| Check Your Child's Speech Ease Your Mind |
Speech Check
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
| Why isn't he talking yet? Should he know more words? Why can't he say that sound? How can I help? |
Therapy Ideas and Information
The following is a collection of therapy ideas and information that parents may find helpful. The information is provided for
parent education and use at your own discretion. The information is not necessarily endorsed by Speech Check or it founder.
Please note that the conversion of the documents to "nice" html layout is ongoing. You can also view this information in the
more "readable" .doc and pdf formats.
The following is a collection of therapy ideas and information that parents may find helpful. The information is provided for
parent education and use at your own discretion. The information is not necessarily endorsed by Speech Check or it founder.
Please note that the conversion of the documents to "nice" html layout is ongoing. You can also view this information in the
more "readable" .doc and pdf formats.
Improving Classroom Comprehension and Processing
Classroom language can be complex, somewhat ambiguous, dependent on subtle contextual relationships and
presented rapidly amid background noise and distractions.
For example “If your in group B and haven’t finished the last assignment, stop and get together into our last groups to
discuss our next topic.”
To comprehend and process the child must: 1. Understand the sounds, word meaning and grammar, 2. Fill in
needed information, 3. Understand the pragmatic intent and 4. Remember any relevant related information. Most kids
manage this huge task but a language disordered student will likely experience continuous breakdown. These children have
special needs in order to succeed in the regular classroom.
What we will learn are some simple strategies that you can use to help these children comprehend and process the
information that you present.
These strategies will help everyone in the classroom not just those with special needs.
Not all strategies work for all children. If you find a strategy that works well with a child make a note in their file.
1. Teach new vocabulary separately before using it in the usual lesson. Give your students practice understanding and
using the concept first.
For example if your next lesson is on plants, talk about what roots, pettals and pollin are before using the terms together in
the lesson. Breaking the task of leaning new concepts apart from the task of learning how everything goes together will
help students to process the up coming material faster and more accurately.
2. Use contextual cues:
State the topic to be discussed
Provide specific verbal instructions to guide the listener
Supply a prepared outline
Use visuals: slides, charts, pictures, graphs, diagrams, films etc.
Present directed questions
For example: “We are going to learn what plants need to grow. Pick up your handout and look at the first picture. Billy,
what does the first picture show.” Providing more that just verbal information helps the listener to form expectations, focus
attention on critical points, see relationships, organize and remember information.
3. Repeat new information exactly – redundancy helps the listener to hear and process, redundancy helps the listener
to hear and process. If you change the words you change the processing task.
4. Provide examples relating new information to what is know. The best examples:
- are dramatic
- are relative to backgrounds, interests and experiences
- use names of kids in the classroom
For example, “If Sara and Jake went camping
5. Use a slower than normal speaking rate with pauses. Short pauses after important information (usually after the
main noun or verb) helps the listener to chunk information.
For example, “Red and blue make green…Put in 4 drops of red…and 4 drops of blue.”
6. For some children being close to the speaker increases their ability to attend and cope with distractions.
7. Decrease background noise, especially talking. Most kids can cope with some noise for simple tasks but for
children with language problems most of the tasks are always new and difficult.
8. Get immediate responses. As time increases the child must use memory changing the task to become increasingly
difficult and complex. Even very short delays in response time affect performance.
9. Changing the type of response required affects levels of processing and retention of information.
- Automatic simple responses such as imitation are not processed deeply and are easily lost.
- More complex tasks such as paraphrasing, defining, explaining, thinking up personal examples, verbal illustrations
and interpreting meaning are comprehended at a deeper level and retained longer.
- Active responses are better than passive.
Classroom language can be complex, somewhat ambiguous, dependent on subtle contextual relationships and
presented rapidly amid background noise and distractions.
For example “If your in group B and haven’t finished the last assignment, stop and get together into our last groups to
discuss our next topic.”
To comprehend and process the child must: 1. Understand the sounds, word meaning and grammar, 2. Fill in
needed information, 3. Understand the pragmatic intent and 4. Remember any relevant related information. Most kids
manage this huge task but a language disordered student will likely experience continuous breakdown. These children have
special needs in order to succeed in the regular classroom.
What we will learn are some simple strategies that you can use to help these children comprehend and process the
information that you present.
These strategies will help everyone in the classroom not just those with special needs.
Not all strategies work for all children. If you find a strategy that works well with a child make a note in their file.
1. Teach new vocabulary separately before using it in the usual lesson. Give your students practice understanding and
using the concept first.
For example if your next lesson is on plants, talk about what roots, pettals and pollin are before using the terms together in
the lesson. Breaking the task of leaning new concepts apart from the task of learning how everything goes together will
help students to process the up coming material faster and more accurately.
2. Use contextual cues:
State the topic to be discussed
Provide specific verbal instructions to guide the listener
Supply a prepared outline
Use visuals: slides, charts, pictures, graphs, diagrams, films etc.
Present directed questions
For example: “We are going to learn what plants need to grow. Pick up your handout and look at the first picture. Billy,
what does the first picture show.” Providing more that just verbal information helps the listener to form expectations, focus
attention on critical points, see relationships, organize and remember information.
3. Repeat new information exactly – redundancy helps the listener to hear and process, redundancy helps the listener
to hear and process. If you change the words you change the processing task.
4. Provide examples relating new information to what is know. The best examples:
- are dramatic
- are relative to backgrounds, interests and experiences
- use names of kids in the classroom
For example, “If Sara and Jake went camping
5. Use a slower than normal speaking rate with pauses. Short pauses after important information (usually after the
main noun or verb) helps the listener to chunk information.
For example, “Red and blue make green…Put in 4 drops of red…and 4 drops of blue.”
6. For some children being close to the speaker increases their ability to attend and cope with distractions.
7. Decrease background noise, especially talking. Most kids can cope with some noise for simple tasks but for
children with language problems most of the tasks are always new and difficult.
8. Get immediate responses. As time increases the child must use memory changing the task to become increasingly
difficult and complex. Even very short delays in response time affect performance.
9. Changing the type of response required affects levels of processing and retention of information.
- Automatic simple responses such as imitation are not processed deeply and are easily lost.
- More complex tasks such as paraphrasing, defining, explaining, thinking up personal examples, verbal illustrations
and interpreting meaning are comprehended at a deeper level and retained longer.
- Active responses are better than passive.