Reading,
Writing, and Spelling in a Speech-Language Room
Bob Schlagal,
Appalachian State University
Helen White, Catawba County Schools, North Carolina
I (the second author) have worked as a speech-language
pathologist (SLP) in a public elementary school for a good many years now. In
the mid 1990s I also became a teacher of reading and language arts. That is, I
began to incorporate reading, writing and spelling activities into my
speech-language therapy sessions. Part of this move was due to my own growing
interest in the language arts (including enrollment in a Master’s program in
reading) and its potential as a tool in Speech-Language work. Another part of
my move into literacy work was my school’s commitment to improve reading skills
in every area of instruction. The use of reading and writing in my room has
been a strong support to my students in their reading and writing development,
and it has also strengthened my work as a speech-language pathologist. I would
like to share something of my rationale for teaching reading and writing,
describe my basic approach, and comment on the successes that I am
experiencing.
How It Began
I began to become interested in reading due to the
fact that a good number of my speech-language students each year also have
reading problems. The connection was clear to me. There are elements of
language competency that are important to the development of reading ability.
My experience and conclusions in this regard are supported by researchers who
now assert that underlying language difficulties are the source of many reading
problems. As Boudreau and Hedberg (1999) note, “The coexistence of language
difficulties and problems in literacy acquisition has long been observed by
clinicians providing services to children with language impairments; however,
it has only been recently that researchers have investigated this relationship.
Studies have clearly documented the fact that children with language
impairments are at risk for difficulties in learning to read and write” (p.
249).
At the same time as I was drawing these conclusions, I
began to feel that all of my young clients, whether they had reading problems
or not, would benefit from reading and writing activities. I saw in such
activities a way to provide an additional modality to help focus attention on
elements of speech and language use. That is, I saw reading and writing as ways
to underscore and reinforce the skills that I am trying to assist my clients in
mastering.
With these thoughts in mind, I was delighted when my
school undertook to extend reading instruction into every part of the teaching
day. In fact, every teacher in our school--from the physical education teacher
to the regular classroom teacher--was required to establish objectives for
improving reading. This coincidence of my interest and the school’s commitment
was just what I needed. Our new initiative gave me the opportunity and support
to fully incorporate reading and writing methods into my teaching sessions. Of
course, the key concern for me was to make sure that such instruction
complemented students’ Individualized Education Plans and advanced my
therapeutic goals. This proved to be easier than it might sound, but oral
language goals are easily achieved in written language settings.
Speech Pathologists and Reading
Because the field of speech language pathology is very
much aware of the connections between language difficulties and reading
problems, it has recently begun to move into the area of reading instruction. A
powerful impetus for this move has been the research finding that phoneme
awareness (the awareness of individual sounds within spoken words) plays an
important role in reading acquisition (Adams, 1990; 1996).
In response to the phonological awareness research,
many speech-language pathologists who undertake literacy work have adopted
intensive drill-based instructional models. These models address reading and
writing in the context of intensive code-based training. Such programs restrict
students’ reading to decodable, phonetically controlled texts that march
hand-in-hand with phonic skills that have been pre-taught. Further, these
programs generally limit students’ writing to encoding teacher-dictated,
phonetically-driven sentences or paragraphs. In other words, learners are
placed in highly constrained circumstances where errors are least likely to
occur. When errors do occur they are immediately corrected, and if necessary
the skill is retaught. Most of these programs were developed for severely
disabled readers and have a history of success with that population, although
transfer of reading to natural language materials is commonly delayed until
well into the advanced stages of the instructional sequence. For many students,
this transfer may be postponed for years, and many continue to struggle with
less structured materials.
At least one program of this kind–perhaps the most
popular one with SLPs--was developed through the combined efforts of a speech
pathologist and a linguist. As with the aforementioned programs, the Lindamood
Phonemic Sequencing Program for Reading, Spelling, and Speech, or LiPS
(Lindamood & Lindamood, 1998), is a highly scripted code-based instructional
package. The principle difference is that this program involves extensive and
thorough training in the production and classification of speech sounds--a
course, quite literally, in the science of phonetics--prior to
addressing these things in the context of letters and written words. While such
programs have an obvious appeal to speech therapists because they revolve
around of elements of speech and language with which they are more than
familiar, such programs do not address the diverse needs of my students.
Only a small number of my students suffer from severe deficits in phonological
processing (6 per cent, at this time). Further, such programs as we have
described do not allow for the focused natural language use that encourages
students to exercise and apply skills they are working on. Nor do these
programs allow me to monitor freely occurring errors in my students’ language
use.
My Students
As a speech-language Pathologist, I see children with
many and varied needs. I currently serve over 60 children. Some of my students
have speech impairments: These range from children who need articulation
therapy for a few sounds-in-words like /r/, /s/ or /z/, to those who stutter or
have developmental dyspraxia (an impairment in the ability to correctly pronounce
and sequence sounds and syllables) and may need from 20 to 40 sounds in
sounds-in-words corrected. I also have students who are language impaired:
These students exhibit depressed receptive and/or expressive language skills.
