Summer Language & Literacy Books
Summer is a great time to introduce new books into speech-language therapy sessions, read aloud time at home, or extended school year classes for children with special needs. I enjoy using a variety of seasonal books during early intervention evaluations and speech-language therapy sessions. There are several authors that are my favorite to use to elicit and build growth of children’s receptive and expressive language skills.
Children tend to gravitate towards books with colorful pictures and characters. They are interested in looking at these types of books and will often attend during shared book reading. There are some children who have a limited attention span that will not sit during sharing book reading, but it’s always good to have great summer books available that may spark their interest. Here are few recommendations by authors and illustrators:
Bill Martin Jr & John Archambault– Authors, Lois Ehlert-Illustrator
Chicka Chicka ABC (20th Anniversary edition of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom)
This is a popular and engaging book for toddlers, preschoolers, and early elementary school aged children. The repetitive lines are great for children to develop early literacy skills while learning about the alphabet. This book is great for young kids to practice naming basic nouns (e.g. tree, coconut), adjectives (e.g. colors), spatial concepts (e.g. top, up, down). Have fun with this book by pairing the repetitive lines with clapping or other body movements. Model for children and have them imitate language and body movements. You’ll see how quickly many will learn to say some of the phrases in the book! Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!
Ten Little Caterpillars
This simple story book is great for kids who love bugs! During an interactive read aloud, a speech language pathologist, teacher, or parent can stop along the way and have children comment about what they see on the page. They can name and describe the objects such as flowers, caterpillar, jar, spider, leaves, stem, melon, bird, dragonfly, and butterfly. You may emphasize sequencing words such as first, second, third and verbs such as crawled, wriggled, and climbed. Make sure that you pause to see what children notice. It’s always important to give them time to comment. This book has one simple sentence for each illustrated page, yet provides multiple opportunities for an adult to facilitate children identifying and naming objects. Give children time to comment and build language. At the end of the story, they can practice counting, naming the type of caterpillar, and naming the type of type of butterfly or moth. A great extension activity is going on a nature hunt to see how many caterpillars or butterflies they can see outside in 30 minutes! Kids learn through experience!
Jonathan London– Author, Frank Remkiewicz- Illustrator
Froggy Learns to Swim
This is a fun story about Froggy, a little frog, who is nervous at first about learning to swim. His parents take him to the local pond and before you know it he masters what he was born to do! After all, frogs love hopping around on lily pads in the water, floating, and swimming. Young preschoolers and early elementary school age children like seeing the adventures of this character, Froggy. Jonathan London’s writing style follows a similar beginning in his books with Froggy waking up and bouncing out of bed ready for his new adventure! This one is sure to elicit great communication and language skills too!
Froggy Goes to Grandma’s
Many children have nice memories of visiting their grandma and so does Froggy! In this story, his grandmother has special activities planned for his trip. He goes with his parents and sister, Polly in a taxi and then flies on an airplane to get to his grandma’s house. Children will get to see, listen, and/or hear about Froggy going to a museum, baseball game, amusement park, and bowling alley. Kids will learn about his best day of all that was actually at home with his special grandma. Hmm…I wonder what they did. It involves food! Yum! This book is perfect for preschool and early elementary school aged children. Children can practice:
listening comprehension
story retell
sequencing
tier 1 vocabulary
basic concepts
oral language
compare/contrast
oral reading
reading comprehension
The speech-language pathologist, teacher, or parent can extend the interactive read aloud of the Jonathan London books by having children discuss a visit to their grandparents’ home or time at the pool. Everyday routines and special activities are a natural way to increase language & literacy skills.
Two of my other favorite children’s book authors are James Dean who writes Pete the Cat books and Chris Van Dusen who writes about Mr. Magee and other stories. They are also the talented illustrators of their books. Check out these fun books for use in summer speech/language therapy sessions!
Pete the Cat Scuba Cat by James Dean
Pete the Cat Pete at the Beach by James Dean
A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee by Chris Van Dusen
Thanks for reading the blog today. Stay connected to the website for updates! Check out this link for other summer children’s book recommendations. https://www.buildingsuccessfullives.com/tell-me-about-summer-stories/
Tamara Anderson, M.S., Ed.S., CCC-SLP
Speech Language Pathologist
Education Specialist
Spring Language & Literacy Books & Toys
There are many spring themed books and toys that may be used as therapeutic tools in speech-language therapy sessions with children. Speech-language pathologists may select the suggested resources recommended below in weekly therapy sessions. I prefer to have a variety of fiction books, toys, and activities ready to use. I often provide children a choice of 2-3 books, and have them select the one that they would like to hear read aloud. This helps keep preschool or elementary school aged children engaged when they have an active role in selecting the book.
