Figuring out how to build listening and reading comprehension in students with language issues is a tall order. There always seems to be a million skills they’re struggling with and not enough hours in the day to get to them all. Let’s face it, there are a lot of articles, studies, presentations, materials (and so…
Tag: Language Disorders
What’s really causing reading comprehension problems?
There isn’t a week that goes by that the typical pediatric SLP doesn’t wonder how to fix their students’ reading comprehension problems. The problem is that most people are doing this backwards for kids with language processing issues. Many are skimming over some of the basic foundational skills our students need to be good readers…
Why “reading comprehension” strategies aren’t helping your students with language disorders.
There’s no question that language processing and reading comprehension go hand-in-hand. We know that our vocabulary skills have a huge impact on our ability to understand what we’re reading… Yet for students with language impairments, the reading strategies they’re learning in school could be missing the mark. This was definitely the case with my student…
Stop working on main idea and supporting details.
Do you spend loads of time working on “main idea” and “supporting details”? We all know these skills are important. I mean, stating the main idea and supporting details is expected according to the Common Core Standards. Students have to be able to do it to succeed in school. After all, getting the “gist” and…
Students aren’t making inferences? This could be why.
Not a year goes by that I don’t see an inferencing goal for a student with language issues. It reminds me of a former student of mine, “John” (which I told you about in this last article) was no different. John was the “lazy and unmotivated” student who turned in sloppy written work with incomplete answers…
The Listening Comprehension Test-2: A product review for speech-language pathologists
What follows is an in-depth review of The Listening Comprehension Test-2 (Bowers, Huisingh, & LoGuidice, 2006); a staple evaluation tool if you’re an SLP treating school age language disorders. There have been many cases when this assessment has saved some of my students from falling through the cracks; and the case I’m about to describe…
Your step-by-step guide to improving narrative language
Have you ever felt like you should be doing more “push-in” therapy instead of resorting to the standard “pull-out” model? If you’ve ever felt this way…it’s okay to give yourself a break. Why? First of all, it’s probably not your fault. Scheduling can be a disaster. With the large caseloads we have, it can seem…
When can you treat language and articulation at the same time?
It seems like being a speech pathologist is kind of like being on a roller coaster. We have some days we’re ready to tackle the trickiest cases and are determined to change the world…but then there are other days we’re limping along just trying to get through the day…wondering if we’re ever going to actually…
How do you address written language during speech therapy?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone through my students’ writing samples and wanted to pull my hair out. Sometimes it’s such a disaster I don’t even know where to start. The grammar is a mess. Spelling errors are everywhere. And their writing is filled with words like “stuff”, “things”, or my personal…
How to teach your students to generalize, even if you’re doing pull-out therapy.
Generalization is like the Holy Grail for speech therapists. All we really want in life is for what we do in the therapy room to transfer to other settings. Yet for many of us, generalization is like a mirage that continues to elude us and our students. Part of the problem is that therapy can be…