This week in Speech

Speech and language students at Prairieview have been practicing using contextal clues to interpret the meaning of unfamiliar words while reading. They have made progress thinking of "What makes sense in the sentence?" when predicting meanings. Most of the students are feeling more comfortable attempting to figure out possibilities rather than skipping the word or giving up.

Other children have enjoyed listening to reading passages or watching a brief video and summarizing the story. They have used summary guide graphic organizers to identify characters, setting, and sequence of events. They are improving story-telling and expressive language skills.

Lakeview students enjoyed writing on Mrs. DeYoung's "Word Wall"
to list various character traits and synonym and antonym pairs. They generated lots of adjectives to describe emotions and personal attributes. This activity is helping to increase vocabulary and develop comprehension and reasoning skills.

Lakeview Speech and Language Groups

This week Speech/Language students at Lakeview have been finishing up extended response activities. The children read an article about high school students in Oakland, California who work at a coffee cafe to earn high school credit and useful business skills. The student employees raised money for a local youth project while earning a salary. Our Jr. High students were asked to write an essay on "Should high school students be allowed to participate in a work program rather than go to school?" The young writers had to use evidence from the article to support their opinion. They practiced citing facts from the text and interpreting them to draw conclusions. The students used graphic organizers to outline
their ideas and explain cause-effect relationships. Many of them were challenged to extend their thinking to explain how working at a job may or may not provide a valuable educational experience. In the process they were encouraged to recognize an author's point of view and elaborate on ideas. They often needed assistance thinking of words to describe character traits of student employees. Many of the students used laptops to type and edit their essays. These skills will continue to be addressed in language group in the coming weeks.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Conference notes have been sent home to parents of Prairieview Speech/ Language students. Parent-teacher conferences are being scheduled for the week of November 29th. Mrs. DeYoung will be available to meet with parents and discuss student progress in Speech/Language therapy. Please return the form by November 23rd or contact Mrs. DeYoung to schedule an appointment.

Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent-teacher conferences are being scheduled for the week of November 29th. Mrs. DeYoung will be available to meet with parents and discuss student progress in Speech/Language therapy. Conference schedule forms are being sent home this week. Please return the form by November 23rd or contact Mrs. DeYoung to schedule an appointment.
mdeyoung@ccsd66.org
(630)783-5157

MAP

Students at Prairieview and Lakeview have taken the "Measures of Academic Progress" (MAP) tests over the past few weeks. The MAP assesses student achievement in Reading, Math, and Language Usage. It is used to measure growth over the school year. On Tuesday November 2, teachers attended an inservice training session to learn how to use MAP data to evaluate student performance and set instructional goals. This information is useful not only to classroom teachers to determine how their class is performing and what to teach, but it also provides specialists like Mrs. DeYoung diagnostic tools to help identify students' individual strengths and weaknesses. The data can be used to determine which students may benefit from remediation. The reports from the MAP will also allow professionals to choose appropriate activities and materials
at a child's reading level.

Building A Stronger Vocabulary

Speech/Language lessons in November will focus on building vocabulary skills. Vocabulary development is a basic building block of reading comprehension and written expression. According to Linda Diamond and Linda Gutlohn (2006): Instruction in vocabulary involves far more than looking up words in a dictionary and using the words in a sentence. Vocabulary is acquired incidentally through indirect exposure to words and intentionally through explicit instruction in specific words and word-learning strategies.

Components of vocabulary instruction
The National Reading Panel (2000) concluded that there is no single research-based method for teaching vocabulary. From its analysis, the panel recommended using a variety of direct and indirect methods of vocabulary instruction.

Research shows that there are more words to be learned than can be directly taught in even the most ambitious program of vocabulary instruction. Explicit instruction in word-learning strategies gives students tools for independently determining the meanings of unfamiliar words that have not been explicitly introduced in class. Since students encounter so many unfamiliar words in their reading, any help provided by such strategies can be useful. * *

Therefore, Mrs. DeYoung will focus on word-learning strategies that can be applied to a variety of contexts. Word-learning strategies include dictionary use, morphemic analysis, and contextual analysis. In language groups we will be using context analysis to infer meanings of new words and morphemic analysis (identifying meanings of root words and suffixes) to define unfamiliar terms). Students will will also receive explicit instruction to identify synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms to acquire new vocabulary.

* *For more information, see "Teaching Vocabulary" by L. Diamond and L.Gutlohn in http://www.readingrockets.org/

This Week in Speech/Language Classes

This week language groups at Lakeview have been reading articles and preparing an extended response. Using a graphic organizer, they have written key idea statements and located evidence in the text to support their opinions. They are practicing interpreting the text to explain the significance of the author's comments. Interpreting involves not only explaining the meaning of information in the passage, but making inferences about why it is important. The students are being urged to elaborate on their ideas and explain cause-effect relationships to draw their own conclusions.