Here are some suggested spring themed books:
Quiet Bunny’s Many Colors by Lisa McCue
This book has vibrant illustrations and a good message that teaches children that everyone is unique and that they should embrace their own individuality. The story is about a little bunny who loves spring and goes on an adventure discovering all the different colors of spring in the forest. He is amazed about all the various colors from the yellow dandelions, green lily pads, blueberries, and red tulips in the forest. Along his forest adventures, he wishes he could be more colorful until he meets a wise owl that reminds him that he is already special!
Therapy Ideas: Labeling (nouns, verbs, adjectives), Descriptions, Adjectives, Sequencing, Story Retell, Problem/Solution, Character Traits, Listening Comprehension
Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson
Many children enjoy this series of books. Bear awakens in the spring from his long winter sleep and he is hungry. First he nibbles on fresh blades of grass, but that doesn’t satisfy his appetite. His forest friends help him find more spring snacks. He enjoys the berries, clovers, fresh fish from the pond, and honey cakes. His friends even plan a spring party in his cave. There’s just one problem that needs solving for him to enjoy the party with his friends. What will they do?
Therapy Ideas: Sequencing, Story Retell, Problem/Solution, Character Traits, Listening Comprehension
Hooray for Birds by Lucy Cousins
This is an engaging and practical book for early language learners. Children are invited to imagine that they are birds. They see many species of birds busy in their natural habitats from morning time until night. They see a rooster, woodpecker, swan, parrot, starling, flamingo, peacock, flamingo, rooster, red robin, hummingbird, penguin, ostrich, peacock, and a night owl! Children will be focused on the colorful illustrations skillfully done by Lucy Cousins.
Therapy Ideas: Following Directions, Label nouns and verbs, Descriptions, Similarities, Differences, Build simple sentences
In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming
This is an ideal book for early language learners who are learning basic vocabulary and how to communicate verbally and/or with AAC. This book also sparks children to imagine walking in the grass like the boy on the front cover. What are some living things that they might discover during the day? They will see caterpillars, hummingbirds, bees, birds, ants, snakes, moles, beetles, frogs, beetles, bunnies, fireflies, and even bats! Speech-language pathologists can pause during an interactive read aloud and have kids name the insects, birds, or animals. They can repeat simple sentences such as “I see the _________” , “I like the ____________” or “I don’t like the _____________.”
Therapy Ideas: Label nouns and verbs, Descriptions, Rhyming, Build simple sentences, Sequencing
Here are some suggested toys to use after an interactive read aloud and during follow up speech/language therapy sessions to build communication and language skills.
Melissa & Doug Insect Puzzle
Melissa & Doug Fishing Game
Lucky Ducks Game
Jumping Jack Game
These books and games may be used effectively in speech/language therapy to build skills in children with speech/language impairment, autism, learning disability, and/or intellectual impairment.
Guess What? There is a Spring Language & Literacy Contest today on Instagram. You may just have a chance to win one of these items or another great spring themed book or activity depicted in the IG contest photo.
These are a few other effective books with a spring theme that you may check out at your local library or purchase:
Turkey’s Eggcellent Easter by Wendi Silvano
*You may win this book and literacy companion in the IG contest!
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick by Lucille Colandro
Rain Drop Plop! by Wendy Lewison
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Pete the Cat and the Cool Caterpillar by James Dean
Spring for Sophie by Yael Werber
Pete the Cat: Big Easter Adventure by James Dean
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Frog by Lucille Colandro
Stay Connected to @buildingsuccessfullives on Instagram for contest details.
Interactive Read-Aloud in Speech-Language Therapy
It is common practice for speech-language pathologists to use books in therapy to build articulation, language comprehension, and oral language skills. It is important to select engaging books that will maintain a child’s interest. It is even more important that SLPs facilitate an interactive read aloud in speech-language therapy. This is different that just simply reading aloud a story to your students or clients. Instead, it involves purposeful selection of before, during, and after literacy strategies and activities.
