Page 45 - Literacy Based Speech Language Therapy Activities Digital Version

How to Use Storybooks in Speech Language Intervention

Rock your Therapy with Scaffolding Strategies

Two types of people should read this section:
1. If you are new(er) to speech pathology you can implement the following strategies in any therapy

session and enjoy a level of success that only experience normally allows.

2. If you are experienced you probably already incorporate scaffolding techniques into your therapy.
However, your teachers need to know how you get your students to rapidly add sounds, use new

words, and increase communication. Each student responds well to different strategies. If we
identify which technique a child likes, our teachers can perform the same magic in their class.

First, a little background on the research behind scaffolding strategies and then on to definitions and

a data chart for you to use with each student.

What are scaffolding strategies?

Scaffolding is support provided in a creative and adaptive manner that enables the student to learn
the skills at the most independent level possible. Each student has a range of skill levels from what
he or she is able to do without any assistance to what he or she is able to do with maximal
assistance. This range was termed the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) by Vygotsky

(1980). The bottom of the zone represents what students can do by themselves and the top of the
zone represents what students can do with a lot of help from an adult. As students learn, their zone

moves to higher levels. Scaffolding strategies allow an educator to work at a level that is beneficial to
each student. Numerous types of scaffolding strategies can be used to help students internalize new
information and scaffolding can be used before, during, and after storybook reading.

Scaffolding strategies can be used in shared reading to approach intervention goals at a student’s

level. Students with language impairments tend to be passive learners (Rabidoux and MacDonald,
2000). Shared reading allows adults to use scaffolding techniques to engage students, allowing them
a comfortable way to be active in the learning process, during intervention, in the classroom, and in

the home. There is strong support in the literature indicating that students who are active in the
learning process learn more quickly and retain information better (Feldman and Denti, 2004).

The Best Scaffolding Strategies

Print reference

The educator references a target from the book by pointing or commenting (e.g. The educator points
to an illustration and asks, “What is happening in the picture?”)

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