Today I’ll talking about how I implement inclusive language therapy!
I’ve written about this topic before, but this time I want to share with you some activities you can put into action right away! These specific activities help me zone in on my own students’ performance while still addressing the whole class’ needs. Most SLPs feel, myself included, that it’s nearly impossible to keep data and truly address our students’ individual needs in the classroom, but I have developed some strategies that truly help.
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Let me start by saying, I do not do strictly inclusion services with my language disordered/delayed students. I do a combination of inclusion and “pull out.” I think that’s the best of both worlds for most of my students, but that’s just my humble opinion based on years of experience. Being in the classroom has opened my eyes to what my students are struggling with, and it helps me to know what to really focus on when they’re with me in my therapy room.
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First and foremost, My ELA inclusion teachers always email me their lesson plans which I use to plan my lessons (with my language delayed/disordered kids in mind). If you have cooperative inclusion teachers like this, treat them like royalty and hang on to them for dear life. I either plan around the theme (such as tall tales, Native American history, a certain novel, etc.) or I plan around the skill (main idea, inferencing, compare/contrast, figurative language, etc.) Sometimes I can hit on both when I’m really on my game. I try to write language goals for these students in such a way that any ELA skills can apply, or I “tag myself” on the reading comprehension goal on my students’ IEP if they also receive special education services.
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One of my goals might read something like this:
Little Joe will apply language skills (such as making inferences, summarizing, telling main idea and details, comparing/contrasting, answering comprehension questions, deciphering unknown vocabulary using context clues, justifying answers, and/or comprehending figurative language) in order to answer constructed response questions on assignments and tests with 80% accuracy over X assignments/tests.
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That’s just an example. For some students, my goals are very specific based on their disorder. Their goals may only target listening/follow directions, only vocabulary, only inferencing, etc. By 4th and 5th grade it’s time to focus on a variety of skills because that’s what they’re expected to do, and by that grade level, I feel the focus of language therapy changes from bridging language gaps and remediating delays to helping them cope with the immediate demands of the classroom. Ultimately, our job as school SLPs is to help students be as successful as possible in the curriculum. Yeah, I know, I know. THAT can make us feel like a tutor or a paraprofessional, but I don’t feel that way because I help students by applying my language expertise which no para or tutor can do.
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Keep in mind that the classroom teacher will most often teach skills with pencil and paper. I believe that our best contribution to the classroom is FIRST teaching skills through a language lens and keeping oral language (rather than reading and writing which the teacher will do later) in the forefront with we instruct. Students need to be able to SPEAK IT before they can READ AND WRITE IT. We are the authority on oral language and speech-language underpinnings!
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Here’s a trick for engagement; When I go into a classroom, I hand out “voting squares” to each student. Every student gets a red and a green square. You’ll see why shortly.
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You can use whatever kind you’d like, or you can download these for free. If you don’t want to download them, just cut red and green squares of construction paper. >>>>>>>>>> That works fine, too!
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These boost engagement; they keep every child paying attention because they will have to use them to vote.
More on those later 🙂
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My teacher cohorts focus on reading comprehension. What’s the prerequisite skill or stepping stone to reading comprehension?
Well, listening comprehension, of course!!
I write many students’ goals to target listening comprehension.
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I love my co-teachers, but unlike myself, most of them use long, taxing passages to target comprehension (because that’s what’s expected of them). I don’t know about yours, but It’s all about rigor in my district. If your students are like mine, they struggle with those complex passages. Due to their disabilities, they trudge through them slowwwwly (if they can read them at all) and they tend to lose comprehension along the way. Many times, they get tired and discouraged and start to “fake silent read,” shut down, or get visibly frustrated. Why? It’s too hard for our babies who grapple with language. That’s why they need us….for our expert scaffolding!
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I typically use shorter, more manageable passages. Usually, they are even on grade level, but they’re more high-interest and always short. In fact, my inclusion classes are the very reason I make many products with short, fun, non-fiction passages that are perfect for inclusion grades
3-5 (or even higher depending on disability). I have a bunch of them in their own corner of my TPT Store, the category called Non-Fiction Text Passages.
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After everyone has their voting squares, I like to use gradual release – the I DO, YOU DO, WE DO method. I use the teacher’s document reader or projector to project a little passage on the board. Here are some examples of the passages I used for Thanksgiving from my “Thanksgiving {responding to non-fiction text & more}” packet.
Now you would think these would be easy for 4th grades; for example, but even with this small amount of text, the questions challenge them.
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I DO: I read a passage on the board and then pose the questions to myself (as well as other questions that I come up with on the spot because that’s the nature of any SLP). I let them hear me think aloud about the question and eventually tell them my answer. We model everything else, so why not model our thinking?
