Category: preschoolers

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SPEECH LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT CHECKLIST FOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Today I am excited to tell you about another product in my assessment referral series: SPEECH LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT CHECKLIST FOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN 

I created this 9 page guide to assist speech language pathologists in the decision making process of how to select assessment instruments and prioritize assessment for preschool children. In doing that you are eliminating the administration of irrelevant tests and focusing on the administration of instruments directly targeting the areas of difficulty that the child presents with. Continue reading SPEECH LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT CHECKLIST FOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

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In case you missed it: Therapy Fun with Ready Made Spring Related Bingo

Back in late February I did a guest post for Teach Speech 365. In case you missed it I am running it again on my blog since spring is now in full bloom!

Spring is here and there are many fun therapy activities you can do with your preschool and school aged clients during this time of year.  Now, while many of my colleagues are great at creating their own therapy materials, I am personally not that handy.  If you are like me, it’s perfectly okay since there are plenty of free materials that you can find online and adopt for your speech language purposes.

Making Friends, an online craft store, and Boggles World, an online ESL teacher resource, are two such websites, which have a number of ready-made materials, crafts, flashcards, and worksheets that can be adapted for speech language therapy purposes.  One of my personal favorites from both sites is bingo. I actually find it to be a pretty versatile activity, which can be used in a number of different ways in the speech room.

Let’s start with “Spring” bingo from the Making Friends Website, since its well suited for preschool aged children.  The game comes with both call-out cards and 12-4×4 card printable boards that can be printed out on card stock or just laminated. Continue reading In case you missed it: Therapy Fun with Ready Made Spring Related Bingo

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App Giveaway: Are you Sleeping?

Today Thanks to the generosity of Lavelle Carlson of SpeechPathologyApps.com I am giving away multiple copies of their newest app “Are You Sleeping”.

Continue reading App Giveaway: Are you Sleeping?

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Understanding the risks of social pragmatic deficits in post institutionalized internationally adopted (IA) children.

Image may contain: 1 person, textThis article was originally published in December 24, 2012 issue of Advance for Speech Language Pathologists and Audiologists under the title: “Adoption & Pragmatic Problems” (pp 6-9) 

Photo credits: Leonid Khavin

Cover Model: Bella Critelli

According to U.S. State Department, 233,934 children were adopted internationally between 1999-2011, with a majority 76 percent (or approximately 177,316) of these children being under 3 years of age.

To date a number of studies have come out about various aspects of these children’s language development, including but not limited to, rate of new language acquisition, patterns of typical vs. atypical language acquisition, as well as long-term language outcomes post-institutionalization.

While significant variability was found with respect to language gains and outcomes of internationally adopted children, a number of researchers found a correlation between age of adoption and language outcomes, namely, children adopted at younger ages (under 3 years of age) seem to present with better language/academic outcomes in the long-term vs. children adopted at older ages.1,2,3,4

Indeed, it certainly stands to reason that the less time children spend in an institutional environment, the better off they are in all areas of functioning (cognitive, emotional, linguistic, social, etc.). The longer the child stays in an institutional environment, the greater is the risk of greater delays, including a speech and language delay.

However, children adopted at younger ages, may also present with significant delays in select areas of functioning, many years post-adoption. Continue reading Understanding the risks of social pragmatic deficits in post institutionalized internationally adopted (IA) children.

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Stimulating Language Abilities of Internationally Adopted Children: Fun with Ready-Made Fall and Halloween Bingo

  There are many fun language based activities parents can do at home with their newly (and not so newly) internationally adopted  preschool and school aged children in the fall. One of my personal favorites is bingo. Boggles World, an online ESL teacher resource actually has a number of ready made materials, flashcards, and worksheets which can be adapted for such purposes. For example, their Fall and Halloween Bingo comes with both call out cards and a 3×3 and a 4×4 (as well as 3×3) card generator/boards. Clicking the refresh button will generate as many cards as you need, so the supply is endless! You can copy and paste the entire bingo board into a word document resize it and then print it out on reinforced paper or just laminate it.

