The interesting thing about mentoring SLPs is that I get to see what clinicians are doing in a number of different situations and settings across the US (and often, the world).
I’ve found that many of the SLPs I work with seem to have similar struggles when it comes to language therapy.
The biggest complaint is that they feel they have no standard language therapy protocol; so they’re shooting from the hip.
And with the massive amount of information out there, it’s virtually impossible to sift through it all; especially with a full-time caseload.
So many of them are doing the best they can with the information they’ve been able to process between their back-to-back sessions, or the nights/weekends they’ve spent catching up on paperwork and planning.
In my experience, many SLPs tend to fall between two extremes in their choice of language therapy activities:
Either they’re too structured in their therapy…or they’re not structured enough.
It’s not unusual to find the same therapist in constant limbo between these two extremes.
Language Therapy Mistake #1: Too much structure.
When a lot of people come in to some of my programs, they’ve been focusing on a lot of discrete skills in isolation.
This is often what I refer to as “drill and kill” because it usually is performed in a rote “drill” format, and it “kills” your students chances of doing anything functional with that skill.
This might include things like:
- Naming categories
- Stating word associations
- Describing functions of words
- Listing synonyms and antonyms
- “Wh” questions
Part of the reason this is the case is because there are TONS of card decks and worksheets made my major publishing companies that address these skills.
And of course, these skills are all important; but working on them by doing isolated drill activities is not likely to result in measurable gains.
So of course, many of their students aren’t generalizing.
If all you do is discrete trials without any follow-up to show students what to do with that information you’ve just drilled, they won’t ever figure out how/when to apply it.
Language Therapy Mistake #2: Too little structure.
The opposite issue I see is that many SLPs are working on activities that lack enough structure for their students.
This could include working on high-level cohesion, like story-telling. Or comprehension strategies, like stating the main idea and inferencing.
The first problem with this approach is that it often lacks intensity, because the activity is requiring the student to toggle between a handful of different skills at once.
When you’re jumping around from one skill to another within an activity, you might not get sufficient opportunities to practice that ONE skill that is currently a priority for a student.
For example, let’s say you have a student who is working on syntax.
You want to give him opportunities to use a particular sentence structure in context, so you ask him to tell you a story, or retell a story you’ve told him.
The chances of that student needing to use that sentence type in every sentence are relatively small, so the student may only have a couple chances to “practice” the skill that you’re targeting.
On the other hand, if we took some time to study individual sentences with the target structure, the student would actually get more opportunities to practice said skill than with the less structured “story-telling” exercise.
The second problem is that these less structured activities require students to integrate multiple language skills at once; which might be too difficult for them.
For example, this might include targeting high-level comprehension, summarizing, and story-telling without taking the time to address more foundational language skills first.
Most SLPs who come to be have been addressing these skills because they’re extremely important; as they’ve often the “end goal” of therapy.
However, when we jump right to this high-level work, our students may lack the underlying linguistic skills to benefit from this type of instruction; so they’re simply not ready for it yet (Scott, 2009; Nippold, 2017).
It would be kind of like teaching someone calculus before they’ve learned to add.
Getting your language therapy “just right”.
SLPs doing language therapy are constantly faced with the “structured” vs “functional” dilemma.
If we make our therapy too rigid, we run the risk of our therapy being too decontextualized and too contrived.
But if we aren’t structured enough, we aren’t ensuring that we’re giving our students the amount of intensity and repetition they need with specific tasks.
We also get a lot of pressure to “push-in”, or “co-teach” which just adds to the confusion.
The key is to be like Goldilocks. Find the protocol that’s not to structured, not too rigid…but “just right”.
And of course, it’s easier said than done.
But we know one of the biggest predictors of reading problems is vocabulary, and that we need to know at least 90-95% of the words in a text in order to comprehend it (Nagy & Scott, 2000).
We also know that students with language disorders need explicit instruction to build those vocabulary skills.
Since vocabulary issues are often the root cause behind these processing issues, and because most general education classrooms don’t provide enough explicit instruction on some of those underlying language skills needed for comprehension, I recommend starting with vocabulary as your main focus in therapy.
The goal is to get that good solid foundation before you start working on those more difficult tasks that require students to put it all together at once.
Kind of like how you’d teach someone what to do with their arms and legs in the water before asking them to jump into the deep end.
On your end, that means you’ll need to know how to select high-quality words to target.
Then, we need to develop a complete system for building academic vocabulary in a way that allows students to build the skills needed for high-level comprehension and expression, like I teach in Language Therapy Advance.
When we use the right strategies for addressing these skills, students can make massive breakthroughs.
The reason this is the case is because it’s like baby bear’s porridge.
Not too structured, not too rigid. Just right.
Bridging the gap from structured to functional language therapy.
Let’s say you’ve been working on some of those structured vocabulary activities like the ones I’ve described in Language Therapy Advance with that perfect balance of structure and flexibility.
You’ve helped your students build a solid foundation…but you think some of your students are ready to try some of those high more difficult language tasks like high-level comprehension or narrative skills so you can really tie things together for them.
In these cases, it makes sense to start to transition to those more difficult skills (e.g., narratives, main idea, inferencing, etc.).
This is because you’ve taken the time to build the underlying language skills needed to respond to comprehension/cohesion work.
This is the stage where many of SLPs have started to feel confident in what they’re doing in their pull-out sessions, but they’re wanting to either make their therapy sessions even more functional…
Or they want to venture out and start doing more classroom-based sessions.
But making this transition can be tricky.
We’ve got to figure out how to find that protocol that’s “just right” when it comes to structure and flexibility.
My first attempt at finding this balance was a complete disaster.
I lacked a clear plan, and I didn’t know if should be doing push-in, pull-out, or a little of both.
When I went in to the classrooms, I felt like a teaching assistant rather than a clinician because I had no clear protocol.
My therapy ended up being watered-down, and my students didn’t get much practice with the skills they needed.
So I usually went back to my comfort-zone, which was pull-out therapy.
This worked great for a lot of my students. They were thriving with the vocabulary intervention I was doing.
But there was a group of students who seemed to need one more final push to help them bridge the gap to generalization.
The first step in doing this the right way is creating a solid foundation for language therapy in the first place.
That’s exactly what I help my SLPs do in Language Therapy Advance.
SLPs who join the program learn the framework I used to not just help my students reach their full potential…but to do it:
…Without working on every single worksheet teachers would send to speech with kids…
…Without spending hours drilling skills my students hated working on (like stating the main idea and answering inferencing questions)…
…Without teaching students every single vocabulary word they didn’t know…
…Even though I was working with mixed groups for only 30-40 minutes a week…
…Even with a huge caseload…
…Without reinventing the wheel for each individual language case…
…And without burning myself out in the process.
With the right system it’s possible for you to do the same.
What if you could:
… Cut your to-do list in half, and get still get groundbreaking results with your students?
… Leave work at a reasonable hour, get your nights and weekends back, and STILL see your students thrive?
… Be seen as a “go-to” language expert instead of the “speech teacher”?
… Spend less time digging through materials and research, and more time focusing on helping your students?
… Wake up recharged and 100% confident in your language therapy agenda on Monday morning?
If that sounds good to you, join the waiting list to learn when Language Therapy Advance enrollment is open.
References:
Nagy, W. E., & Scott, J. A. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosethal, & R. Barr (Eds.) Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. 3, pp. 269-284). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Scott, C. M. (2009). A case for the sentence in reading comprehension. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40, 184-191. doi: 10.1044/0161-1461(2008/08-0042)
