Speech All the Time

Monday, July 29, 2013

Phonemic Awareness Activities Can Be Fun


So many children on our caseloads today need to develop phonemic awareness skills. Among the skills that children develop when learning to read are: 

  •     determining the number of syllables in a word
  •     blending syllables
  •     recognizing rhyme
  •     generating rhymes
  •     stating onset rimes

Presenting activities that are fun, interesting, and instill the desire to learn can be a challenge.


Jennifer Shamberger from Speech Universe. has created a delightful set of phonemic awareness activities to accompany the book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books by Lucille Colandro. The Little Old Lady books are wildly popular with children. Linking phonemic awareness activities with the vocabulary from the story provides rich, literacy-based intervention.





And now onto the activities
    
  •  How Many Syllables
  • Students clap and use dot markers to mark the number of syllables in words
           said by the teacher/therapist. This provides a motor component to the activity 
           and provides print on a worksheet for the student to have a visual match to 
           the word heard.



  •     Blending Syllables   
  • Children chooses a card. After the teacher/therapist reads the syllables, he 
             student says the word then moves a token ahead on a game board the
             number of spaces written on the card.


  •  Recognizing Rhyme
  • A card is chosen and the two words are read to the student who determines  
           whether they rhyme or not. The card is then placed on either a “Rhymes” mat 
           or a “Does Not Rhyme” mat. 



  • Generating Rhyme
  • Children, roll a dice, then generate a rhyming word for the word on a numbered 
         mat.


  •    Onset Rime
  • A card with a consonant, pause, an open syllable is read. The student says the 
    word from the story, then moves ahead the number of spaces on the game  
            board that Granny says.




This packet is available on Jenn’s TPT store for $3.50.

Kathy
   



Wednesday, July 24, 2013

What is Best Practice for Assessing and Serving Bilingual Children?


Many of us as are being asked to evaluate and provide  speech and language services for Bilingual children and  English Language Learners (ELL). "Where do I begin?" and "What do I need to know?" may be some of the first questions we ask ourselves

Tatyana Elleseff at Smart Speech Therapy LLC has written a wonderful article entitled “Language Differences vs. Language Disorder:  Assessment and Intervention Strategies for SLP’s Working with Bilingual Children”.   I am currently seeing very young children whose family's first language is other than English. These little ones are not developing speech, language or communication skills. Therefore, I was very happy when Tatyana asked me to do a materials swap and product review on my blog. While I am reviewing her article, she is doing a review of my companion packet for “Badger’s Fancy Meal”. 

Whether you are looking for a concise introduction to working with Bilingual students or you need a refresher on Evidence Based Practices in this area, this is an excellent resource. 

The following areas are addressed:

  • types of bilingualism
  • similarities between monolingual and bilingual language acquisition
  • simultaneous dual language learning and language delay
  • outlines of stages of language acquisition in both simultaneous and simultaneous learning; influences on later learning
  • acquisition models
  • academic language and its function
  • BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency)
  • communication differences vs. disorder; characteristic overlaps
  • what communication disorders affect
  • challenges of assessment
  • identification measures; criteria for selection; limitations of standardized assessments
  • pros and cons of several currently used standardized measures
  • dynamic assessment and its advantages
  • initial referral considerations
  • assessment of phonology, fluency, general language
  • intervention approaches
  • what happens when L1 is eliminated 

Points of interest
  • simultaneous language learning occurs when there are two languages from infancy 
  • dual language acquisition in simultaneous language learning is NEVER equal
  • sequential language learning occurs when the second language acquisition is AFTER the first, typically after 3 years of age
  • timing and sequence of language milestones are similar
  • dual language learning does not cause confusion/delays in young children
  • vocabulary in each language is less, but when combined, it is the same or better
  • communication disorders WILL BE PRESENT IN BOTH LANGUAGES

The point that jumped out at me was “Advising parents of language disordered children to stop speaking  L1 and focus on L2 only is NOT supported by evidence based practice!” This has a significant impact on how we serve very young bilingual children.