Speech groups at Prairieview are making good progress in articulation skills. Students have reviewed the "speech helpers," (parts of the body used to talk) and been taught how to produce target sounds. They are performing oral motor exercises and word drill activities to improve muscle memory for their target phonemes. Many of the children are beginning to use their target sounds in sentences. They are also urged to
monitor their own speech production and correct errors independently. Kudos to the children and their parents who have been diligent about completing home activities each week. The practice outside of school is definitely paying off.

Several Prairieview students have individual goals to improve grammar, listening, and vocabulary. Fourth grade language students have learned about verbs and adverbs. They are writing descriptive complex sentences to increase vocabulary and written language skills. Other students are focusing on question formation and writing complete sentences. Some third graders have finished a unit on the story of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter and made their own book about the classic tale. Other third graders have used online activities to practice listening and following directions.

Language Basis of Reading And Writing

As Alan Kahmi has written, "Reading and writing share a common link with talking and understanding. The knowledge and skills your child acquires as part of oral language development will affect the learning of reading and writing. To be literate-that is, to read and write-is to be able to deal with language on paper. "

As human beings, we are born to communicate with each other- wired for oral language. Speaking and listening are part of every culture. We all learn to talk through social interaction. This is not the case with reading and writing. People are usually specifically taught how to read. Children learn to read and write after they have learned to listen and to speak their native language. In western cultures, they need to develop the ability to recognize and identify speech sounds of their language to be able to make sound-letter associations. Children with oral language disorders are at risk for learning disabilities that interfere with reading and writing.

Children who are acquiring English as a second language need sufficient time to learn to understand and speak English before they will be able to comprehend and produce written work. It takes most people about six or seven years to begin to learn to read. It can take the same length of time for a second language learner to acquire enough skill in the new language to be able to use it for written communication.

Spending time talking and listening to others is vital for acquisition of language. Especially in this day of television, computers, and video games, social interaction is key to language development. Children also benefit from experiencing the power of the written word in daily activities. Writing notes, sharing books, and reading mail (or email) together every day can promote reading and writing in the home. Parents can encourage literacy skills in their children by exposing them to formal and informal speech styles and various types of texts (books, magazines, non-fiction articles, etc.)

So, as a speech-language pathologist, I urge parents to Talk with your kids. Write to them. Enjoy communicating with eachother by any means possible; be it at the dinner table, in the car between soccer practices, or through a note on the refrigerator. Read with them. And most importantly, Take time to listen. You are your child's most important teacher and role model for meaningful use of language.

Mrs. DeYoung

Story Telling Activities

Using the narrative structure or story frames (see last week's blog), parents can help their children comprehend story telling rules by modeling narratives.

• Tell stories about your day. As the child begins to understand simple stories, expand the narratives to be longer and more complex.
• Tell short stories about pictures. Family photos are great for this!
• Practice telling stories using wordless picture books or comic strips.
• Encourage your child to retell a story that you told first. If he cannot do this independently, help him sequence the events and recall the details by asking him questions like "Then what happened?" "Where did they go?" etc.
• Have your child tell stories about the day's events. Again, if he has difficulty organizing the ideas, ask questions from the story frame to help fill in the missing details.
• Use a computer to write stories with your child. It allows the child to add details and elaborate and save his ideas. There are some fun story maker sites on the web.

Have fun!

Story Telling

Encouraging Oral and Written Communication
Narration is telling stories. It is one of several types of daily communication that form a framework for oral and written language. Many childten with language delays or learning disabilities do not learn to use rules of narration for listening, speaking, reading, or writing. As a result, their oral and written stories are often confusing to their listeners.

All narratives have:

• a beginning: The beginning must introduce-

who is involved

what happens first

where the story occurs

when it takes place

• a middle: The body of the story tells

what happens next

any problem that developed

what other events occured

• an ending: This explains the conclusion and how the problem was solved

Students with narrative disorders may omit parts of the story or have difficulty recalling or relating the events in order. Parents can encourage their children to comprehend and tell stories using the basic story structure and by modeling (sharing their own stories).

Tongue Thrust/ Myofunctional Disorders

Tongue thrust or myofunctional disorders describe a swallowing pattern in which the tongue pushes against or between the teeth with contraction of facial muscles. It also describes the resting position of the tongue. This can effect dentition as well as speech patterns.

