be found here:  PEACH & TEACH

I often use Karen Anderson's SIFTER (Screening Instrument For Targeting Educational Risk), available for elementary and secondary; and the LIFE (Listening Inventory For Education) for evaluating FM efficacy.  Both are available here, along with a lot of other assessments:  Success for Kids with Hearing Loss Tests

Advanced Bionics has a form for tracking daily listening checks.  It only allows for a week of data, but it would be nice for someone who is new to listening checks.  You can find it here:  Daily Listening Check

This list is definitely not exhaustive.  There are a lot more resources out there...and many of them free!  Please feel free to share any tool you use to help you assess or track auditory skills!  Thanks!