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#081: Targeting Vocabulary Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Secondary

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This Week’s Episode: How to Target Prefixes and Suffixes

So far in this month’s podcast series we’ve targeted basic concepts, as well as some comparatives and superlatives with our preschool students. We tackled plans with our early elementary that focused on targeting object function, categories, antonyms + synonyms, and describing. Last week we targeted multiple meaning words with our later elementary students.

You’ll notice that our vocabulary goals for this week are similar to last week, with less of a focus on multiple meaning words and more time spent on prefixes and suffixes.

We’ve taken the vocabulary research and embedded it into the literacy-based framework, to create a super functional application that blends the best of both evidence-based worlds. You can find great visuals listed under strategies + tips! Don’t forget to save them for future references! 🤓 😍

P.S. For more on our vocabulary intervention framework, bop on over to this blog post: How to Teach Vocabulary: A Framework.

Strategies + Tips Discussed

– Literacy-Based Therapy Framework
– Vocabulary Intervention Framework

A Helpful Link

– SLP Now Evidence Table

Here’s what we discussed:

[2:15] Therapy Ideas for Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)
[5:15] Therapy Ideas for Step 2 (Reading)
[5:17] Therapy Ideas for Step 3 (Post Story Comprehension)
[6:05] Therapy Ideas for Step 4 (Skill Practice)
[7:42] Therapy Ideas for Step 5 (Parallel Story)

Want to hear more about this topic? Click here to see this month’s content!

Links Mentioned

– The SLP Now One-Page Literacy-Based Therapy Unit Planner
– ReadWorks Article: The First Earth Day
– EdPuzzle
– SLP Now Membership (You can find the KWL Chart, graphic organizers and WH questions that we talked about here!)
– Wheel Decide

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Thanks so much!

Transcript

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Speaker 1: Okay. So let's dive into some secondary vocabulary plans. Our vocabulary goals for this week are the same as last week, and last week we focused primarily on multiple meaning words. So this week we're going to hone in a little bit more on affixes or prefixes and suffixes. And the article that we're using is a non-fiction text from ReadWorks called The First Earth Day. And if you want to plan along, head to slpnow.com/planner. You'll just enter your name and email, and we'll send you a interactive planner like editable planner. You can plug in the title of the texts that we're using. You can plug in your students' goals and then plan out the activities for each step of the literacy-based therapy framework. So without further ado, we'll dive into our plans.
So again, we're using Dr. Ukrainetz's five-step literacy-based therapy framework, and we're embedding all of the vocabulary research that I've come across into this framework. So there is a separate framework for vocabulary intervention and in these episodes, I'm just combining the two to put it into a super functional context. So just to recap the texts of The First Earth Day and the goals that we're focusing on are prefixes and suffixes, but we can target any number of goals. And if you want ideas for multiple meaning words, et cetera, et cetera, check out the previous section.
So for step one, we'll dive into pre-story knowledge. So with this, I like to do an article walk. We'll pull up the article, we'll look at the title, we'll look at any pictures, and we'll skim through the text. And I like to have students fill in a KWL chart. It's a graphic organizer where they fill in what they know about the topic, what they want to know and then afterwards, we can go back and fill in what they learned. And depending on how the article walk and the filling in the graphic organizer goes, I will use my clinical judgment to decide if we want to do a virtual field trip. So in this case, we might watch a video about the history of earth day, for example, if they end up needing additional background information.
Another activity that I like to do for this age group especially when it comes to prefixes and suffixes is to pre-teach the vocabulary. So assuming that the students have been introduced to prefixes and/or suffixes and that they know what they are that is definitely a precursor, I would identify the prefixes and suffixes that I want to target. And this is largely based on just the students' progress overall where we decided to focus on just which target makes the most sense. And then we can go through and introduce the prefix and or suffix. I have a bunch of affixes activity pages that I like to pull into their vocabulary journal so we can identify the prefix or suffix to find it. And then we can go through the article and identify the words that have that prefix and/or suffix, add it to their vocabulary journal page. And then by the time we dive into the article, they'll know a lot of the vocabulary that they need to access that article and just to have it makes sense.
And then after we do that, I might have them fill in a graphic organizer to infer what the main idea is and what the key details are. This is a really great language activity. It again gives them an opportunity to use some of their vocabulary words. And I get super, super excited and definitely reinforced when students use those words. Because as I've said a million times already, a lot of our students need upwards of 40 meaningful exposures to really integrate new words into their vocabulary. And so if they're motivated to really find ways to use those words and refer to their vocabulary journals and try to create sentences, I think that's really awesome. And sometimes I'll give them little tallies and we can see who gets the most exposures and they get a kick out of that.
But then, so we fill in that graphic organizer. Again, it's an opportunity for me either to model the use of the target words or an opportunity for the students to use them. And then for step two, we just read the article, keep that pretty simple, and that brings us to step three, where we do some story comprehension.
So at this point, I'll ask a combination of literal and/or inferential questions. One, because many students tend to have comprehension goals. And then it's also just another opportunity to embed the target vocabulary words, because that's what we're all about getting lots and lots and lots of exposures. And then for another activity is to actually fill in, like after we actually read the texts, we can fill in the summarizing graphic organizer. We can identify the actual main idea and compare it to the main idea that we thought. It would be like our inferred main idea and then also the key details. We can create sentences from that. We can use our key vocabulary words and then again, just more and more opportunities to use that word.
And then that brings us to step four, where we focus on focused-skill activities. So I would again review the skill as needed. So I have a visual that introduces each vocabulary skill. So we review that as needed and then we continue working on the vocabulary journal. So each like this particular unit has several vocabulary pages to go with it. And so we can pull all of the multiple meaning word pages. We can pull all of the prefixes and suffixes and pull those pages from the skill packs and add in the words that I identified for all of the prefixes and suffixes and we do just a number of activities. And because we're often targeting more than just vocabulary, we're often targeting grammar and language as well so we can embed this vocabulary in any number of activities. And if you need additional ideas, definitely go back and check out the previous podcast episodes.
But I shared this last week, one of my favorite activities. If I really just need, if everyone is working on vocabulary and we just need to get a lot of drill, I love creating little wheels like digital wheels and adding in the target, the vocabulary targets. And then I either have students to find the word using them in a sentence, acted out, dried out, any number of fun-engaging activities, just to give them more meaningful exposures to that vocabulary target, and then we just get in as much practice as we need.
And then we get to step five, which is the parallel story. And because this text is a non-fiction text, the activity looks a little bit different. If they haven't already written out sentences for the summary of the story, our summarizing skill pack has a graphic organizer that helps them write out a summary. So I'll have them do that and that's often not the most exciting activity. So I look at the dynamics of the group and decide what would be motivating for them, but a lot of students are aspiring YouTubers. So we either create a YouTube video and we don't actually post it on YouTube and I asked for parent permission. But we might record a video and pretend that we're creating a YouTube video or a newscast or just something related to the topic.
And sometimes we just read off the summary. Sometimes we do a spin off and create something else, which gives us even more exposure or more opportunities to create those sentences and embed those vocabulary words. So I just kind of follow the dynamics of the group and the level that they're at and what is appropriate to build that all in.
So that's a wrap on our secondary unit with a focus on vocabulary, and I hope that was super helpful.

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Summarizing and Main Idea Intervention: A Practical Review

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This is a guest blog post by Holly, a school-based SLP, all about summarizing and main idea intervention!

“Tell me about that movie you watched!”
“What are you learning about in social studies?”
“Let’s summarize what we learned from this article.”

These types of conversations can take a lot of effort for our students.To provide a summary, countless foundational language skills are involved: comprehending information, remembering details, categorizing based on topics and themes, sequencing, identifying story elements, filtering important and unimportant information, paraphrasing, formulating sentences — the list goes on! 

It’s no wonder this skill is so challenging and important. What makes summarizing such a powerful target for language intervention? It’s:

Relevant. Summarizing is a curriculum-based skill that shows up in Common Core standards all the way from kindergarten (retell familiar stories with support) to twelfth grade (provide an objective summary of the text). 

Functional. Students have opportunities to practice it across everyday conversations, language arts instruction, and nearly every other academic content area!

Strategic. Not only is summarizing a skill in itself — it’s a helpful tool to support memory, comprehension, and expression. We’re all for working smarter (not harder) and that counts for our students, too.

This is why we’re reviewing practical strategies for summarizing and main idea intervention. While this is an area that is well-researched in the field of education, our goal is to help you filter through the information to find high-quality, relevant external evidence and explore how it fits into your own decision-making.

Thanks to ASHA’s Evidence Maps, this post’s primary source is a systematic review and meta-analysis by Stevens, Park, & Vaughn (2019). The article investigated interventions for summarizing and main idea identification, which were provided to struggling readers from elementary school to high school. 

The Difference Between Retelling and Summarizing

When a student retells a story, they are using story grammar to recount a series of events.

When a student summarizes a text, they are identifying the main idea and key details. The text is expository in nature (versus a narrative).

Here are the highlights…

This systematic review included 30 experimental, quasi-experimental, or single-case design studies published between 1978 and 2016, with a population of students between third and twelfth grade who were identified as struggling readers.

The interventions included a range of summarizing and main idea instructional practices (using a mix of narrative and expository texts), administered across a range of service delivery models (1-4 students per group vs. 5+ students per group, 12 and fewer sessions vs. 13 and more sessions).

The outcomes of the group design studies “were indicated to have a positive effect on struggling readers with an effect size of 0.97” and the single-case design studies “demonstrated strong evidence favoring main idea and summarizing interventions on oral and written retell measures” (Stevens, Park, & Vaughn, 2019). There was no significant difference of intervention effectiveness on group size, frequency of sessions, or students’ ages/grades.

Now that we have an overview of the external evidence, let’s dig deeper and find out what intervention approaches were effective. While we walk through a framework for summarizing and main idea interventions, consider which strategies might be a good fit for your caseload.

1. Preview Text Structure

First things first: what kind of texts and materials will be the base of your intervention?

To generate a summary, students will first need a stimulus, such as a picture scene, passage, story, or video. It’s no secret that we love literacy-based therapy (see previous posts here), and there are endless ways to incorporate summarizing skills into this framework. Depending on your students’ ages and interests, you can incorporate photos and paragraphs, narrative texts such as picture books and fiction articles, nonfiction articles with a range of different text structures, or video clips.

Stevens, Park, & Vaughn (2019) suggest that there are benefits of explicitly teaching the text structure of what students are reading (Bakken, J. P., Mastropieri, M. A., & Scruggs, T. E., 1997; Dimino, J., Gersten, R., Carnine, D., & Blake, G., 1990; Weisberg, R., & Balajthy, E., 1990). When students know the context of a story (fiction or nonfiction) or an author’s purpose (to inform, persuade, entertain), it can serve as an effective foundation for summarizing. This can be incorporated during your “book walk” with students — review the type of text you’re reading or ask students to make a prediction. Another option: give students the ability to choose the structure of the text you’ll be targeting! Many of my high school students love the nonfiction units involving debates, so it’s a great chance to explore the structure and intent behind these persuasive texts.

2. Integrate Graphic Organizers

Which visual aids will you use to explicitly teach and practice summarizing skills?

Graphic organizers were observed to support students’ ability to identify main ideas and generate written summaries (Boyle, 1996; Boyle & Weishaar, 1997; Faggella-Luby & Wardwell, 2011).

In narrative texts, you may consider story grammar diagrams and sentence starters, which can be found here. Check out these summarizing visuals, which are also adapted for each nonfiction unit. Here are a few graphic organizers in action:

SLP Now Summarizing Graphic Organizers

3. Teach Summarizing Strategies

Now that students are primed on the type of text they’re reading and the summarizing tasks at hand, consider equipping them with strategies to use while listening and reading.

Here are a few strategies supported with research:

• Brown & Day’s (1983) Macrorules for Summarizing: Delete trivial information, delete redundant information, generalize information using a categorical name, and select the main idea topic sentence from the text (if it’s not explicitly stated, invent the main idea topic sentence!)

