General /
- Give the child full attention when they want to speak.
- Comment on activities while playing alongside the child rather than asking them to talk.
- Respond to what the child is saying rather than how
- Be patient, and let the child know you will wait
- Listen and show interest by maintaining eye contact and using their name
- Give positive feedback for effort
- Build on what the child has said, follow their lead
- Increase opportunities for conversation
- Take short turns
- Tell the child if you cannot understand, and ask them to say it in another way
- Confirm you have understood by paraphrasing, enabling the child to continue
- Offer help and support
- Model the correct use of language ( repeat, emphasise, expand)
- Ask open ended questions
- Develop self-monitoring skills (ask directly, “did that sound right”; fade to a visual reminder, e.g. a look.
Use of vocabulary/word finding /
- Identify key vocabulary for topic
- Pre teach new vocabulary, find pictures to match key words if possible
- Use text with picture, it may support some children
- Teach the vocabulary in context , e.g. prepositions, quantity, adjectives
- Make semantic connections, describe it, where might you find it, what does it do? What else is like it?
- heighten knowledge about the structure of the word (phonological awareness) what sound does it start with, is it a long or short word, how many syllables in the word, can you think of another word that starts with the same sound, can you think of a word that rhymes with it. Can you think of other sounds in the word?
- Support the child in pronouncing new vocabulary correctly
- Expand on what the child says,
- Ask the child what they know about the word
- Have a word wall in the classroom
- Encourage the child to use the word, e.g. curriculum related vocabulary, time, measure, size shape.
- Build category trees or word webs/mind maps for curriculum vocabulary
- Get children to explain the meaning of words that have more than one meaning
- Revise new vocabulary regularly until established
- Cue child to find word, phonic cueing, semantic cueing, sign or gesture
- Cloze procedure, model the sentence and prompt the child to use a similar sentence with different vocabulary
- Set up a situation which forces the child to make a comment, e.g. asks the child to cut out a picture but do not provide a scissors
- Forced alternatives, e.g. What colour is the orange? (No response) Is it orange or green? Orange.
- Barrier games
- Games to check understanding of meaning, (a) target word with definitions one correct two incorrect. (b) true/false, target word, a number of true/false statements.
Word order /
- Teach useful phrases
- Model the correct structure rather than telling the child they have said it incorrectly. E.g. “bus big school”, “oh you saw a bit bus on the way to school”.
- Use structured sentences The_____ is______. On a pacing board, using pictures to fill in the gaps, The boy is running. The dog is playing. The girl is dancing.
Sequencing ideas, events /
- Give explicit structures for supporting narrative skills
- Prompt with cues, first, then last, use visual cues, or flashcards. Who, what, where, when.
- Model the use of cues above.
- Use story sequence cards with two/three pictures, (first then/last)
- Have the child give instructions with the support of pictures/photographs
- Take pictures of sequences that are relevant for the child and have them tell the story
- Use red dots or counters between the pictures to signify connectives, and then, later, expand on connectives, because, so, but.
- Send the child on messages that involve a sequence
- Have the child retell familiar stories, use visuals to support
Sentence structure /
- Provide sentence frames with examples of how to use more complex language.
- Pacing boards/gap sheets focused on specific grammatical structures.
- Model the correct use rather than correct
- Encourage use of longer sentences, use connectives
- Encourage older children to comment on their own sentences, do they have connectives, do they have descriptive words.
- Barrier games (can provide a script for the child to use to support sentence structure)
- Colour coding. Subject verb object, use pictures, or words if the child can read e.g. Subject yellow, verb blue, object green, adjectives red.
- For children with more complex needs Susan Ebbels (2007) suggests shape coding.
Use of verb tenses /
- Model the correct use rather than correct
- Focus on the target e.g. if the child is working on regular past tense “him walk to the shop” put the emphasis on the target “he walked to the shop”
- Ask the child to perform certain actions, what did you do, I jumped. This could be modelled by teacher and SNA or during team teaching
- Have the child instruct peers/doll teacher to jump, write, run
- Today/Yesterday, irregular verbs, using pictures, Today I am ______, yesterday I. (Pacing cards with the structure written could also be used as a support for this.
