What’s the scope and sequence for language therapy?
Why don’t we have a language therapy curriculum?
I get these questions all the time, so today I wanted to give you some answers. Listen to the answer in this video:
Why do people want a language therapy curriculum?
The hidden question behind those question of scope and sequence is really:
“Where do I start when it comes to language therapy?”
When it comes to language and literacy, there can be a lot of gray area when it comes to the SLP’s role. We’ve got reading specialists. We’ve got special education teachers.
We’ve also got supervisors who often question what we’re doing or try to guide us in our practice, even though they don’t really understand our level of expertise. To top it all off, we’ve got tons of options when it comes to materials and research. If you’re a full-time (or even part-time) SLP, you don’t have spare time to be wading through all of that.
So why isn’t there a language-therapy curriculum that we can just use universally? (believe, me I’ve looked for one and have always come up short).
Well, when it comes to language, growth is not linear. Which means when we look at what skills are age-appropriate across the school-age, it would be impossible to create a cookie-cutter curriculum that would actually work for every one of our students (or any of our students, for that matter). That’s why I’ve created this free training for SLPs that will share why that’s the case and what to do about it.
So many people want a clear hierarchy that tells them the exact order of what to target when. When we have a hierarchy, it answers the question of what skills to do next. It gives us a plan of attack. It helps make decisions for us so we don’t feel so much cognitive fatigue.
With language development, we’ve got these nice little developmental milestones charts when it comes to ages 0-6, and then after kindergarten it’s really variable. Growth is so dependent on the environment , which is why it’s really hard for us to pinpoint school-age developmental milestones or say definitively “These are the language skills and vocabulary words that kids SHOULD know at each grade level.”
Now there are certain skills that are kind of like a linchpin for language growth. One example would be the ability to comprehend and use complex sentences, so knowing that can narrow our focus. But aside from that, language therapy can feel a bit messy.
The bad news is that a “language curriculum” is not going to be coming any time soon. And if it does, you’ll have to make so many tweaks and customizations to it that it may be more trouble than it’s worth.
If we don’t have a curriculum, how do we plan for language therapy?
The good news is that you don’t actually need a scripted curriculum or neatly defined scope and sequence. Instead what you really need is a language therapy FRAMEWORK.
What we DON’T want to do is start from scratch for every case. That will take up so much energy and depletes your your stamina so that you don’t have any energy left to focus on your students (or any other part of your life, for that matter). And quite frankly, starting at square one for each student just isn’t necessary.
Instead of using something that’s rigid and scripted, what we want to do is meet in the middle and create a FRAMEWORK. This allows just enough flexibility that you can use it across cases, but enough structure that it narrows your focus and saves time and energy. The concept of a language therapy FRAMEWORK is what I developed when I did my doctoral research and created my signature program for SLPs (Language Therapy Advance Foundations).
Using this framework will allow you to focus on the language skills that are going to impact on other skills; because you don’t have time to teach everything. You’re not going to be able to dive into every single little discrete language skill because you just don’t have time. And you don’t really need to! There are certain skills that are going to have a bigger impact than others.
The way that I structure my framework is like a row of dominoes. You figure out the one big main area that’s going to have an impact on all those other area. The very last domino is high level processing, which we ultimately want our students to be able to do in order to function in school and life.
But then you think about identifying the first domino that’s actually going to make those other skills, “fall down”. That first area, or the “first domino” that’s correlated with a lot of those other language skills high-level processing skills is vocabulary.
Then that has some five components that fit underneath it that are going to inform the actually treatment techniques and materials you choose. So you create your framework by identifying those key areas that fit under the “first domino”, and simply start plugging in strategies and techniques to create your own system. It helps save time because it narrows things substantially, but at the same time it allows you to easily customize it on a case-by-case basis.
I actually walk through the entire process on this free online training for SLPs.
On the training I’ll share:
- The top mistakes EVERYBODY makes when it comes to language therapy, and WHY they are confusing your students and burning you out.
- The SECRET I used to get BETTER RESULTS while doing LESS WORK that’s allowed me to help my students make major breakthroughs, while working a full-time SLP caseload and starting a business.
- My evidence-based framework for creating a “domino effect” that will amplify your language therapy, and help you break through language therapy plateaus without spending hours planning or doing research.
You can register for this training for SLPs here.
