Benefits of 'Assisting Students with Language Delays in the Classroom'

This language programme is designed for teachers to use within the classroom, either with the whole class or with small groups, which can be integrated into the class programme. It caters to the needs of students with a wide range of language abilities, from those with very limited language skills, to the students who find initiating or participating in conversation a challenge. It was created as a result of years spent working with students in the classroom and working closely with their teachers.

The use of Language Charts make it easy to see exactly what skills are required for the development of functional language and the step by step structure of the programme guides teachers to the skill areas appropriate to the language needs of their particular students.

The programme focuses on the three areas of language development, i.e:

·    ‘The Preverbal Skills of Language’, which provide the foundation for the development of language and are essential in order for a student to acquire functional language. These include skills such as; Attending and anticipating; Learning to look and listen; Copying actions and sounds; Waiting and taking turns.

·    ‘The Building Bricks of Language’ are the words and concepts necessary for the development of a student’s practical vocabulary, allowing them to follow instructions, respond to questions and develop their communication skills.

For example; nouns, verbs, prepositions, negatives, sequencing skills.

·    ‘The Skills of Conversation’ are required in order to provide the student with the ability to initiate and maintain an interactive conversation. These are skills such as, Waiting, listening to others and recalling information given; Speaking clearly; Asking and answering conversational questions.

Photo by Ladyheart at Morguefile.com

           

The programme provides teachers with information as to;

·    What skills are important in order to assist a student’s language development.

·    Why these skills are important, providing clear explanations of the significance of each skill and key points to remember when teaching that skill.

·    How to teach these skills, providing 180 practical activities and fun exercises to assist the development of each skill. These exercises and activities can easily be incorporated into the regular class routine and programme.

The activities in all three areas are purposely ‘Low Tech’ so the majority of resources should be readily available within most classrooms or schools. 

- Francesca Bierens

Speechmark author of Assisting Students with Language Delays in the Classroom

Useful communication guidance for pupils with special needs

Communicate with Me was written in response to a need to improve how the services for people with learning disabilities communicate with, and involve, the people they support.  It was written as a resource to support work practice and a quality assurance tool to support services to integrate these practices into service culture.  Communication is integral to delivering a quality service for people with a learning disability and effective communication enhances the quality of that support.

Communicate with Me is a resource that provides guidance to anyone who supports someone with a learning disability, whether they are a paid practitioner (employed by a service or directly by an individual), a family member, an advocate or another member of that person’s community. 

Communicate with Me is a learning resource designed to further the abilities of all communication partners to both communicate more effectively with people with a learning disability and to support people in a way which enables them to become more involved in their own lives. 

Communicate with Me is designed to support the whole service to consider and develop both how it communicates with, and involves, people with a learning disability in a way which enables change to become embedded in the culture and shared values of that service.

The above is an extract from the book ‘Communicate with Me – A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability’.

You can purchase 'Communicate with Me A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability’ book with companion online resource and quality assurance frameworks from Speechmark www.speechmark.net , Amazon and all good book retailers.

You can also join the:

•Communicate with Me Communication Partner Development Scheme

•Communicate with Me Internal Quality Assurance Scheme  

 visit www.communicatewithme.com

Main text cited from: 

© Martin Goodwin, Jennie Miller, Cath Edwards (2015) abridged section from ‘Communicate with Me – A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability. Speechmark Publishing

Preparation is all important

The Pre-verbal Skills of Language

Whether we are baking a cake or building a house, we all know that good preparation is critical to the desired outcome of the project. For a cake to be delicious, the ingredients need to be measured correctly and strong, solid foundations are essential to ensure the stability of a house.

 

The same applies to language development. For a child to develop language that is functional and communicative, they firstly need to acquire the pre-verbal skills, the skills that provide the foundations on which language is built. 

It is easy to assume that if a child is able to speak, they have already acquired the pre-verbal skills but this is not necessarily the case. A child can often use words but not use these words to communicate effectively with others. Being aware of the pre-verbal skills and assisting their development is very important for the development of a child’s language. This can be done by;

• Encouraging the child to look at you or in your direction, even briefly, when they speak to you or want to show you something.
• Gradually developing the child’s ability to focus and concentrate on a range of activities; those he enjoys as well as activities chosen by other people, such as a parent or teacher.
• Drawing the child’s attention to objects around them and showing them how to look at things both inside and outside, rather then just looking at objects directly in front of them.
• Teaching the child to listen to the sounds in their environment such as planes, printers, dogs barking.
• Encouraging the child to copy actions and sounds made which is done most effectively through play and action songs.
• Assisting the child to wait and take turns, which is a skill that can be taught at the playground or at home, waiting for a favourite activity or at school or pre-school during group activities with other children.
• Developing the child’s awareness and control of their face and mouth muscles by playing games in front of the mirror, encouraging them to copy different facial expressions and tongue and lip movements.