- Listen and repeat, pictures of verbs, take turns picking up a card “Today I am running” Other person repeats/echoes. Alternative, other person says in the past tense.
Social communication /
- Praise good listening skills
- Some skills may need to be taught explicitly encourage them to wait for a gap, or a clear indication from the speaker before joining in.
- Encourage the child to look at the non-verbal cues
- that when a person pauses it means you can have a turn
- Identify what you feel is rude and explain why
- Discuss the effects of saying the wrong thing to a person
- Explain about different ways of speaking in different contexts
- Discuss how tone of voice and posture give clues to emotions
- barrier games to help a child repair and clarify what was said
Asking questions /
- Develop an ethos of asking for clarification
- Teach question forms in sequence,
- 1. Using single words with rising intonation.
- 2. "Wh" words at the beginning of a sentence What (What with nouns, what with verbs) who, what for, where, when, how, how much, why, whose, which.
- Play games using the question word through modelling.
- Who/what? Who is in…? The bag, model, child models, using toys relevant and appropriate to the child, dolls house, garage.
- Using pictures, who is this?? Turn take, teacher models, or more able child can model. Place pictures face down/ up depending on the level of the child. Use pictures that are relevant/personal to the child first.
- Where?
- Dolls house, farm, garage. Hide the object, teacher model, child takes turn, where is the horse, cow, duck?
- More able children can play games using more difficult question words.
- What’s in the bag? One child/teacher knows what the item is; the other children have to ask questions to work out what it is. Where is it from, what is it made out of? Who uses it? What is it for?
- barrier games
Responding to questions /
- Give time for children to think and respond to questions Play games using the question word through modelling.
- Who/what? Who is in…? The bag, model, child models, using toys relevant and appropriate to the child, dolls house, garage.
- Using pictures, who is this?? Turn take, teacher models, or more able child can model, taking turns to ask and respond. Place pictures face down/ up depending on the level of the child. Use pictures that are relevant/personal to the child first.
- Where?
- Dolls house, farm, garage. Hide the object, teacher model, child takes turn, where is the horse, cow, duck?
- More able children can play games using more difficult question words.
- What’s in the bag? One child knows what the item is; the other children have to ask questions to work out what it is. Where is it from, what is it made out of? Who uses it? What is it for? Child responds to questions in order to support other children identify the object.
Making requests /
- Setup a situation which forces the child to make a comment, e.g. asks the child to cut out a picture but does not provide a scissors
- Model the language
- Role play
Receptive language skills / Strategies
Attention /
- Schedule important and demanding activities early in the day or after an extended break.
- Keep activities brief or structure them into short blocks, provide a clear beginning and end.
- Allow for regular breaks, and give the child errands that allow them to move around.
- Alternate activities between mentally demanding, and less challenging or physical ones.
- Limit information presented and present one activity or idea at a time.
- Keep instructions brief or break them down or provide a written copy.
- When giving instructions get the child's attention by calling their name and making eye contact.
- Reinforce instructions with written cues or instructions on the whiteboard.
- Minimize potential distractions - seat child at the front of class and keep their desk free of unnecessary material.
- Seat the child near the teacher or with children who will be good role models.
- Provide direct prompts to return to task and positively reinforce on-task behaviour.
- Simplify and reduce material on worksheets, and the blackboard.
- Develop and stick to a daily classroom routine.
- Emphasize the skill or concept over the quantity of work.
- Gradually increase goals.
- Ensure that tasks are meaningful to the student and are within the student’s readiness range.
- Set an alarm for short time segments.
Listening / Strategies to Control Attention and Concentration
Mobilising Attention
- To control attention, the student must learn to recognise those times when they are about to disconnect so that they can reconnect right away.
- Certain situation characteristics are effective in mobilising attention, such as discussions and problem-solving groups.
- Some tactics that can help students stay focused on the subject include taking notes, organising ideas using outlines or note/mind mapping, following along in the text, noting ideas, noting distracting thoughts, purposefully disconnecting (look out the window, become aware of my position and breathing, relax) so that I can better reconnect a few moments later.