Fall vocabulary words include: corn, crops, farmer, scarecrow, apples, acorns, oak leaf, maple leaves, ginkgo leaves, grapes, mushrooms, salmon, geese, squirrel, jacket, turkey, Jack-O’-Lantern, rake, pumpkins, harvest moon, hay, chestnuts, crow, and sparrow

Halloween vocabulary words include: witch, ghost, skeleton, skull, spider, owl, Jack-O’-Lantern, devil, cobweb, graveyard, clown, pirate, robot, superhero, mummy, vampire, bat, black cat, trick or treaters, alien, werewolf

Now the fun begins!

Some suggested activities:

Practice Vocabulary Labeling: Label the words for newly adopted IA children and get them to say the words after you.

Practice Simple Sentences: Make up simple sentences such as A spider lives in a cobweb or  A squirrel is eating an acorn.

Practice Rhyming:  what rhymes with cat/bat/ trick/leaf/ rake/moon?

For those children who are having articulation (speech) difficulties practice saying  words with select sounds (/ch/, /sh/, /l/, etc) to improve their  intelligibility (pronunciation)

Practice Categorization Skills: Name some fall words, Halloween words, name some popular halloween costumes, name some popular fall activities, etc

Practice naming Associations: what goes with a witch (broom), what goes with a squirrel (acorn), etc

Practice expanding vocabulary by providing Attributes (object characteristics):  Take a noun-word (thing) such as “squirrel” and answer some questions about it: what is it? what does it do? where do you find it? what are its parts? What color/shape is it? does it make any sounds? what goes with it.  Here’s one example, (I see a pumpkin. It’s a fruit/vegetable that you can plant, grow and eat. You find it on a farm. It’s round and orange and is the size of a ball. Inside the pumpkin are seeds. You can carve it and make a jack o lantern out of it).

Practice expanding language by providing relevant  Definitions: Tell me what a skeleton is. Tell me what a scarecrow is.

Practice improving their Problem Solving abilities by naming Similarities and Differences among semantically related items: How are pumpkin and apple alike? How are they different?

Help them understand that many words can have more than one meaning and  explain Multiple Meaning words to them:   A bat, witch, clown, can mean _____ and also mean _________

So join in the fun and start playing today! 

Resources:

Bogglesworld Halloween Bingo Board and Cards http://bogglesworldesl.com/halloweenbingo.htm

Bogglesworld Fall Bingo Board and Cards http://bogglesworldesl.com/autumn_bingo.htm

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Fun and Educational Summer Board Games: Recommendations for SLPs and Parents

 

children-playingAccording to the New York Times Article which summarized the results of Johns Hopkins University study: A  TYPICAL STUDENT WILL LOSE ABOUT ONE  MONTH OF LEARNING OVER THE SUMMER  TIME.

“More troubling is that it disproportionately affects low-income students: they lose two months of reading skills, while their higher-income peers — whose parents can send them to enriching camps, take them on educational vacations and surround them with books during the summer — make slight gains.”  To continue: “the study of students in Baltimore found that about two-thirds of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income ninth graders could be explained by summer learning loss during the elementary school years.”

BUMMER!

But then again it is summer and kids do want to have fun!

So with the recent heatwaves across the country, how about combining fun with learning on those sweltering summer days when lazing at the pool or going outside may not be the best option.

Let’s take a look at the few common and readily available  board games, which can be used to improve various language abilities: including vocabulary knowledge, problem solving, questioning, storytelling as well as other language related skills.

 A to Z Jr– a game of early categorizations is recommended for players 5 – 10 years of age, but can be used with older children depending on their knowledge base. The object of the game is to cover all letters on your letter board by calling out words in specific categories before the timer runs out. This game can be used to increase word finding abilities in children with weak language skills as the categories range from simple (e.g., basic concepts) to more complicated (e.,. attributes). This game is great for several players of different age groups, since younger children or children with weaker knowledge and language skills can answer simpler questions and learn the answers to the harder questions as other players get their turn.

