Tag Archives : Documentation

Why Teach Word Associations?

As speech-language pathologists, we recognize the significance of  providing direct vocabulary instruction for students who have language impairments on a weekly basis. Students need to improve their receptive and expressive vocabulary skills so that they can improve their functional communication, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and overall understanding of their grade level curriculum.
Teaching word associations is essential to students’ vocabulary acquisition and understanding of word relationships.

What are the advantages of teaching word associations?

1) increases receptive and expressive vocabulary skills
2) increases students’ abilities to understand and explain similarities/differences
3) prerequisite skill for students to understand grade level/curriculum level compare and contrast activities
4) prerequisite skill for students to understand word relationships in analogies that requires students to use basic level deductive reasoning skills
5) supports common core English/Language Arts standards
6) reinforces skill of categorization that requires students to sort items into groups, name items according to group, identify/name items that don’t belong in a group
7) increases understanding of age level, grade level, and curriculum vocabulary
8) research supports direct instruction of word associations

Evidence based practice

Research supports the need for direct vocabulary instruction. Marzano (2004) agrees that there is a strong case for the importance and usefulness of direct vocabulary instruction. He states “the research indicates that wide reading probably is not sufficient in itself to ensure that students will develop the necessary vocabulary and consequently the necessary academic background knowledge to do well in school. In contrast, direct vocabulary instruction has an impressive track record of improving students’ background knowledge and the comprehension of academic content.”  

What resources can SLPs and teachers use to address these skills?

This packet includes baseball themed data collection forms for SLPs or teachers to record students’ accuracy of naming word associations. Students play a baseball game by choosing a player and take turns hitting the baseballs by naming 2 associated words for each target word. If they get a question right, they get a mini baseball to put on their baseball field. If they miss the question, they “hit” a foul ball and the SLP gets the ball. If they answer approximately 15-20 questions correctly, they safely make a “run” by making it to home base and collect enough baseballs to fill up the path.

The Packet includes the following pages:
1) Cover page
2) Instructions page
3) Boy and girl baseball players; custom made illustrations for BSL Speech Language
4) Baseball field custom made graphics for BSL Speech Language
5) 2 pages of different size custom made baseball graphics for BSL Speech Language
6) 2 General Associations lists (Grades 1-3)
7) 1 Language Arts Associations List (Grades 3-5)
8) 1 Science Associations List (Grades 3-5)
9) 1 Social Studies Associations List (Grades 3-5)

No Glamour Vocabulary book by Linguisystems, Inc.

Monday Update: 3/4/13
Today in language therapy, I reviewed word associations with 2 of my 3rd grade groups. First, I reviewed the meanings of word associations. Then, I did a mini lesson and guided practice activity. I listed basic words such as dog, apple, and bookbag and had them name associated words as I wrote them on a mini dry erase board. Then, I had them look at our “word wall” of language arts words that had story vocabulary listed (e.g. character, character traits, author, illustrator, narrator, etc.). I asked them: What is the category or topic of  these vocabulary words? My students required prompting to answer, so I asked them exclusionary questions: Are these math vocabulary? Are these science vocabulary? Are these social studies vocabulary? Are these language arts vocabulary? After that, I modeled making a graphic organizer to review the lesson and we used markers to make the vocabulary more visually appealing (plus using markers are more fun!!). Here is the one I created:

Additional Resources to teach word associations:

Help for Word Finding book by Linguisystems, Inc.

Pair Ups Association Cards by Linguisystems, Inc.

I PAD app Word to Word by MochiBits: best used with 4th, 5th, and middle school students

Numerous TPT resources created by SLPs

* I suggest purchasing/adding Rachel Lynette’s tasks cards for analogies in iBook and printing/laminating to create a file folder activity

Baseball Themed Baseline & Progress Check Data Forms

I am excited to share that I have completed receptive and expressive language packets that include baseball themed data collection forms to address synonyms & antonyms, associations, multiple meanings, and irregular plural nouns/irregular past tense verbs. I decided to create these materials because I have several activities to use when providing speech-language services for my students.  Although my students love when I use different games and activities to target their vocabulary and grammar activities, the words elicited are not always the same each session and I needed a way to effectively measure their language progress over time.

My solution for this dilemma was to make a quick way to keep track of my students’ knowledge and use of specific vocabulary and grammar targets versus solely using data from a variety of question probes each session.   I love my new data tracking forms and have already starting using them to record my students’ accuracy with each skill (baseline data) and will recheck their percentage of accuracy after additional language therapy sessions. In the field of education, these forms are called criterion referenced tests or CRTs. This is because you are informally measuring students’ knowledge about a set skill and monitoring their progress over an extended period of time.

In my school district, we use an online documentation system to create Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). SLPs and other special education teachers are required to enter a percentage for baseline data at each annual review and then update progress online each 9 weeks for each goal/objective using a percentage of accuracy.

These forms will be great to record data for my elementary school aged children and I am sure other SLPs can utilize them as well!! You can administer the probes across 4 data collection days with this informal assessment tool. This will make your data collection much easier and reliable.

Here is a picture of the materials that I used with my students recently:

I first used the synonyms data tracking form during a “baseball game” with one of my students who has mild autism and receptive/expressive language disorder. He was eager to play the game by naming synonyms as we have been practicing this skill for a while in therapy. He liked getting to put the mini baseballs on the field when he answered questions and made his way around the bases. After the student finished answering his questions, I wrote his score on a large baseball with a note about what language skill he practiced during therapy. He thought it was awesome that he got to take home a baseball ! You would have thought  that it was a real baseball and NOT just a paper version. He left my speech room with a big smile!! Small joys! 🙂

These resources are available at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store at:http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Synonyms-Antonyms-Baseline-Data-Progress-Check-Forms
Here is what you will receive in the Synonyms & Antonyms Packet:

1) Cover page
2) Instructions page
3) Boy and girl baseball players; custom made illlustrations for BSL Speech Language
4) Baseball field custom made graphics for BSL Speech Language
5) 2 pages of different size custom made baseball graphics for BSL Speech Language
6) 2 Synonyms lists
7) 2 Antonyms lists

Kindly leave your feedback in my TPT Store.

Thanks for reading the blog today,

Tamara Anderson