Before reading a book, the speech-language pathologist should draw children’s attention to the cover of the book. Have them think about the title, the picture on the cover, and make predictions about what the story may be about. You may ask them if they have heard the story before and for them to share one fact about the story. The speech-language pathologist may also briefly review the key story elements vocabulary (e.g. introduction, setting, character traits, problem, solution) or story grammar marker vocabulary (e.g. character, setting, initiating event/kick off, internal response, plan) prior to reading the story. This will help children have an idea about what they can visualize as they listen to the story.
During the interactive read aloud, it is important that the speech-language pathologist pause at key points in the story to model “think alouds” and pose questions about what the characters are thinking, why they made a particular decision or what may happen next. The SLP may also have children talk to each other briefly about what happened in the story. Children also need to learn vocabulary in context of the story as well. The speech-language pathologist should make sure that she or he pauses when there are tier 2 vocabulary words and model for the students how to use clues from the sentences to predict or make an educated guess about the meaning. SLPs may show them visuals from book companions to emphasize key characters and parts of the story. For early language learners, the SLP can emphasize key tier 1 words and have children name the items in the pictures. The SLP can model building simple sentences about the pictures. Young children can practice saying simple sentences during the interactive read aloud when prompted to do so by the SLP.
After the interactive read aloud, the speech-language pathologist should select activities based on a child’s speech-language therapy objectives. You may ask them literal and inferential questions, have them practice naming synonyms and antonyms from vocabulary in the story, practice saying words with their speech sounds, complete a sequencing activity with pictures and/or text, verbally retell the story, or write the story events with a graphic organizer.
An interactive read aloud can be a therapeutic language and literacy activity to assist children with visualizing story events, building vocabulary and oral sentences, deepening their understanding of a story, and making connections to the story from their prior knowledge. The speech-language pathologist also provides a verbal model of correct speech articulation for children with articulation disorders. An interactive read aloud is an ideal and purposeful speech-language therapy activity that can be used effectively across numerous themes, during individual sessions, and mixed articulation, language, and speech fluency group sessions too!
Check out my TPT store and click on the literacy based assessment and intervention tab for resources to build children’s skills. When speech language pathologists skillfully and consistently use a variety of children’s literature in therapy, it leads to students’ speech, language, and literacy success! Thanks for reading!
Tamara Anderson
Speech Language Pathologist
Education Specialist
Do you want to read more about an SLP’s role in literacy and shared book reading/dialogic reading? Stay connected to Building Successful Lives so that you don’t miss out! It’s an important strategy to increase language skills in children.
Say What? Listening Comprehension Progress Monitoring
Speech-language pathologists and educators know how important effective listening comprehension is for school and life success. Many children who have difficulty learning academic concepts and underlying language concepts struggle with listening comprehension. Active listening is an essential skill for children at school, home, and during everyday activities in their community. Often times, teachers notice when children are having a hard time listening, remembering details, and understanding what they are taught. The first thing to rule out or confirm is if children with suspected difficulty have hearing loss. After that, it is necessary to determine if children are having difficulty focusing and comprehending what is said, focusing only, or if they are focused but are still not comprehending what is said.
Children who have significant attention difficulties and truly have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may or may not also struggle with listening comprehension on a consistent basis. It will depend on if they have a system in place to manage their ADD/ADHD symptoms. Other children may be easily distracted or zone out in class due to medical needs (e.g. absence seizures) or social/emotional issues. It is important that service providers consider the possible reasons for a child’s behavior and academic performance. Other children may have difficulty with comprehending oral information because they don’t understand the vocabulary or are unable to make meaning of long sentences. Some children may also have difficulty with short term auditory memory and therefore struggle with remembering details during listening tasks.
Speech-language pathologists are frequently asked to consult on cases when children are struggling to follow verbal directions and comprehend verbal information from their teachers. Listening is one of 4 overall components of essential literacy skills for school and life success. The other 3 areas are speaking, reading, and writing abilities. Educators may use this informal assessment to evaluate children in preschool-5th grade. It will provide a quick overview of listening abilities of young children. Then teachers can select targeted intervention (RTI) to teach struggling students. Next they can monitor their progress by repeating relevant portions of the Listening Comprehension Progress Monitoring tool after children receive intervention for several weeks.
