Marisha

Speaker 1: Let's dive into some early elementary therapy plans with a focus on vocabulary. As always, we have a list of sample goals that we'll focus on. And this is not a comprehensive list of goals, we made a list of the most common vocabulary goals that we see, and then we split them into rough age chunks. So, if you're not seeing goals that you're currently targeting with your caseload, check out last week's episode and stay tuned for next week's episode, we used a different picture book last week, and we'll be using a fiction article next week, but the strategies will still apply. And just a quick recap of the goals that we'll be discussing today. We've got object functions, categories, antonyms and synonyms, describing and then maybe a little bit of compare and contrast. And the text that we're using is The Curious Garden.
So, let's dive in to the actual planning. And if you want to follow along head to slpnow.com/planner. I highly encourage you to fill in the graphic organizer and then just type in the name of the text, the goals that you would like to target with your students. And then you can kind of check off the different activities that make sense for your specific group, and then just jot in some notes on what would be most helpful. For my therapy plans, if we're focusing on object functions, categories, antonyms, synonyms and describing, let's just talk about what we would do to target those vocabulary goals. And so, for step one, we have pre-story knowledge activation, and this is based on Dr. Yukon, it's this literacy-based therapy framework.
And so, for this age group, I would start off with a book walk. Where we look at the cover of the book, we look at the front and the back, and we flip through some of the pages. If we're doing virtual therapy, I would just pull up the video of the book and then just scroll through the video and look at the cover and then some of the pages and just open it up for discussion with the students and see what they notice, what they have to contribute. Do they have the vocabulary that they need? Are they clearly missing some background knowledge to be able to participate in the discussion? I just take a quick inventory here and use my clinical judgment to decide if they need more background information. If so, I'll do a little, like identify which gaps they have and find a video on Edpuzzle. And for this example, I think it'd be super helpful to have a video of a kid giving a tour of their garden, or just something related to gardening, because that's largely what this story is about.
And then, when that's done or if they had enough prior knowledge to jump straight into the graphic organizer, I would pull out my story grammar graphic organizer, that includes all of the story grammar elements. It has visual icons and definitions for each element. And then I have the students do, it's an inferencing activity and I have them guess who the characters are, when and where the story happens, the problem, et cetera, et cetera. And then, as I always say, this is not a fluff activity, there's meaningful opportunities to embed vocabulary here. So, at this stage, I'm probably doing a lot of modeling of the object functions, the categories, the antonyms and synonyms, the describing. And so, I'm providing the exposure here. And every study has a different number, but many of our students need upwards of 40 meaningful exposures to a vocabulary word.
So, I'm just modeling a way throughout this activity, trying to give the student as many meaningful exposures of the target concepts as possible. And I know it might feel a little bit overwhelming, how in the world am I supposed to figure out which words I target? And you absolutely do not need the SLP Now membership to make this happen, you can absolutely flip through the book and identify your own targets. But I analyze each book and create a cheat sheet with a list of the categories, the most common categories as well as the most common object functions. And then I also attach activity pages that you can use to build a student's vocabulary journal. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. I think for early elementary students, it makes the most sense to just provide modeling when we're doing these initial activities.
Give them exposure, so they have something to hang, especially when it comes to object functions and categories. They need lots of exemplars first before they can start to piece it together. But then we would do those activities and I would just have a list of the targets that I want to emphasize. And I would just maybe have a sticky note or whatnot of the targets that I want to focus on. So, for this particular book, we would focus on of course, plants or flowers, and then there's a lot of emotions in the story as well. So, I think that could be a nice abstract category to focus on. And then in terms of object functions, we could target things that you wear or things that you... Yeah, things that you wear, I think would be the main focus.
And then for step two, shared reading, we would go through and read the book. And as always, this is very simple. We just try and maintain student engagement. If we're doing teletherapy, I would most likely pull up an Edpuzzle video of someone reading the book. And then just use that to keep students engaged, and then just pause occasionally and reel in the student's attention if I see them kind of zoning out or if their eyes are moving a lot and showing me that they're doing something else on the screen. But that's short and sweet activity, if I'm reading it myself, I'll just emphasize the concepts that we're targeting.
And then for step three, we dive into story comprehension. So, this is a great way to embed vocabulary concepts. And if it's an object function or a category or types of words that they've targeted before, then we can go ahead and embed questions. And then if not, I would just provide, have the students who have those concepts, they can model them, or I can just scaffold that student to be able to respond to those questions. So, some things that we can do if they need support and I can't just ask the question and have another student model, or if I want to give them the opportunity to practice on their own. I can give them literal questions and I create question cards for all of my books. It has the question and three answer choices with the icons and then it'll include the vocabulary concepts in there as well.