 Tribond Jr – is another great game which purpose is to determine how 3 seemingly random items are related to one another. Good for older children 7-12 years of age it’s also great for problem solving and reasoning as some of the answers are not so straight forward (e.g., what do the clock, orange and circle have in common? Psst…they are all round)

 Password Jr-is a great game to develop the skills of description. In the game you guess passwords based on the one word clues. This game is designed to play with children ages 7 years and older as long as you help the non readers with the cards. It’s great for encouraging children to become both better at describing and at listening. You may want to allow the children to select the word they want to describe in order to boost their confidence in own abilities. Provide visual cheat sheets (listing ways we can describe something such as: what does it do, where does it go, how can we use it etc) to the child as they will be much more likely to provide more complete descriptions of the target words given visual cues.

 Blurt – a game for children 10 and up is a game that works on a simple premise. Blurt out as many answers as you can in order to guess what the word is. Blurt provides ready-made definitions that you read off to players so they could start guessing what the word is. Players and teams use squares on the board strategically to advance by competing in various definition challenges that increase language opportunities.

Games the facilitate asking questions: Guess Who (age 6+),  Guess Where (age 6+), and  Mystery Garden (age 4+) are great for encouraging students to ask relevant questions in order to be the first to win the game. They are also terrific for encouraging reasoning skills. Questions have to be thought through carefully in order to be the first one to win the game.

Game that facilitates Story Telling as well as Perspective Taking:   Fib or Not (ages 10+) encourages the players to fool other players by either telling an outlandish true story or a truly believable made up story. For the players who are listening to the story, the objective is to correctly guess if the story teller is fibbing or being truthful. Players advance by fooling the other players or by guessing correctly.

Games that improve verbal reasoning and problem solving abilities: 30 Second Mysteries (ages 8-12) and 20 Questions for Kids (ages 7+).

In 30 Second Mysteries kids need to use critical thinking and deductive reasoning in order to solve mysteriously sounding cases of everyday events. Each clue read aloud reveals more about the mystery and the trick is to solve it given the fewest number of clues in order to gain the most points.

In 20 Questions for Kids, a guessing game of people, places, and things. Children need to generate original questions in order to obtain information. Here again, each clue read aloud reveals more about the secret identity and the trick is to solve it given the fewest number of clues.

Now that you know which games to play and why, how about you give it a try.

Have fun playing!

References:

Smink, J (2011) This is Your Brain on Summer. New York Times: The Opinion Pages. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/opinion/28smink.html?_r=1

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Improving Social Skills in Children With Psychiatric Disturbances Speechpathology.com Webinar

Will be presenting a webinar via speechpathology.com on July 2nd 2012 at 12pm EDT entitled

Improving Social Skills in Children with Psychiatric Disturbances

Course Abstract

This course is aimed at increasing the participants’ knowledge regarding the role of SLPs in the treatment of social pragmatic language disorders of school-age children with psychiatric impairments. It will review social pragmatic treatment approaches which can be used for children with psychiatric impairments, explain the functions of common challenging behaviors, as well as list a number of proactive behavioral intervention approaches professionals can implement to decrease challenging behaviors and increase compliance and cooperation in therapy sessions.

Course Objectives

  • After this course, participants will be able to identify social pragmatic deficit areas of children with psychiatric impairments.
  • After this course, participants will be able to describe components and targets of successful social skills treatments.
  • After this course, participants will be able to list common challenging behavior types and explain proactive behavior strategies used to prevent inappropriate behaviors from occurring.
  • After this course, participants will be able to describe social pragmatic treatment approaches that can be used for children with psychiatric impairments.
  • After this course, participants will be able to identify materials that can be used to address relevant social pragmatic treatment goals.
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Multicultural Considerations in Assessment of Play

As speech language pathologist part of my job is to play! Since play assessment is a routine part of speech language evaluations for preschool and early school-aged children, I often find myself on the carpet in my office racing cars, making sure that all the “Little People” get their turn on the toy Ferris Wheel, and “cooking” elaborate  meals in complete absence of electrical appliances.  In fact, I’ve heard the phrase “I want toy” so many times that I actually began to worry that I might accidentally use it in polite company myself.

