One day I was working with a boy and a girl on describing. We were describing animals to each other, trying to help the other child guess what animal we were talking about. This little boy was supposed to be describing a rooster, and....he didn't really know how. I whispered into his ear, "It says 'cockadoodledoo'". He turned right around and promptly said, "It says crocodile doo-doo!" And then I proceeded to laugh. Really hard. Couldn't help it.
I love language. I love teaching language. I love working with children who struggle with language. Not only is it highly entertaining, it can also be very rewarding. I am by no means an expert, but I feel like I have some nifty tricks and materials up my sleeve. So I thought I would share them with you.
In my experience, when I have a child with language difficulties, they usually also have trouble defining words. Semantics in general seem to be a common area of difficulty. My favorite tests for looking at semantics in detail are the TOSS (There's one for ages 4-8 and one for 9-13) and the LPT-3 (Ages 5-11). They are both extremely easy to administer, score, and interpret. They lay it all right out for you very clearly what areas the child particularly struggles with- whether it's labeling/word-finding/vocabulary, giving functions, attributes, or the category.
Join me tomorrow when I share with you how I usually introduce intervention and also a couple of printables. :)
Have you ever used the Expanding Expression Tool kit? I find it to be a wonderful tool for teaching these kinds of skills.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard of it before, but I just looked it up and it definitely looks useful for a variety of language skills. Thanks for mentioning it!
ReplyDeleteYou wrote an interesting post. I appreciate you sharing it with us. With the WPM test, you can not only determine your typing speed but also improve your accuracy. For more information, please read my Free Word Per Minute Test blog post.
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