Tag

speech language pathology

Writing a paragraph

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Each year I think of more and more things I want to help my students with. Each year I feel like I have less and less time, and that there’s more and more they need. One skill that is constantly requested by teachers, parents, and districts, is writing a paragraph. Despite that fact that our kids have language and learning disabilities and often do not have the fundamental language skills to write a well-constructed sentence, let alone a paragraph, writing is how progress is measured these days. MCAS, PARCC, formalized testing….so much of how it measures “success” is being able to write a well-constructed 5-paragraph essay. You already know my feeling about standardized testing, so we’ll let that one go for now.

So, okay. This year we will work extra-hard on written language when my kids come for speech/language 3 times a week. Despite the fact that there are a zillion other benchmarks to be targeted, vocabulary to be learned, auditory processing deficits, need to learn language comprehension skills and strategies, reading anywhere from 2-6 grades below their current grade level, lack of inferential knowledge, inability to summarize or extract the main idea…..yes. We will squeeze in written language.

But I was thinking hard the past few weeks as we get into a groove at school. We have to start at a basic level for our kids. And then an even more basic level than we had thought. There are so many holes, things that must be explicitly taught, things that our language/learning disordered kids don’t naturally pick up on. So, I did some reading on Bloom’s Taxonomy (Revised) and decided to use that as my framework for writing benchmarks and targeting skills this year. Because really, if our kids haven’t mastered the first tier, “Remembering” (e.g., remember what a paragraph is, what it contains), or “Understanding,” the second tier, we can’t expect that they will be able to jump right into “Apply” and “Analyze”, let alone “Evaluate” and “Create.”

I tried something out. I see kids elementary through high school, so I posed the following question to an 8th grade group and a 9th grade group: “What is a paragraph?” Some of the answers I got?
-(Silence)
-“I don’t know”
-“A  bunch of words”
-“A rectangle shape of writing on paper”
-“Sentences that talk about something”

And right away, that reinforced my gut feeling that we have to start at the basic level. Remembering. So, we talked about four vocab words. Paragraph; Topic Sentence; Details; Clincher. We talked about what each of them meant and why we needed them in a paragraph. We didn’t do any writing. Just Remembering. We used a color-coding system. Topic Sentence is green, Details are yellow, and Clincher is red. We wrote the terms and their definitions in colors. The next day, we read several short paragraphs (short and simple – probably around a 2nd grade reading level) and practiced finding the topic sentence, details, and clincher. We underlined each in their respective colors. We reviewed the terms and the colors. It was hard for them. We talked about it. We took it sentence by sentence.

This is where we’re at. But. We have to build a foundation first. I really truly believe that. And eventually, we’ll be writing a paragraph.

The beautiful symphony of scripting

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Please. please. please. read. this. post.
This post, these words, they explain, better than I ever could, why I indulge my students’ scripts, why I try to meet them in their world, or at least at the fence. 

(via Diary of a Mom)

 

Brooke skips through fields of words and frolics in their sounds. She rolls from one to the next — Water Water Besha Besha — filling her pockets with the ones that delight her senses, dropping the rest on the grass with a satisfying thud as she runs, overcome with squealing laughter, a vocal gymnast throwing sounds twirling, twisting, flipping into the wind. My girl loves sounds. As tongue-tyingly frustrating as they may be when forced into the box of Other People’s Perceptions, words and sounds and sounds that are words are wondrous, joyful, FREE when unburdened by Communicative Purpose. 

From today’s post – a playground of words, featuring Julia Bascom –http://wp.me/pNO8N-43n

But what do you DO?

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Because I have been invested in the field of speech-language pathology for many years now (truly since my junior year of high school), I sometimes forget that not everyone totally gets what the field is.

Friends and family know that I work intensely with autistic kids, and kids with social pragmatic difficulties. They know that I work in a school. That I see all ages. That I work with language-disordered kids, among other things (fluency, articulation, etc). But, I do realize that that’s still not clear — why does a speech-language pathologist do all of those things? What do I do?