Factors that contribute to myofunctional disorder:

• Allergies, nasal congestion, nasal obstruction, or enlarged adenoids which result in mouth breathing and cause the posture of the tongue to be very low in the mouth.
• Large tonsils or frequent throat infections which cause abnormal swallowing and poor tongue/lip posture.
• Short lingual frenulum
• Thumb/finger sucking or tongue sucking
• Abnormally large tongue
• Heredity factors and growth patterns of the face (such as jaw angle)
• Neurological musculature or other physiological abnormalities

William E. and Julie Zickefoose

Certified Orofacial Myologists

Oral Motor Activities

This week several students who are working to improve articulation skills have begun practicing oral motor exercises with Mrs. DeYoung.

Oral Motor Activities for Tongue Elevation

• Bite on a toothbrush as you move your tongue to different places in the mouth. Do not drop the toothbrush.
• Practice licking popsicles or pretzel sticks. Move your tongue, not the stick!
• Put peanut butter on the roof of the mouth and try to lick it off
• Put a small piece of food (cheerio, raisin, etc) on the tongue. Hold it there for 5-10 seconds. Lift the item to the hard palate (roof of the mouth).
• Click your tongue 5 times.
• Say “kkk” “ggg” a few times. Watch the back of the tongue go up.
• Brush the sides of the tongue with a toothbrush. Then raise your tongue so the sides of your tongue are spread along the top teeth. Slide your tongue back and forth against the teeth.
  

Cooperative Learning In Speech Groups

Cooperative learning is a generic term for various small group interactive instructional procedures. Students work together on academic tasks in small groups to help themselves and their teammates learn together. In general, cooperative learning methods share the following five characteristics.
Student work together on common tasks or learning activities hat are best handled through group work.

Students work together in small groups containing two to five members.

Students use cooperative, pro-social behavior to accomplish their common tasks or learning activities.

Students are positively interdependent. Activities are structured so that students need each other to accomplish their common tasks or learning activities.

Students are individually accountable or responsible for their work or learning.

Speech Therapy Sessions

Mrs. DeYoung has begun seeing students with IEP's for speech therapy. Parents have received a letter indicating when their child is scheduled for service.

Parents of students who are recommended for the Sound Improvement program have also been contacted. This is an intervention being offered to children in compliance with the Response to Intervention (RTI) program which allows for speech and language service without being placed in special education.

Please contact Mrs. DeYoung if you have any questions or concerns about the speech and language programs at Prairieview and Lakeview. We are looking forward to a great year!

Mrs. Marilyn DeYoung
Speech Language Pathologist
Center Cass Dist. 66
Prairieview and Lakeview
(630) 783-5157
mdeyoung@ccsd66.org

Speech Screening

Mrs. DeYoung is conducting speech screenings with Prairieview and Lakeview students who have transferred into the district this year. The purpose of the screening is to identify those students who may benefit from speech therapy services. She has also met with third graders who received speech intervention at Elizabeth Ide last year. Mrs. DeYoung will contact parents of students who did not pass the screening and may be eligible for speech intervention. Anyone who would like their child screened for speech services may email Mrs. DeYoung at mdeyoung@ccsd66.org or call (630) 783-5157.

Students in grades 3-8 who have an Individual Educational Plan (IEP) in place for speech services will begin therapy sessions this week (August 30-September 3). Parents will be notified of days and times their child is scheduled to see Mrs. DeYoung.

Communication is a Tool

Lakeview Speech/Language students are discussing purposes of communication. This week they discovered that effectivie communication can help them achieve goals:

Make friends

Ask for help

Express feelings

Get needs met or get something you want

Plan an activity

Build a relationship

Share information

Solve problems

Think and Learn

Change behavior

Exchange ideas

Have fun!

Oral Presentations

Did you know that there is an Illinois state learning standard for school children to "speak effectively?"

As the school year draws to a close, many students in District 66 will be giving oral reports and speeches in their classrooms. Mrs. DeYoung will be visiting various classes to observe students speaking in front of a group. Several speech and language groups will be practicing oral presentation skills during speech therapy sessions.

Oral Presentations

Look at the audience-Eyes on the listeners, not your notes!


Stand up straight- Try not to slump or sway


Speak up- You want to be heard


Speak slowly- Not too fast, you want to be understood


Use your clear speech


SMILE-You will do great!

Writing stories

Using online resources is a great teaching tool for children to improve written language. This week students in the self-contained classroom at Prairieview learned about story elements (setting, characters, plot) while writing and illustrating a story on the computer. Using the tools on www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker/ the students selected animated characters, identified a setting for their story, described actions, and explained their characters' emotions. The picture icons in the program help students to add detail to their stories, which they may not think of during ordinary paper and pencil activities. Next week the children will continue to write narratives with the storymaker website and practice developing a problem, solution, and ending for their narratives.

