Many of us speech therapists were trained to rehabilitate oral language skills and leave the written skills to the teacher or resource teacher. I still believe that my main value is in building oral language skills, which can feed right into written language. I work with students to brainstorm ideas, organize thoughts. add detail and descriptive words, transitions and endings. Then they get to work writing their piece.
I was recently in a classroom where the teacher referred to “The Writing Menu” by Melissa Forney. She showed the class a full page of “sensory words” in columns according to touch, smell, sound, taste, and sight. It is an excellent resource to have at your side when writing and wanting to include descriptive words. I ordered “The Writing Menu” and found a workbook of ideas for the classroom teacher to make writing fun. The author’s premise is to provide a “menu” of writing ideas for units of study such as The Rain Forest, Native Americans etc.. The menu gives kids choices according to their abilities–Appetizers are easier projects such as listing or labeling that can be done in one session, Main Courses are projects that involve multiple skills and take several days to complete and Desserts are projects that involve kinesthetic expression such as art or music and take several days to complete. The concept of a menu gives the kids ownership as they make choices based on their learning styles and interests. I know I would pick the dessert!
The author includes writing target skills by grade from first through eighth grade as well as many ideas for writing prompts and lists of words.
If you’re looking for ideas for writing and a new approach, check this out.
What materials do you find helpful to get a child ready for a writing assignment?
I listen to the parents I work with and one of the moms said to me last week, “You should blog about parent guilt!” Being a mom of three grown boys, I am well versed in parent guilt. When the elementary school called to suggest reading help for my son, I immediately thought, “Didn’t I read to him enough?” Why is it that we always blame ourselves??
I am privileged to have a relationship of trust with many of the moms and dads with whom I work. They share their struggles with guilt over whether they are spending too much time with the child with speech and language delay/disorder versus siblings, if they have “caused” the problem somehow by missing ear infections or not seeing signs early enough to detect disorders.
First of all, the parents I work with are my heroes. They are full-out working on behalf of their child, implementing techniques in my absence to move their child ahead, learning what toys, books and games are best to stimulate language, changing around the playroom for pretend play or going to seminars to educate themselves on the best therapy for their child.
I often tell parents that we don’t have a crystal ball to foresee the future or be able to assign causes for their child’s speech and language issues. For instance, some children with frequent ear infections during the second year when language is developing, lag in their language development, and other children with the same number of ear infections don’t.
My main point to parents is to try not to look back, but garner your energy and use it to move forward and find the best program of intervention for your child and join in as a partner in the process.
I shared some of my favorite Halloween books last week and have used them when working with kids with typically developing language as well as those with auditory processing difficulties, and those on the autism spectrum. I had quite a fun time with Aaaarrgghh: Spider! with a little fellow on the autism spectrum that I wanted to share.
Our goals include being attentive to a book and answering wh-questions as well as building pretend play skills. It all came together with this goofy book about a spider campaigning to be the family pet! We started out with my wonderful collection of bugs, including spiders, a jar with a magnifying lid, Play-doh of course, and some little Fisher Price furniture and playground items.
We talked about the spiders, chose different ones to look at under the magnifying glass and then read the book. I pointed out the faces of the family and reactions to the spider’s attempts at winning them over. We copied surprised, scared and happy faces. Then we got out the Play-doh and made a web, stuck the flies and bugs in it for eating, and hung the spider down from the web to dangle over our dinner, as in the book. We copied the reactions of the family at the sight of a spider waving over our food.
Then, much to my delight, my little friend took off in his play. I was holding a fly and he had the spider when he hid the spider under a mound of Play-doh and started counting. I followed his lead of starting a game of hide and seek with our bugs! We took turns searching for each other’s bugs and he created two new spots for hiding–great flexible play. Then I got out my Play-doh oven as an option for a hiding place. After our bugs hid in it, he piled several bugs in and started to lift it up with sound effects. I asked what he was doing and he said, “It’s landing.” When I asked what is was (the oven), he said, “A plane.” Wow! That was an exciting step up in pretend play to assign a different use to an object than what is it intended for. He proceeded to fly his “plane” around the room on its way “to London” before it had to land so the bugs could go home.
Little steps like that make my day.
