Happy 2014!

Happy New Year, friends!!

I have SO much to write about as I have been remiss when it comes to my blog updates. Where to start, where to start.

Well, November was full of conferences. First up was the Adolescent Language & Literacy conference online. I watched a bunch of online presentations from the comfort of our couch. 

Next up was ASHA in Chicago with my mom. I don't think I've mentioned on here that my mom is also an SLP! Fun fact!  ASHA could take up a few posts in itself (I'll get to those when I get to those), but I gained a ton of professional development and great information/ideas to take back to my speech & language room. 

The Magic of Teamwork: Science and Service Delivery

Hence the magic hat :)

Then we moved right on in to December! 
The last few weeks of the holidays with my kiddos was eventful with these cute lightbulb ornaments: 

And some nice procedural narratives and written language tasks that targeted lots of goals:

 We did Secret Santa at work. 

I drew the principal's name, so this is what she got:

Dasher & Dancer (puppy chow)

Prancer (Starbucks Card)

Vixen, Comet, Cupid, and Donner (Mt. Dews)

Blitzen (nail polish), &

Rudolph (some cute gloves)

]

My Secret Santa was amazing. I got a few gift cards to Target and Einsteins (favorite places), goldfish and granola bars (favorite snacks), a cute little bag, and some ornaments for our Christmas tree. Secret Santa was a success!

And in other news, Mr. Ludwig and I saw the real Santa! ;) 
And celebrated the holidays with our family and friends.

And that brings us to…2014!!

aka the 2014-2015 IEP date range. That will take some getting used to.

We are stuck in a historic snowstorm of below zero temps

and Snow Day #4 is on the way!

Hope you, your families, and your kiddos are safe and warm! 

Thanks for checking in! :)

Mrs. Ludwig

Vocabulary Instruction: a presentation for teachers

After I presented to our staff on language impairment (You can find that presentation HERE!), I had a teacher come find me with a cool vocabulary dictionary to share. She told me that I could present it to our staff if I thought it was a good resource. I suggested that we present it together (collaboration, yes!) and used it as an opportunity to provide more professional development to our teachers on the topic of vocabulary, an area that lots of our language kids work on in speech-language therapy.

And that's how Part 2 of my professional development presentation for our teachers came about:

I had just read an AWESOME book: Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction by Beck, McKeown, and Kuchan (2002), which has been referenced in TONS of academic and professional circles. 

If you haven't checked this one out, you should! I came across it first in some of my online research. Then, one of my principals listed it as one of her favorite books in a staff e-mail. And at that point, I knew I had to have it and with a 1-click stop in my Amazon shop, the book quickly arrived on my doorstep. The book was also mentioned in one of my ASHA sessions last November in Atlanta. It's everywhere!

Bringing Words to Life was the basis for the following slides and talking points. So part 2, here we go!

A quick overview to start:

I highlighted the key points from my previous presentation on language impairment that were related to vocabulary.

Also included was some pretty 
important research with some pretty big implications:

And then I talked about the relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension, which is a big struggle for a lot of language-impaired kids. 

My example was this: 

Take this paragraph and pretend 

you don't know the red underlined words...

...which would mean you're essentially reading this:

Now given that, can you answer main idea/detail or inference questions about it? Probably not.

Then I introduced Bringing Words to Life, which has practical suggestions for both 1) what to teach and 2) how to teach vocabulary.

The authors note that conventional wisdom teaches us that we learn vocabulary from context. Before entering school, kids learn from an oral context. Once kids get to school, there is a shift in focus to acquiring words from written text. There are several state and common core standards based on using context-clues to learn words.

The authors argue that oral language contexts are much more conducive to learning vocabulary because of the added intonation and meaning available. Using written text as the primary source for vocabulary acquisition becomes even more of an issue for struggling readers. 

  

If a kid can't decode very well and most of the brain power is focused on figuring out what the word is, the chances that he or she is learning what the word means is probably slim to none.

Even with good decoding skills, not every word meaning can be deduced based on the context. 

See the below example:

...hard to tell the tone of that paragraph unless you already know what the word grudgingly means.

The authors introduce Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 words. Tier 2 words are the academic words that are especially important for reading comprehension.