They may have word finding disabilities, problems with listening comprehension,
difficulty understanding question formats, or problems with vocabulary
function. Or they may be too quiet or talk too much. They may also have
difficulty with language in the area of morphology (word structures),
semantics, syntax, and/or pragmatics, and so on. Again, a limited number of
these will experience extreme difficulty with learning to read.
While the problems that SLPs encounter are diverse,
one problem that SL Pathologists commonly deal with is the difficulty that many
of our students have in making the transfer from corrected sounds or language
forms in therapy to correct application in normal language use. It is one thing
to learn to produce a correct speech sound in a training session, it is another
for that child to apply it correctly in less controlled contexts. It is our
contention in this article that reading and writing activities allow my
students to extend our speech-language lessons into freer settings while at the
same time advancing their literacy skills.
Writing and Language Use
One of the ways to encourage free language use is
through writing. Writing is a very important part of my resource room. Each
child writes at every therapy session. Writing may seem like an unusual activity
in a speech-language room, but I want my students to extend their speech and
language issues into written form in order to maximize their communication and
language development (Goldsworthy, 1996; Koppenhaver, Coleman, Kalman, &
Yoder, 1991).
Writing in particular seems well suited to helping
students develop their competency with phonemic analysis, especially when the
spelling of a word is unknown and must be sounded out (Schlagal, B. 2001).
At a very basic level, constructing words with letters
emphasizes the phonemic structure of language--that is, it clarifies that there
is a sound system of the language that is represented in alphabetic writing.
Writing also provides support for learning the specific relationships between
phonemes and graphemes. At a higher level, of course, the experience of writing
helps make clear how language may be structured to express ideas in writing
(MacGinitie, 1991, p. 58).
Meaningful and functional use of written language is
enhanced when readers attend to speech sounds at the level of the phoneme and
use resulting discoveries about phonemes and letters of the alphabet to guide
their writing and reading (Richgels, Poremba, & McGee, 1996, p. 633).
For these reasons every child who comes to my room
writes, kindergarten through grade 6.
As a warm-up activity during each session, children
seat themselves and individually write a sentence. My rule is that the sentence
must contain at least the same number of words as the child’s age. When
the spelling of a word is unknown to a child, she is asked to “sound it out.” I
ask children to say the target word out loud slowly. Or, if there are
articulation issues, I will say the word myself and model sounding it out.
Peers may also help with spelling. Children can help each other sound out words
or point out the word on my Word Wall if it is there. (First graders can be
quite excited when the Word Wall begins to make sense to them and they can read
a growing number of words on it.) In addition, there are dictionaries which older
students may use. But for the reasons cited above my primary emphasis is on
sounding out words.
When a sentence has been completed, the child must
read it to me twice for fluency, pointing to the words as they go. Then they
count out the number of words to prove that they have reached the minimum goal.
Kindergarten and first grade children (and those who
are severely limited in independent writing) dictate their sentences to me.
Using classic language-experience technique (Hall, 1981; Stauffer, 1970), I
record exactly the language that I am given, saying each word as I write it in
clear, appropriately sized print. As I do this I am getting an ongoing language
sample and I am also monitoring articulation errors and noting error locations
for later work. Once the beginner’s sentence is composed in this way, I model a
finger-point reading of it. The child then reads it back twice, pointing to the
words. For children who have difficulty with matching spoken to written words,
I am right there to catch and support them through an accurate finger-point
reading of their sentence. This necessary beginning reading skill (Morris,
1983) is not always well-established among my younger students. If students are
pointing to one word while saying another, they cannot use their emerging
phonic skill (e.g., beginning consonant knowledge) to assist them with word
recognition (Morris, Bloodgood, & Perney, 2003). Kindergarten and first
grade teachers are not always able to give the kind of individual attention to
children who need to learn this task. When the dictated sentence has been read
correctly twice, the child copies it (beneath the dictated sentence) and the
sentence sheet is entered in the child’s work folder.
The sentence writing (or sentence dictation task)
serves to get students seated and on task at the beginning of each session. But
it also reinforces a host of skills. Those who are writing are discriminating
phonemes to sound out beginning consonants, medial vowels, and final
consonants, creating first words and then complete sentences. Those who cannot
yet write are reinforcing concept of word--accurate finger pointing--and they
are picking up sight words. For example, Christopher, a first grader and an
emergent reader who has just been labeled learning disabled, had been absent
for more than two weeks. On his first day back Christopher sat down, opened his
work folder and read his last dictated sentence word-for-word with accurate
finger-pointing.
Children with articulation difficulties are writing
sounds that are (or will be) addressed in their speech therapy. The child who
has difficulty with the /th/ sound, for instance, may write “fum” for thumb.
I am thus able to document a trouble spot and spend time on it in speech
therapy. Further, because I have acquired an understanding of developmental
spelling, I am also able to monitor the plausibility of children’s errors and
observe and intervene if students fall into confusion and begin to use
unproductive strategies like guessing at spellings rather than sounding through
words.
Many of my students take on sentence length as a
challenge and compete with each other to write the longest sentence in the
class. One kindergarten boy dictated a complete sentence containing forty
words, and my second graders may write entire pages. A dictated sentence is
only judged too long if the child cannot control it during the rereadings.
Sentence writing has evolved into other kinds of
writing, as well. Some students create journals of daily activities at home and
at school, while others create stories or write about themselves and their
feelings. Dialogue journals have also grown out of this. Students may write to
each other and pass notes back and forth while I am doing individual therapy at
the speech mirror. One group of second graders types their collaborative story
composition onto the computer. These stories are saved, copied, and
illustrated. Then the story may be read again to the teacher or to classmates
or parents.
The parents of my students are interested in the
evolution of their children’s writing. Some have come by specifically to read
their children’s sentences, journals or stories. In them they can see evidence
of evolving skill in the spelling of words as the children become more complete
and accurate in rendering them. They can see growing control over sentence
forms and increasing productivity. And they can see handwriting improvement
over time.
Group Dictations and Group Compositions
Much
of the work of speech language pathologists is focused on correcting expressive
difficulties. Expressive problems can be seen when children use incorrect verb
tenses, use telegraphic speech, begin sentences with him instead of he,
or have difficulty explaining what activity they just finished. Expressive
problems can also be seen when children cannot form proper questions, cannot
retell or sequence stories, or are too quiet. Such children benefit from tasks
that support them in developing fuller, more expressive and accurate language.
One of the most useful activities that I know of in this context and one that I
have used for years is a small group language experience dictation. These group
dictated stories are a richer and more developed form of the individual
dictated sentences described above.
True to language-experience precepts, I encourage
students to create a story that I record in print; and I write down exactly
what is said, errors included. Therefore when a child with past tense -ed
problems says “My mom pick me up,” I write it down. As we read back the
sentence before going on to the next, she may catch her error; if not, one of
her classmates may. If the error still passes unnoticed, there is a third
opportunity: the editing phase when I ask children to proofread sentences
looking for specific errors. Once an error has been identified, we make
necessary changes and practice the corrected version of the text. Now I have a
written record of the error occurring in free speech, and we have a
self-corrected form of the child’s own language to work with. (If the error is
not caught, it will be left for that day. It will be brought up again during a
different therapy session when I target past tense -ed.) After each
composition, each member of the group will finger-point read the text aloud,
with a level of assistance appropriate to skill level. In this way, the group
hears and reads along through the story three to four times. For younger
students, this gives the opportunity to absorb sight vocabulary; for more able
students, the repetition promotes fluency (Samuels, 1979). Each group’s story
is then printed and shared with each of the other groups, regardless of their
grade.
I continue to use these stories to focus on particular
skills. We play games with the stories for points, counting sentences, capital
letters, verbs, nouns, homonyms, synonyms, and the like. Groups will even
compete to see who can find the problem/solution to the stories when they are
composed using a conventional story form.
I encourage 3rd through 6th graders to collaborate on
writing their own stories. Each child chooses a different color marker (to
identify individual sentences), and together they choose a topic and begin
writing on the marker board. Each student reads his sentence aloud after he
writes it so the others will see and hear what has been written. Corrections
can be made if errors are discovered during the reading. Reading the sentence
aloud helps with proofreading and with decisions about word choice and style
(Cramer, 1978), but it also helps cue the next writer into what might logically
follow in the sequence. On one occasion my principal observed one of these
writing groups creating a story. She told me how surprised she was that the
children could naturally pull the story together into a coherent sequence while
there were four different voices composing the story.
I ask that these group stories contain at least six to
ten sentences. I seldom have to remind them of this, because their interest in
sharing in the creation of plot leads them regularly to exceed my minimum. In
fact, the larger problem lies in bringing stories to a timely conclusion. Once
the story is complete, I ask questions about the story and students must read
back or identify the part of the text that answers the question. Next I type
the story on my computer, print and distribute copies to all of the classes
that week. The story also remains on the board for several days, and I find
many students reading it out loud when they come into the classroom and wanting
to know who wrote it.
Conclusion
The
traditional language arts activities that I have integrated into my daily work,
are somewhat novel in a speech-language setting. Although my professional
organization, the American Speech, Hearing, and Language Association, (ASHA)
has recently defined literacy problems as part of the Speech-Language
Pathologist’s responsibilities, the direction I have taken comes from my own
studies in reading and the language arts. These new methods have stimulated
interest and excitement among my students, and they have given me new and
productive ways of working with speech and language difficulties. My work is
primarily an instructional and therapeutic intervention for students with
linguistic weaknesses, but it is also an important source of support for busy
classroom teachers who have little time for individual remedial work.
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