• Schunk & Rice’s (1992) 5-Step Comprehension Strategy: Read the comprehension questions, read the passage to find out what it’s mostly about, think about what the details have in common, imagine what would make a good title, and reread the story if you do not know the answer to a question.

4. Encourage Self-Monitoring

To support students’ progression towards independence, the following self-monitoring strategies were outlined:

• Self-questioning techniques (Graves, 1986): Prompt students to think of a question about the main idea and answer it. Let’s take an article all about sharks: What makes sharks special? How many kinds of sharks are there? Which ones are the most dangerous? Asking and answering these questions about the text can help students generate a summary with key details.

• Checking off completed strategy steps (Jitendra et al., 2000; Malone & Matropieri, 1993): After identifying “who” did “what”, working through a story element diagram, or incorporating summarizing strategies, students can check off each step as complete.

Wrapping it up with a recap!

Let’s recap these researched approaches to targeting summarizing skills:

1. Preview text structure. 

2. Integrate graphic organizers. 

3. Teach summarizing strategies. 

4. Encourage self-monitoring.

This is a snapshot of practical summarizing and main idea intervention strategies captured by the literature over the past few decades. Some of these may already be part of your arsenal and some may be unfamiliar. For what it’s worth, here’s a friendly reminder: none of the research studies tested all of these strategies simultaneously, so there’s no precedent to fit each intervention approach into one activity during your next session. Let us know what you think about the review and if you have any questions. Thanks for stopping by!

References

Bakken, J. P., Mastropieri, M. A., & Scruggs, T. E. (1997). Reading comprehension of expository science material and students with learning disabilities: A comparison of strategies. The Journal of Special Education, 31(3), 300-324.

Boyle, J. R. (1996). The effects of a cognitive mapping strategy on the literal and inferential comprehension of students with mild disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 19(2), 86-98.

Boyle, J. R., & Weishaar, M. (1997). The effects of expert-generated versus student-generated cognitive organizers on the reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 12(4), 228-235.

Brown, A. L., & Day, J. D. (1983). Macrorules for summarizing texts: The development of expertise. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 22(1), 1-14.

Dimino, J., Gersten, R., Carnine, D., & Blake, G. (1990). Story grammar: An approach for promoting at-risk secondary students’ comprehension of literature. The elementary school journal, 91(1), 19-32.

Faggella-Luby, M., & Wardwell, M. (2011). RTI in a middle school: Findings and practical implications of a tier 2 reading comprehension study. Learning Disability Quarterly, 34(1), 35-49.

Graves, A. W. (1986). Effects of direct instruction and metacomprehension training on finding main ideas. Learning Disabilities Research.

Jitendra, A. K., Kay Hoppes, M., & Xin, Y. P. (2000). Enhancing main idea comprehension for students with learning problems: The role of a summarization strategy and self-monitoring instruction. The Journal of Special Education, 34(3), 127-139.

Schunk, D. H., & Rice, J. M. (1992). Influence of reading-comprehension strategy information on children’s achievement outcomes. Learning Disability Quarterly, 15(1), 51-64.

Stevens, E. A., Park, S., & Vaughn, S. (2019). A review of summarizing and main idea interventions for struggling readers in grades 3 through 12: 1978–2016. Remedial and Special Education, 40(3), 131-149.

Weisberg, R., & Balajthy, E. (1990). Development of disabled readers’ metacomprehension ability through summarization training using expository text: Results of three studies. Journal of Reading, Writing, and Learning Disabilities International, 6(2), 117-136.

Perspective taking: “According to the author…”
WH questions: Who / did what / when / where / why
Conjunctions: Someone / Wanted / But / So / Then

How to Use PICO Questions in Your SLP Evaluations

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This is a guest blog post by Monica, a school-based SLP, on how to streamline your speech and language evaluations by using the PICO question as an evidence-based strategy. 

We’ve all faced the same problem of wanting to get a lot done with our evaluations, but not having enough hours in the day. There are so many things to accomplish with an evaluation: addressing teacher and parent concerns, seeing where the student is developmentally, finding patterns of strengths, finding areas of needs, planning for new goals, thinking about what EBP interventions we’re going to use with the student, and considering influences like other languages and cultures (at the very least!). I think especially when we have a lot of evaluations going on at the same time, posing each evaluation as a PICO question could help to hone in on what you want to get out of the evaluation. I also tend to get stuck in a rut of doing the same type of evaluations, especially when there is a lot to juggle with my workload. I like to think of my end game first and then form a plan from there. 

Here is how to break down the PICO question according to ASHA.

P – Population/Problem, “What are the characteristics and/or condition of the group? This may include specific diagnoses, ages, or severity levels (e.g., autism spectrum disorder, mild hearing loss).”

I – Intervention/Indication, “What is the screening, assessment, treatment, or service delivery model that you are considering”

C – Comparison/Control, “What is the main alternative to the intervention, assessment, or screening approach (e.g., placebo, different technique, different amount of treatment)? Note: In some situations, you may not have a specific comparison in your PICO question.”

O – Outcome, “What do you want to accomplish, measure, or improve (e.g., upgraded diet level, more intelligible speech, better hearing in background noise)?”

PICO Question Example

For example, we have a kindergarten student with suspected autism. The student’s parent is going to seek an evaluation referral from their primary care physician, and the school team is going to start an evaluation. The teacher has concerns about social skills and language. 

When I think about what to fill out first, usually I’ll think about the population first. BUT, I will often think about what type of intervention I know to be evidence-based practice for that population and what information I will need to drive goals. For the autistic population, I know that I’ll need a good picture of how they are functioning in real life, not just what a standardized test can give me, and that I’ll need to do extensive interviewing with the teacher and caregivers. One type of intervention I will most likely want to use is to work on them having a foundation of perspective-taking skills to improve their comprehension and ability to interact with peers in a way that is comfortable for them. We often come across the problem of not being able to identify strengths with formalized assessment, so we’ll explore other ways to gain information. 

Start with the (O)utcome in the PICO question

To get a whole picture of the child/student. What their strengths and needs are, with a focus on perspective-taking and comprehension. 

P – Student in kindergarten, areas of concern: language, social skills (suspected autism)

I – 

C – 

O – To get a whole picture of the child/student. What their strengths and needs are, with a focus on perspective-taking and comprehension. 

Next (I)ntervention and (C)omparison

We typically have formal and informal assessments, so let’s compare the results of those two, and see what we would miss if we only did formal/standardized testing. The same PICO method could be used to think about which standardized tests to give, what would you be missing, or what to consider when deciding which test to administer. (Other things to consider are the norming population, the complexity of language used in the test, and if the test is really testing for what you are looking for).

What ways could you fill the gap left by formal testing? 

P – Student in kindergarten, areas of concern: language, social skills (suspected autism)

I – Formal and informal testing in all areas of concern

C – Only formal/standardized testing 

O – To get a whole picture of the child/student. What their strengths and needs are, with a focus on perspective-taking and comprehension. 

Informal Testing Tips

Use informal testing as a way to fill the gaps with formal standardized testing. In this case, I would do extensive interviews with the teacher/school staff/caregivers and observations. Narratives are an important area of intervention for the autistic population because it can target both language and perspective-taking skills (Gilliam, Hartzheim, Studenka, Simonsmeier, Gilliam, 2015). I usually start with informal assessments to build rapport, and it is often the most useful data. Next, I finish up with some quick informal assessment after formal standardized assessment if there was an identified area of need. Hadley & Dickinson (2018), showed that a language sample during storytelling is a better indicator of a child’s vocabulary skills. With the language sample, you could ask the child to describe their favorite foods or movie and get baseline data in describing.

An informal retell of a wordless picture book could give you information on perspective-taking skills and if they picked up on any emotions in the story.

Asking questions during and/or after the story could give you information on their comprehension skills, as well as classwork samples and teacher interview.

You could also use this time to assess overall intelligibility (and figure out what kind of speech sound disorder assessment you want to do if that’s an area of need).  

Use Visuals

Because it’s informal testing, you’re able to use any visuals and prompting you might need, which is also a great indicator of what type of supports the child might need in the classroom and with your intervention. I use my favorite materials during this portion of the informal assessment, and can get a lot of information that I might have missed with just a standardized assessment. Visuals like this Describing Helper makes your SLP life easier. This is also a great time to test out some speech sound interventions and different levels of prompting. (Were you able to get a sound with a quick phonological awareness task? Or with some very specific motor-based prompts?)

Check in with the teacher or caregiver. 

Do a quick check back with the parents and teachers to make sure what I’m seeing in the assessment sounds like their child and I’m set. We can now see that the (C)omparison: only using formal/standardized testing would have missed a lot of valuable information. Starting with identifying what strengths to build on, and what interventions might be appropriate, has really streamlined my assessments. This also helps when I have a complex case and it feels overwhelming to start. It’s cut down on the time I need to take to sit down and write goals and get baseline data because it’s an all-in-one process. 

Here’s a quick summary of the process:

1. Make a PICO question.
2. Get a language sample and check in with teachers and caregivers.
3. Do standardized/formal assessments.
4. Do follow-up informal assessments: embed getting baseline data and prompting.
5. Do a quick trial of interventions that may work with the strengths of the student.
6. Write goals and form a treatment plan from your data.
7. Check back in with teachers and caregivers, if needed.

Looking for more resources to test a student with a culturally diverse background? Dynamic assessment is also another informal measure that will give a better indicator of their skills. The Leader’s Project has a great explanation of the test-teach-retest model of dynamic assessment here.

References

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.). EBP Process – Step 1: Frame Your Clinical Question. https://www.asha.org/research/ebp/frame-your-clinical-question/

Gillam, S. L., Hartzheim, D., Studenka, B., Simonsmeier, V., & Gillam, R. (2015). Narrative Intervention for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 58(3), 920–933.

Hadley, E. B., & Dickinson, D. K. (2020). Measuring young children’s word knowledge: A conceptual review. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 20(2), 223–251.

The SLP’s Guide to Virtual Speech Teletherapy & Language Assessments

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Back in 2005, ASHA first recognized teletherapy as a delivery model for speech-language pathologists and audiologists. It has since been an area of study, practice, and special interest for a growing number of clinicians. Over the years, we’ve heard from Tracy Sippl on our blog (Getting Started with Teletherapy) and Sarah Lockhart on our SLP Now Podcast (A Crash Course in Telepractice for SLPs) as they’ve discussed their day-to-day jobs.

Now, we know that speech-language teletherapy services are more widespread than ever — largely due to virtual pivots SLPs made out of necessity in 2020. Whether you’re a clinician just branching out into virtual services, an SLP who learned all of the basics on the fly, or an experienced teletherapist, we have put together a definitive guide for providing speech-language teletherapy. 

This post includes an overview of your teletherapy setup (e.g., technology, environmental supports) in addition to virtual assessment and intervention considerations. We’ve incorporated highlights from ASHA’s Evidence Maps in the area of Telepractice, using a range of systematic reviews from the last decade! Let’s get started.

1. Technology Essentials for Teletherapy

Confirm which video conferencing platform you will be using with students.

Camden et al. (2019) conducted a systematic review of teletherapy modalities used for pediatric teletherapy, finding that “the type of technology used did not influence outcomes, indicating a multimodal approach can be adapted to fit the needs of the children and their families.” There’s no one-size-fits-all option, so consider the factors that will affect your students. Here’s a snapshot of a few popular options and what sets them apart! Once you have a platform in mind, you’ll want to review relevant tutorials so you and your students can become familiar with navigating its features.

Platform Price Range Screen Sharing Screen Control HIPAA Compliant Version
Zoom Free – $200/mo Yes Yes Yes (paid version)
Doxy.Me Free – $50/mo Yes No Yes (free and paid)
Google Meet Free Yes No Yes (here)
VSee Free – $50/mo Yes Yes Yes (free and paid)

Consider which devices and accessories you and your students will be using.

You’ll each need a desktop or laptop computer (preferred) with either a built-in webcam or an external webcam, or a smart device such as a tablet (if needed) with a built-in camera. Headsets or headphones with a built-in mic will also make a positive difference for you and your students — this way, you and your students can hear each other as clearly as possible. Both you and your students will need access to the internet, either through wifi or an ethernet connection (this will often determine the quality of your audio/video connection). Lastly, a power cord and outlet should be accessible to keep the device charged throughout the session.

Provide scheduling reminders.

While in-person services often allow you to physically pop by a class or provide a hall pass to a student, scheduling looks different for virtual services. How will you invite students and families to join your session on the right day, time, and platform? You can individually send reminders via phone calls, texts, emails, or announcements on student homepages (e.g., Google Classroom). You can also use an email/calendar system (e.g., Google, Outlook) or another program (e.g., Calendly) to schedule events and send auto-reminders to students, families, or teachers. Either way, consistent scheduling has its benefits. According to Camden et al., “scheduled online intervention sessions as compared to a needs-based approach (e.g., family contacts the provider on an as-needed basis) were found to be more effective” (2019).

2. Environmental Supports for Teletherapy

Connect with students’ caregivers.

When you’re not in the same room as your students, an adult on their side of the screen can make a world of difference. Depending on a student’s age and support needs, start a dialogue with family members or educators around expectations: when caregivers are available and what their role may look like (e.g., setting up the technology, supporting participation, on standby for troubleshooting if needed). This is also an opportunity to incorporate parent-implemented home programs, since teletherapy studies “using a coaching approach [were] identified as being more frequently associated with outcome improvement” (Camden et al., 2019). For more on this topic, check out The Importance of Parent Involvement (And How Teletherapy Can Help) on parent involvement and an interview with Leanne Sherred about fostering parent engagement in telepractice.

Reduce background noise and distractions.

There’s no surprise here — we’ve all seen how distraction-rich environments impact focus and comprehension. Consider who else is around the student or if there are any TVs within earshot. If distractions can’t be totally eliminated, can the student face another direction or use headphones? Since we can’t control what is happening on a student’s side of the screen, this is another reason to partner with caregivers as much as possible. Lastly, tweak your webcam setup so you have an accessible camera angle and light source (reduce extra glare by facing towards a light source or window, rather than having the light shine from behind you).

3. Virtual Assessments in Teletherapy

Discuss expectations for virtual evaluations.

Check in with students’ families and educational teams in advance of the evaluation to gather input and review testing plans (e.g., technology support, interpreters). You may opt to use informal and/or formal methods of virtual assessment, depending on many factors.

Use informal assessment measures.

One example of this includes language sampling — check out this 6-step process for collecting language samples! Here is an example of how to adapt this task for teletherapy:

Step 1: Select an elicitation task (e.g., conversation starters, narrative retell, expository/persuasive prompt). If using a narrative retell activity, you can either physically review the book with the student (e.g., hold it up to the webcam, use a document camera) or you can screen share a digital version of the story (e.g., a scanned/PDF copy, youtube video without audio). 

Step 2: Set up the teletherapy session and select the “recording” feature so you can review a video of the sample afterward. Complete the task with the student, providing opportunities for the student to repeat utterances if audio/video temporarily cuts out.

Step 3: Transcribe and analyze the sample, noting situational limitations if present. For further analysis and comparison of scores to same-aged peers, SUGAR and SALT Software programs may also be considered.

Administer validated formal assessments virtually, as appropriate.

Visit ASHA’s Considerations for Speech, Language, and Cognitive Assessment via Telepractice, which reviews general guidelines for standardization and modification of telehealth assessment materials. 

Speech: With a high-quality audio/video connection, virtual assessments of speech-sound production are shown to be valid (Wales et al., 2017).

Language: Because many in-person standardized tests require the use of pointing or following directions, adapting virtual receptive language assessments is not quite as straightforward. There are some digital evaluation materials that have been published (e.g., Q-global and Q-interactive by Pearson). Previous studies have demonstrated the potential of telehealth for school-age language assessments on a small scale, though further research would be beneficial to measure validity across age ranges, populations, and settings (Sutherland et al., 2016).

4. Teletherapy Intervention Tips

Incorporate your EBP framework for making decisions.

When summarizing their systematic review, Wales et al. stated that the “findings from the seven reviewed studies revealed that telehealth is a promising method for treating children with speech and/or language difficulties”, though results are limited at this time (2017). While external evidence related to teletherapy continues to grow, your clinical expertise and responsiveness to student perspectives are equally vital.

Use, adapt, and explore teletherapy materials.

There are countless ways to effectively target communication goals with standard therapy materials without reinventing the wheel. However, if you are new to digitally interactive and looking to give it a try, there are many options to explore! Here’s a quick guide to the different formats teletherapy materials may come in:

Physical books, manipulatives: Use in-person therapy materials by holding items up to the webcam or a document camera. Physical items can also be combined with green screen virtual backgrounds.

Traditional PDFs: Use static PDF documents by screen sharing and annotating (e.g., Zoom annotation, Adobe, Kami, Paint Tool extension).

Boom Cards: Use Boom Cards by screen sharing, selecting responses, typing into text boxes, dragging/ dropping items, and showing corrective feedback.

Online Materials: Use other online materials (e.g., videos from YouTube, EdPuzzle, Epic) by sharing your screen and computer sound.

SLP Now Membership: We have been busy creating evidence-based therapy materials that can be used to help make your life easier for digital teletherapy. Listed below are some of the options that our members have been utilizing. They are feeling more confident and less stressed.  You can have access to them for free if you sign up for a free 14-day trail!  We’d love to hear what you think!

SLP Now No Print PDFs: Use interactive PDFs by screen sharing, annotating, and directly clicking on words/images to navigate through the document.

SLP Now Google Slides: Use interactive powerpoints by screen sharing while in editing mode, dragging/dropping items, or typing into text boxes.

SLP Now Smart Decks: Use Smart Decks by screen sharing, selecting responses, typing into text boxes, and showing/hiding corrective feedback.

SLP Now Boom Cards GIF

 

Support virtual engagement.

Even if every previous step is planned out flawlessly… is the student tuned in and actively participating? If you’re looking to add naturally motivating activities into teletherapy, here’s a previous post on Free Reinforcers for Teletherapy!

Here’s a recap of this guide:

1. Technology Essentials: Consider which video conferencing platform, devices, and accessories you and your students will be using. Provide scheduling reminders as well!

2. Environmental Supports: Connect with students’ caregivers and work together to reduce distractions.

3. Virtual Assessments: Determine expectations for virtual evaluations, including informally and formal assessments, as needed.

4. Teletherapy Intervention Tips: Incorporate your EBP framework for making decisions. You can do this by exploring relevant teletherapy materials and supporting virtual engagement!

Clearly, there’s a lot to explore in the world of teletherapy — thanks for stopping by! Is there anything you’d like us to unpack further? Let us know if you have any questions or virtual wisdom to share with others below.

References

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (n.d.). Telepractice. (Practice Portal). Retrieved April 15th, 2021, from www.asha.org/Practice-Portal/Professional-Issues/Telepractice/

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (n.d.). Considerations for Speech, Language, and Cognitive Assessment via Telepractice. (Clinical) Retrieved April 15th, 2021, from https://www.asha.org/slp/clinical/considerations-for-speech-language-and-cognitive-assessment-via-telepractice/

Camden, C., Pratte, G., Fallon, F., Couture, M., Berbari, J., & Tousignant, M. (2020). Diversity of practices in telerehabilitation for children with disabilities and effective intervention characteristics: results from a systematic review. Disability and rehabilitation, 42(24), 3424-3436.

Eichstadt, T. J., Castilleja, N., Jakubowitz, M., & Wallace, A. (2013, November). Standardized assessment via telepractice: qualitative review and survey data. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American-Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Chicago.

Kester, E. (2020, June 12). Conducting student speech-language evaluations via telepractice. Retrieved April 15, 2021, from https://leader.pubs.asha.org/do/10.1044/leader.SCM.25062020.36/full/

Sanchez, D., Reiner, J. F., Sadlon, R., Price, O. A., & Long, M. W. (2019). Systematic review of school telehealth evaluations. The Journal of School Nursing, 35(1), 61-76.

Sutherland, R., Hodge, A., Trembath, D., Drevensek, S., & Roberts, J. (2016, September). Overcoming barriers to using telehealth for standardized language assessments. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 1(SIG 18), 41–50.

Taylor, O.D, Armfield, N.R, Dodrill, P., & Smith, A.C. (2014). A review of the efficacy and effectiveness of using telehealth for paediatric speech and language assessment. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, 20(7), 405–412. doi:10.1177/1357633X14552388

Wales, D., Skinner, L., & Hayman, M. (2017). The efficacy of telehealth-delivered speech and language intervention for primary school-age children: a systematic review. International Journal of Telerehabilitation, 9(1), 55.

#080: Targeting Vocabulary Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Later Elementary

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This Week’s Episode: How to Target Idioms, Multiple Meaning Words, and Context Clues

So far in this month’s podcast series we’ve targeted basic concepts, as well as some comparatives and superlatives with our preschool students. Last week, our early elementary plans focused on targeting object function, categories, antonyms + synonyms and describing.

We’re going to focus on multiple meaning words with our later elementary students because the research that I’ve done lately indicates that teaching idioms and context clues don’t deliver the same evidence-based bang for your buck as multiple meaning words.

Let’s get to integrating our vocabulary intervention framework with *my favorite* Literacy-based therapy framework!

P.S. For more on our vocabulary intervention framework, bop on over to this blog post: How to Teach Vocabulary: A Framework.

Strategies + Tips Discussed:

– Literacy-Based Therapy Framework 
– Vocabulary Intervention Framework

Here’s what we discussed:

[2:35] Therapy Ideas for Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)
[5:35] Therapy Ideas for Step 2 (Reading)
[5:44] Therapy Ideas for Step 3 (Post Story Comprehension)
[6:55] Therapy Ideas for Step 4 (Skill Practice)
[10:05] Therapy Ideas for Step 5 (Parallel Story)

Want to hear more about this topic? Click here to see this month’s content!

Reference

SLP Now Evidence Based Table

Links Mentioned

– The SLP Now One-Page Literacy-Based Therapy Unit Planner
– ReadWorks Article: Miss Johnson’s Plant Experiment
– Virtual Field Trip on EdPuzzle
– ChatterPix
– Wheel Decide

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

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Thanks so much!