The authors recommend the following:

When the authors write about student-friendly definitions, they say that longer definitions with lots of information are better for leaning and understanding words than some standard dictionary definitions. 

For example, take a look at the word disrupt in the following example:

...words may be commonly misused if a standard dictionary definition doesn't capture the essence of the word. Student-friendly definitions are preferred!

At the end, I brought the information back to the classroom and encouraged teachers to 1) read the book if they were interested, and 2) have rich verbal environments in the classroom to benefit not just kids with a language impairment, but all kids!

Teachers can:

• Teach the kids to pay attention to new words
• Connect with words beyond just the classroom
• Use various dictionaries: unabridged, learner 
• Use vocabulary words in morning meetings and on notes
• Have a word of the day
• Use crosswords and scrabble games to make vocabulary fun and exciting

...teach kids to love words! What ways do you create rich-verbal environments in your speech and language rooms? What ways do you see teachers doing this in the classrooms? I'm curious!

And so ends my PD Presentation Part 2. My principal has already requested a part 3 presentation on a new topic for next year, so stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!

Mrs. Ludwig

p.s. As I've written this, I just found a post that was written by Jenn over at Crazy Speech World about how she collaborated with a teacher to create student-friendly definitions based on Beck, McKeown, & Kucan's work. Love it! Check it out HERE! :)

PD Presentation Pt. 1: Language Impairment

I am more than just the "speech teacher" (as I am commonly referred to at my schools). I am a "speech and language teacher". Actually, I am a "speech, language, and literacy teacher"! Sometimes I wonder if I should start advocating for the new title "speech and language teacher" to help build my SLP brand as a language specialist within my schools. As SLPs, we cover so many areas and do so much more than just correct speech sounds, but for whatever reason, the "speech teacher" title hasn't evolved as our profession's scope of practice has expanded.

In my experiences, the teachers are pretty good at collaborating on the speech impairment IEPs; however, when it comes to language impairment, I have often been faced with a perceived "what in the world are you talking about?" conversation when explaining the language IEPs to teachers at the beginning of each school year.

So...I decided it was time to make a change! At the beginning of last year, I requested to give a professional development presentation on language impairment for our teachers.

My purpose for giving the presentation was to:
1) Educate
2) Encourage collaboration, and
3) Provide support for language-rich classrooms

The presentation needed to focus on the basics and also needed to be relevant to the teachers. My main source of information was my Praxis 2 study book, An Advanced Review of Speech-Language Pathology, 2nd edition. It covers the basic need-to-know info and other citations were included as needed.

This is it!

Okay, here we go! A brief overview of my presentation:

Speech is sounds & language is....

...everything! I went over a few risk factors and highlighted/talked about the ones highlighted in red:

And then I briefly discussed three categories of language problems:

• 1) Specific language impairment

• 2) Other clinical conditions 
• Cognitive Disabilities, Autism, Brain injury

• 3) Physical & social-environmental factors 
• Related to neglect or abuse, ADHD, or poverty
• Working in an urban school, it was important to note that socioeconomic status is more critical to language development than ethnic background

Okay, so how to identify these kids? Unfortunately, traditional identification happens late...a wait-to-fail model:

But really we should be identifying these kids EARLY so the kids can get appropriate interventions. There are several academic skills that teachers can look for to help identify these low-language kids:

What does language impairment look like in the classroom? They may have trouble with the following skills:

A side note: Before presenting, I was asked by our directors of instruction to model a strategy that could be used by teachers in the classrooms. The strategy I chose was guided notes, so I had the teachers fill out a guided note handout during the presentation. I included a slide about why guided notes make sense.

...a lots of times the kids with a learning disability or language impairment fail not because they can't do the work, but they can't access the curriculum.

I also tried to include as much teacher-relevant information as possible. I talked about a study that found that 20% of the language teachers were using was figurative, which is hard for language-impaired kids to understand:

...how we say things make such a big difference! I gave an example of having 4 of my language kiddos in my speech & language room and I instructed them to "have a seat". They all looked at me blankly and stayed standing. So I tried again. This time using "please sit" and we had 100% compliance. Our gym teacher noted in another meeting that the kids didn't understand when he said not to "cut corners". It's not what you say, but how you say it that can make all the difference!

At the very end of my presentation, I explained the scheduling model I was planning to use for the year, the 3:1 service delivery model...which is a whole post in itself.