Have a fun Spring Break!

Understanding vocabulary

By Francie Alexander (www.scholastic.com)

Knowing what words to teach is the first step in providing effective vocabulary practice. I have a favorite mnemonic device that helps me remember the types of words I want to teach explicitly:

Type A Words: These words are like Type A personalities. They work hard in order to convey the meaning of the text being read. There are two sources for these words: Academic Language and the Content Areas. Academic Language describes the language of schooling — words used across disciplines like genre and glossary. Content Area words are specific to the discipline — words like organization in social studies and organism in science. If you want your students to “get it,” these are the must-know words.

Type B Words: These words are the Basics. There are hundreds of high-frequency words. The basics make up a large percentage of student reading and writing. Students must be able to read words like the, is, and, are, been and because — well, because.

Type C Words: The Connectors act as signal words. There may be some overlap with the basic words. Students need to understand the signals for cause and effect relationships, sequence and other important indicators of how text is organized.

Type D Words: D is for Difficult — words with multiple meanings are challenging for all students and may be especially so for English-Language Learners.

Type X Words: X is for the eXtras. These are the words that will not be encountered frequently but in a certain story or context are important to meaning. Tell the students what it means without teaching explicitly.

Language Skills

In March third and fourth grade language groups at Prairieview have practiced identifying synonyms. Naming synonyms is a great way of increasing vocabulary. Students have taken pride in learning new words and rapidly listing synonym pairs. They have also used context cues to infer synonyms of unfamiliar words while reading.

Prairieview students have also listened to stories and summarized the narrative by telling who is in the story(characters), when and where it occurs (setting), and what happened (plot). We have used graphic organizers to list elements of the narrative and sequence important events in the story. Mrs. DeYoung uses the summarizing strategy to improve reading comprehension as well as active listening skills.

Fifth graders and students at Lakeview have reviewed how to write an extended response essay. This week they read a passage and answered questions dealing with cause-effect relationships. Mrs. DeYoung reviewed signal words ( because, since, so, the reason, therefore, as a result... etc). often used in cause-effect paragraphs. Students are practicing writing cause-effect statements and short essays using these transition phrases.

Suggestions for Auditory Processing

Things That Can Be Done in the Home for Children with Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD)

• At mealtime, include your child in family conversation by encouraging your child to talk about what happened in school and listen as family members talk about their experiences. Cue your child to look at the speaker’s face. Eliminate as much background noise as possible. If your child has difficulty following or adding to a conversation appropriately, recap by speaking in short sentences with expression.


• Play games that require the players to use logic, strategies, and problem-solving. Spelling and vocabulary games are good. Games in which no one “loses” are best.


• Encourage the habit of making lists for a variety of purposes such as groceries, chores, and homework assignments. This helps to develop planning and organizational skills.


• Play the telephone game. One child whispers a secret to the next child, who whispers the secret to the next child, and so on.


• Watch good ½ hour television programs that involve characterizations and plot development with your child. At the end of the program, discuss with your child opinions, solutions to problems, sequence of events, character flaws, poor choices made by characters, and alternative endings.


• Talk to the child about listening for words that give order clues, words such as “now,” “later,” “after,” and “before.”


• When reading stories, ask the child to recap what was heard, after a page or two. At the end of the story, ask the child to summarize the entire story (Kelly, D.A., 1995).

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Mrs. DeYoung is scheduling conferences for the week of March 8. She will meet with parents of students whose annual reviews are due in March, and parents who did not have a conference first trimester who would like to discuss their child's progress. Please contact Mrs. DeYoung this week to request an appointment.

RTI Articulation Groups

As a result of recent speech and language screenings it has been determined that a handful of Prairieview students, while functioning well in the classroom, could benefit from Sound Improvement Training. This is an intervention being offered to students in compliance with the government's new Response to Intervention (RtI) program.

The program allows students to benefit from speech and language service without initially being placed in special education. RtI is a preventative measure that provides the student an opportunity to possibly reduce his/her risk for articulation difficulties that may negatively affect his/her educational performance.

In the Sound Improvement Group, the speech pathologist will meet with students with similar needs in small groups to 1) check for stimulability of sound production, 2) provide interventions to develop correct articulation, and 3) track data to interpret future needs of each student. This is a preventative measure used for a specific amount of time (up to 12 weeks) to see how the child's sound production develops. Participation at home is warranted for the duration of this program. Homework will be given and each child is expected to practice while in this group.

The next Sound Improvement Group at Prairieview will be offered March-May. Parents may contact Mrs. DeYoung if they are interested in their child participating in a group.