Here is the quick cheat-sheet overview.

Language has three components: form, content, and use.
1. Form has three components. Phonology (the sound system of a language, how sounds are combined), Morphology (the structure of words), and Syntax (the order and combination of words in sentences). Essentially, we’re talking about grammar, noun/verb agreement, prefixes, suffixes, etc. Phonology is the basis for reading — knowing which sounds go together in which ways, etc.
2. Content: here we’re talking about words (aka “semantics”). What words mean, how words are defined, how to put words into sentences, paragraphs, how to cohesively use the definitions of words to express points, how to sequence sentences in the correct order, which words are antonyms and which are synonyms, and so on and so forth. Goes on forever.
3. Use: how form and content combine in daily life. AKA pragmatics. AKA, “how do we use language to be social?”

And….I work on all of these. All of these components develop naturally along a trajectory for neurotypical kids. But for most of my kids, they aren’t developing naturally. They have to be taught, often explicitly. That’s where I come in.
Examples of things that my kids might struggle with:
–Grammar, noun/verb agreements, prounoun uses
–Adding detail to sentences (e.g., adjectives)
–Using words to succinctly express what they are trying to say (e.g., “This weekend, she was there, I mean, my aunt, and um we went to that store you know? And……..”)
–Extracting the main idea, main points
–Higher-level language: idioms, multiple meaning words, metaphors (e.g., does “It’s raining cats and dogs” mean that animals are falling from the sky?)
–Predicting
–Comparing and contrasting (e.g., a 6th grader who can’t explain what’s the same/different about a lemon and an orange)

And again, the list goes on and on. It all comes back to these fundamentals of language. They are the building blocks of everything. If a kiddo has a language disorder, and struggles with the above, it’s only logical that they may have trouble in content classes — Science, Social Studies, etc. Because then, not only are they missing the building blocks, but they’re expected to understand the concepts too.

This is a very, very, very, summarized, abbreviated, and quick explanation. But maybe it’s what someone needs to see. Does it make sense? Should I give more information? I could geek out post after post with basic, or detailed, information….say the word and it’s a go. (Or, I may just do it anyway, because after all, I can!)

Philosophy

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THIS. Jess so eloquently put it into words (as she always does), and I want you to read it. Please.

But, in case you don’t click over, in case you don’t read it and fall in love with Jess’s writing and her family and her incredible daughter, I will happily ramble away and tell you about it.

She talks about how, when setting a goal for her daughter, she asks the question, “Is this a goal that I would set in order to help my daughter to become that fullest version of herself or is it one that I would set simply because it will help her meet societal expectation?” And THAT is what I guide my treatment on. Many of my colleagues will disagree. And those colleagues are the ones who may desperately aim to extinguish flapping, squealing, jumping, other stimming behaviors. The colleague who, during class change time, yells at my student who did a jump and a squeal. (Because, he has learned, and he knows, that class change time is actually a GREAT time to do that, and he had been holding it in all throughout class) But those behaviors? They’re the ones I ignore. That don’t bother me. That, if anything, I LOVE, because they are real and true and they are providing an outlet, for thoughts and emotions and feelings and everything that otherwise would remain trapped and distracting inside. And if it is something that is truly getting in the way of a child’s becoming, then that’s one thing. I have used Social Thinking and behavior plans and visuals and countless tools. Because there are certain behaviors that are harmful to themselves or to others, or distracting in an intolerable way.

But if it’s just a “quirk?” If, at its core, it’s simply a difference from how the majority of us are? No, I have bigger things to worry about.

And, I just want to add — we ALL have quirks. And nobody put us on behavior plans for them. Sometimes I make funny noises, say weird things, I’m plenty awkward. And I’m a fantastic speech/language pathologist, I’m well-respected, and my kids like me for being who I am. Said a 6th grade boy, with Nonverbal Language Disability: “Thank you for being weird sometimes, it makes me feel better about being weird myself.”