Similarly, speech-language pathologists can administer this tool to students already receiving speech-language therapy services. It can be given at the beginning of the school year for SLPs who work in the school system. It may also be given to children receiving private speech-language therapy services prior to receiving intervention in the area of listening comprehension. Use the portions of the Listening Comprehension Progress Monitoring tool that you determine is most appropriate for each student. There are basic 1 step directions, directions with embedded concepts (spatial, qualitative, quantitative, temporal, conditional), 1 sentence level questions, 3 sentence level questions, 5 fiction passages, and 5 non-fiction passages included in this product.
After several speech-language therapy or teacher intervention sessions, read aloud the same sections previously administered in this informal assessment tool. Each part of this tool may be given 3 additional times to monitor children’s progress over an extended period of time. If you prefer, you can administer a different fiction and/or non-fiction passage from this tool to monitor students’ progress after receiving speech-language therapy or Response to Intervention (RTI).
I recommend that you note observations and background information on this tool to help rule out and/or confirm potential related contributing factors to listening comprehension difficulty. Remember to note:
1) Hearing- within normal limits or not within normal limits (failed hearing screening, conductive hearing loss, sensorineural hearing loss)
2) Medical concerns- per parent report/file review (e.g. absence seizures, etc.)
3)Possible short term auditory memory difficulties- due to no response or incorrect responses to verbal instructions
3) Behavioral signs- distracted, appears to day dream, says “what” frequently, blank stare, appears frustrated, presents as lacking confidence, inattentive
You can see a preview of this product and gain direct access to this digital download in my TPT curriculum store.
If an SLP or teacher thinks certain children may have short term auditory memory weakness, they should receive an informal evaluation and RTI in that area. HearBuilder has a web based intervention program for auditory memory that may be beneficial to remediate children’s weak skills. It is also available as an app in the iTunes store. Private practice speech-language pathologists can also target remediating auditory memory difficulties as well.
If you have any questions or concerns about children with listening comprehension difficulties or with this tool, you may leave me a comment below or contact me here.
BUILDING LANGUAGE SKILLS THROUGH MINI LESSONS AND GUIDED INSTRUCTION
Keys to Successful Group Speech-Language Therapy Sessions
Speech-language pathologists who work in the schools have the responsibility of delivering effective group speech language sessions. Each child has various IEP goals and needs while the SLP’s job is to use therapy approaches that will contribute to each student’s progress. That lead me to think about how many teachers use mini lessons and guided instruction to yield students’ academic gains.
Mini lessons are taught by classroom teachers typically at the beginning of a reading or writing workshop. During the 10-15 minute brief lesson, a classroom teacher explains a specific skill or strategy, demonstrates how to use the strategy, and gives students an opportunity to practice the skill. After the mini lesson, the teacher gives instructions for students to participate in literacy centers, independent reading, or other independent assignments. While students are participating in different activities, the teacher speaks with children individually (conferring) or leads a guided reading group for more targeted instruction. Then they have 5-10 minutes at the end of reading workshop to review the skill of the day and for children to share about their reading work and progress.
Many school districts throughout the United States use this teaching and learning method in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms to build literacy skills. Several years ago, I completed a Reading Endorsement certification through Georgia State University. During this reading assessment and intervention training, I learned how literacy scholars such as Lucy Calkins implemented reading workshop and mini lessons as a part of their instruction to improve children’s language and literacy skills. The research shows that students make progress using this explicit instruction and practice.
I think school based speech language pathologists can use aspects of this methodology when providing group speech-language therapy sessions. This may be just what SLPs need to have more successful sessions.
MINI-LESSON +
GUIDED SPEECH/LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION +
CLOSING REVIEW= SUCCESS
By teaching a mini lesson, you focus on the skill that you want to teach, purposefully explain the skill, and provide verbal/visual models. Then you allow your students to practice. It’s important that speech-language pathologists don’t just skip to students’ practice of their IEP goals. The SLP must teach while providing verbal and visual models. I have used mini-lessons with many groups of students with speech-language impairment only as well as those with co-occurring specific learning disability and autism. However, use your clinical judgment to determine the students that are most likely to respond best to structured speech-language intervention that is not play-based. For those non-verbal or minimally verbal students, read this post for those therapy tips.
Here are 5 example mini lessons that you can teach:
1.Using a K-W-L chart to think about non-fiction
2.How can I compare and contrast vocabulary?
3.What are word associations?
4.Using context clues to identify challenging vocabulary
5.What is the difference between main idea & supporting details?
6.Story Elements or Story Grammar- What’s that all about?
