The other day I got a great question from a read and wanted to do a special case study Q & A. In this particular case, the SLP is supporting a 10-year old bilingual student in a private clinic. The student presents with disorganized syntax and various grammatical errors. They’ve worked on things like verb…
Category: Syntax and Grammar Techniques for SLPs
One of the biggest challenges for students with language disorders is language structure; so SLPs need to teach them the rules of grammar and word order. In these articles, SLPs will learn easy-to-implement ideas and activities for their therapy focused on building morphology and syntactic awareness.
The hidden culprit behind “wh” question confusion in kids
A lot of kids with language processing issues struggle to answer “wh” questions.It can be a challenge to figure out how to help. The problem is that most “wh” question activities just focus on asking kids questions over and over again without teaching them the skills that are causing the breakdown in the first place….
What to say instead of “sound it out” when helping kids read
SLPs can play SUCH and important role in building literacy skills… Since SLPs have a background in language, they’re well-equipped to help kids build the decoding skills kids need to be strong readers and spellers. But sometimes knowing how to provide support can be a little confusing! A great place to start is by teaching…
What’s working now: For building spelling skills
Building spelling skills can have a huge impact on overall language processing and vocabulary growth, which falls perfectly in line with your expertise. Vocabulary is one of the biggest predictors of success or failure in school because of it’s impact on overall comprehension and language processing (Nagy & Scott, 2000; Nippold, 2017). But most people…
Teaching Prefixes and Suffixes: What’s age-appropriate across K-12?
I routinely get questions from speech-language pathologists about what’s “age-appropriate” when it comes to vocabulary, semantic, or morphological skills. The other day, an SLP asked me about how to determine which prefixes and suffixes to target in language therapy when working on morphological awareness skills. That’s why I wanted to hop on a quick video…
Syntax intervention: Is there a scope and sequence?
I get questions all the time about whether or not there is a hierarchy to delivering quality language therapy. The truth is, there isn’t “one way” to do it. But the good news is that there are some really important skills speech-language pathologists can address that can make a big impact. Knowing what these skills…
Morphology and the SLP’s Role: The When, the Why, and the How
The members of the Effective Language Therapy for SLPs group recently took a vote about what topics they wanted to study, and one topic that came up was morphology and it’s impact on spelling and language processing. No one seems to doubt that morphology is important. What isn’t clear is WHEN and HOW we should…
Syntax: What’s age appropriate and what skills are high priority?
One of the biggest challenges for speech pathologists treating kids with language disorders is knowing how “normal” language development looks over the school-age years. We have a lot of language developmental milestones charts out there, but most of them end around age 6. After that, you’ll be hard pressed to find a neat little chart…
Which should I target first? Vocabulary or grammar?
The other day in my Language Therapy Advance Foundations program, some of my students asked how they should prioritize when they have students who need help with both vocabulary and grammar. They were wondering which to target first. My answer was this: Why not BOTH at once? We often think of language skills, like semantic…
Sentence structure: The counter intuitive solution to better language processing
If you struggle to find an effective way to boost language processing, you’re going to want to check out the video below I used to feel like I was jumping around from skill to skill in therapy. Wh questions… Following directions… Verb tenses… Grammar worksheets… Stating the main idea… The list went on and on….