The presentation was well-received by the teachers and by our principal. I found that it really helped us have a shared language for talking about language impairment IEPs. Win, win!

Would love to hear if anyone else has had successes in advocating and collaborating with teachers on language-impaired kids! Have you found similar challenges/experiences?

Check back for PD Presentation Part 2!

Mrs. Ludwig

ASHA Conference 2012

I have so much to report since the last time I updated Mrs. Ludwig's Speech Room! I had fully intended on updating day-by-day at the 2012 ASHA Convention, but my time there was SO busy & time got away!

Hello, Atlanta! 

(this was about all of the city I actually saw)

First off, it was AMAZING! So much great information. Here's a brief rundown on of my highlights:

• The opening speaker was Maya Angelou - pretty amazing! The best shot I could get:

"If you don't like something, change it. 

If you can't change it, change your attitude." - Maya A.

• There were so many great oral seminars that I often had to make tough choices about which one to actually attend!

• I gathered some great resources, tips & tricks. I'll post the best share-able resources here.

• The iPads at convention were EVERYWHERE! You know you're at a convention with SLPs, when.... :) And several sessions were dedicated to iPad use in therapy. 

A Few iPad Resources

The Opposites:

Cost: FREE

This one is pretty cool and I find myself even wanting to play! It's a little like old-school Tetris. Words float up and once you see an opposite pair, you click on the pair of words and they disappear. If the words pile up, you lose!


There are 10 different levels. 
Harder levels = harder words.
Level 1 (left) has easier opposites than Level 3 (right).







At the end of each level is a bonus round where you have 20 seconds to click all the opposites. I like this one!

The next iPad app is called Toontastic:

 

This app creates an animated comic strip with a beginning, middle, and end. It's a neat for storytelling and generating a narrative. Each box is a part of the animated comic strip: 

Setup, Conflict, Challenge, Climax, Resolution. 

You can delete or add any of the parts of the story
 if they don't work for your narrative.

When you click on the first box "Setup", you get to pick your Setting.

....or draw your own! One feature I wish it had is the option of adding your own photo.  But it doesn't, so I'll deal. :)

Then you pick your characters. Once they're all in place, you're ready to record your animation and narrative for the "Setting" part of your story. 

You record your story while moving your characters around. When you're finished, you can play your audio recording back along with the character movement that was added during your recording.

Once you complete the steps described above for each box (mine are still empty), you can play your entire comic strip story complete with animation and audio. 

Pretty neat.....and the best part.....it's FREE!

A few highlights from the Oral Seminars

For my younger LI/SI kids this session was really great:

Concomitant Speech & Language Impairment: Effect Practice for Optimal Outcomes. Presenters Ann Tyler & Gail Gillon

• Lots of my LI/SI kids struggle with literacy. This session offered lots of cool evidence-based resources that merge the research with practice. Go see for yourself!!

• Gail Gillon Phonological Awareness Resources - all free! 

• My Read It Again - awesome free stuff for language and literacy! 

• Explicit lesson plans for specific books

• Materials to print:

• Progress Monitoring Sheets

And for my upper elementary & middle school kids, this one was useful: 

SLPs Enhancing Students' Language Skills in STEM Disciplines. Presenters: Janet Proly, Karen Davis, Melissa Malani, and Kimberly Murza

• The STEM (science, technology, engineering, & math) disciplines are becoming a big focus in the academic world.

• For LI kids, math and science texts can be difficult to break down and are each written in their own language

• The presenters gave a handout for breaking down academic text. Here were their Top 10 Questions to ask for disciplinary texts:

....and that is a very, very brief look at my time in Atlanta, but I hope those resources/links are useful! 

Now that I'm back very professionally-developed and energized with lots of new ideas, I've gotten back to work on some of my therapy activities for the holidays! 

Here's a preview of my Holiday Packet I'm working on:  

Coming soon to a blog & TPT store near you! :) 

And since it's almost Thanksgiving, one more turkey for you! When thinking what she was thankful for, a cute kindergartner pulled out a Fruit Rollup from her pocket and copied the letters exactly (even the O!, we'll work on the S...). 

Enjoy your holiday, thanks for checking in, and have a very very happy Thanksgiving!!

~Mrs. Ludwig