The benefits of play are well known and cataloged. Play allows children to use creativity and develop imagination. It facilitates cognition, physical and emotional development, language, and literacy.  Play is great!  However, not every culture values play as much as the Westerners do.

Cultural values affect how children play. Thus play interactions vary significantly across cultures. For instance, many Asian cultures prize education over play, so in these cultures children may engage in educational play activities vs. pretend play activities. To illustrate, Farver and colleagues have found that Korean preschool children engaged in greater parallel play (vs. pretend play), initiated play less frequently, as well as had less frequent social play episodes in contrast to Anglo-American peers. (Farver, Kim & Lee, 1995; Farver and Shinn 1997)

To continue, cultures focused on individualism stress independence and self-reliance.  In such cultures, babies and toddlers are taught to be self sufficient when it comes to sleeping, feeding, dressing, grooming and playing from a very early age. (Schulze, Harwood, and Schoelmerich, 2001) Consequently, in these cultures parents would generally support and encourage child initiated and directed play. However, in many Latin American cultures, parents expect their children to master self-care abilities and function independently at later ages.  Play in these cultures may be more parent directed vs. child directed.   These children may receive more explicit directives from their caregivers with respect to how to act and speak and be more physically positioned or restrained during play. (Harwood, Schoelmerich, & Schulze, 2000)

In Western culture, early choice making is praised and encouraged.  In contrast, traditional collective cultures encourage child obedience and respect over independence (Johnston & Wong, 2002).  Choice making may not be as encouraged since it might seem like it’s giving the child too much power.  It would not be uncommon for a child to be given a toy to play with which is deemed suitable for him/her, instead of being asked to choose.   The children in these cultures may not be encouraged to narrate on their actions during play but expected to play quietly with their toy.  Furthermore, if the parents do not consider play as an activity beneficial to their child’s cognitive and emotional development, but treat it as a leisure activity that helps pass the time, they may not ask the child questions regarding what he/she are doing and will not expect the child to narrate on their actions during play.

Consequently, in our assessments, it is very important to keep in mind that children’s play is affected by a number of variables including: cultural values, family relationships, child rearing practices, toy familiarity as well as developmental expectations (Hwa-Froelich, 2004).  As such, in order to conduct balanced and objective play assessments, we as clinicians need to find a few moments in our busy schedules to interview the caregivers regarding their views on child rearing practices and play interactions, so we could objectively interpret our assessment findings (e.g.,  is it delay/disorder or lack of  exposure and task unfamiliarity).

References:

  •  Farver, J. M., Kim, Y. K., & Lee, Y. (1995). Cultural differences in Korean- and Anglo-American preschoolers’ social interaction and play behaviors. Child Development, 66, 1088- 1099.
  • Farver, J. M., & Shinn, Y. L. (1997). Social pretend play in Korean- and Anglo- American pre-schoolers. Child Development,68 (3), 544-556.
  • Johnston, J.R., & Wong, M.-Y. A. (2002). Cultural differences in beliefs and practices concerning talk to children . Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45 (5), 916-926
  • Harwood, R. L., & Schoelmerich, A and Schulze, P. A. (2000) Homogeneity and heterogeneity in cultural belief systems. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 87,  41-57
  • Hwa-Froelich, D. A. (2004). Play Assessment for Children from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds. Perspectives on Language, Learning and Education and on Communication Disorders and Sciences in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations, 11(2), 6-10.
  • Hwa-Froelich, D. A., & Vigil, D. C. (2004). Three aspects of cultural influence on communication: A literature review. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 25(3),110-118.
  • Schulze, P. A., Harwood, R. L., & Schoelmerich, A. (2001). Feeding practices and expectations among middle-class Anglo and Puerto Rican mothers of 12-month-old infants. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32(4), 397–406.
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The Efficacy of the Lidcombe Program for Stuttering Preschoolers

While the prevalence of stuttering varies according to age groups (preschool, school-age, etc), the incidence of stuttering is reported to be at approximately 5%, with the onset mainly occurring during the preschool years.  Based on the above,  it is estimated that approximately 2.5% of children under 5 years of age stutter (The Stuttering Foundation).

