Hello parents,
I hope that all of you are safe and in good health!
Many students in both the ASD and POHI programs of Nowlin have goals related to language development. This can mean anything from learning and using single words (vocabulary) all the way up to producing sentences of six or more words. I’d like to focus on two simple, yet very effective activities that can be used at home for our students that are motivating and also beneficial.
Firstly, although many of our students are able to express wants and needs, sometimes continued practicing of this skill can be beneficial, especially if the student has not practiced it in some time or does so inconsistently. While I may have worked on requesting with them for a year or more, they will need some practice moving forward to keep the skill and ensure they don’t lose it. This can be done by simply prompting them, “tell me what you want.” If a response is not given, you can provide a sentence starter by saying “I…” or “I want…” Those two words can also be written to give visual support, especially with ASD students. Once this becomes consistent again and easy, you can make the task harder by including a verb or an adjective. For example, if your child is requesting chips for a snack, and are consistently saying “I want chips,” you can model “I want to eat chips” as an expansion. Similarly, if your child is playing with toys, instead of having them only repeat “I want cars/blocks” (or any other item), you could prompt them to say “I want green car” (or any other color) or “I want the small/big ball.” These are simple activities, but help to maintain a necessary skill and reinforce the power of words in our lives.
The second activity is what is called Dialogic Reading, and it can be done in many ways. Usually, a book is read to a child and then the child is prompted to retell the story while looking back at the pages again after it is completed. It can also be done as you go (so you would read one or two pages and then have them say what happened or ask a question about the pages). My recommendation here is to keep it light and simply do what is effective and keeps your child engaged. It is important to try to engage with your child, and be supportive of them while also teaching them. Here are a few examples of how this can be done- 1) You stop after two pages and prompt your child to explain what happened in those pages, and they respond, “swimming.” You could affirm their words but also add, “that’s right, Pete is swimming in the pool,” or even say, “yes, Pete is swimming in the…” to see if they can finish the sentence with “pool” or “water.” 2) While retelling, your child points to part of the story and says, “car.” At this point, you could get them to expand by giving them a choice-“that’s right! Is it a blue car or a yellow car?” You could also work on using prepositions by asking, “where is the car?” There are hundreds of examples that could be given here, and it will be different for each student, as they are all at different stages in their language development.
I hope that this helps provide some good ideas and methods. With us and our children being forced to stay home, I know that this can add a lot of stress and make our days difficult. Hence, the bottom line here is to do what is fun, engaging, and gets them talking! If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, etc please feel free to email me and I will try to answer and also address any issues here. Take care, and say hello to your children from me! I miss them very much.