Transcript

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Speaker 1: Let's dive into some plans for later elementary. As always, we're going through our vocabulary goals. This month we are focusing on vocabulary. We split up... We made a list of vocabulary goals that we tend to see, and goals that we thought were appropriate for this age group included non-literal language or idioms, multiple meaning words, context clues, and affixes. We'll be focusing primarily on multiple meaning words throughout this unit. If you are wondering about some of the other skills, we'll really be diving into affixes next week. And then we targeted a variety of other goals in the last two weeks, as well.
The article that we're using is Ms. Johnson's Plant Experiment, and that can be found on ReadWorks. Let's dive into a plan and be sure to head to slpnow.com/planner, if you want to follow along and fill in your own therapy plan. This plan typically is good for a whole month of therapy and then typically the students who need more therapy or who need more time with a unit, they are typically seen more times a week than the students who need less support. And so it ends up evening out, at least in my experience. So that's what we've got and we'll just dive into those plans.
So again, this is based off of Dr. Ukrainetz's five step literacy-based therapy framework. I dug through a bunch of the research to learn more about vocabulary intervention, and I worked hard to marry the two and figure out how to integrate all of these vocabulary strategies and implement them in a literacy-based therapy framework.
So let's start with step one, which is pre-story knowledge. We start off with a book walk or in this case, an article walk. We'll look at the article or the article title. This particular article has a picture to go with it. And we might just browse through the article a little bit, skim the passage to see what we can find. A lot of times students will, if they have some pre-story knowledge, they'll be able to share some of their experience. I really like using a KWL chart in this situation. So we'll do the book walk and then I'll see what they know about the topic and then what they want to know, and then at the end, we can fill in what they learned. But if they really struggle to fill in this chart, I will... and I'll use my clinical judgment to decide what type of virtual field trip we want to do, and if it's even appropriate, but I love searching for videos on Edpuzzle. I'll just look up a video that I think would be relevant.
So this is about a plant experiment, so I might have them watch a video about a plant experiment, because that would be super relevant and then they can see it in action and we can dig deeper into any concepts that they struggle with. This might be where we identify vocabulary that is particularly challenging, especially vocabulary that they need. So we might also pre-teach some vocabulary. And then I identify the key vocabulary words. I'll identify anything that's tricky as we work through the passage, but typically I do a pretty good job of predicting what they need support with.
I analyze all of my reading passages and pull out the multiple meaning words, and I pull out the relevant prefixes and suffixes. I can typically guess based on that list, what they'll need support on. And so I can take some time to pre-teach that. We can define the word, which is especially important for our students at this point. So we'll define it, we'll fill it in. At this age group pre-teaching makes sense. For our younger students they don't have as much of that basic vocabulary yet, and they really need exposure to the book before that really makes sense. That's typically what I try to do based on my own experience and what I read in the research.
Once we've done all of those activities, we can go ahead and fill in a graphic organizer. I pull up my story grammar organizer, and it includes icons and definitions of all of the story grammar elements. And then we identify who the story is about, when and where it happens, et cetera, et cetera. And we just fill that in. And it's an influencing activity because we've only glanced at the article. And so we make our best guess based on what we learned about the vocabulary and what we learned in our virtual field trip and our KWL chart and then we infer what happens in the story.
Then for step two, we actually read the article. We keep this really short and simple. We just read through it and we're good to go. Then for step three, we dive into story comprehension. You might be thinking, "What does this have to do with vocabulary?" So in step one, I modeled the target vocabulary words. I gave the students the definition. And then when we read the story, they had additional exposures to the target vocabulary words because they appear in the text. So then by step three, we would have gotten a decent amount of exposure. They should be familiar with the words. And so I want to ask questions, and this is a great activity because oftentimes the students in my group also have comprehension goals, but it's another opportunity to embed these vocabulary words.
I'll strategically split up the questions. I have lists of questions that I like to ask. I can find those in my cheat sheet. And I have a list of literal and inferential questions. I also have some worksheets with questions and I can pick the one or ones that make the most sense for the group. And we just go through that. And then when we get to step four, because in step three, we did the comprehension activities. They had a couple of opportunities to use their word in a meaningful context or their words. And then in step four, I do the focus skill activity.
This, especially in terms of vocabulary, I think if we're working on multiple meaning words or context clues or affixes, I would like to introduce the skill before I expect them to define it. So this framework doesn't necessarily have to go in order. So step four is something that I would probably... I would teach the skill as soon as we write that IEP goal, the first session after that I'd review their goals and introduce that. I think that progression just makes more sense. But when we get to step four, I would just review that skill. And then we would work on building the vocabulary journal.
For multiple meaning words, each unit includes several pages that I either print out and put into a physical journal, or I copy and put into a virtual journal in Google Slides and then I have the student do a bunch of exercises with the target vocabulary words. So whether we're working on multiple meaning words, context clues, affixes, or non-literal language, we'll do different activities with those targets. And then if we need additional... Because a lot of times students need 40 plus exposures. So the vocabulary journal will give us multiple exposures of each word and they've had exposures to the word throughout the unit, but if we need more than that, I might do different activities.
I like creating digital wheels where we add their words and then we spin the wheel and then they have to come up, they have to define the word, use it in a sentence, whatever activity makes sense or we do a combination of those. As always, all of these activities can be used. They're rich language activities, so if one student is working on defining the words that if another student has a grammar goal, they can create a compound sentence about the word. So we can be strategic in how we set these up. But digital wheels are really fun activities to get multiple exposures ChatterPix is a really fun activity, so we might take a picture of the teacher, for example, and we might have her... ChatterPix is... I used to use it with my preschoolers, but the older kids love it, too.
So you take a screenshot of a face, you draw a line for the mouth, and then you hold down the record button and you speak in a sentence. And then when you're done recording, it plays it back and then the mouth moves. The kids think it's hilarious. And it's very motivating. So what I have them do is, if we did their vocabulary journal, as a reinforcer, I can have them read their sentences and record them on ChatterPix and then they listen back to them and they think it's hilarious, so they're super engaged in that. That's a really great way to get multiple exposures and we're building on all of the activities throughout the unit. We can do the same thing with responding to questions. If we catch them using their vocabulary word, then maybe they get to record it in ChatterPix. And if multiple students are working on similar goals, they all get meaningful exposures that way, and it keeps them all engaged.
So that brings us to step five, the parallel story, where we fill in the graphic organizer and we create a story related to the story that we just read. So they come up with their own character, setting, et cetera, et cetera. We do our best to incorporate their vocabulary words, and then they can record themselves reading that. They can reenact the story. There's lots of different options to facilitate engagement and make it super fun for our students. And then that brings us to the end of the unit.
I just wanted to point out, I go into a lot more detail and dive into all of the research on the different vocabulary goals, but I just wanted to share what I found in my research. And this could be different, but when it comes to idioms, there is some evidence, but there isn't much to show that teaching idioms is effective. Idioms are used all the time in conversational speech and all of that. They don't show up a ton in a lot of our articles. So I tend to teach those more incidentally and I'm absolutely, I'm always looking in the literature because things always change and maybe since I did that research, there's been more evidence, but that's just what I found in my last round of research.
And the same thing is true for context clues. I have been able to teach context clues strategies that did have a significant impact on my students. So I'm not saying that we can never write goals for figurative language or context clues, but there is a lot more research for targeting multiple meaning words, which we focused a lot on and we have a lot of activities in our monthly units for those.
And then as promised next week, we'll really focus in on prefixes and suffixes. And again, if you want more detail on all of the strategies and ways to structure vocabulary intervention, I embedded pretty much everything I know about multiple meaning words in this snippet here, but do check out the vocabulary course if you'd like more detail.
That's a wrap. We'll see you next week.

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Evidence-Backed Strategies for Complex Syntax Intervention with Younger Students

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This is a guest blog post from Rebecca, another SLP, all about complex syntax intervention with younger students!

How I Approached Syntax Intervention with Younger Students

While working with younger children with language impairment, I typically utilize my previous grad school instruction and SLP supervisor training. I tend to approach my therapy sessions by using simple sentence structures that target morphosyntactic (grammar and sentence structure) forms and increasing utterance length. Targeting complex syntax with younger students wasn’t at the top of my radar!

So, after collecting a thorough language sample from my student and analyzing it for morphological and syntactic errors, I would determine what skills to target first. Traditionally, I would target morphosyntactic forms including markers of tense and/or agreement, such as past tense –ed, third person singular –s, auxiliary be, and copula be) in a simple sentence frame (e.g., The girl pets the puppy).

My therapy goal may look something like this:  By June 2022, when participating in story retell, Johnny will independently use regular and irregular past tense verb forms, improving from 50% to 80% accuracy, as measured by SLP data.

Sound familiar?

Additionally, I would target increased sentence length by teaching students to add more descriptive words (adjectives and adverbs) to their utterances. But how can I target expanding sentence length beyond the simple sentence framework? Don’t my students need to master their morphosyntactic forms in simple sentences before I can move on?

If, like me, you thought you needed to wait until students entered the 3rd-grade to incorporate complex syntax forms in your therapy intervention, think again!

Typical Language Development and Complex Syntax with Younger Students

In typical language development, children begin to use complex sentence forms soon after they combine words into sentences, usually by age 2-3 years (Arndt & Schuele, 2013; Bloom, Tackeff & Lahey, 1984; Limber, 1973).

Reduced infinitives (e.g., I wanna sleep) and simple infinitives (e.g., Everyone wants to go) are two of the earliest forms of complex syntax produced by young children with a Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) below 3.0.

Beyond an MLU of 3.0, children start to produce a wide range of complex syntax forms. For a comprehensive view of complex syntax forms see Schuele & Dykes, 2005.

Why Target Complex Syntax in Therapy with Younger Students?

So why is this important to remember? For many of the students with language impairments on our caseloads, their development in use and mastery of complex syntax forms is often delayed by as many as two years behind their age-matched peers (Eisenber, 2003; Fletcher, 1992; Marinellie, 2004; Schuele & Dykes, 2005).

Moreover, complex syntax is needed to meet the academic demands of the classroom curriculum and common core standards.

Reviewing the Evidence for Complex Syntax

You might be asking yourself at this point, “Okay, I’m willing to give complex syntax a try with my younger students, but how?”

We will begin by reviewing a series of three studies by Nelson, Camarata, and colleagues (Camarata & Nelson, 1992; Camarata, Nelson, & Camarata, 1994; Nelson, Camarata, Welsh, Butkovsky, & Camarata, 1996), that compared two approaches to complex syntax, direct imitation and conversational recast.

But first, disclaimer alert! There is limited research available targeting complex syntax interventions for young children with language impairment, so as in all situations of determining the best approach for your students, it is important to consider the three pillars of Evidence-Based Practice–scientific evidence, clinical expertise, and client perspectives.

Okay, let’s dive in! A within-subject design was used to monitor progress of individual targets including morphosyntax, simple syntax, and/or complex syntax. Children aged 4-7 years participated in 1:1 direct intervention for 30-60 minutes per week for a range of 3-5 months of treatment.

Researchers found that young children with and without language impairments learned their syntax targets in a spontaneous context much faster during the conversational recast condition (fewer sessions and fewer therapist recasts).

Conversely, when engaging in the direct imitation condition for elicited productions of the syntax targets, young children initially learned faster, but did not carry over the skill to spontaneous contexts as quickly.

All signs point to the conversational recast approach when learning and retaining new syntactic structures. Okay, but how can I start using this approach in therapy?

Recasting in Speech Therapy

Let’s define it first! Sentence recasts are the immediate therapist response to a child’s utterance that repeats some of the child’s words and corrects or modifies the morphological or syntactic form of the utterance.

Key Points When Targeting Complex Syntax with Younger Students

– Recasts are a way to add or correct information without disrupting the flow of the conversation.
– Recasting is another form of modeling.
– Recasts occur when the therapist repeats the correct or modified syntactic structure.

Example

The therapist shows the child a picture of a puppy with a ball.
– Child: “The ball is red.”
– Therapist: “Who is playing with the ball?”
– Child: “The puppy.”
– Therapist: “The ball that the puppy plays with is red.”

Added Benefits

– Therapy can be addressed in a structured or naturalistic setting
– The therapist can engage in the child’s interest and language level
– The child does not receive negative or corrective criticism
– The child does not have to repeat anything
– Parents, teachers, and peers can be trained to support this intervention

I hope you’ve enjoyed this overview on using conversational recasts to improve complex syntax for younger children!

Don’t forget to check out the blog next time when we discuss another approach to addressing complex syntax, repeated storybook reading within a scaffolded-language structure (RSR-SLS; Bellon-Harn, Byers, & Lappi, 2014).

 

References

Arndt, K. B., & Schuele, C. M. (2013). Multiclausal utterances aren’t just for big kids: A framework for analysis of complex syntax production in spoken language of preschool- and early school-age children. Topics in Language Disorders, 33(2), 125–139.

Bellon-Harn, M. L., Byers, B. A., & Lappi, J. (2014). Treatment intensity: Effects of interactive book reading on narrative abilities in preschool children with SLI. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 35(4), 226–236.

Bloom, L., Tackeff, J., & Lahey, M. (1984). Learning to in complement constructions. Journal of Child Language, 11(2), 391–406.

Camarata, S. M., & Nelson, K. E. (1992). Treatment efficiency as a function of target selection in the remediation of child language disorders. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 6(3), 167–178.

Camarata, S. M., Nelson, K. E., & Camarata, M. N. (1994). Comparison of conversational-recasting and imitative procedures for training grammatical structures in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 37(6), 1414–1423.

Eisenberg, S. (2003). Production of infinitival object complements in the conversational speech of 5-year-old children with language impairment. First Language, 23(3), 327–341.

Fletcher, P. (1992). Subgroups in school-age language impaired children. In P. Fletcher & D. Hall (Eds.), Specific speech & language disorders in children (pp. 152–165). London, England: Whurr.

Limber, J. (1973). The genesis of complex sentences. In T. E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and acquisition of language (pp. 169–185). New York, NY: Academic Press.

Marinellie, S. A. (2004). Complex syntax used by school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) in child–adult conversation. Journal of Communication Disorders, 37(6), 517–533.

Nelson, K. E., Camarata, S. M., Welsh, J., Butkovsky, L., & Camarata, M. (1996). Effects of imitative and conversational recasting treatment on the acquisition of grammar in children with specific language impairment and younger language-normal children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 39(4), 850– 859.

Stoeckel, R. [MedBridge]. (2020, July 7). Demonstration of Recasting [Video].  https://youtu.be/WqT0Lzb_yts

Schuele, C. M., & Dykes, J. C. (2005). Complex syntax acquisition: A longitudinal case study of a child with specific language impairment. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 19(4), 295–318.

Schuele, C. M., & Wisman Weil, L. (2004). Complex syntax productions of children with specific language impairment and MLU-matched peers. Poster session presented at the Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, WI.

#079: Targeting Vocabulary Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Early Elementary

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This Week’s Episode:  How to Target Object Functions, Categories, Antonyms + Synonyms, and Describing with Early Elementary Students

So far in this month’s podcast series, we’ve targeted basic concepts, as well as some comparatives and superlatives with our preschool students.

As we spring forward with our early elementary students we will target object function, categories, antonyms + synonyms, and describing. The book we’ve selected is The Curious Garden. This is such a fun story that has great examples of object functions (things that you wear) and emotions (abstract).

Let’s get to planting those meaningful exposures, shall we? 🌱

Strategies + Tips Discussed:

As always, we’ll be following the 5-Step Literacy-Based Therapy Framework outlined by Dr. Ukrainetz. In this episode, I’ll share:

– Age appropriate activities for pre-story knowledge activation,
– How I use my story grammar graphic organizer to provide meaningful exposures,
– Using question cards for story comprehension,
– Putting visuals to use in focus skill activities,
– Creating a vocabulary journal, and more!

Reference

SLP Now Evidence Based Table

Here’s what we discussed:

[2:20] Therapy Ideas for Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)
[6:10] Therapy Ideas for Step 2 (Reading)
[6:45] Therapy Ideas for Step 3 (Post Story Comprehension)
[8:30] Therapy Ideas for Step 4 (Skill Practice)
[12:12] Therapy Ideas for Step 5 (Parallel Story)

Want to hear more about this topic? Click here to see this month’s content!

Links Mentioned

– The Curious Garden by by Peter Brown
– The SLP Now One-Page Literacy-Based Therapy Unit Planner
– EdPuzzle (This is a great resource for a prestory knowledge book walk + virtual field trip!)
– SLP Now Membership

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, subscribe today to get the latest episodes sent directly to you! Click here to make your listening experience auto-magic and as easy as possible.

Bonus points if you leave us a review over on iTunes → Those reviews help other SLPs find the podcast, and I love reading your feedback! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews,” “Write a Review,” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is.

Thanks so much!

Transcript

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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.

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#078: Targeting Vocabulary Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Preschool

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This Week’s Episode: How to Target Basic Concepts, Comparatives, and Superlatives with Preschoolers

Understanding words that we take in is helpful, right? That’s the theory we’re operating with when we target vocabulary goals using literacy-based therapy.

We’re going to talk about targeting basic concepts, as well as some comparatives and superlatives.

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.

The lack of vocabulary can be one of the biggest hurdles these students have in following directions, and we can use literacy-based therapy to help them get over that hurdle, so they can keep learning!

Ready to plant some seeds? Let’s get to it!

Strategies + Tips Discussed

How to Teach Basic Concepts (30 minutes)
– Direct Instruction (15 minutes) – Provide examples of the two target concepts
– Interactive Instruction (15 minutes) – Art, drama, or game activities designed to incorporate the target concept

If you want to nerd out and dive into more Basic Concepts content then check out this blog post: Using Books to Target Basic Concepts.

References:

Evidence-Based Table

Bracken, B. A. (1988). Rate and sequence of positive and negative poles in basic concept acquisition. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 19, 410-417.

Seifert, H. (1991). Treatment effectiveness of large group basic concept instruction with Head Start students. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 22, 60-40.

Here’s what we discussed:

[5:40] Therapy Ideas for Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)
[8:00] Therapy Ideas for Step 2 (Reading)
[9:00] Therapy Ideas for Step 3 (Post Story Comprehension)
[9:52] Therapy Ideas for Step 4 (Skill Practice)
[14:14] Therapy Ideas for Step 5 (Parallel Story)

Want to hear more about this topic? Click here to see this month’s content!

Links Mentioned

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– Lola Plants a Garden
– The SLP Now One-Page Literacy-Based Therapy Unit Planner
– EdPuzzle
– Toca Boca (A fun app with opportunities for repetitive vocabulary practice!)
– SLP Now Membership (The Vocabulary Bootcamp course is included in our Academy!)

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Thanks so much!

Transcript

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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.

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#077: Targeting Grammar Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Secondary

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This Week’s Episode: Targeting Grammar Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Secondary

So far in this month’s podcast series we’ve targeted MLU goals with our preschoolers,  irregular and regular plural nouns with our early elementary students, and compound and complex sentences using conjunctions with our later elementary students.

We are going to close out this podcast series with our secondary students. In this episode I provide evidence based strategies to target producing sentences with three or more clauses, producing sentences with passive voice, and producing sentences with adverbial clauses.

We will be diving into a non-fiction ReadWorks article called Wild Calls in the Springtime Sky. Like last week’s article, this once includes both an audio and written version which means extra options for exposure to the text! 🙌

In addition to producing more complicated sentences, we want to make sure our students are working on their comprehension by answering questions that include those more complex sentence structures.

It’s common to see difficulty with comprehension as they up the grammar ante.

I do have to say that I really love diving into nonfiction units, especially once my students have mastered story grammar, because it’s so important that our students are able to access new information from expository texts in the classroom.

They have to be able to read and comprehend to learn new information, and this kind of work provides some really great context for therapy with meaningful outcomes.

Strategies + Tips Discussed:

-Model / Recast / Sentence Expansion
-Tip: To keep your student engaged, have them create a YouTube or Toontasic video as a newscaster for our parallel story.

Reference

-Gould, B. W. (2001). Written Language Disorders: Theory into Practice. University of Virginia: Pro Ed

Here’s what we discussed:

[5:18] Therapy Ideas for Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)
[6:50] Therapy Ideas for Step 2 (Reading)
[7:40] Therapy Ideas for Step 3 (Post Story Comprehension)
[9:08] Therapy Ideas for Step 4 (Skill Practice)
[12:00] Therapy Ideas for Step 5 (Parallel Story)

Want to hear more about this topic? Click here to see this month’s content!

Links Mentioned

– SLP Now Membership (This is where you can find the summarizing organizer we mentioned!)
– The SLP Now One-Page Literacy-Based Therapy Unit Planner
– Toontastic
– EdPUzzle
– ReadWorks Article: Wild Calls in the Springtime Sky

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

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Bonus points if you leave us a review over on iTunes → Those reviews help other SLPs find the podcast, and I love reading your feedback! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews,” “Write a Review,” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is.

Thanks so much!

Transcript

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Speaker 1: Let's dive into some plans for our secondary students. So we've got some sample goals here, and as always, this is not a comprehensive list. For this whole grammar series, we took a list of common grammar goals and just split them up by age group, just for ease of presentation. If you're not seeing the types of goals that you're working on with your students, then definitely scroll back to the previous podcast from this month to find your goals and the related evidence-based strategies.
But the goal is that we have here are producing sentences with three or more clauses, producing sentences with passive voice, and then producing sentences with adverbial clauses. And then we also might have students answer questions about paragraphs that include passive voice or adverbial clauses because we can often see some difficulty with comprehension of those structures as well. And I thought that would fit in nicely with this unit.
In terms of the text for this unit, we are using a ReadWorks article called Wild Calls in the Springtime Sky. This is free, you can create a free ReadWorks account to access the article. And this article does include an audio version, so it's a nice support that we can have access to. And the article is about Canada geese and their migration patterns. It's a nonfiction article, so it's really great to target that expository text. It includes more of that complex syntax. And I really love diving into nonfiction units, especially once my students have mastered story grammar. I think that's a very important skill, and I don't like to skip that if students don't have mastery of that. I'd like to stick there, but sometimes we just got to move on and dive into the expository texts because it's so important when it comes to reading textbooks and just accessing any information in the classroom. Because so much of it is expository, they're having to read to learn new information, and it's a really great context for therapy with really meaningful outcomes.
And so let's just dive into those plans. And then just a quick recap. The text, again, is from ReadWorks, Wild Calls in the Springtime Sky. And the goals we're targeting are creating sentences with three or more clauses, passive voice, adverbial clauses, and we can also work on comprehension of texts that include these targets.
Just to get us set up for success, I think we want to know which structures are included in the text. So in the SLP Now units, we break down all of the different structures. In this particular text, we have some adverbial clauses and some relative clauses, but we don't have passive voice. So the nice thing about these summaries are that if we really want to target passive voice, we probably don't want to use this article. But if we do want to target sentences with three or more clauses or adverbial clauses, relative clauses, this would be a great text for that. And the cheat sheet for the article just quickly helps you identify those, and so I'll talk about how we can use that list throughout the unit.
With pre-story knowledge activation, I'd like to just pull up the article, take a quick look at it, we can look at the title and the picture, and we can pull out inaudible because we're no longer using story grammar, we're summarizing the article, we can pull out the summarizing organizer which includes a circle for the main idea and three boxes for the key details. And if the students, after doing the book walk, if they have enough background knowledge to fill that in, I'll have them identify, just kind of take a guess, at what the main idea is and what the key details might be, just based on their background knowledge and what they know about the topic and just kind of make an inference.
If that's really challenging, if they don't have the adequate background knowledge to make that happen, we might take a virtual field trip and pull up a video through Edpuzzle about migration and geese, just getting some background information and having a visual aspect to hang things on. And then we might also do some pre-teaching of the key vocabulary words. Because if they don't know what migration is, they're really going to have trouble summarizing the article.
And then definitely stay tuned. Next month, we will be focusing all on vocabulary and sharing similar evidence-based strategies and all of that good stuff. So, stay tuned if you want to learn more strategies. But just in the interest of time, we're going to keep moving on to step two, where we actually read the article.
And then through step one and step two, it really depends on where the student is, but we would definitely want to provide some strategies in our toolbox inaudible one to model the target structures. So we can model sentences with multiple clauses, we can model passive voice, adverbial clauses, relative clauses, all of that good stuff. We can provide the models. We can also recast because during all of these activities, the students are doing a lot of talking, so if they produce two simple sentences, we can combine them and recast using their target structures. And we can provide opportunities for this, too, by asking specific question types and all of that good stuff.
And then moving on to step three, we can use the same types of strategies when we are working on story comprehension. So as we're asking the literal comprehension questions, the inferential questions, as we're filling in the summarizing graphic organizer, throughout all of these steps, we can model, recast, or we can have the students use another evidence-based strategy of sentence expansion. So the Goal 2001 article includes a nice overview of this strategy. But we can use the students' sentences, or the therapist can provide a sentence, and we give them a simple sentence and then we have them build the sentence by increasing the length and complexity. So that's another way that we can recast, as well. We can take a simple sentence and then add to it.
So that's what we've got for story comprehension. As students are responding to questions, we can model the use of these phrases, recast, and provide an expansion. Or if the students have had adequate exposure to the target structures, if they've gone through that introduction, if they've been taught how this all works, they've done some of the drill practice, we can do some embedded practice where they take the simple sentence that they produced and expand it by adding a different clause or adding multiple clauses to it.
And then for step four, this will really depend on how the student does. And as I say in pretty much every presentation, these steps are not necessarily linear. So just because it's step four doesn't mean it happens fourth in the sequence of all these steps. We might decide that, "Okay, last unit, we gave the student tons and tons of exposure, we introduced a skill, we did a mini-lesson introducing these adverbial clauses, we're ready to move on." We might just do a quick drill activity and dive into a lot of embedded practice.
Or if they're super familiar with it, we might just expect them to produce that skill. And in step four, we might work on introducing a different skill. We don't necessarily focus on the same skill in every step of the framework. It's really dependent, because our students have multiple goals, and we kind of strategically split up the practice in a way that makes sense. So in the first unit, I might teach them about compound and complex sentences first, after having given them, of course, some different exposures.
And then during that unit, I might just do some modeling and recasting. And then the next time, I might step up the ante a little bit and require them to do some more of that sentence expansion on their own. And each student will progress differently. And then I would just alternate their goals and adjust the focus as we move through the unit in a way that makes sense. And I know that's very broad. And it really depends on the combination of students' goals, how they're performing on those goals, the dynamics of the groups, lots of different factors. So that's what we've got there.
And I would just pull out the visual introducing that type of clause and give them some very structured practice with expansion. It is typically helpful to create sentences about like the here and now, about things that they're experiencing, things that they're seeing in the speech room, for example, so that it's very concrete and they don't have the cognitive load of trying to comprehend a text. I find that that's a really great way to start and give the students inaudible practice and build their confidence with the skill, and then we can dive into the embedded practice. And so that's what I like to do for step four, if that's necessary.
If they've had practice, we'll just pull out the visual, review it, and then move on to embedded activities. And again, just like in every other unit, any language activity would be great to target these skills. Anything that involves language, they'll be producing sentences and they have the opportunity to produce all of these types of clauses that we're trying to target.
And then to wrap up the unit, we have step five where the students create a parallel story. So I'd like to start, and this is a little bit different because we're using a nonfiction text, so I like to have students take their summary, their graphic organizer, and create something from that. So a lot of times, these students love YouTube and they are all aspiring YouTubers, so one really motivating activity is for them to create a YouTube video about what they learned. So sometimes they just pretend to be a newscaster and they share a summary of the article.
Sometimes they get a little creative and switch things up and just create a news story based on what they read. But we can get creative with that. And then the students have the opportunity, I like to have them write out, especially at this level, I like to have them write out their sentences. And then it's a really nice way to work on that sentence expansion and they can work on including all of those clauses. And then they're motivated to work through this because they know they'll get to make a fun video. So that's one example of what I like to do.
Another fun example, there's apps like Tunetastic, where the students can create an animated video. They can pick a scene and characters, and they can use that to build a different type of newscast where they pick the characters and they record their voice to create a similar final product, except it's just not them on video. So those are both really fun activities and just really fun, engaging ways to embed these new clauses and structures into a meaningful context.
So that's a wrap with our therapy plans for secondary students using a nonfiction text, and we'll see you next month for some vocabulary strategies.