This perfect resource is a great investment for $24.95 at her store. Tatyana  is currently reviewing my storybook companion packet for “Badgers Fancy Meal on her BLOG.

Kathy

Thursday, July 18, 2013

To Map or Not to Map


I think it’s probably safe to say that at one point in our lives or careers, we assumed that preschool children were too young and/or not ready to engage in preliteracy activities. As we now know, that is far from true. When I taught a preschool Language Disorders classroom, and then a State-funded grant program for an all day Early Childhood classroom in conjunction with Head Start, it became readily apparent that given the right structure and materials, even children who are delayed or at risk for developing language, can significantly increase the skills they need to become readers as they enter school-age programs. 

Early literacy, story book reading, oral narrative and vocabulary development have been my passion for a very long time. Over the years I have created, and continue to create as a matter of fact,  literacy units based on quality children’s storybooks. In doing so, one of the strategies that I have used to expand comprehension and oral narrative is to teach story elements. 

There are five main elements in a story: setting, plot, characters, conflict and theme. Given strong visual supports, and active engagement with the story, young children are able to answer questions regarding setting, plot and characters. Characters include people or animals in the story. The setting is where the story takes place. The plot includes the sequential events in the story--what happened first, middle, and end. 

Best practice suggests that story elements be discussed during the introduction of a story. When introducing these elements to preschool age students I teach these elements at the the end of a four-day set of lessons after they are familiar with the story elements they will need to know to map them out. I would like to share a simple format that I used in my storybook companion, “Llama Llama Misses Mama” by Anna Dewdney  in my TPT store  to teach these elements using a visually supported story map. Below is an excerpt from the lesson.




Show the children the book “Llama Llama Misses Mama”. Present the following information.

What is the name of our book?

That is called the ‘title’. All books have a ‘title’.

Did we talk about who wrote the book? Let’s see if we can find the words on the cover of the book that tells us who wrote the book”. Point to the author’s name. “Here it is. The name of the person who wrote this book is Anna Dewdney. A person who writes a book is called an ‘author’. All books have an author. Let’s all say the author’s name together.” Have a child come up and point to the author’s name. 

All books have ‘characters’. ‘Characters are people or sometimes animals who are in the story. I am going to give you a ‘character’ circle to hold.” Give students a character circle. “When I name a character, if you have that character, hold it up in the air.” Do this for all the characters. Ask the student who is holding that character to label it. 



The characters in a book do things in different places. These places are called the ‘setting’. Some stories happen in just on place, and in other stories the characters go to more than one place. In ‘Llama Llama Misses Mama" are the characters in the same place on every page? I am going to give you a ‘setting’ circle to hold.” Give students a setting circle. “When I name a setting, if you have that setting, hold it up in the air.” Do this for all the settings. Ask the student who is holding that setting to label it.



All books and stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. These are called the ‘events’ in the story. Sometimes there are a lot of events in the story, but we are going to name 3 for our story.” Show the picture of Llama Llama in his bedroom. “What is the first event in our story?” Discuss.

Show the picture of Llama Llama at school. “What is the middle event in our story?” Discuss.

Show the picture of Llama Llama and Mama at home. “What is last event in our story?” Discuss.



We are going to use all of these circle pictures today to make a ‘story map’. Does anyone know what a map is?” Elicit answers. “Yes. A map is like a big picture that shows how to get somewhere and shows where things are. A ‘story map’ shows what is happening in a story. It has characters on it, the places in the story (the settings), and things that happen in the story (events--beginning, middle and end).




Display the Story Map. Point to the ‘Characters’ part. “This part of the story map is called ‘Characters’. What picture circles do you think we will put here?

Point to the ‘Setting/Places’ part. “This part of the story map is called ‘Setting/Places’. What picture circles do you think we will put here?

Point to the ‘Events/Beginning, Middle, End’ part. “This part of the story map is called ‘Events’. What picture circles do you think we will put here?