I can ask the question, they can have a field of three or I can narrow it down to two choices if they need even more support. And then, that's just the strategy that I like to use. I also really love incorporating story grammar into the story comprehension piece. So, I'll pull up my story grammar organizer and I create an organizer that has interactive pieces for each story. I can give, and it depends on the student's level, but I can give them a field of two choices or seven choices, whatever makes sense. And we can just move around the icons and answer the story grammar questions, like who's the story about? When did it happen? Where did it happen, et cetera, et cetera. And throughout those activities again, I'm either modeling or giving the student the opportunity to use their vocabulary words in an embedded context.
And then for step four, we dive into focus skill activities. This is where I might pull up the visual that explains what an object function is, what a category is, what an antonym is, what a synonym is, how we describe. And I just pull up the relevant visual. And if we're in person, I use the visuals, I laminate all of mine and I use them as mats, so that I know what the student is working on. And then instead of me having to always explain what a category is, what an object function is, I can point to the relevant part of the visual to help scaffold the student's performance. And then it helps me make sure that I'm actually teaching this skill initially. And then we might do a little bit of drill based practice, each book has a no print companion that includes kind of more drill based practice of the categories.
So, that can be a good opportunity to kind of start working on that skill and to drill the specific targets for object functions, categories, antonyms, synonyms. For working on describing, I might take a vocabulary card and pull up my describing visual. And I also created a little cheat book, I guess, for describing, where it has the different describing words that we like to use. And then I can give the student a field of choices, which is so incredibly helpful, describing felt like pulling hair before I had this. So, that made a big difference for me. And then another activity idea is to fill in a vocabulary journal. So, if we identify that we want to work on things that we wear, for example as an object function, the sheet and it's the same structure for categories as well, but we have 10 items on the vocabulary sheet.
And if we're in person, doing in-person therapy, I like to print this off and use a folder to keep track of all of the student's vocabulary pages. It's a great way to introduce a concept, whether it's a basic concept, category, object, function, whatever it may be. If we're working on describing, I like to print off a describing organizer and we'll put a picture of the item in the middle and then we'll come up with describing words. And then if that vocabulary word comes up in another story, we can add to it and build the description. And the same thing for basic concepts, object functions, categories, we'll constantly build on that. So for example, if we're working on things that we wear, we can identify the exemplars. So a dress is something that we would wear, a scarf is something that we would wear, an apple is not something that we would wear.
So, we can identify the exemplars and the non exemplars, just as a way to introduce the concept and give the students some practice. And then we would look at the book and find examples of things that we wear, or and this can be done with any category, any object function, any basic concept. And we would take screenshots of the book and add them in or we can draw them in, we can just write the words. It depends on the student's level, but then we keep this, whether it's in their physical journal or their digital journal and then we revisit this as we go through the unit. So this month we're reading The Curious Garden, if next month we read Froggy Gets Dressed, that has lots of things that the character wears. We can add to that page and continue building the understanding of that concept.
So, that's a super powerful activity and that wraps up step four and brings us to step five, which is the parallel story. For when we're creating the parallel story, I like to have students fill in a graphic organizer, they come up with their own character, their own setting, their own problem. And it's related to the story that we read. And since we've been working on a bunch of gardening vocabulary, we'd likely create a story that's related to gardening. Maybe we did an extension activity where they got to build their own garden, whether it's real or imaginary. So, we can create a story about that and we would then embed all of our vocabulary concepts. And we don't have to have it be about gardening, we can have it be around any category or whatever focus we want. And then that's an opportunity for the students to embed this vocabulary in a meaningful context.
And so, that wraps up the unit and one other strategy to give the student additional exposures is to reread the story. So, we can either reread the story in therapy, or if it happens to be a book that they're reading in the classroom, that's super helpful, that gives us automatic retell. Or we can share the video of the book with the parents and ask them to watch it at night, for example as a bedtime story. So, there's lots of options here, and we just want to think about how we can give the student as many meaningful exposures as possible, so that they can add that word or that concept to their inventory and successfully use it in our embedded activities and bring it into the classroom and onto the playground and home and all of that. So, that's our ultimate goal and that wraps up the unit.

Speaker 1: Let's dive into some preschool therapy plans focusing on vocabulary. So again, as always, we have a list of sample goals, and when we were creating these podcasts, I made a big list of all of the vocabulary goals that I see across my caseload and other SLP caseload's. And then I just split those up roughly by age group ,and we'll work through the progression of goals. So if you don't see the goals that you're targeting with your students, or if you don't hear them in this presentation, definitely stay tuned for the other vocabulary presentations, because hopefully you will have the targets that you need. And it was just a rough split just to make it a little bit easier to navigate the presentation and share as much helpful information as possible.