I watched a wonderful interaction between mother and child today during our speech therapy session. It is exciting for me to see my little clients improve, but just as satisfying to watch parents learn how to encourage speech and language.
Little two-year-old Sean loves my three dollar plastic pretend microphone. He selected it out of my bag and started to make sounds into it. Mom held the mike and began to imitate Sean. Much to his delight he continued in their “conversation,” offering up new sounds and syllables, waiting for Mom to imitate. Ever so gradually, Mom began to slightly change what Sean was saying. He said “ba” and she replied “ba ba.” Slowly the roles reversed and Sean started to imitate mom so now he was having to match what mom was saying. He was learning the fun of producing sounds, having a conversation and imitating sounds all at once. By the way, Mom was having fun too!
Whenever we teach parents how to stimulate speech and language, they become a big part of their child’s progress.
CNN reported a study published on Monday in the Journal of Pediatrics that found an increase in the number of children with autism and related disorders in the United States. The number is up to 1 percent of children from the age of 3 to 17.
The study is based on the results of the federal government’s 2007 national survey of children’s health, where parents were asked by telephone if a health care provider had ever told them their child had an autism spectrum disorder. In a follow-up question, parents were asked if their child was currently considered to have ASD. Nearly 40% of the respondents said no.
The question is whether the original diagnosis of ASD was accurate since the disorders are not considered curable. To that point though, as therapists we see children who receive massive hours of early intervention after a diagnosis of ASD, and years later they are “undiagnosed,” due to great improvement in their social and language skills.
The new statistics may be accurate and autism may be on the increase or maybe we are better diagnosticians. According to the CNN article,
“The researchers urged caution in interpreting the change, noting that an increase in diagnoses does not necessarily mean that more children have the disorder. It could simply reflect a heightened awareness of the disorder.”
In any case, heightened awareness is good if we can identify children with ASD early and get them the early intervention services they need to make maximum progress.
Halloween is a fun time of year for kids and an easy theme to introduce into therapy. Today I want to share a few books on that theme that are simple, yet fun and can be incorporated into a language or articulation lesson.
Last week I went to the home of my little friends on the autism spectrum. Books aren’t always his favorite activity and I try hard to find stories with simple, funny, stories linked to his experiences. First we popped popcorn in a pot with a glass lid. What fun to see the kernels pop and overflow, just like the story, Popcorn, by Frank Asch. We took pictures of the steps so we could order them later in re-telling our activity. Then we read the book and took advantage of all the opportunities to ask wh-questions relating to the pictures supporting the story, and describe the action, especially on the party page.
Sheep Trick or Treat by Nancy Shaw begins with “As the Halloween moon rises, sheep are fixing up disguises.” These well costumed sheep go trick or treating through the farm and encounter some wolves on the way home. Good thing they are dressed up to scare their enemies and arrive home safely to eat their treats! Shaw’s clever series of sheep stories in rhyme are great for pre-literacy skills as well as articulation practice with the /sh/ sound.
Aaaarrgghh! Spider! by Lydia Monks is one of my favorites for the season. This tale is about a lovable, persistent spider who wants to be adopted as the family pet. It is a good story to talk about feelings and associated facial expressions of surprise, fear, happiness and excitement.
Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell is another seasonal book that is a simple, concrete story about the experiences of going to the farm and picking apples and pumpkins, and returning home to carve the pumpkin and go trick or treating. This book could be used as a social story for children on the autism spectrum before a fall field trip, pumpkin carving or trick or treating.
If you work with children on the autism spectrum, please let me know what books have been interesting to your little clients. I would like to develop a list to share with other speech therapists and parents. You can comment below or e-mail me directly at sherry@playonwords.com. Thanks!
I try to work on all of my language goals while using excellent children’s literature.
Recently, I was working on brainstorming ideas with a student to prepare for a writing assignment about a “memory.” The teacher read Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partirdge by Mem Fox to the class and asked them to define a “memory.” Her teacher asked the class to bring in a souvenir from a fun adventure. Based on the souvenir, they organized their writing assignment around where it came from, when they got it, described the big event around the memory (a trip to grandma’s, the zoo, the beach etc.) and concluded with how it made them feel.