Use the story element circles to have the children create the story map.
Making a story maps helps us to remember the story. It also helps us tell the story to others.” Use the ‘Events’ part of the Story Map. “We are going to use the ‘Events’ part of our Story Map to do this.” Point to the first picture. “What happened first in our story?”

“What did Llama Llama do after he got up but before he went to school? You are going to have to use your brains to help you remember, but we’ll also use our book.” Turn to the pages in the book, and have the children tell you what’s happening on each page. 

Stop when you get to the page where Llama Llama is at school. “Now we are in the middle of our story. What picture on our Story Map shows the middle part of the story? ”  Let’s tell what happened in the middle of the story while Llama Llama was at school.” Turn to the pages in the book, and have the children tell you what’s happening on each page. 

Stop when you get to the page where Llama Llama and his Mama are at home. “Now we are at the end of our book. What picture on our Story Map shows the end of the story?” Turn to the last page in the book, and have the children tell you what happened at the end of the story. 

I use this strategy for several story books before I start having the children create their own story maps by either gluing pictures and/or story strips onto a map of their own. The students can also illustrate the characters, setting and events on a map. They should be able to use these story maps to start giving simple oral narratives of the story. 


Kathy

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Giraffes Can't Dance


I have a particular fondness for using picture books in therapy. Having fun, interesting and engaging storybooks and activities make learning fun and promote print awareness, text comprehension,  vocabulary, semantics, oral narration, sequencing, and can reinforces phonemic awareness, generalized articulation skills, and use of appropriate syntactic structures . The efficacy of using storybooks will be the discussion for future blogs. So stay tuned.
One of my favorite companion packs is 35 pages of engaging materials that compliment the book by Giles Andreae & Guy Parker-Rees. It is designed for children ages 4-8. It is a worthwhile investment to purchase your own copy of the book if you do not already have access to a copy. Here is a preview of the packet.

A set of 23 character cards includes the main “characters” or animals in the story--giraffe, lion, warthog, chimp, baboon, rhino, and cricket. The remainder of the cards are pictures of familiar and less common jungle animals in the story. These can be used for vocabulary enrichment and for a sentences generation activity for articulation.




The next activity includes 23 vocabulary cards that state the sentence in the story that contains the word. Three choices of the meaning of the words are given.


There are 3 levels of comprehension question cards. Level ! has 2 picture responses to choose from, Level 2 has 3 multiple choice answers, and Level 3 targets inferencing. There is no single correct answer for Level 3 questions. Many of the questions start with “What do you think . . . ?” 





To increase semantic mapping, use Same& Different cards and have students tell how the two thing from the story are the same, how they are different, or both.



On the Verb Tense cards, the prompt questions are taken from the text of the story. The student has to listen carefully to the question to determine when the action is taking place. There are 3 grammatic choices with different syntax for the verb tenses. For a more advanced practice, the student can respond with out the choices. This format overlaps with comprehension as well. 



All of these targeted skills can be used with the 2 game boards--"Giraffes Can Dance Too", and "Cha-Cha Chimps".



Activities are included to provide the opportunity for sequencing, and using oral and written narrative skills. Sequencing cards can be used to orally retell the story using just the pictures, or text and pictures together.

The “Write Your Own Story” strips can be used to have students dictate sentences that are written by the adult, or students can generate their own written sentences. 




Articulation cards were developed with words from the story that contain the sounds /k/, /g/, /f/, and /v/. The cards can be used for imitative or spontaneous word productions. For a sentence level activity, have students chose a character card and a target sound card, and generate a sentence using both words. 



That's it folks. Thanks for reading.

Kathy














Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Look for my first blog post tomorrow on Literacy-Based Intervention, and a giveaway opportunity for my new storybook companion "Giraffes Can't Dance."

Monday, July 8, 2013

Hi all. Welcome to my blog. I'm just getting started. It's a steep learning curve, but I'll get there.