The BEST entry criteria and BEST Eligibility Assessment are used to ensure that the child has the skills to allow them to benefit from the therapy. These include:

• Triadic attention – when the child and teacher/parent are able to focus their attention on to the same thing
• Symbolic play – ability of the child to use objects, actions or ideas to represent other objects, actions, or ideas as play
• Imitation in play – copying someone else during play time

These can be assessed during everyday play with normal children’s toys. BEST Assessment Pictures a brief picture assessment should also be used to assess the child’s expressive language. You will need the BEST Assessment and Therapy Recording form to carry out this assessment.

Hearing test results can also be important as children with hearing difficulties may struggle to benefit from the therapy, as the one of the main aims of the therapy is for the child to hear the sentences. If you have any concerns about the child’s hearing, please let their parent/carer know.

If you deem the child to be eligible, then complete the quick pre-treatment assessment with them. This allows you to determine the child’s level before the therapy and is useful for tracking progress.

BEST pre-treatment Assessment – this is an assessment of the child’s expressive language. Using the picture book, show the child one picture at a time and say “Tell me what’s happening”, and record the child’s response (if any) on their therapy recording form. Here it is important to note that it is not necessary to try to get full responses out of the children, or repair or remodel any of their answers. The aim of this baseline assessment is to capture the child’s unsupported expressive language ability. Refer to the scoring section for how to score this assessment.

After 8 therapy sessions (“Decision point 1”) the BEST Assessment 1 is administered to see if the child needs to continue the therapy or not. During the assessment, the child is shown one picture at a time and the SLT/teacher says “Tell me what’s happening”, and the child’s response (if any) is recorded. Their scores are added up and if they exceed 85% on both content and morphology, the child does not need to continue with the therapy. If not, they do continue. Refer to the scoring section for how to score this assessment.

After a further 4 sessions, we reach Decision Point 2 where BEST Assessment 2 is administered. This has the same format as the first one, and again, if the child scores over 85% on both content and morphology, they do not need to continue. If not, they can carry on until the end. Refer to the scoring section for how to score this assessment.

After the final 4 sessions, the outcome assessment is administered in the same way as the BEST Baseline Assessment. Refer to the scoring section for how to score this assessment.

This assessment is optional and allows you to see if the child has continued to make progress after the sessions are finished. It is administered six weeks after the Outcome Assessment, and again it is administered the same way as the BEST Baseline Assessment. Refer to the scoring section for how to score this assessment.

All of the assessments are scored in the same way. The scoring is divided into two parts:

• Content – nouns and verbs
• Morphology – includes determiners such as ‘a’ and ‘the’, auxiliaries such as ‘is’, and inflections such as ‘-ing’ on the end of verbs.

For each sentence, you will have recorded the child’s initial response in the box on the therapy recording form (see materials section). The sheet tells you whether to score each part of the response as correct or incorrect. Tick the appropriate boxes to get a total for each.

Children are scored based on how many items they get correct. At the end, the total content and total morphology scores are added up, and converted into percentages. These can then be added to the Recording Form Table and plotted on the Progress Tracker Chart. You can use the progress tracker chart to watch the child’s progress over the course of the intervention.

Further Scoring Information:

• Off-topic, irrelevant and other such spoken utterances are scored as incorrect.
• Acceptable determiners for the agent are ‘that’, ‘the’ and ‘a’.
• Acceptable determiners for the patient are ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘his/her’.
• Where a noun argument is marked but the wrong lexical item is used, eg. ‘dog’ for ‘cat’, then this is scored as incorrect. This also goes for ‘mum’/’girl’ and ‘boy’/’man’ confusions which are also incorrect.
• When a subject pronoun (‘he’ or ‘she’) is used for the agent this is accepted as correct.
• Where a child makes many attempts or produces separate clause elements as separate utterances, only the first attempt/utterance is analysed.
• Where a child makes a false start and self corrects part way through an utterance the complete corrected sentence is analysed e.g. ‘the boy… the man is eating the apple’.
• The verb ‘combing’ is accepted in the place of ‘brushing’.
• The verb ‘cuddling’ is accepted in the place of ‘hugging’.
• The verb ‘licking’ is accepted for ‘eating’ only for items containing ‘lolly’.

All of the assessments are scored in the same way. The scoring is divided into two parts:

• Content – nouns and verbs
• Morphology – includes determiners such as ‘a’ and ‘the’, auxiliaries such as ‘is’, and inflections such as ‘-ing’ on the end of verbs.

For each sentence, you will have recorded the child’s initial response in the box on the therapy recording form (pdf). The sheet tells you whether to score each part of the response as correct or incorrect. Tick the appropriate boxes to get a total for each.

Children are scored based on how many items they get correct. At the end, the total content and total morphology scores are added up, and converted into percentages. These can then be added to the Recording Form Table and plotted on the Progress Tracker Chart. You can use the progress tracker chart to watch the child’s progress over the course of the intervention.

Further Scoring Information:

• Off-topic, irrelevant and other such spoken utterances are scored as incorrect.
• Acceptable determiners for the agent are ‘that’, ‘the’ and ‘a’.
• Acceptable determiners for the patient are ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘his/her’.
• Where a noun argument is marked but the wrong lexical item is used, eg. ‘dog’ for ‘cat’, then this is scored as incorrect. This also goes for ‘mum’/’girl’ and ‘boy’/’man’ confusions which are also incorrect.
• When a subject pronoun (‘he’ or ‘she’) is used for the agent this is accepted as correct.
• Where a child makes many attempts or produces separate clause elements as separate utterances, only the first attempt/utterance is analysed.
• Where a child makes a false start and self corrects part way through an utterance the complete corrected sentence is analysed e.g. ‘the boy… the man is eating the apple’.
• The verb ‘combing’ is accepted in the place of ‘brushing’.
• The verb ‘cuddling’ is accepted in the place of ‘hugging’.
• The verb ‘licking’ is accepted for ‘eating’ only for items containing ‘lolly’.