Everyone is weird. Everyone has quirks. Sometimes that weirdness becomes dangerous or distracting. But sometimes it’s just….fun. And then, it’s okay.

Here are things I want to write about.

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In no particular order:

  • My intuition and sensitivity
  • Being a speech-language pathologist
  • Working with kids with autism
  • Anxiety
  • Quantum physics and energy healing
  • Books I’m reading
  • Relationships
  • Tragedies in the world

Where on earth do I start?

Rules

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I have worked extensively with kids and teenagers on the autism spectrum. All across the spectrum. (And I do, fully, passionately, with my whole heart, believe that there is quite a spectrum — not just of autism but of “neurotypical” too — more on that in the future.) And something that has hit home to me lately is the damage that teaching “rules” can do.

Without disclosing confidential information, I will just say this: I am working with a teenager, who has Nonverbal Learning Disorder. She also has a myriad of other mental health diagnoses. Having NVLD means that some of her struggles include understanding and interpreting someone’s intent, the “why” behind their actions, etc. She is at the point where she is great in hypothetical situations, but when she’s “in the moment” it’s much harder. She has an extremely traumatic background. She brought it up the other day when we were talking about different social situations and the ways to say your own opinion (a big fear of hers is that she will offend a friend, or other person, if she shares her point of view). And she started talking about the person who had abused her, and said, “He was my [family member]. He was in charge. You have to listen to what [family members] tell you to do, so I had to go along with it.”

And it really struck me. With so many neurotypical kids, rule-following is a “must.” So throw in a few other diagnoses of trouble understanding social situations and reading intent, and knowing what to do, and it’s a mess. When she was little, just like so many other kids, she heard, “Parents make the rules,” or “You have to listen to teachers,” etc. It’s so easy to give rules like that, because they are true almost all of the time. But we HAVE to teach our kids that there are times to break rules. That, “if you feel unsafe, uncomfortable, or not good, it is okay to break the rules and talk to someone else about it.”

I know this is an extreme situation, which is why it’s really upsetting me. But it applies in other ways too. With any rule. One rule is “don’t cross the street when the light is red.” Well, we also have to teach them, “But if you’re in the middle of the road when the light turns red, you can keep crossing.” We have to teach the exceptions to the rules. Which is also why I like to call them “guidelines” more than rules.

Embracing my quirky self

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I really like myself.

I didn’t always like myself.

In fact, I think it’s only in the past two-three years that I really started liking myself.

It’s funny, in a sad way. I spent all of high school and college trying to act “normal” and “cool,” so that people wouldn’t think I was weird, or odd, or different. Consequently, anytime I did ANYTHING, I panicked over how I was perceived about it. So it became a lose-lose situation. And I firmly believe that positivity and confidence is attractive and magnetic, so the opposite was certainly repelling and unappealing. It’s not a coincidence to me that I met the love of my life (and the first and only guy I have ever truly dated) once my self-confidence skyrocketed and I started loving myself. Nor is it a coincidence that my generalized anxiety and panic attacks settled down once I started liking myself. It’s funny — all the work we do to “protect” ourselves just makes it worse in the end.

But now, I embrace my weirdness. I am quirky and I LOVE that. I love laughing at myself. I say what’s on my mind, I say weird things, I make people giggle. I let my students laugh at me when I sing during a therapy session or do something completely embarrassing. It helps them see that I’m human. And maybe it’ll help them feel more comfortable laughing at themselves, too.

I love my sensitivities, even when they make life tricky for me. I love my quirks, my ruminations, my intuition. I don’t pretend to enjoy going to clubs or bars anymore. I don’t pretend to enjoy things I don’t like. I tell it like it is. I’m honest with myself and others about my likes, dislikes, interests, fears. I’m real. I really just love myself. And that’s not to say I’m happy all of the time, because I’m not. But happiness and self-love can be separate things. I can love myself and also be sad sometimes. And that’s okay.