Have fun with these activities and remember it is always better to spend a short amount of time doing these activities regularly rather than hours every now and again.

********************

Francesca Bierens Speechmark author of Assisting Students with Language Delays in the Classroom

Tell a Story, to Get a Story…

Having just completed a fun, productive and interactive presentation on storytelling at a RCSLT Clinical Excellence Network workshop for children with language impairments, I asked the audience to reflect on all the information they had received at the workshop, and identify 3 changes or actions that they would put in place at work the next day.

One speech and language therapist said that she would tell her client a story. I was intrigued by that and asked her to say a little more about that. She continued, that she was often asking the children with whom she works to tell her stories, and whilst she would read stories from a book, she never simply told them a story during her storytelling sessions.

What an interesting observation and a great change to commit to making - and one that can so easily be put into practice. At the workshop, I had shared strategies to facilitate the elicitation of storytelling in children and young people with language and communication difficulties, and one strategy that I have found really effective is simply to take my turn first and share a story with the group, whether it be a personal story about something I have done over the weekend, or a wonderfully wacky and obviously fictional story about a princess, dragon or fire-eater! This gives the students the time to get comfortable, to settle down in the session and enjoy the delights of storytelling, whilst at the same time, also, getting to know a little more about me, their therapist.

It provides the children with practice in a range of essential skills related to storytelling, including listening, using appropriate body language and facial expression to show interest, or, when needed, even confusion, as well as asking focused and appropriate questions. It also, of course, gives me the valuable opportunity to model storytelling and provide them with a helpful template on which to base their stories, if required. Of course my story will have a definite beginning, middle and end, on which the children can map their stories.

Have a go and see for yourself, if you have a group of children reticent at telling stories, try and start by telling stories yourself. Involve the children in different ways, perhaps they can clap loudly or roar every time they hear you mention the monster; or they can count the number of characters in your story. Make your story exciting, fun and interesting, use props like swords and other attention-grabbing objects, and dress up like the characters in your story. Be the wizard, the witch or the dragon. And by the time you are at the end of the story, you may very well found that you are no longer the sole storyteller, but one part of a very satisfied collaborative enterprise.

Go on, try it, tell a story, or even two, to get a story… 

Victoria Joffe, Professor, Enhancement of Child and Adolescent Language and Learning

School of Health Sciences, City University London

Speechmark author of: Vocabulary Enrichment Programme, Narrative Intervention Programme, Favourite Idioms and More Favourite Idioms

Look how well they are getting along; but it’s just a box of Lego®!

We all have a building story; the grand design of creating our own miniature house or the momentary glow of success on discovering the extra set of wheels which completes our innovative vehicle design. Sometimes though, the magic of that box of bricks can have the potential for so much more.

Lego® therapy has been around for a while now. Daniel LeGoff and later Dr Gina Gómez de la Cuesta and Simon Baron-Cohen from the Autism Research Centre, Cambridge,  have shown that within a more structured environment, the use of building blocks and sets can be utilised to improve the social and communication skills of young people with Autism. Recently more and more educational, health and social care settings are realising the benefits of this great programme. Just this week, there’s been news of a special school in Blackpool setting up an after school club.

Using it in a number of settings over the years has been interesting and inspiring. Whether as a one-to-one session to teach and build confidence in social communication, or as a whole class tool to encourage speaking and listening in a literacy lesson, this structured use of model building has had the ability to unlock potential in many young people who prefer a more logical approach to collaborative play.

For the ‘logical thinker’, many aspects of social interaction and communication are strange. ‘To hug or not to hug……..’ This is actually the question. Take a moment to consider what the ‘rules’ are around hugging. Do we hug everyone we know? Do we hug all our friends? Do we sometimes hug in certain places but not others? This single area of socially acceptable behaviour presents one with the prospect of crossing a social minefield. It is just one area of social etiquette which, as a ‘social thinker’ we (usually) successfully navigate, managing to avoid any major explosions. The logical ones amongst us, however, find themselves blundering wildly through; desperately attempting to avoid mistimed contact, awkward polite back pats and the painful minutes entangled in the unanticipated, uninvited clutches of a well-meaning associate.

The activities within the book ‘Building Blocks for Communication’ have been developed with the logical thinker in mind, although all thinking types will no doubt benefit. They have been developed and tried and tested through close work in a number of settings with some incredible people. Used in mainstream classes, Nurture Groups, by Family Support Practitioners and parents at home, and also, with careful planning, in social communication intervention groups, these activities have been designed to be adaptable for many ages and abilities.

The training courses running alongside the publication often produce many more ideas for new and innovative activities. So, get your logical thinking caps on, get out that box of bricks and start presenting abstract concepts in a more structured way! 

Amy Eleftheriades, Alpha Inclusion.
Speechmark author of ‘Building Blocks for Communication’