Despite the strides made by the current stuttering research, much confusion and misconceptions exist with respect to the treatment of stuttering in preschoolers. Many clinicians still continue to recommend that the parents ignore the child’s stuttering or use indirect environment modification approaches in the hopes that the child’s stuttering goes away. Further complicating this issue is that oftentimes many preschool children DO spontaneously recover from their stuttering several months post onset.

While oftentimes, it may be prudent to wait a few months to see how the onset of stuttering progresses, waiting too long may be quite problematic.  This is especially true for those children who become increasingly frustrated with their stuttering or those who begin to develop secondary stuttering characteristics (reactions to stuttering such as gaze avoidance, facial grimaces, extraneous body movements, words avoidance, etc).

When it comes to preschool children one intervention approach which has been highly successful to date is The Lidcombe Program. Developed in Australia, the Lidcombe Program is a fluency shaping program, which is highly effective for children 2-6 years of age who stutter.

It’s goal is to eliminate stuttering.  The program focuses on behavioral feedback provided in response to a child’s fluent speech.  However, it’s not the therapist who provides the treatment but the PARENTS. The researchers who developed the program firmly believe that the intervention has to take place in natural environments, and there’s nothing natural regarding the therapist’s office!

Based on theories of operant conditioning, the premise of the program is simple: parents praise stutter free speech and request for correction of stuttered speech.  The Lidcombe focuses on raising the child’s awareness of stuttering and encourages verbal reactions to stutter free speech.

To start, child and parent/s attend therapy sessions once a week.  The therapist teaches the parents the types of verbiage to use with their child in treatment as well as  how to rate their child’s weekly stuttering incidence on a 10-point stuttering severity scale in order to obtain a percent of stuttered syllables (%SS). Parents and therapist compare severity ratings (SR) and discuss discrepancies, if any. Therapist then supervises as parent administers treatment in session. For the rest of the week parents administered treatment in structured home setting in short increments (10 to 15 minutes each) 1 to 2 times per day.  As child’s awareness improves, parents’ switch from structured to unstructured settings in an effort to initiate generalization.

For more information about whether the Lidcombe Program is right for your child, visit their website or contact the speech language professionals specializing in this approach in your area.

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My new article was published in January 2012 issue of Adoption Today Magazine

My article entitled: Speech Language Strategies for Multisensory Stimulation of Internationally Adopted Children has been published in the January 2012 Issue of Adoption Today Magazine

Summary:  The article introduces the concept of multisensory stimulation and explains its benefits for internationally adopted children of all ages.  It also provides suggestions for parents and professionals on how to implement multisensory strategies in a variety of educational activities in order to stimulate interest, increase task participation as well as facilitate concept retention.

References:

Doman, G & Wilkinson, R (1993) The effects of intense multi-sensory stimulation on coma arousal and recovery. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. 3 (2): 203-212.

Johnson, D. E et al (1992) The health of children adopted from Romania. Journal of the American Medical Association. 268(24): 3446-3450

Ti, K, Shin YH, & White-Traut, RC (2003), Multisensory intervention improves physical growth and illness rates in Korean orphaned newborn infants. Research in Nursing Health.  26 (6): 424-33.

Milev et al (2008) Multisensory Stimulation for Elderly With Dementia: A 24-Week Single-Blind Randomized Controlled Pilot Study. American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias. 23 (4): 372-376.

Tarullo, A & Gunnar, M (2006). Child Maltreatment and Developing HPA Axis. Hormones and Behavior 50, 632-639.

White Traut (1999) Developmental Intervention for Preterm Infants Diagnosed with Periventricular Leukomalacia. Research in Nursing Health.  22: 131-143.

White Traut et al (2009) Salivary Cortisol and Behavioral State Responses of Healthy Newborn Infants to Tactile-Only and Multisensory Interventions. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing. 38(1): 22–34

 Resources: