Page 78 - Literacy Based Speech Language Therapy Activities Digital Version

Literacy-Based Speech Language Therapy Activities

Conclusion

In the same way that we began this
section, we want to reiterate that
with literacy-based intervention we

are not necessarily doing anything
new.

1) We are now planning

effectively because now we
know that if we use
academic topics the
students will have more opportunities to use the language we are building. We are also

thinking about what is going home to mom and dad because the child now has the language
to have a meaningful conversation about what they did that day.

2) The old you opened the storybook immediately. The new you knows that culture, language and
SES cause students to show up with different types of knowledge. The new you will not
make any assumptions and will instead teach about the book’s topic before the topic begins.
The new you also feels super savvy because you just performed an extra week of therapy

with ZERO planning.
3) The book-reading portion used to be 100% of your therapy. It is still the largest part but is
now based on the structure of the narrative so that the child can transfer these abilities to

any story or communication that he undertakes outside of your speech session. You know
that we are not in the business of teaching content. That is what general education is for.
We are building the linguistic structure for that content to hang on.

4) The old you snapped the book shut and ushered students back to class. The new you knows
that children with impairments need higher levels of repetition and might need and want the
book repeated. This might also be the first time that they successfully understood a story.

The new you is going to ask comprehension questions to make their confidence explode,
build and play games related to the narrative structure, and write similar, yet-new stories
based on the content they just absorbed. And, because you have been so brave and so

thorough, you have gained the right to enter speech pathology’s sacred ground: inferencing
questions such as WHY and HOW, identifying critical features of a problem (who's
involved, how it's solved, dangerous or not), identifying critical features of an interaction

(who, relationship, positive or negative), and novel story creation. Basically, you get to
introduce the ability set that is right on the border of “within normal limits.”

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