At my outplacement at Cheat Lake Elementary I am lucky enough to have a very supportive supervisor who is interested in giving me as much experience as possible. Thus, when it came time to write a new IEP and conduct an IEP meeting with a parent of a child who will begin receiving speech services, she talked me through the paperwork and the process ahead of time, then simply sat in as I ran the meeting.
During the meeting, the parent had several good questions about both the therapy itself, the process, and what kind of progress she could expect to see in her son. When she asked about his prognosis, I told her that as the sounds he had acquired were very stable, and the sounds he had in error were being produced inconsistently, this was a good prognostic indicator for his success. I told her we expected to see fast progress with his speech.
This article supports the use of a child's error consistency index as a prognostic indicator; that is, the more inconsistent the errors, the better the prognosis with intervention.
Tyler, A.A., Lewis, K.E., & Welch, C.M. (2003). Predictors of phonological change following intervention. American Journal Of Speech-Language Pathology. 12, 289-98.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Blog 3: Pragmatics Intervention
R and E are both in the second grade. In addition to being seen individually for articulation errors, they are also seen in a group of 2 twice weekly for pragmatic language intervention. They have no specifically diagnosed disorder or problem, just an observed lack of pragmatics skills both in and out of the classroom. These goals have been included on their IEP.
One of the techniques we use to review and discuss pragmatic skills is social skills stories. These are comprised of a short paragraph describing something happening to or around a child, and giving 3 choices of response, only one of which is correct, giving an appropriate interpretation of or reaction to the situation. R and E must then choose the correct response, and discuss WHY they think that was the response, using both information from the story and inference skills.
Additionally, R and E take turns reading the cards aloud to each other, to practice oral reading and listening comprehension skills. This also reinforces turn taking and other manners such as paying attention and listening.
The clients, R and E, enjoy this technique, and respond positively and enthusiastically to both the cues and discussion, and to the stories themselves. R’s regular classroom teacher reported she has been acting more “normal” with her peers on the playground. My supervisor feels that this is an appropriate intervention for R and E.
In the article “Exploring the effects of communication intervention for developmental pragmatic language impairments: a signal-generation study,” the authors Adams, Lloyd, Aldred, & Baxendale report that pragmatic skills can be accurately measured and will improve with direct treatment. This study was done with school-aged children over an 8 week period, and although focused on the ability to provide accurate measures of the increases, indeed did demonstrate that these children made gains in the area of pragmatic skills.
Adams, c., Lloyd, J., Aldred, C., & Baxendale, J. A. (2006). Exploring the effects of communication intervention for developmental pragmatic language impairments: A signal-generation study. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 41, 41-65.
One of the techniques we use to review and discuss pragmatic skills is social skills stories. These are comprised of a short paragraph describing something happening to or around a child, and giving 3 choices of response, only one of which is correct, giving an appropriate interpretation of or reaction to the situation. R and E must then choose the correct response, and discuss WHY they think that was the response, using both information from the story and inference skills.
Additionally, R and E take turns reading the cards aloud to each other, to practice oral reading and listening comprehension skills. This also reinforces turn taking and other manners such as paying attention and listening.
The clients, R and E, enjoy this technique, and respond positively and enthusiastically to both the cues and discussion, and to the stories themselves. R’s regular classroom teacher reported she has been acting more “normal” with her peers on the playground. My supervisor feels that this is an appropriate intervention for R and E.
In the article “Exploring the effects of communication intervention for developmental pragmatic language impairments: a signal-generation study,” the authors Adams, Lloyd, Aldred, & Baxendale report that pragmatic skills can be accurately measured and will improve with direct treatment. This study was done with school-aged children over an 8 week period, and although focused on the ability to provide accurate measures of the increases, indeed did demonstrate that these children made gains in the area of pragmatic skills.
Adams, c., Lloyd, J., Aldred, C., & Baxendale, J. A. (2006). Exploring the effects of communication intervention for developmental pragmatic language impairments: A signal-generation study. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 41, 41-65.
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