Here are the related follow up speech-language activities:
1. Use No Glamour Reading Comprehension book in small group. Have students select a topic of interest and then a passage. Read aloud the passage. Tell them to listen carefully to information and be ready to share 1 new fact that they learned. Model for students how to write their new learning in the L section of the chart. During the mini lesson, the SLP should have guided them through completing the K and W sections about what they already know and what they want to learn.
2. Use LinguiSystems Elementary Photo Cards in small group. Give each student a card that contains two photographs of common objects. They should each get a turn to practice explaining how the words are similar and different. Give them written sentence starters such as “They are similar because they both__________” and “They are different because they _____________.”
3. You can use my Spring Word Associations packet to have students name related vocabulary words. This is a good activity to work on word retrieval and expressive vocabulary. This activity also allows the SLP to pre-teach spring theme vocabulary that can be used in future speech-language activities. I have other seasonal word associations packets in my online curriculum store.
4. Play a fun context clues game such as Context Clues Pirate Treasure by Learning Well Games. In this game, the SLP should read aloud the question card. Then, the students use the context clues strategy to make a prediction about the meaning of the underlined word. This game has multiple choice. If your students don’t need multiple choice, use the context clues cards from Vocabulary Chipper Chat. You may also use the context clues pages from my Non-fiction Bundle for guided practice. This gives them multiple choice. I usually have my students circle or highlight the vocabulary in the passage and I read the sentence while they think about the most logical meaning of the tricky word based on hints in the sentence.
5. Play Super Duper Publications’ What is the Main Idea? Fun Deck activity. Have your students listen for what the short paragraphs are mostly about. This activity provides them with multiple choice responses to help them think about the best answer. I also created main idea response sheets to keep track of the specific card numbers that they completed all year. This way they don’t repeat cards in sessions. Remind students that the details are the facts that are related to the topic or main idea.
6. Use the fiction story that you selected for Story Grammar Marker mini-lesson. Give your students the Story Grammar Marker manipulatives. Each student in the group can express parts of the story elements such as: character, setting, kick off, internal response, plan, actions, direct consequence, and resolution.
*If you think this vocabulary is tricky for your students to recall. You can teach them related vocabulary that the classroom teachers typically use (e.g. beginning/introduction, character, character trait, problem, middle, plot/events, solution, ending/conclusion). I also have a rubric with these story elements that you can use to measure students’ progress of oral story retelling skills.
Another option is to have them practice story elements vocabulary identification using my Guess What? Curriculum Vocabulary game. It’s available in my TPT store too.
Closing Review of Speech-Language Skill/Target
Before students leave the speech language room, make sure that you ask them, “What did you practice today?” or “What did you learn today?” If they can’t answer the question on their own, have them repeat a sentence that summarizes what they practiced. It is important that students understand what they are working on in speech-language therapy. The speech-language pathologist should review the teaching point to emphasize the focus of the session.
What is the evidence to support using mini lessons and guided instruction?
There is a ton of literature in the field of reading to support the use of reading workshop model that incorporates mini lessons and guided reading/explicit instruction.
Guided instruction is also an integral part of therapeutic intervention provided by speech-language pathologists. SLPs use evidence based strategies of verbal modeling, visual supports, prompting, cuing, expanding, recasting, and direct vocabulary instruction to guide students’ understanding and expression of specific speech-language targets. You can read more about these strategies here from my last blog post.
Here is the reference list for further information on this topic:
Atwell, Nancy (2010). The Pleasure Principle. Instructor Magazine. [electronic version] http://www2scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=8132
Atwell, Nancy (2007). The Reading Zone: How to help kids become skilled, passionate, habitual, critical readers. New York: Scholastic Teaching Resources.
Atwell, Nancy (1998). In the middle. New understandings about writing, reading, and learning. New Hampshire: Boynton/Cook.
Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2006). Teaching for comprehending and fluency: Thinking, talking, and writing about reading, K–8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G.S. (1996). Guided reading: Good first teaching for all children. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.
https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/videos/teaching-content/reading-workshop-overview-0/
I know there are days when you may want to skip the mini-lesson, but don’t. It’s critical to your speech-language students’ success. Speech language pathologists do not have the same tasks as teachers to deliver instruction across content areas and academic standards. However, there are principles from a workshop model that may be adapted to therapy sessions while still maintaining a therapeutic focus. Remember…
MINI-LESSON +
GUIDED SPEECH/LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION +
CLOSING REVIEW= SUCCESS
ASHA states in their policy about the Roles and Responsibilities of Speech-Language Pathologists in Schools that “current research supports the interrelationships across the language processes of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. SLPs contribute significantly to the literacy achievement of students with communication disorders, as well as other learners who are at risk for school failure, or those who struggle in school settings. (ASHA, 2010)
Additionally, the April 2017 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools journal has a collection of articles about reading comprehension and the role of the SLP. Read the articles on ASHAWire, where you can access online journals related to the field of speech-language pathology. Previous articles in this journal contain relevant information about the need for explicit and guided instruction to improve literacy skills.