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#076: Targeting Grammar Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Later Elementary

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This Week’s Episode: Targeting Grammar Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Later Elementary

So far in this month’s podcast series we’ve targeted MLU goals with our preschoolers and irregular and regular plural nouns with our early elementary students.

This week we are working on compound and complex sentences in Part 3 of our series about targeting grammar goals using literacy-based therapy. 🤓

For this week’s lesson planning we’re going to work with an article from ReadWorks called “The Hiking Trip”, which is an article about a boy who’s really looking forward to a hike with his dad. It’s finally springtime, the snow has melted, and they head out for their hike — inevitably encountering some obstacles to overcome along the way.

What I really like about this article is that it does come with a written and audio version, which is great for teletherapy — we can send the link to our students, and they can either read or listen to it at home to get additional exposures. 💪

It’s worth mentioning that when it comes to therapy planning, I usually count on spending about a month on each book unit — depending on the students’ needs and where they’re at — so I like to have a variety of activities that I can draw from.

I plan it all up front and then get to cruise through the rest of the month in observe + adjust mode. 😎

That gives us plenty of time for meaningful embedded practice of all the different skills, and we have the chance to see our students really make some progress on their goals.

Let’s put on our planning pants and get to work! 👖

Here’s what we discussed:

[4:15] Therapy Ideas for Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)
[8:15] Therapy Ideas for Step 2 (Reading)
[9:30 Therapy Ideas for Step 3 (Post Story Comprehension)
[11:45] Therapy Ideas for Step 4 (Skill Practice)
[13:15] Therapy Ideas for Step 5 (Parallel Story)

Want to hear more about this topic? Click here to see this month’s content!

Strategies + Tips Discussed

– Recasting / Modeling / Cued Combining / Open Combing
– Tip 1: Use keyboard shortcuts to highlight specific conjunctions in the article. (Command + F) for Mac or (Control + F) for PC
– Tip 2: Use the acronym FANBOYS to help your students remember conjunctions.

Reference

– Strong, W. (1986). Creative approaches to sentence combining. ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills.

Links Mentioned

– SLP Now Membership (This is where you can find the graphic organizer we mentioned!)
– The SLP Now One-Page Literacy-Based Therapy Unit Planner
– ReadWorks Article: The Hiking Trip
– EdPuzzle

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Transcript

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Speaker 1: Let's dive into some plans for later elementary, and just a reminder, we are focusing on specific grammar goals for this series of episodes. For this age group, we are focusing on producing compound and complex sentences. A compound sentence uses conjunctions like "and, but, so." Our FANBOYS is the nice little acronym there. Then, complex sentences use the other types of conjunctions like "before" and "because." Then for the article that we're using, it's from Read Works, and it's called the hiking trip, and it's an article about a boy who's desperately looking forward to a hike with his dad. It's finally springtime, the snow has melted, and they finally get to go hiking, and the story has some nice problems along the way as they go on their hike. The cool thing about this reading passage, too, is that read works also provides an audio version of the story, or ... Yeah, and it's a fiction article, so it's got the nice story, grammar elements and all of that good stuff.
It's nice too, especially if we're doing teletherapy, we can send the article to our students and have them listen to it for practice at home, or if they have some center time in the classroom, it's something that they can listen to, just to get additional exposures to it. But now let's dive into the actual plans.
Again, the article that we're using is The Hiking Trip, and we're focusing on compound and complex sentences. These are definitely not all of the grammar goals that we would target with this age group, but these are the ... We came up with a massive list of grammar goals, and definitely check out the show notes for all of the episodes this month to see a list of the goals for the different age groups, but we just generated that list and split it up roughly based on the age group that would be appropriate.
If compound and complex sentences doesn't target the goals that you need, you can check out the episodes for other types of goals, for additional evidence-based strategies, and ideas to target those goals. It will be using a different type of text, but the strategies will still apply. Then again, as always, we're using Dr. [Ukranitz's 00:02:47] five step literacy-based therapy framework, and step one is pre-story knowledge. We are doing a variety of language activities. These are more general activities, but we can be very strategic in how we set up these activities. If the students are new, if it's a new target for our students and they're not able to produce compound and complex sentences on their own, this is a really great opportunity to provide models and to recast their sentences, just to give them exposure. If the student produces two simple sentences, we can recast that, combine the sentence into a compound or complex sentence, whatever their target is, and just give them lots of meaningful exposure. Then in our own speaking, we can produce those compound and complex sentences, and we can also do activities like identifying them in the story and all of that good stuff. The story will include lots of compound and complex sentences.
Then, our book guide for the article actually lists all of the conjunctions that are used, so the coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. We use coordinating conjunctions to create compound sentences and subordinating conjunctions to create compound complex sentences. If you're wondering which types of sentences or which words to look out for, or which conjunctions to look out for, the cheat sheet for the unit will be a great resource for you. That's what we've got just in terms of targets and strategies for the pre-story knowledge.
In terms of the actual activities, we can do an article walk. We can pull up the article, take a look at Read Works includes a picture for this article, so we can look at the picture. We can look at the title. We can maybe look at some of the sentences in the article, and depending on the students' response to this activity, if it seems like they're really missing some knowledge about hiking or the forest, if they've never experienced that, we might take a virtual field trip. I like pulling up videos on Ed Puzzle, and so we can maybe find a quick little video about where a kid talks about a hike that he went on, or they take us on a hike or a tour of the forest, for example. We can just do that if the students need additional background knowledge, and we can use our clinical judgment to decide which type of video would make the most sense for our particular group of students.
Then, another thing that we can do is, if they have that background knowledge, we can fill in the graphic organizer, because this is a story. We can use a story grammar organizer to make a guess, who are the characters, where and when does the story happen? We can just go through the organizer and fill in those pieces and make some inferences. Again, this is a language activity, so we can model and recast the target sentence structures. Another activity that tends to be appropriate for this age group is pre-teaching vocabulary. Again, this is another language activity and we can, again, model and recast the sentence structures as we go through those vocabulary activities. Then, next month we are focusing our all on vocabulary, so definitely stay tuned and listen into those episodes if you want more pre-story knowledge activation, vocabulary activity ideas.
Now we're diving into step two, which is shared reading. With this, we keep it pretty simple. We just read the story. We can emphasize the compound and complex sentences in this story. We can maybe even have the students identify them, or if we just want to make sure that we're emphasizing them as we read, we can pick a conjunction. If we're reading this on the computer, you can do command F or control F, depending on if you're on a Mac or a PC, and it'll highlight all of the conjunctions. If we're using a conjunction like and, it can be an activity to decide if it's a compound sentence or not, because "and" is often used in sentences that are not compound sentences. That can be a great activity in and of itself. But if it's a less common conjunction, that can be a really great way to emphasize those structures, or we can go ahead and highlight them ahead of time, and that's pretty easy if you have the list of conjunctions already in the article like we do for you. That is step two.
Then for step three, we dive into story comprehension. One activity that I like to do is just to ask literal and inferential questions, and as students respond to those questions, I can either ... Well, other students in the group might be modeling the use of compound and complex sentences, and we can emphasize that, or we can recast the students' responses. If the students are a little bit further ahead, if they've been introduced to compound and complex sentences, they've been working on this skill for a while and they're ready to step things up, but they're not at the level of producing these structures independently, we can use an evidence-based strategy called combining sentences. Strong 1986 has a really great article that dives into more detail on this strategy, but this is when ... Let's say a student responds to a literal or inferential question and they give two simple sentences. We can use the combining sentence strategy to have the students combine them to create a single longer sentences.
If we're focusing on compound or complex sentences, we can have them use a specific conjunction. There's two ways that we can combine sentences. We can do cued combining, where I underlined the components in the sentence and/or I can give the student a conjunction to use. If you want more detail on that, you can check out the Strong 1986 article, or we dive into a little bit of that in our grammar course in the SLP Now Academy.
The second strategy that we can use the combining sentence strategy is open combining. This is when I don't give specific instructions and the student can just determine their own way to combine the sentence. I would just give them their two sentences and they get to decide how to combine that sentence. The cued combining and open combining are two strategies that we can use to target those compound and complex sentence schools.
One example that I gave for step three, story comprehension, was filling in those literal and inferential questions. We can also use the same activity with story grammar. We can have students fill in the story grammar organizer, and so they're identifying the characters, the setting, all of the different story grammar elements. Then again, we can have them combine the sentences to produce compound or complex sentences. Then, again depending on where the student is, we can provide models and recast, or we can have them actually do that cued or open combining. We can be use our clinical judgment to decide which strategy makes the most sense.
Then we've got step four, and this is focused skill activities, and we can introduce or review the skills. Inside the SLP Now membership, we have visuals to introduce these skills. Before we have students do the cued and open combining, we would want to introduce them to what a compound sentence is, or what a complex sentences, and just introduce the skill, present that visual, and do a little bit of structured practice with it. When I introduce the skill and I put together the mini lesson, I like to walk through the visual and just explain what it is, what a compound sentence is, what a complex sentence is, and then we create some simple sentences just about the student, something that's high interest that they definitely understand. Then we move from there.
Then again, we can continue using the strategies of modeling, recasting, open combining, cued combining, whatever combination makes the most sense for the particular student throughout any other language activities that we might use. We are targeting a variety of goals with our students. One student might have grammar, vocabulary, story retell, whatever they're working on. We can continue to target the grammar structures throughout the unit.
Then for step five, we would create a parallel story. I would just take the graphic organizer that they filled in before, create a nice blank copy, and then we would create sentences, again trying to elicit those structures, and then we would just create our own story. Maybe they can create a parallel story about a time that they went hiking, or they can come up ... Make a story about another student and make up a problem that they encounter on a hike. The students, especially the older students, have a really great time with that type of activity.
Then again, as we're filling in the graphic organizer, as we're creating that story, we're targeting those compound and complex sentences, encouraging the students to combine them, whether we're using cued or open combining, and that gives them tons of meaningful embedded practice of all of these different skills, and we're really able to see them make some really nice progress on these goals, and it's really simple to put together. We just need the article, a couple of visuals, and just these evidence-based strategies in our packets, and we've got an awesome unit. I hope that was super helpful, and we'll see you next week as we dive into some examples for later elementary.