- Encourage students to focus on one aspect of the task at a time. To limit the risk of confusion.
- Divide the task into smaller units.
- Between the task sections, use natural break times and opportunities for the student to briefly relax and physically move. Although these breaks are very short (a few minutes), they allow the student to recover their capacity to concentrate. They also help to assimilate and store essential information in my memory long-term, so that I can rapidly recall the main points of the previous work unit.
- Negative internal dialogue distracts my attention from the task and weakens resistance to distractions and encourages disconnection.
- Self-talk about the task; the best way to organize its completion, articulation of my questions and reasoning, either out loud or silently to myself, helps to maintain focus.
- Self-talk, whether internally or out loud, will often increase understanding.
- Similarly to internal dialogue, all cerebral activity spontaneously generates a constant flow of images and scenarios. The use of drawings, diagrams, graphs, schemas or models keeps mental imagery focused on the learning task, while facilitating my understanding.
Listening Strategies / Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next.
Top-down strategies include:
- listening for the main idea
- predicting
- drawing inferences
- summarising
The listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include:
- listening for specific details
- recognising/remembering vocabulary words
- recognising word-order patterns
They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation.
They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies.
They evaluate by determining whether they have achieved their listening comprehension goals and whether the combination of listening strategies selected was an effective one.
Listening for Meaning
To extract meaning from a listening text, students need to follow four basic steps:
- Figure out the purpose for listening. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate listening strategies.
- Attend to the parts of the listening input that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory in order to recognise it.
- Select top-down and bottom-up strategies that are appropriate to the listening task and use them flexibly and interactively. Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they use top-down and bottom-up strategies simultaneously to construct meaning.
- Check comprehension while listening and when the listening task is over. Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, directing them to use alternate strategies.
Auditory Processing /
- Direct Intervention-this involves remediation efforts to improve auditory discrimination, integration skills, associative skills and teaching specific language or academic skills. Examples include teaching the person to hear differences in sounds or words, teaching the person to pick out words in the presence of background noise, and teaching the child to use rhythm and tempo cues in speech.
- Give your student multi-level instructions (with increasing difficulty). E.g. “go to room 2, and ask Ms Harte for some blue paper”. The student will need to listen carefully to your complete instruction, and practice rehearsing the instruction. They may find it helpful to practice visual imagery alongside internal rehearsal.
- Play a guessing game by giving him clues to an item that you have thought of and see how many clues he needs to guess the item correctly. You could do this while playing “I Spy” or simply by hiding items around the classroom/yard and having him hunt for them.
- Try playing the “Silly or Not Silly” game by saying a sentence and asking your student to label it “silly” or “not silly.” For example, you could say, “The mop cooked spaghetti and meatballs for the canary.” (Silly - of course!) This can be done in a quick fire round.
- The student with auditory processing difficulties must be taught and encouraged to use strategies to cope with and compensate for deficit areas. For example, homework instructions could be taped, the person could be taught how to ask for repetition of things not heard or understood, and the use of visual cues to complement what is heard can be taught.
Sequencing Skills /
- Prior to listening to a story being read aloud, remind students that they will be working on their sequencing skills. Depending on your lesson, you might say, "As we read, let's think about what happens during the beginning, middle, and end of the story," or "After we finish reading, we're going to try to retell the story."
- As you read, pause frequently to ask students to identify the events in the story and to encourage them to think about when the beginning gives way to the middle and the middle transitions to the end.
- Once you have read the story, make lists with students about the events that occurred, trying to arrange them sequentially. Sentence strips or pictures work well for this type of activity, since events can be represented by either pictures or words and then put in the correct order. Let students use these lists or pictures as reminders as they retell the story by acting it out with puppets, for instance.
- Begin by reminding students that they will be working on their sequencing skills (encourage their metacognition by having them think about the skill they are going to work on).
- One strategy that may be helpful is to give students pieces of paper and pencils to use as they read. Students can write page numbers and a few words (for older students) to remind them of important events in the story. For instance, a student who is reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears in order to retell it may jot down: