Interventions for Younger Students:
School Age Children:
Tier 1 Language Intervention Strategies/Ideas: should be integrated into a whole group learning situation
Tier 2 Language Intervention Strategies/Ideas: should be used in a small group setting.
Note: the strategies listed below are suggestions that can be used at both Tier 1 and Tier 2.
Vocabulary:
Comprehension Difficulties:
Expressive Language (content/meaning)
Syntax & Morphology:
Pragmatic Difficulties:
- Provide pictures whenever possible. When teaching new themes, include a list of 5-10 vocabulary words that will be imbedded into theme activities. Review with him, show him a real object and pair it with the picture and the verbal word. Refer frequently to those pictures during activities, directions, and stories.
- Provide pictures when asking him to follow classroom directions. For example, when asking him to hang up his coat, show him a picture of someone doing that. When asking him to stand in line, show him a picture of someone doing that. When telling him to color an item a particular color, show him a picture of the color. Etc.
- Provide pictures to give him options for requests such as (bathroom, drink, toys, song choices, iPad games, etc.)
- Encourage him to request by prompting “I want ____.” Pair with a picture if necessary.
- Encourage him to play with other friends and make requests “more blocks please”, “blue block please”, “play kitchen”, etc.
- Parallel talk: talk out loud about what he is doing. “You are getting your shoes on.”
- Expand: expand on what he is saying. If he says “car”, you say “that is a blue car.”
- Give him one thing at a time: this encourages him to ask for more.
- Give him two choices: do you want ___ or ___. Wait for a verbal response.
- Acceptance: accept any attempt that he makes to communicate
- Read to him daily. He may most enjoy basic books that target single word vocabulary. Read the same book over multiple days to increase his familiarity with the pictures. He may sit for longer periods of time if he is familiar with the book. Encourage him to point to objects in the book. For example, “show me the dog.” If he doesn’t know how to point, gently guide his hand to the picture of the dog (hand over hand).
- Encourage imitation skills. Make this a fun activity such as pointing to body parts then tickling when he gets it right or practice silly motor movements like sticking out tongue, clapping hands, wiggling fingers. This also encourages eye contact and joint attention.
- Ask yes/no questions that are basic. To encourage “no”, ask silly questions such as “is that a puppy?” when pointing to a cup. Then exaggerate the response – “noooo” and shake head.
- Encourage imitation of sounds and syllables. For example, when looking in a mirror together, stick out your tongue, smile and frown, pucker lips, make noises too and see if he will imitate you. Even if he doesn’t imitate at first, keep trying and eventually he may start doing it too.
- Set up the environment to where he has to get your help for a preferred toy, object or snack. See if he will look at you and point. If he fusses, ask him “what?”. Wait/pause and give him time to respond. After he requests in some way (even if it’s not a word) acknowledge his attempt to communicate by giving him what he requested. Keep doing this. Eventually, he may begin to vocalize or imitate the word.
- When you realize what he wants, model the word. He’s pointing to a cookie. You say, “you want a cookie?” Wait/pause, he vocalizes, points or nods. You say “cookie” and wait. Whatever, he does, give him the cookie. This is a good model of the target word and waiting to give him an opportunity to verbalize the request. But also acknowledging his attempt at communicating.
- provide demonstrations for directions and practice over and over: this is easy to do with body parts. Example: “point to your nose, point to your feet”, etc. You can also do this with other directions, “clap your hands, touch daddy’s nose, point to the sky”, etc.
- Make identifying objects in the environment into a game. Use an animated voice and big facial expressions. Example, “where’s the table?” and run to the table and say “Here’s the table!” do this with lots of household items. You can also do this when driving and ask “Where’s McDonald’s” when you see the sign. “Where’s a truck?”
- During play, ask him to give you things. Example: “give mommy the cup?” or to simplify just say “cup?” as if you’re asking, “where is the cup?” It’s important to spend time down on the floor playing WITH your child and narrating the play for him.
- Offering two physical choices. Reaching or pointing is an acceptable form of beginning communication
- Give him one preferred item at a time. When playing with a preferred toy such as blocks, offer him one block at a time. When he wants another, wait, until he points, vocalizes to make a request.
- Sabotage: this technique is when the adults sets up a situation in which the child will need your help. For example, if he wants a cookie, have the cookies out of reach and encourage pointing, signing more or cookie, or vocalizing to make a request
- Engage him in songs and fingerplays or games that require attention and are motivating such as pat-a-cake, itsy bitsy spider, or I love you rituals.
- Accept ANY attempt that he makes to communicate
- Point and label items in picture books. Read books daily.
School Age Children:
Tier 1 Language Intervention Strategies/Ideas: should be integrated into a whole group learning situation
Tier 2 Language Intervention Strategies/Ideas: should be used in a small group setting.
Note: the strategies listed below are suggestions that can be used at both Tier 1 and Tier 2.
Vocabulary:
- Pre-teach key vocabulary and concepts
- Teach vocabulary in context - repeat word often.
- Stop in lectures to acknowledge target vocabulary
- Use gesture/objects/photos/pictures/ to emphasize or teach meaning
Comprehension Difficulties:
- Use a slower rate of speech
- Include pauses between steps or sentences to allow for processing
- Model and encourage use of “think time” to aid comprehension by teaching all students to wait 3 seconds before responding to questions or making comments
- Present information in smaller steps
- Tell the student what to listen for, before presenting information verbally
- Paraphrase auditory information
- Specifically teach the concepts of “before” and “after” when giving multi-step directions
- Model “think aloud” and encourage visualizing “making a picture in your mind” to aid comprehension, vocabulary, and critical thinking
- Teach vocabulary in context including activities involving categorization, associations, similarities and differences
- Have the student repeat what he/she is listening for
- Teach the student to ask for clarification or repetition
- Use a story map or graphic organizer
- teach/cue student on “whole body listening”
- Look at the teacher before directions, questions, or content instruction (listen with your eyes), hands and feet still, mouth quiet, think about what is being talked about
- Review, discuss and paraphrase the main idea
- Model and encourage simple note-taking or visual methods of organizing information appropriate for grade level, (sticky note listening, Cornell notes (main idea/details columns), highlighting
- Use visual supports that identifies the type of WH questions (who, what, where, when, why)
- Highlight the key information in text
- As you speak to your students, try to work in “connecting” words such as so, because, then, but , when, instead, while, etc. This gives the student more information. Our students need us to tell them what we are doing, why we are doing it, and who we are doing it with.
- State when a topic is changing
- Use the word paired with student movement
- Use synonyms, antonyms, or categories to reinforce target vocabulary
- “Flexible” is similar to “bendable” or “easy to shape”.
- Give examples of other things that are flexible - a person, a rubber hose, play dough, etc.
- Utilize word webs, student drawings and word maps
- Allow multiple opportunities to practice and reinforce target vocabulary
- Use peer instruction or cooperative groups
- Keep a vocabulary journal to refer to
- Prompt student to add new vocabulary to their vocabulary journal
Expressive Language (content/meaning)
- Use cues for ordering (1st, 2nd, third, etc.)
- Provide extra classroom focus using vocabulary activities like word wall, word of the day, naming items in categories,
- Sort new vocabulary by feature - what category, function, make comparisons to more familiar words, and make associations (what else goes with it)
Syntax & Morphology:
- Expand the students response by repeating his/her sentence and adding any missing grammatical elements
- Student repeats or writes “the dog bark the cat.” teacher says “you’re right, the dog barked AT the cat.”
- Repeat the sentence back emphasizing the correction to make it more salient to the student
- Take what the student says and expand upon it.
- Student says “the dog bark”. Teacher says, “you’re right the big brown dog barks loudly!”
- Avoid saying “you say it”
- Find a way for the student to communicate when it seems difficult for him
- Provide multiple choice options, picture cards, etc.
- Give the student a visual cue taped to his/her desk to remind of grammatical rules
- Give the student flash cards with various parts of speech and have them practice making complete sentences
- Follow student’s response with a wh question to elicit additional information then model new, longer sentences. “The boy took my pencil. Which boy took your pencil. Red shirt. The boy in the red shirt took your pencil.”
- Have the student develop a vocabulary log that contains:
- Word
- Student friendly explanation
- A sentence to illustrate the word’s meaning
- An illustration
- Part of speech
- Teach students to “tell everything the listener needs to know” (I wasn’t there, I need for you to tell me…)
- Find and highlight the main idea in a text
- Rephrase or say the main idea in your own words
- Model and encourage the use of simple notes (words/pictures) or visual methods (graphic organizers) appropriate for grade level to support organization of ideas for story retelling, relating past events and summarizing content
- Model “think aloud” and encourage visualizing (make a picture in your mind) to aid in organizing ideas, word finding and use of descriptive language
- Emphasize use of sequential words
- Model and encourage use of “think time” (3 seconds) to aid organization and or word finding
- Have student retell sequence or generate sequence with outline before writing
- Give student specific vocabulary he/she needs to use in explanation or retell
- Provide different types of cues to help student recall:
- Phonemic - give first consonant sound of the word
- Semantic - carrier phrases “you measure things with a ___”
- Provide attributes - “it’s yellow, has lots of windows, type of transportation”
- Provide the opposite - “not rough, but ___”
- Phonemic combined with semantic cue - “it lives in the ocean, has eight legs called tentacles, it is an ah…”
Pragmatic Difficulties:
- Identify the inappropriate behavior when it occurs - but do so gently without making the student feel bad
- Give options - “you can do your homework by yourself or your friend (or the teacher) can work with you. Which do you prefer?”
- Validate his emotion - “I understand doing homework is hard”
- Put an activity that triggered his emotion - “you’re frustrated because you don’t want to do your homework”
- Put an emotion to his behavior - “you must feel frustrated”
- Acknowledge his behavior - “i see you ripped up your paper”
- Look at pictures of emotions and name the feelings
- Talk about what would make the student feel the same way
- Talk about why they may be feeling a certain way
- Teach unfamiliar facial expressions and emotion words (frustrated, anxious, worried, excited, etc.)
- Clearly and explicitly explain basic social skills and explain why they are important
- Require teacher greetings.Wait for a response
- Teach eye contact:Provide cues for students who forget to give eye contact.Ask for eye contact when responding even if it’s brief
- Teach polite vocabulary
- Explicitly explain expected and unexpected behavior in different situations
- Teach initiating conversation or play with another peer
- Set up situations in which the student will need to initiate conversation
- Give the student a message to deliver to another person
- Teach compromising - in the moment
- What would you like ___ to do/say to make you feel better?
- Prompts - what could we do to make you both feel ok?
- Teach cause/effect - when you ____, others feel/think ____ (perspective taking)
- Discuss how the student wants others to think of him
- Encourage him to look at his peers and try to think what their eyes are saying or what their body language/facial expressions are saying
- Prompt the student to be aware of others body language