School Version of the AMPS (School AMPS)

Uses
The School AMPS is a standardized, criterion-referenced assessment for students 3 years and older. It enables therapists to provide a standardized measure of the quality of a student’s schoolwork performance. These measures are ideal for establishing baseline performance and evaluating for change in occupational performance. Additionally, the student’s school motor and school process measures can be compared to age norms for students 3 to 12 years of age. The School AMPS software reports normalized standard scores, standardized z-scores, and percentile rank, a familiar reporting method for parents and colleagues. Those trained in administration and scoring of the School AMPS come away with the skills to interpret norm-referenced and criterion-referenced School AMPS reports and to identify student skills most impacting performance. They are able to use the results of the School AMPS to determine a student’s need for occupational therapy services, write student goals that are occupation-based, and plan interventions that meet an individual student’s needs. Subsequent evaluations using the School AMPS provide a sensitive tool to document change in schoolwork performance and outcomes of intervention.

Scoring
The School AMPS is a modified version of the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS). Like the AMPS, the School AMPS is an evaluation of occupational performance expressed in terms of the quality (efficiency, safety, difficulty, and independence) of the smallest observable units of occupational performance – the school motor and school process skills that are linked together, one by one as the students enact schoolwork task performances. Because each student is observed performing two schoolwork tasks that have been identified as problems of occupational performance, and because a 4-point rating scale is used to score each of 16 school motor and 20 school process skills for each task performed, the result is a very sensitive and powerful evaluation of the quality of the student’s occupational performance.

Schoolwork Tasks
To date, five categories of schoolwork tasks have been developed for the School AMPS – pen/pencil writing tasks, drawing and coloring tasks, cutting and pasting tasks, computer writing tasks, and math manipulative tasks. Except for the manipulative task category, which includes two tasks, each of the other categories of schoolwork tasks includes four or five specific tasks, for a total of 21 School AMPS tasks. These School AMPS tasks reflect those most commonly performed in preschool and elementary schools, but are also applicable to older students who have disabilities that affect their schoolwork task performances.

Administration
A School AMPS evaluation begins with a collaborative interview with the student’s teacher to identify what schoolwork tasks are of most concern and his/her expectations for the student's schoolwork task performance. The teacher determines what schoolwork tasks students perform and the specific task criteria. Moreover, they are intended for other students in the classroom as well as the one evaluated. This means that the student being evaluated is observed as he/she performs the teacher-specified tasks along with his/her classmates as part of their typical classroom routine.

This page was last modified on 11 January 2010