This week we're talking about just basic vocabulary, so naming objects, and then also some basic concepts, so spatial, temporal, qualitative, quantitative. All of those good stuff. All of those great basic concepts, as well as some comparatives and superlatives, so using like the bigger, biggest comparative/superlatives. And the text that we're using for this unit is Lola Plants a Garden. It's a very sweet strategic story, as the title suggests, about a girl who plants a garden. So let's dive into these therapy plans.
I'm going to embed as much information as possible on vocabulary intervention and the strategies that we can use. But we do have a three hour course diving into all things vocabulary in the SLP Now Academy, so if you want a deeper dive into these concepts, definitely check that out. It'll give you more information. And the SLP Now membership also has research summaries detailing all of the different goal areas and a summary of the strategies there as well, if you don't have time to sit down for a three hour course right now, which is totally understandable. But I will do my very best to make this as accessible and just as well explained as I possibly can.
So, as always, we're using our five step literacy-based therapy framework, developed by Dr. Ukrainetz. And we've got the five steps and we'll walk through those and I'll also share evidence-based strategies that we can use to target these early vocabulary goals.
And so just backing up little bit, so you can see that we're working on a lot of basic concepts. And the research emphasizes how important these basic concepts are for future academic achievement, and early elementary and kindergarten teachers use basic concept terms with great frequency when giving directions. So this is a quote from the Bohm article in 1986. They did a ton of research on all of these basic concepts, so that's a huge incentive to work on these basic concepts, to target them in therapy.
And just as a more practical example, a lot of times when I end up working on students with following directions, when I do a task analysis of the skill, the biggest struggle is that students just don't understand they're missing those basic concepts, and that's the hurdle in figuring and being able to follow directions, so they're just missing that vocabulary. That's a common thing that I've seen just in my own practice. And then I also see that it, like in math, there are an incredible amount of basic concepts. And so if our students don't have a good grasp of those, that vocabulary, or that lack of vocabulary, can make a big difference.
When I structure my basic concepts intervention, I use the Bracken 1988 article. They did an extensive amount of research. They looked at the development of all of the concepts. And I do an inventory of the basic concepts that my students have, and then I make a priority list of the concepts that we need to target. And a lot of times there's a pattern, so it makes it pretty easy to put that together.
And there's a lot of specific strategies for basic concepts, which we'll dive into in the focus skill activities, so that'll be our main focus. And I'll try and embed just like the basic vocabulary, as well as comparatives and superlatives throughout the unit. But the main focus for this unit will be those basic concepts, because the comparatives and superlatives build off of the basic concepts. So I think that makes the most sense.
So first, step one. We have our pre-story knowledge activation, and this is where we would do a quick book walk. We'd look at the front and the back cover of the book. We might look at a few of the pages. And this is my like temperature check to see what the students know about for this particular book, what they know about gardening. Do they have any of that vocabulary? Are they making comments? Are they having any naming errors? How are the students showing up? And then I use my clinical judgment to decide if the students need additional background knowledge to be able to participate in the unit. And if that's the case, I love to go on Edpuzzle and pull up, like for this, an example might be, I might find a video of a child giving a tour of their garden, for example. So that's something that I might pull so the students can kind of see the concept in action. And then that'll give them a little bit more structure and just a little bit more of a background before we dive into the other activities.
And if it's appropriate for the students, a lot of times at this level, a graphic organizer would be over their head, so I'm going to skip that part for now. But if you're curious about how the graphic organizer would work, tune in next week to hear my early elementary therapy plans.
And throughout these activities, again, I always say this, but these are not fluff. These are meaningful language activities, and in this step, I'll mostly just be modeling the target structures. So if we're working on qualitative concepts, I might pick some of the pairs that we're working on and start saying, like identifying which ones are big and which ones are small and comparing the plants that we see, and just modeling some of that vocabulary. Because the research shows that students, especially the students that we see, every study gives a different number, but a lot of times our students need upwards of 40 exposures to a specific target. So I want to start embedding that as soon as possible and just really modeling that. And I'm not expecting them to use that vocabulary yet because often times they haven't had enough exposure. But if I model and give them lots and lots of examples, I'm going to set them up for success.