As speech pathologists, we are responsible for the speech language goals for oral language which precedes written language. Therefore, I am often involved in the process of brainstorming ideas, organizing thoughts, adding details and description and building a conclusion. Visual organizers are helpful to students before the writing process and rehearsing their ideas verbally.
What books do you find helpful in language therapy? Let’s share in the comments below.
As I have said before, I think many children are labeled apraxic prematurely. Often I will say to a parent that their child is apraxic-like, meaning he or she appears to be having some motor programming difficulty with speech and finds it difficult to imitate at the appropriate age.
With the 2 year-olds that are referred to me who have very few words that might appear and then be gone, I have found an effective way to “get them going” in a therapy session. If they have a word or two that seem easy for them to produce such as “ball” or “dog,” then begin with those words. Plan an activity where you can use the word in many different ways through play so the child has an opportunity to be successful and get his vocal mechanism going. I even tell parents to help “warm up” their child in the morning before they are going off to preschool and they seem to talk more and be more successful.
Yesterday I used a little push-activated toy, a dump truck, that we kept making and putting play-doh balls into as we made it go across the table. Every little activity with a ball was an opportunity for success.
Like other professionals today, I am always on the alert for signs of autism in children that I see, so that if needed, I can help parents get the best help, fast and early for their child. I am amazed at the progress many children can make if they are diagnosed early. When I worked at the Early Childhood Center in Fairfield, I would start with children when they were 3 years old. When I looked back at reports of their status just a year earlier, at 2 years, I couldn’t believe it was the same child. They had had many hours of therapy, and it showed.
Recently, I was having a play session with a little boy, whom I was seeing for my “play on words” session, where I show parents how to talk, read and play with their typical youngsters, to enhance language. This little boy was 2 1/2 exhibiting some “red flags” for autism. At first nothing appeared to be off. He was playing nicely by himself with his little Fisher Price animals and talking in short sentences of a typical length for his age. This can be misleading because one might think that language is fine if they can talk in sentences. But, language is more than grammar. Pragmatic language, or social language is a key component in a child’s overall language age. A child at this age still typically plays next to another much of the time but also engages in play with peers and adults and has conversations back and forth, looking the other person in the eye. But when I came into hir play with a figure or piece of the action, he didn’t “let me in” by looking me in the eye, responding to my questions about his play scheme, or seem to acknowledge that I was there. HIs mom began describing situations that she had observed her son in recently that were cause for her concern.
They were at the beach and his peers were busily playing together while she observed her son off by himself, not seeming to be interested or aware of their play. He kept throwing stones in the water repeatedly, not changing his activity.
Often between 2 and 3, when children are expanding their language into little sentences and developing the use of language to manipulate their environment–request things, show their dislike for things, ask questions–it may become apparent that your child is not using his language flexibly as he should.
If you have concerns be sure to discuss specifics with your pediatrician and/or call your local Birth to Three Services to have an evaluation. Autism Speaks is an excellent organization and has helpful descriptions of the signs of autism on their website.
I love to use great picture books when doing language therapy so I wanted to share a few that have been rich for teaching certain language goals for elementary aged kids.
Recently I was working with a fourth grader whose goals include being able to: summarize a portion of text read to her, re-tell relevant facts in order, compare and contrast concepts and vocabulary, predict what will happen, and answer age appropriate wh-questions.
I checked The Sea, the Storm and the Mangrove Tangle by Lynne Cherry out of my public library. What a treasure that was for teaching language skills to an elementary aged child. She is also the author of The Great Kapok Tree. The story begins with a propagule seed floating to its new nesting area to start a mangrove tree. Each layer is described and beautifully illustrated with the creatures and foliage and its protective purpose for the animals. A hurricane disrupts the calm but illustrates the refuge that this mangrove tangle can be.
We took a long paper, placed it vertically and drew the different levels of the mangrove tree, the animals that lived there and the plants that provided refuge and food. We compared the different levels, animals and plants, before and after the storm in an exercise of comparison as well saw how the levels were linked through deep, tangled roots etc. We summarized sections after we read them aloud and offered three facts to back up our summary. We answered “Why? questions concerning the importance of certain structures and habitats.
I often try to link a book to today’s experiences so we looked on the internet for mangrove trees and found a site that explained the controversy surrounding cutting down the mangroves to make way for a shrimp farm, just as was mentioned in the book.