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#075: Targeting Grammar Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Early Elementary

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Today’s Topic: Literacy-Based Therapy Plans for Early Elementary

This week’s episode of the podcast is all about targeting early elementary grammar goals with literacy-based therapy. 🤓

Before diving into this week’s book (Spring is Here, a really cute story about a hibernating bear who lives with a mole!), we’ll review some of the goals that we’ll be targeting — specifically irregular and regular plural nouns, as well as irregular and past tense verbs.

Remember: The goal of the literacy-based framework is to help familiarize our kiddos with the concepts they’ll be learning about, and expose them to the target structure before we expect them to produce it.

Throughout all of the pre-story knowledge activities — whether we’re doing the book walk, a virtual field trip, or filling in the graphic organizer — we want to model or highlight the targets naturally in conversation, priming our students for reproduction and modification as necessary. 💪

Here is a great 5 Step Cheat Sheet for Grammar Intervention.

Here’s what we discussed:

[2:39] Therapy Ideas for Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)
[7:00] Therapy Ideas for Step 2 (Reading)
[7:23] Therapy Ideas for Step 3 (Post Story Comprehension)
[8:08] Therapy Ideas for Step 4 (Skill Practice)
[11:34] Therapy Ideas for Step 5 (Parallel Story)

Want to hear more about this topic? Click here to see this month’s content!

Links Mentioned

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– The SLP Now One-Page Literacy-Based Therapy Unit Planner
– SLP Now Membership
– EdPuzzle
– Spring Is Here by Will Hillenbrand
– Connell, P. J. (1982). On training language rules. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 13, 231-240.

Other Mentions

– Grammar Bootcamp (Included in the SLP Now Membership Academy): This course will help you identify relevant grammar targets and effectively address these targets in therapy. You’ll get a quick overview of the evidence and practical demonstrations of how to implement evidence-based strategies when targeting grammar goals.

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, subscribe today to get the latest episodes sent directly to you! Click here to make your listening experience auto-magic and as easy as possible.

Bonus points if you leave us a review over on iTunes → Those reviews help other SLPs find the podcast, and I love reading your feedback! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews,” “Write a Review,” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is.

Thanks so much!

Transcript

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Speaker 1: Okay, so now let's dive into some therapy plans for early elementary, and before we dive into the book and sample activities, I'm just going to share some ideas for sample goals, and you can find a list of the goals that I mentioned if you want to refer back to it in the show notes, as well as any other resources that we mentioned. But the typical goals that we see for this age group are four specific grammar targets. And this is definitely not a comprehensive list. We just did a brainstorm of all the potential grammar targets and split them up between preschool, early elementary, later elementary and secondary. If you're not hearing any of your goal targets in this list, definitely check out the other episodes.
But we're talking about irregular and regular plural nouns, as well as irregular and regular past tense verbs. And the book that we're targeting in this unit is Spring is Here, and it's a very cute story about a hibernating bear who happens to live with a mole, and the mole tries all sorts of things to wake up the bear, and he finally finds the perfect solution to wake up the bear. It's got really great graphics, lots of great actions in here. It's great for targeting those verbs. There's a number of regular and irregular verbs as well as a bunch of narrow targets as well.
Let's dive into the actual therapy plan. Again, just to recap, we're using the text, Spring is Here, and we're targeting plural nouns and past tense verbs. And again, we're using the framework, the literacy-based therapy framework developed by Dr. Ukrainetz, and the first step is pre-story knowledge activation. I always like to start with a book walk. We look at the front and the back cover of the book. We flip through some of the pages and we talk about what we see, and this is a really great way for me to see how much the students know about the topics. What are they telling me? What are they pointing out? Are they having any naming errors or is it clear that they're missing a lot of context? And then if that's the case, I like to dive into a virtual field trip.
An example of something we could do for this story, because it's about hibernation, if they're just really confused about, "Why is the bear sleeping and why won't he wake up?" and they think that maybe he just stayed up too late and they don't understand hibernation and how all of that works, it might be a very difficult story for them to really participate in. I might go to Edpuzzle and pull a video that explains why bears hibernate or just giving more details about bears, like a video about bears or a video about moles, and just to give them a little bit more context, and there isn't a hard and fast rule for what type of field trip we want to use. It just really depends on where the students demonstrate a need.
But if the students demonstrate adequate knowledge, then I might just skip that field trip and dive into the graphic organizer. This is a really great way to target a variety of skills. We're primarily focusing on grammar here today. And I know that if you want a more general overview of all of these steps, definitely go ahead and check out last month's episodes. But if we are targeting grammar, in the story grammar activity, I would just take a blank story grammar organizer and I would have the students fill it in and just after doing the book walk, we would make an educated guess about who the characters are and the cover makes that pretty clear. There's a bear and a mole on the cover, so those are our characters.
We can write in the graphic organizer. We can just do bear and mole. If we're doing teletherapy, we could take a screenshot and put the screenshot of the bear and the mole in the organizer as well, and then we would then fill in the rest of the organizers. We would make a guess about what the setting is, like when and where does the story happen? What's the problem? How does the character feel? What's the plan? And we would just move through the graphic organizer and fill that in. It's a really great inferencing activity, but it's also a great opportunity to model and recast our grammar targets.
When we're looking at the grammar research literature, one consistent thing that I found is that we want to provide students with ... We want to expose them to the target structure before we expect them to produce it. Throughout all of the pre-story knowledge activities, whether we're doing the book walk, we're doing a virtual field trip, we're filling in the organizer, these are all language activities that the students should all be producing language and then we're producing language too, so we can provide models or highlight the features naturally in conversation.
If a student is working on past tense verbs, if we use the past tense verb, we can just emphasize it a little bit and provide that model, or we can recast or we can correct what the child says. If we're talking about what happened in the story, and then, "He sleep," we could say, "Yeah, he was sleeping," and then modify that or correct what they said to work on that target structure. And we can also modify the modality, so if the student has a goal to produce questions, we can take a statement and turn it into a question. And then that's another way to recast.
Like I said, this is a pre-story knowledge activation. It might sound like a lot of fluff, but we can be really strategic in providing the student plenty of opportunities. And if they've been in speech therapy for a while, they've been working on this specific goal for a long time, we can then expect them to start producing it. It's just an embedded activity where we can have them produce the target structure.
Then for step two, we read the story. This is pretty short and simple. We just read it. We might emphasize if there are past tense verbs. Another strategy that we can use is to kind of change up the story a little bit. For example, if it's written in the present tense and we really want to work on past tense, we can just modify the verbs and give them more exposure there.
Then for step three, story comprehension, we can use our question cards or we can just ask questions. I happen to make question cards to scaffold this skill for students, but then if they're responding to questions, I might recast their responses to produce the correct structure, or the same thing with story grammar. I really like pulling out the story grammar organizer and asking questions about the different story grammar elements, so, "Who was the story about? When did it happen? Where did it happen?" And that'll also elicit language, which we can then recast and correct the student structures or we can use it as an opportunity to have other students or the therapist can model those structures as well.
Then diving into step four, the focus skill activities, we would then introduce the skills. I have different visuals that I like to use to introduce ... Especially at this level, I like to print out or pull up my little noun summary sheet, my verb summary sheet, and just teach them what the noun is and what that looks like, just give a mini lesson explaining what it is. And if you want more detail on this, I have a grammar course in the SLP Now Academy that dives into more detail and give some examples of these mini lessons, but that's one thing that we like to do.
And then the next step would be to dive into some structured practice. And there's one evidence-based strategy that is particularly helpful for these types of structures. Modeling combined with production is helpful and that's something that we've been doing, but results in limited generalization. I think it's an important precursor, at least depends based on what I've read in the literature and what I've seen, but it's not going to get us to generalization and having students produce these targets.
However, imitating contrasting sentences is a great drill-based activity that can give us a lot of bang for our buck. And I'm just going to give a super quick overview, but if you want more detail on this approach, there's an article by Connell, which was published in 1982, that includes a whole step-by-step training procedure, so you can check out that article. I also detail it a little bit in that grammar course that I mentioned that's in the SLP Now Academy if you just want layman's terms, quick access to the training procedure, but the Connell article does a really great job of breaking it down.
But for example, if we're working on past tense verbs, I would give the student two pictures, one of a student, a boy or a character who is eating and then one that's finished eating, and you can do this in the context of the book. There's a lot of actions and we can have the before and after. We can get strategic with how we set this up. But for the example that I gave with the boy who's eating and finished eating, you can say, "He is eating," and, "He ate," and then the Connell article walks through how to structure this and progressing from having the student imitate the pairs of sentences and increasing their independence with that. And it's very structured, very step-by-step, and that's a great way to move them towards embedded practice, which we want ... like I said, we want to do that as quickly as possible.
With the embedded practice, we can do that in the focus skill activity in step four of the framework. Inevitably, we have other students in the group who are working on different types of goals. This is anything language-based. Whether we're having students define vocabulary words or retell the story or whatever it may be, that all involves language and any language activity related to the book requires students to produce utterances that include grammatical concepts. If we're having students do a describing activity, we can just structure it in a way that elicits their target structure. That's what we've got there.
And then for step five, we dive into the parallel story, which is where we have the student create a story related to the story that we read. For Spring is Here, we might do a story about another animal that hibernates and create a story about that or we might ... Yeah, so that would be an example, just picking a story about a different animal that hibernates and putting that together, or they can make an alternate story if the bear didn't wake up, because if the mole was trying to wake up the bear in January, that might not work out so well.
That's what we've got for the parallel story, and I would again use the story grammar organizer, have students create sentences using their target structures, and we can structure the story again in a way that elicits their target structures. If we want them to work on past tense verbs, we can have them tell the story in the past tense. If we want them to work on auxiliary verbs, we can tell it in the present tense. If we want them to use irregular plural nouns, we can pick characters that require the use of those irregular plural nouns, whether it's characters or items in the story.
And so we can be very strategic with how we put that together and we can really create a very fun, engaging, effective unit with just very few materials. We have the book, we have some visuals and maybe some question cards, and then the parallel story. We provide some templates in the SLP Now membership to help students structure this and we also provide the story grammar organizer, but it's absolutely not necessary. A lot of these things can be done with very minimal materials. So yeah, that's what we've got for our early language unit for Spring is Here with a focus on those grammar goals.

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#074: Targeting Grammar Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Preschool

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The goal of last month’s learning series about literacy-based therapy plans was to provide a general overview of Dr. Ukrainetz’s 5-step framework so that we can continue to build on those strategies in super specific, tactical, and research-based ways.

