Hey there and welcome back to the podcast. Today we are diving into strategies related to describing. And this is an area that I think we all do pretty well with. We have a strong foundation on how to target describing, but I'm excited to share a couple strategies and then dive into some tools that we can use to make it easier to implement those strategies.

So there's two core strategies that emerge in the research. One is explicitly teaching attribute categories, like size, shape, function, location, parts, category, all of those things. Teaching those categories give students a clear framework and helps them organize their ideas.

And then we also want to make sure that we're systematically teaching those and helping students build that framework. The second strategy is teaching through contrastive examples. When we show pairs of examples that differ in one or more attributes, like an apple and a pear.

They're both fruits, sweet, and have stemsbut have different colors, shapes, and tastesContrasting can be really helpful. In practice, one tool that we all know about is the Expanding Expression Tool.

It is a visual and tactile way to teach those attribute categories. You can make a little song about the attributes and it's a tactile thing. If they're looking at the apple, they can be like, okay, green group, and do that.

Definitely look at the resources from Expanding Expression Tool. They have a bunch of amazing resources and handbooks so I'm not teaching how to use that. I wanted to give a nod to that tool because it can be very helpful. Some other tools that we can use. I personally use the Expanding Expression Tool.It's really helpful to teach them like, what group is it in?

But sometimes they don't have that vocabulary of like, oh, these are all the groups that I can think of. And these are all of the colors and shapes. Sometimes we need a little bit more visual support. So I created, it's called a Describing Helper.

and it has a page for the different attributes that we might use when describing. So it has pages for the different attribute categories, and then it has pictures of a bunch of examples. On the colors page it shows different colors. On the shape page, it shows different shapes.

And then we have a bunch of locations and categories and all of that. I find that if we are doing a describing activity, it's really helpful to have those visual choices. even as a scaffolding tool, if we ask a student what category it's in, we can pull up the Describing Helper and be like, is it a fruit or a toy?

And have that be a way to scaffold. This can give us some practice with a contrastive examples If we're looking at the apple, we can say, is the apple a person? No. An apple is not a person. And so that gives us that contrast. Is an apple a place? No. That helps give us practice opportunities, with one simple visual. Another thing that's really helpful, 'cause sometimes teaching the attribute categories is really helpful, like size, shape, color, all of that. Sometimes our students are missing the vocabulary for those. I have a bunch of activities in my library to help teach categories, object functions, and basic concepts

Sometimes we need to break it down and maybe describing is a good longer term goal, but we really need to focus on building vocabulary in the subcategories, and the Describing Helper helps with that. we can also do it more systematically. For categories and object functions, I like to build vocabulary journals for students.

So we have vocabulary journal pages attached to all of the therapy plans in SLP Now, So let's say we're using Apple Trouble, 'cause I'm fixating on apples today. But if we're reading Apple Trouble, we can go to the Targets section in the Therapy Plan for Apple Trouble.

We'll go to the targets tab and see all of the categories and object functions identified in the story. You can click on that and download the vocabulary page. It's just a one pager and it has the title, so it would be like fruit.

First we come up with a definition of what a fruit is .It would have like 10 pictures of exemplars and non exemplars and we can go through. Is a bee a fruit?

A bee is not a fruit. We cross that one out. And then is a grape of fruit. Oh yeah, grape is a fruit and we can circle that. We get lots of repetition and lots of practice. The first section is a quick definition of what a category or what the fruit is. Then we have little pictures to go through what's an exemplar and a non exemplar.

And then the third section on the page is blank. And then we get to add exemplars from the books and the activities that we're doing. So as we're going through Apple Trouble, we can add the apple and the pear. I don't remember if there's any other fruits in that story. But then let's say the next month we read the book about the Hungry Bear and the Strawberry.

We can add a strawberry to the page and then let's say during lunch, they're eating like they have different fruits, then we can add that to their page.We can continue to build on that journal.

And so they'll always have that quick definition, the reminders of the exemplars and non exemplars, and then they get to continue adding their own. And as we're doing the virtual field trip, we continue to add examples and it'll build over units and units. And that just helps them build that vocabulary organize that information and get some really meaningful practice. So we talked about, in terms of the tools that we've covered so far, the Expanding Expression Tool. I'll include a link in the show notes, but if you Google it, you'll find all the resources around that.

In SLP Now we have a Describing Helper, which includes visual choices for different attribute categories. That just came from a need of my students. They knew they needed to give me a group but they needed some foundational support, so having that is a good starting point.

We also want to provide explicit instruction on the attributes within each attribute category. Because sometimes they don't have that vocabulary of like the colors and the shapes and the categories and the functions and all of that. And so we wanna make sure that we're doing some explicit practice there.

And then another thing that has been really helpful. This is in the Describing Helper as well. The first page has sentence frames that we can use to help students. They can give us a list of attributes, but we want them

to create sentences to describe something. That's what they're gonna have to do in the classroom when they're writing and having discussions. There are sentence frames for each of the attribute categories, to help them do that describing activity.

So that's what that looks like. An example for location, the sentence frame would be we find it and it could be like inside, at the store, whatever it might be. Those are the tools that I use to help me in my describing intervention and link to a quick review of some of the research, that helped me decide how I want to do that. So yeah, there's lots of tools that we can use to help us, whether it is EET, the Describing Helper, the categories and object functions vocabulary pages. These are evidence-based activities for basic concepts as well. We have those to help fill in that vocabulary.

Andit's based on the units that we have for those also embed the contrastive examples So if students are struggling with those, like the location words, the sizes, and all of that, the basic concepts, units can really help too. The last thing we talked about was sentence frames in helping students with generalization, so that they're not just listing, we're embedding it into real sentences. That's a quick recap of my strategies and the tools that we use. If you're interested in accessing the tools in SLP Now, I'll include a link in the show notes so you can check out all of the things. Thanks for joining me.

I hope this was helpful, and we'll see you in the next one.