And then that brings us to step two, where we do the shared reading. We just read through the book, this is pretty short and sweet. I might just emphasize or embed a couple of the basic concepts if they're not in the text itself. And then that's what we've got there. It's just a pretty short activity. And my biggest goal is just that my students are paying attention to the book. So with preschoolers, a lot of that is behavior management, making sure that they're able to sit and attend to the book, catching them being good is one of my favorite strategies. So a lot of times, like if we're in person, and we could modify this if we're doing virtual therapy, but when I was reading to groups of preschoolers, I would have tokens or little things that I would give. And they'd be out of reach, but they could see when they get them. And then I would just reinforce them for paying attention. And then if a student is kind of off in their own world, then that motivates them to participate so that they can get a token too.
And then for step three, we have some story comprehension. So for this level, I would focus on just some basic literal questions and I can use the question cards included in the unit. So I could ask questions using their vocabulary targets if we're there. But another idea is just to ask the questions, check for their comprehension, see if they got anything. I really like giving them question cards with multiple choice options so they can identify the correct answer. And more often than not, they have some kind of comprehension goal in addition to their vocabulary. So it can do that. And it's also great, if they're at that level, if they've had enough exposure, I might ask them questions related to embedding their basic concepts as well.
And then that brings us to step four, where we do the focus skill activities. So there's a really great study that details how we can teach basic concepts to our students. So it was published in 1991 and it was authored by Sipher and Schwartz. So I'll include a link in the show notes. We can modify this for our therapy groups, but I loved how they set up this instruction. So they first did, and they used this in a 30 minute session or group. It was done in a preschool, but they did 15 minutes of direct instruction where they provided examples of two target concepts. And they did a bunch of contrastive activities. And the cool thing is, because they had a bunch of stimulus items and cards that they organized, but in SLP Now we have, and you can absolutely make this happen. You can just grab some images from Google, print them out and organize your own activities using the concepts in this story. But in the SLP Now membership, we have no-print activities, where it includes stimulus items for that direct instruction. So if you spend 15 minutes doing that and then you spend 15 minutes on interactive instruction.
So they included a variety of ideas for art, drama, games, just a variety of activities designed to incorporate the target concepts. So if they were working on fast versus slow, they had the students do like a little race. And then they were able to identify who was super fast. And the article will do it much more justice, so definitely check that out for more examples. But I love how they set that up, the direct instruction and then the interactive instruction. And that works really well for our little preschoolers. And we can incorporate a lot of language. So even though we're targeting vocabulary, excuse me, we can still use it to target grammar, because we're using the same types of activities. We talked about similar things when we talked about grammar last month. And so it's very engaging, language rich. We can embed a variety of goals. And like the race example would be great to target comparatives and superlatives, like Sam was faster than Lindsey, and then Mike was the fastest. And so it's a really great way to incorporate all of those different vocabulary concepts.
And if you're working on naming objects, you can throw different gardening objects. You can throw a flower and a shovel. And maybe if you have like pictures of things, they can try and throw the dirt, or you can paste the pictures on a bean bag and have them throw them, like lots and lots of different options here. It could be super fun. The opportunities are endless, but this is just a really nice way to target that. And I may or may not build a vocabulary journal for these students, but if you're doing all of these interactive activities and you have the parent's permission, I think it would be really cool to take pictures that exemplified the different targets. So if you took a picture of the race, then you could kind of take a moment in time, and then you can circle the student who's fastest and the student who's slow. Maybe that's not the best example because some students might get their feelings hurt. But someone might be proud of being slow. That's definitely me when I run.
But it's really cool. If you can build, if you can have a page that includes the target concepts, and then you can add pictures of examples from throughout their school day and then throughout just all of the activities that we have planned. How meaningful would that be? And if they could share it with our parents and bring that home and just revisit it throughout the school year. I think that'd be so incredibly powerful and so fun too. And then in terms of virtual therapy, there are different games that we can play. And I think it'd be super cool to like make a list of all of the different ideas. If you have a way to connect, if you have an iPad and have a way to connect I think the Toca Boca apps are set up beautifully for this type of practice. They're very repetitive and there's lots of opportunities to target these types of skills. So that's what we've got for focus skill activities.
And then for step five, we can create, we can start, like I typically like to just model story grammar at this phase. If the students are working on very basic vocabulary, it's not always, I don't know. I don't always think that that's the best use of time necessarily. So I might provide like a lot of scaffolding and have it be a quick activity. Maybe in step three for story comprehension. But it could be really cool to make a little story embedding their basic concepts, maybe about something they did in the classroom. Like if they did a hands-on activity of building a garden, we can make a little story about that. But I think that's where I would leave it for this age group. If we're targeting more basic skills. If it's more advanced preschool, then I think that would be appropriate. But a lot of my preschool students needed just something a little bit simpler and really honing in on those foundational skills. So that's what we've got for our preschool therapy plans.