This month we build on our 5 step framework as Marisha shares therapy plans for a group of preK students. After introducing the group, Marisha breaks down her planning process and shares practical and engaging therapy activities to target grammar goals.

Let’s start by diving into preschool therapy plans!

With our youngest kiddos, it can be tough to find that sweet spot for targeting grammar goals — we want to make sure we’re giving the students exposure, without turning the session into pure drill activities. Luckily, that’s what we’re going to talk about today!

In this episode of the podcast, we’re going to focus on basic MLU goals using the book Just a Duck. It’s such a sweet story with beautiful graphics, and some great opportunities to target a variety of goals.

🐥Ready to start planning? Let’s get quackin’ 🐥

Here’s what we discussed:

[3:30] Therapy Ideas for Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)
[7:00] Therapy Ideas for Step 2 (Reading)
[8:30] Therapy Ideas for Step 3 (Post Story Comprehension)
[12:00] Therapy Ideas for Step 4 (Skill Practice)
[16:30] Therapy Ideas for Step 5 (Parallel Story)

Want to hear more about this topic? Click here to see this month’s content!

Links Mentioned

Add links (set to open in new tab)
– The SLP Now One-Page Literacy-Based Therapy Unit Planner
– SLP Now Membership
– EdPuzzle
– Just a Duck by Carin Bramsen

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Speaker 1: Let's dive into some preschool therapy plans. So the first thing that we want to talk about is just the types of goals that we'll be targeting in this unit. So like I said, we're really focusing on grammar just so we can get super specific, super tactical and talk a little bit about the research based strategies that we can implement versus the approach that we took last month, which was very general. Do check out the show notes for this episode for specific types of goals. But the things that we'll be focusing on are basic MLU goals. So for this age group, some of the most common goals that we see are two to four MLU, and then obviously beyond that too, depending on the student's level. And then also some specific grammar targets potentially, like subject pronouns, possessive pronouns, helping verbs. And this definitely is not a comprehensive list, but hopefully that'll give us a little bit of, just that it'll help us get a little bit more specific as we're talking about these strategies.
And the book that we're using this month is Just a Duck?, and it's a story about two characters, Duck and Cat. And Duck tells Cat that he's a cat. So the duck thinks that he's a cat. And Cat points out that the duck does not look like him. And this is a great opportunity to incorporate some vocabulary targets as well, because for example, they talk about the fact that the duck doesn't have ears and the cat does. And so it's a way to incorporate some of those body parts and they also incorporate a number of actions, because Duck tries to do a bunch of cat things like climbing trees, running at leaves, but he obviously has trouble because they are different. And at the end of the story, the duck realizes that he is a duck. And so it's a really sweet story. It's got beautiful graphics and it has some really nice targets for a variety of goals.
So without further ado, let's dive into the actual plan. So, like I said, we're focusing on Just a Duck?, focusing on the goals of the two to four MLU pronouns, helping verbs, all of that good stuff. And we're using the literacy-based therapy framework from Dr. Ukrainetz. And then I'm also going to be referencing a number of research articles that focus on grammar intervention strategies. So we're going to be merging a bunch of different research and trying to make it as practical as possible. So in just the general framework, the first step for literacy-based therapy is pre-story knowledge activation. So this is where we are priming the pump, so to speak, and helping our students build the background knowledge that they need to be able to really understand the story and really apply all of their skills, because if they don't understand what's happening in the story, they are definitely going to have a hard time producing their target structures and can making progress towards any of their other goals.
So the first thing that I like to do is just to take a book walk. So we'll look at the front and back covers. We'll look at some of the pictures and this helps me get an idea of how much the students know about the topic and just about the story in general, like can they identify the animals? Do they know that vocabulary? And if they can do that, do they know anything about these animals? Do they know anything about the farm or what a farm is, what it looks like, what we can find there. And so doing the book walk gives me a really good idea of where students are. And if they are identifying the animals and clearly understand what a farm is, they live on a farm so they know all of these things, then we're good to go and just start reading the story.
But more often than not, our students struggle with this activity. A lot of times it's pretty quiet and they might be mislabeling things or whatever that might look like. So then if that's the case, I like to dive into a virtual field trip. So I love using Edpuzzle and I pull videos to kind of fill in the gaps that the students demonstrate. So if they have difficulty with the farm animal vocabulary, we might watch a video about farm animals or about a farm. And I just use my clinical judgment to decide which type of video would be the most helpful and which one will get the students the knowledge that they need to really participate in this story.
And then throughout this whole activity, I am still using evidence-based strategies. It's not just a fluffy activity. The whole time, I'm being very strategic and I'm modeling the target structures. So if I want my students to use two to four MLU, I'm modeling that for them. If they produce an utterance, I might recast it. Like if they say, "Duck," and I want them to produce two word phrases, I would say "Yellow duck," and then recast that to help build that grammar. And the research also shows that we want to give students multiple exposures to a target, a grammatical structure before we have them produce it. So this is a really great opportunity to prime the pump for those grammatical structures, give them lots of exposure. And I really like, if possible, I encourage my parents and my teachers, well the students' parents and teachers, to implement this in the classroom as well, because if they're on board as well, like I typically present this at an IEP meeting, it's a really great strategy and it just makes grammar intervention go that much more smoothly.
And then onto number two. We focus in on, we actually read this story. So the strategies here are the same, we're continuing to model and contrast. And then we also use strategies to maintain student engagement. This is a pretty simple activity, it typically just takes a couple of minutes. We read through the story and I just want to make sure that the students stay engaged, especially with preschoolers, I might give them, if we're in person, it's not uncommon for me to give them a sit spot, somewhere where it's their job to stay there. I might have behavioral reinforcers, like catching the students being good. I'll give the students who are sitting a token to reinforce because it's hard for a preschooler to sit and listen.
And I keep it as short and sweet as possible. Make it really easy for them to sit and attend to the story. I might incorporate some little puppets or something to act it out as well. But that's on a as needed basis. I just keep it simple. That's the main strategy there and just get through the story and make sure the students are engaged. And then if I can model or highlight a feature that we're targeting, then that is awesome too.
Then onto step three. We're they're doing some story comprehension. So again, it depends on where the students are. So I'm going to present two different scenarios. So if this is a newer structure, they haven't had a lot of practice, they're not producing it independently just yet, then I will keep it pretty simple. So I really like using a set of question cards that I created, and they're very simple. They're in the farm animals early language unit, but it includes question cards.
And there's a set of who questions, a set of what questions. And there's also when and where. But if the students are working on very early language goals, I'd probably stick with who and what. But I might pick different questions depending on the student's target. So if they're working on prepositions for example, or whatever their MLU goal is, or if they have a specific structure, I might select a different question type, or I might mix in a bunch of question types just depending on the inventory of goals in the group. But I like this activity because it can be modified. So if the students aren't quite at the level, they're just being introduced to the target, we're still in model recast land, then I would ask them the question. And the cool thing with these question cards is that they have three multiple choice options.
So for example, the first question is, who saved the cat? And then it has the answer choices, dog, cat, duck with the pictures associated with it. So I can ask the student that question and give them the answer choices. They can respond verbally, or they can point to the answer depending on their level. And then I could model or recast that appropriate structure. So if we're working on adjective, noun kind of structure, like the two MLU, if the student responds "Duck," I can say, "Yeah, yellow deck." And then that would be a way of expanding their production and modeling where we want to go. And if they're working on a specific grammatical structure, that same principle would apply. But if the student said, "What is the duck doing?" And if he said "He jumping," then I could say "He is jumping."
So that would be an example of how we can target that grammar goal without it being a pure drill activity. We're just giving the student exposure. But if they've been introduced to this target and they're starting, like if I'm giving these models and recasts, and they are repeating them back to me, that's often an indicator that they're ready for that embedded practice. And then I also just check in, and this is purely clinical judgment, there's not a hard and fast rule. But if you've given the student a number of exposures, you sometimes just get that feeling like, okay, based on the student's level, they should be ready to start producing it now. So even if they're not doing it independently, we can use our clinical judgment to decide when we expect them to start producing that structure.
Which brings us to step four of the literacy-based therapy framework, where we focus on the focused skill activities. I also want to say that this is not linear. So it might make the most sense to introduce the skill at the very beginning of the unit. Again, we use our clinical judgment to decide which order makes the most sense. There are no hard and fast rules. This framework is simply meant to help us organize our thinking so that we can use our clinical judgment to decide how we switch things up. It just makes it a little bit easier to navigate. So one of the strategies that we can use is just to introduce the skill. When I am modeling and recasting, especially for MLU goals, I really like using a sentence pack. I feel like that makes it very easy. And a lot of times, a lot of language for these students won't be helpful. So if I had a whole visual explaining what action is, that wouldn't be helpful for these students.
I like to keep it simple. I create a sentence pack and it has tabs. It's like a little laminated book with tabs for all the different parts of speech. And then it also has accompanying sentence strips for all of the different types of phrases. And it has a little cheat sheet that shows what's expected at which age, and then they're all leveled. So it's really easy to put together appropriate targets. And each tab has a bunch of icons that you can move and put onto the sentence strip. So if the students need more support, as I'm modeling or recasting, I'll just quickly put together the sentence strips and give them a visual support as well. So instead of just saying yellow duck, I would put together that sentence strip and I would pull the color from the adjective page and then I would pull the noun, like duck, from the noun page. And then we would just be good to go.
And the sentence pack doesn't have all of the words that we might target. So if it doesn't have some of the specific vocabulary that we're working on, a lot of times, those vocabulary cards are included in the unit as well. And if you don't have access to this specific sentence pack or the icons that I'm talking about, it's really easy to just, you can draw your own pictures and make your own sentence strip on a piece of paper. But just having that visual support can be really helpful, especially if students aren't starting to produce things on their own and they're really struggling. So that's something that I like to do with those early MLU goals. And next time, I'll talk a little bit more about, because I know we have some pronoun and verb goals listed here.
And if you want more strategies for that, tune in next week to our picture book unit for early elementary students, because I'll talk more about the evidence-based strategies there. I just want to make sure we stick to our time. And then some other options, if the students are producing their targets, especially with preschoolers, I like doing a lot of play-based activities. So we might just pick out, we might play with a farm and create some utterances around the animals in the farm. And that's a really great opportunity to do, prepositions and target the vocabulary. So it's a great way to incorporate multiple goals. We have a cheat sheet with a bunch of play-based therapy ideas in our early language. And it's all leveled out. It has lots of different ideas on how to play with different farm and animal toys and different songs and just a bunch of fun ideas to work on these goals with the students in a fun and engaging way.
And then we can wrap up the unit with a parallel story. So if it's appropriate for the students, I might use the story grammar organizer, but sometimes it's just a little bit too much and not quite at their level. So if that's the case, we have a simple book for this unit where it incorporates core vocabulary and much shorter utterances. And I think that might be a better way, especially for really focusing in on early MLU goals. That might be a little bit more functional activity and a little bit more accessible for our students. And then this way, if they're not producing it yet, it's a great way to model it. And if they are producing it, they can select the icons and still have some support as they put together the story. So this is just a simple interactive book that the students get to build, and it includes different icons that they can add to their story. And then they can take their lovely book home for some really great practice.
So that wraps up our first literacy-based therapy unit, focusing in on grammar targets for the book, Just a Duck?, which is great for our preschoolers. And just one other thing that I wanted to point out. A really great study by Fey, Cleave and Long published in 1997, describes how they did grammar intervention in a preschool classroom. So if you're looking for more ideas, they did a really nice job of structuring, they selected their grammar targets and cycled through one target a week and they used the strategies that we'll dive into next time, like contrast of imitation and focused stimulation. So definitely tune in to hear more about that. But they describe how they use this in a variety of activities, especially play-based activities. And then just through other common pre-school activities, like snack and just all of the routine based activities. So definitely check that out. I'll add a link in the show notes for details there. And that's a wrap. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next week when we talk about early elementary plans.

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