A Strategy for Interpreting Text

This week as students in language groups practiced reading and making inferences, Mrs. DeYoung demonstrated how to use starter phrases to formulate a response. Students were directed to highlight a fact from the text and then generate a Therefore.... or This tells me that... statement to elaborate on what they had read and explain what they learned or interpreted from the passage. Younger children were encoouraged to predict what might happen next or discuss why events in the reading take place. When provided with a starter phrase that focuses on cause-effect relationships, the students were able make an appropriate inference and word their thoughts in a way that would make sense to their audience.

Understanding Expository Text/ Helpful Websites for Parents and Teachers

Here are some useful resources when introducing expository text to students. For further information, go to http://www.literacymatters.org/content/readandwrite/expos.htm

Reading Expository Text: The Choice for Some, A Challenge for Others

This article explains why reading expository text is difficult for some students. It discusses factors that affect students' success with reading expository text, including reader and instructional factors. www.big6.com/showenewsarticle.php?id=248

Expository Reading

This site includes links to sites with strategies and activities related to expository reading.www.beavton.k12.or.us/jacob_wismer/resources/expository_reading.htm

Reading Expository Text (Textbooks, Essays, Articles, Reports, Workplace Documents)

This site provides basic information that students need to know in order to read expository text. .www.englishcompanion.com/room82/readexpository.html

Language Groups

Third grade language students are practicing formulating and writing complete sentences using correct noun-verb agreement. The sentences need to contain a subject and verb (predicate). The students will organize their sentences in the correct order to form a brief narrative. They will be introduced to transition words (first, next, last, also) that help them to sequence ideas.

Older students continue to focus on support and elaboration. The fifth graders have used graphic organizers to brainstorm reasons, examples, and supporting details in response to a prompt. Next week they will be introduced to various strategies for putting these ideas into words when writing.

This week students at the jr. high discussed text related to topics they are studying in science and social studies. For example, seventh grade students read notes from Mr. Little's blog and listed reasons that colonists settled in the New World. They gave the reasons and then provided evidence or examples and interpreted their significance. This group identified how the early settlers were able to accomplish their goals. The groups used colored post-it notes to differentiate between evidence and interpretation, and organize ideas.

Articulation Groups

In speech therapy sessions this week, students with goals to improve articulation skills have begun using the audio recorder to record their speech and practice listening to themselves and self-evaluating. They pronounced sentences or read passages aloud and rated their speech (good, fair, poor) and identified words that were unclear. Some of the children are very adept at recognizing their own errors, while others have a difficult time perceiving their mistakes. They may have attention deficits or weaknesses in auditory discrimination that interfere with self-monitoring. Children who are unable to discriminate their own errors will be reminded to focus on oral kinesthetic cues and tongue placement to improve self-awareness. In some cases, using the mirror can be a helpful tool for self-correction. These are great activities to do at home to practice carryover skills. Speech homework second semester will continue to focus on self-assessment and carryover.

Mrs. DeYoung's New Year's Resolution

Many people resolve to make changes and improve their lives in the new year. As we have returned to school after winter break, I am reconsidering how I hope to improve the lives and skills of my students in 2010. They will be expected to perform at a higher level this coming semester than last and I need to figure out how to help them meet that goal.

For example, just this afternoon, a sixth grade teacher came to me asking if I would assist one of our students with his persuasive essay. It is an assignment that prepares students for the upcoming ISAT exam. As I looked over the graphic organizer that the sixth grade team provides for students and began to instruct the particular student and other members of his language small group, I realized that they were not able to complete the activity for numerous reasons. First of all, the level of critical thinking and interpretation required to pass the sixth grade Illinois writing assessment is above the developmental level of a typical eleven-year-old. Students are rarely exposed to the type of expository text that they are being asked to produce. Sixth graders generally do not read extended persuasive articles like those found in letters to the editor or scholarly journals. Also, most adults (myself included), do not use the style of writing that is expected on the Illinois achievement test. In this blog I have hardly begun to provide the thesis statement, evidence, transition statements, or interpretation outlined in the expository writing rubric for middle school students. I wouldn't score well on the ISAT.

Before mid-March, Lakeview speech and language groups may get the opportunity to "grade" Mrs. DeYoung's blog according to the Illinois standards. In the meantime, they will be reading examples of expository writing that approach the standards, practice elaborating and forming meaningful associations, list reasons, benefits, or advantages, brain storm types of evidence, and be encouraged to interpret or explain how the evidence supports their reasons. They will present their opinions orally and in writing. Some of the children may not "meet standards," but all of us (myself included) will make progress and improve our reasoning and writing skills. I will have met my annual New Year's resolution.