If you’re an SLP who’s wondering how you can effectively address complex skills relating to both language and executive functioning in the school systems, you’re in the right place.
The primary challenge is that BOTH language and executive functioning are incredibly complicated. Even just focusing on one or the other can be overwhelming.
Layer on the challenges with the way related service providers are expected to provide interventions in the schools, and it seems impossible.
Unfortunately, that challenge has resulted in debates on whether executive functioning is more important than language and vice versa, which isn’t useful.
You don’t have to decide which is more important. They both are.
We need to find a way to address them both. I help clinicians do that with a concept I call “cycling”. What I do is teach clinicians a set of core treatment techniques that fit within a set of foundational areas that support language and executive functioning.
I refer to the broader areas as “clinical containers”, because they serve to create guardrails for clinicians as they design their therapy systems in that they help clinicians prioritize what they “staple” therapy protocols are.
Once they’ve identified the strategies that will fill those “containers”, they simply “cycle” through those strategies.
For example, for language, the “clinical containers” are:
- Phonology
- Morphology
- Orthography
- Semantics
- Syntax
Language Therapy Cycling
When I help clinicians “cycle” through their therapy techniques, it may look something like this:
Cycle One-Semantic Feature Study:
In this cycle, we focus on helping kids provide detailed descriptions of content words by boosting metalinguistic awareness around semantic features. It can involve embedding executive functioning work by teaching kids to use self-questioning to improve independent word-learning and retrieval, as well as direct instruction of Tier 2 vocabulary. This phase can fill the “semantics” container.
Cycle Two-Semantic Study with Definition Syntax:
Here, we continue to address semantics, but start to layer in syntax by teaching kids the sentence structure around word definitions. This helps kids take the detailed descriptions they’ve learned to provide and filter for relevancy, or to identify the defining features. It also helps kids know the most relevant information to pay attention to when studying new words, which supports independent word learning.
Cycle Three-Complex Syntax Study:
Here, we study complex syntactic structures that commonly cause comprehension issues. In the previous phases, we’ve focused mainly on content, but here we shift towards how words function in sentences. We teach kids now just what words mean, but what words do.
Cycle Four-Word Study:
In this cycle, we emphasize elements like phonology, morphology, and orthography by studying word parts and how they impact meaning. We have many opportunities to refer back to previous cycles and reinforce concepts we’ve address earlier as well. I also teach a protocol in this phase that allows you to address all the strategies we’ve cycled through up to this point in one activity.
Cycle Five-Generalization:
This phase is the most fluid, and can eventually be broken down into additional cycles. Here is where we can address “macro” level skills like narratives, context clues, inferencing, or even more extended writing. It’s possible to weave some of these skills into earlier phases, but here is where we can do it with more depth. Additionally, this is a place we can start adding executive functioning strategies as well, because I have an additional framework I teach for executive functioning that addresses things like self-talk, time perception, and future planning.
You can get an additional explanation of this cycling concept here:
I recommend clinicians start off with three to four week cycles, and then adjust as they repeat the sequence depending on how their students respond.
What this cycling approach allows clinicians to do is address multiple skills with the intensity they deserve. By rotating through different skills, we give clients different kinds of input, which often helps them make connections for skills that may have been taught in an earlier cycle.
It also helps clinicians streamline their direct intervention and create the mental capacity to be able to eventually layer in additional service delivery models.
I teach the strategies I mentioned in the “cycles” in my Language Therapy Advance Foundations program, my course that helps SLPs design a scalable language therapy system that builds the foundational language skills kids need to thrive in school and life.
If you’re an SLP or other clinician who feels like you’ve never had a solid system for language therapy, check out Language Therapy Advance Foundations here.