Speech-language pathologists should provide quality therapeutic instruction to improve the language and literacy skills of children and adolescents. Implementing mini lessons and guided instruction may be keys to improving these skills of those with language impairment in group speech language therapy sessions. You may also implement it during individualized sessions with children if you are lucky enough to have a few of those sessions. Watch your students learn and grow!
Product Feature: The Mitten Speech-Language Activities
The Mitten, by Jan Brett, is one of my favorite stories to read aloud at this time of year. I recently created a speech-language activity pack with 5 extension activities to accompany this book. My students enjoyed the book as well as comprehension and vocabulary activities last week.
This speech-language activities pack is geared towards improving the language comprehension, vocabulary, and speech articulation skills of children in 2nd-5th grade. The activities should be used after an SLP read aloud of the text. Select the activities that best correspond with the learning needs of children on your speech-language therapy caseload. The Mitten has an “accelerated reading” level of approximately 3.9, but may be used with students in 2nd-5th grade.
Pete the Cat Holiday Freebie
My speech language students LOVE when I read Pete the Cat stories to them. The holiday themed book, Pete the Cat Saves Christmas is no exception! This book is great to read aloud with preschool and elementary school aged kids on your speech language caseload. I created a quick “wh” questions comprehension check that has a field of 4 choices. You can access it in my TPT curriculum store.
Many of my students have IEP objectives that require them to answer literal questions from fiction text so this FREEBIE will be a great practice and work sample for that! I know many SLPs like having fun book companions with numerous activities, but I have found that sometimes it’s best to KISS. With this complimentary worksheet, you can keep it simple by having a quick and functional activity after your read aloud in a 30 minute session. I even used it with success in my moderate intellectual disability speech-language therapy groups!
September Book Review {Pirate Theme}
Hey everyone. I hope you are enjoying pirate themed activities in your speech-language therapy lessons this week in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day on Saturday.
This year, I read aloud a new story that I heard about to my speech-language kiddos. The media specialist at my school and I are good friends and she is always recommending great books to me. It helps that my speech language room is across the hall from her office. 🙂
My students and I now LOVE the fiction book: No Pirates Allowed Said Library Lou! The story line is awesome and so are the illustrations!
The main characters are Pirate Pete, his parrot Igor, and the librarian Library Lou. The story opens with Pirate Pete loudly bolting into Seabreezy Library looking for treasure. The folks in the library are quite alarmed and down right scared of his intimidating demeanor. Ms. Library Lou is definitely not impressed by his lack of manners and strong smell of the outdoors. Ughh!
This story has a great twist as Library Lou looks at the treasure map and declares that she knows how to find the treasure. Pirate Pete reluctantly listens to her as she guides him through finding the treasure.
I definitely recommend this book to elementary school aged kids because I know that they’ll love it. Plus so many of them need practice with answering wh questions, story retell, and understanding the meanings of tier 2 vocabulary words from the story. Speech-language pathologists can also pick out articulation words from the story as an extension activity for kids who need to practice pronouncing specific sounds.
Here is a freebie WH questions worksheet with a field of 4 choices for each question. Feel free to carry your pirate theme on to next week if you’d like. I’m sure your students won’t mind! Argggh Matey! Thanks for reading my blog today.
Tamara Anderson
Tell Me About Summer Stories
I love hearing great stories! Lately it’s been from friends over dinner or a juicy summer story with a friend on the phone! No gossip…just sharing some interesting life happenings. I have also been reading some great books.
Well, in speech-language therapy, it is critical that children are taught how to retell fiction stories. They need to understand the sequence of events and key story elements such as character, character trait, setting, introduction, problem, solution, conclusion, etc. They need practice with verbally communicating narratives. It’s a good thing that most speech-language pathologists and educators know how to read with expression to really grab the attention of children. This helps keep children engaged during literacy lessons.
Summer is a great time to read new stories to children and have them practice retelling the story in the correct sequence with key details. Here are some great summer stories for young kids:
Now for those of you working with private practice kiddos this summer you definitely need my best selling Oral Story Retelling Rubric. School-based SLPs this is a must have for you as well. Many of you will be back to your regular SLP awesome life in the schools very soon! 🙂
Here are what some buyers have said about this product:
“I am very happy about this rubric. It is a great resource for me to figure out what I need to focus on more with students. I like the grading system as well.”
“The rubric addresses areas that I focus on in therapy. I do not have to generate my own, which saves me time in the planning process as well as when writing IEP goals.”
“This is a great visual to use to show the students as well! Love it! Thanks!”
There are still a few weeks left of official summer. So keep reading summer stories and have speech-language kiddos tell you about them! What are some children’s books that you think young kiddos love in the summer? I’d love to hear your favorites! 🙂
Tamara
Spring into Literacy: Teaching Phonological Awareness
Recently I have been working on phonological awareness skills with a 1st grade speech fluency student who also has difficulty with reading decoding and reading fluency. I provide services for an older elementary school student as well with language impairment that struggles immensely with basic literacy skills. From my observation, this is not an area that all speech-language therapists address. However, literacy is a part of our scope of practice according to ASHA.
These literacy areas are considered appropriate roles and responsibilities for SLPs: 1) preventing written language problems by fostering language acquisition and emergent literacy 2) identifying children at risk for reading and writing problems 3) assessing reading and writing 4) providing intervention and documenting outcomes for reading and writing 5) providing consultation to teachers, parents, students about effective literacy practices
Woah! Did you realize how in depth our responsibilities can extend in the area of literacy? SLPs can assist with reading & written expression. Say what? I know we have a lot on our plates working with the listening and speaking components of literacy so to think about helping with reading and written expression may be a bit daunting. After all, the resource special education teachers directly teach that for our IEP kiddos.
Nevertheless, a few years ago, I decided to get additionally training in the area of reading. I quickly observed that many of my students with speech-language impairment had a language based learning disability in the areas of reading and writing. Therefore, I completed a Georgia State University reading endorsement certification program. I learned valuable reading assessment and instruction best practices in this program that I can use when I provide consultation for students in the RTI process. It also helps me know what to do as I directly address phonological awareness with students from time to time.
So, what is phonological awareness? This is the term used to describe essential literacy skills that require a child to manipulate syllables, words, and sounds. These are auditory skills that generally begin at age three and are typically mastered by ages 6-7 if a child does not have a reading disability.
Here is what an SLP can do to teach this skill:
1) create word lists of rhyming and non-rhyming words
*Tell the child 2-3 words. Then ask, “do these words rhyme?”
*Give a child a target word and ask “What rhymes with ____?”
2) create word lists for syllable counting (segmentation) activities
*Tell and show a child a word and ask “How many syllables are in these words?”
3) create word lists with compound words and other multi-syllabic words * Have kids combine syllables to express words. For example, say “What word do you hear when I say hot…dog?
What is phonemic awareness? This is a component of phonological awareness and involves skills such as phoneme blending, phoneme segmenting, phoneme deletion, phoneme substitution.
Here are tips on how to work on these 4 skills:
*Use letters that you can manipulate such as these foam letters from Dollar Tree.
1) blend or combine sounds to say words
c-a-r, w-a-t-ch, b-o-o-k, p-e-n-c-i-l, p-l-a-y
2) verbally segment or separate sounds when given words
mom, dad, crayon, water, bear
3) verbally delete or omit a sound from a word to say a new word
say plate without /p/, say mat without the /m/
4) verbally change a sound to another sound
say /hat/, now take away /h/ and add /b/ or change /h/ to /b/
say /sun/, now take away /s/ and add /f/ or change /s/ to /f/
I highly recommend Hearbuilder Phonological Awareness program. It is available as an iPad or iPhone app or as paid subscription for use on the internet.
I hope you learned some new information or refreshed your memory about how to teach phonological awareness skills. These can be used in speech-language therapy sessions or shared while consulting with general education teachers as they deliver RTI interventions in the classroom.
Thanks for reading the blog today!
Tamara Anderson
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Reference: Lanza, Janet; Flahive, L. (2012) Guide to Communication Milestones. East Moline, IL: LinguiSystems, Inc.