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WE DO: I then read another passage (remember these are short). Then we check out the questions. I let everyone have some think time, and I write down my answer. If the question is just what one of my students needs to work on, I choose that child to answer aloud. Sometimes I choose a student by “picking sticks” which is the method my co-teachers use. Then, that student answers aloud, BUT all of the other students use their voting squares to “vote” for every single question. They hold up the green square if they agree with the answer given OR the red square if they do not.
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That gives me an idea of who knew the answer and who didn’t. If I’m stressed about collecting data, I write each of my students’ names on a sticky note before I go to class, and I quickly tally each right/wrong voting. After everyone has voted, I typically choose a student to explain why he/she thinks the answer is correct. Likewise, I choose someone who raised a red voting square to explain why he/she thinks the answer is wrong. Then I ask the student (who answered aloud) the question again to see if he is sticking with his answer or not and let him know if he’s correct. Finally, we discuss, and I also share my answer. It’s work and it’s reading but the kids actually love it! Also, instead of spending so much time reading, we spend time discussing and responding which is what we as SLPs are all about!
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Now, I do realize that some kids may have their feelings hurt with this process, so if that’s the case, it may not work for your class. I make it clear from the beginning that it’s ok to be wrong and that the people who think you’re wrong may be the ones that are actually wrong!Heck, even I get things wrong! Once that attitude of it’s “ok to be wrong” is established, the kids love it.
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After I do the reading for one or 2 passages, I have them choral read along with me for a couple more passages (WE DO), and we answer the questions. We continue to vote. Then I put them in pairs or groups and give each group a passage to read, discuss, and present (YOU DO). When the group comes up to present and tell the answers to the questions on the cards, everyone votes. They defend their answers and change them if needed. Oh! and we are always working on answering in complete sentences with good grammar and restating the question, etc.
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All of December I am using fun little passages about Christmas Around the World.
The students are freaking out (in a fun way) about the things people do for Christmas in other countries.
Update: 2019, these passages have been edited, and accompanying videos have been added.
My very favorite is the Easter Around the world passages.
Update: 2019, these passages have been edited, and accompanying videos have been added.
Recently we did Pecos Bill passages because we were focusing on tall tales.
Sometimes I just have a passage we focus on the whole lesson – like if they’ve just read a chapter in a novel. During novel studies. I make questions to go with the novel (in fact I did this for the wonderful book My Louisiana Sky). For novels, I write questions on various levels (1, 2, and 3) and I number them so I remember their difficulty level.
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Here is an example of some I did for our recent novel:
Just to make it more fun, I put them in boxes that I’ve numbered 1, 2, and 3. Each child is called on to answer a question and gets to pick if they want to answer an easy question (1), a “medium” question (2) or a hard question (3).
They can earn that many (1, 2, or 3) of our school dollars if they get it correct. Sometimes I split the class in half – or boys against girls- and they can earn that many points for their team when they answer. Yep, we keep score on the board!
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It’s interesting to see who is confident about answering questions and who is not. As we did with the short passages activity, everyone votes about whether they think the answer is correct or not (and you can tally that if you wish).
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Of course, based on what I observe from my students in class, we focus on down and dirty when they come to my room for more intensive small group therapy.
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This month we will also be doing a little grammar in inclusion. It makes me sad that there’s not as much focus on grammar these days. I mean, if our big push is to make kids better writers, they need to know grammar!
After some grammar review, we’ll be doing madlibs as a whole class (still voting with our voting square on each part of speech) of Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman carols. YES, we are definitely singing our new wacky new versions once our madlib is complete! We will also be incorporating some grammar practice with color-by-grammar that’s in my packet of Christmas passages.
If you want to see some other cool technology I use featuring altered reality, check out last December’s blog post here.
You can catch other therapy ideas for the month of December there as well 🙂
What tricks do you use for inclusion? I would really love to hear about them!!
Happy pushing in!
LOVE this post, and this made me excited to try some inclusion! What mad libs are you doing? You referenced some in the post, but no link. I love those reading passages, and put them on my wish list.
Shucks, Judy! Sorry! I've added the links now. Thanks for the sweet words; I'm thrilled you liked the post 🙂
I'm finding push-in easier for the K-5 set. My middle school teachers tend to not want to "share" their time. I began the school year hopeful and excited to try academic conversations. We have no common planning time and I am having difficulty getting teachers to send me their plans/vocabulary/theme…anything, so I can participate. Feeling moderately defeated, but forever optimistic that they will see how much I can benefit them in class! Thanks for your amazing suggestions and products!
Annie, I know exactly what you mean about middle school. I had the same experience years ago. What a bummer. If I know you, I know you will keep trying and make it work!! Thanks for the feedback on this post. I love hearing from you!
Great post Mia! I got one of my third grade classes to use your voting cards during text talk. Loving it!