By Sara Finegan

I’ve written about what inclusion most definitely isn’t, and about what special education most definitely should be, and even made some comments about what special education instruction in a general education environment is supposed to look like.

That’s all well and good, if you’re looking to get a taste off of the menu that is Special Education, but it doesn’t constitute a meal, nor, more importantly, does it give you the recipes with which to create one.

What we all really want to know these days is what “Accessing Grade-Level Standards” looks like, whether it takes place in a separate classroom or in a general ed class.

Let me give it a shot, via a hypothetical set of students with IEPs.  Let’s follow this mythical cohort through the fourth and fifth grades, not because those grade levels are the most typical or constitute a more crucial pair of years than any other, but because that’s what I’ve been looking at for the last month, and unless there’s an offer of chocolate, we’re all going to look at things for the next few pages through my eyes.

The Cast of Characters

We begin with the diverse mix of students, whom we encounter at the beginning of the fourth grade:

Matt is a cheerful, restless student with mental retardation.  He knows 50 sight words, can count to 30, and likes to listen to stories.  He has limited social skills, and needs a high level of structure in order to be able to participate in any large-group activities.  Matt, who has limited verbal skills, loves to identify and label things and has an excellent memory for the names of things he’s learning about.  He can copy words and sentences, but does not construct sentences of his own without a great deal of support.  Matt is easily frustrated in a large-group environment and often disrupts class by knocking objects off desks and chewing on other students’ zippers and hoods.

Alex is a highly-functioning student with autism and ADHD.  He has difficulty with visual tracking and this, combined with his attention deficits, makes reading extremely difficult.  He reads reluctantly and is easily distracted from the text.  He has an enormous vocabulary and can dictate complex paragraphs, but the mechanics of writing is difficult for him due to dysgraphia.  Alex has excellent cognitive and reasoning skills and can apply what he’s learned across multiple subjects.  He is easily overwhelmed in large groups, needs a lot of repeated drill and small group, guided work in order to learn new skills, and needs to keep moving.  If he sits for more than five minutes, he begins to “zone out” and gets lost in his own world.

Freddy has moderate-functioning autism and mild mental retardation.  He perseverates on whatever he was watching on television while he ate breakfast.  He is anxious to please adults and, while he enjoys being with his classmates, has few friendships and doesn’t show much interest in others’ needs or likes and dislikes.  He remembers every new word he learns in his reading, and as a result, his sight words vocabulary is enormous.  His decoding skills are less strong, but he is currently reading at about the beginning second-grade level.  Fred loves to take the morning survey in class, and carries his clipboard around to each student, tabulating their responses to the day’s questions.  He can write a sentence describing the results of the survey.

Ben is an English Language learner with expressive and receptive language deficits, auditory memory deficits, and working memory deficits.  He has many friends, encourages people to do their best, but is also easily distracted and can disrupt his table by making faces, tossing paper wads, and chatting when lessons are going on.  Ben’s writing skills are very limited:  he struggles to be consistent with singulars and plurals as well as verb tenses, and uses very bland, generic vocabulary.  His thinking is not particularly organized and he jumps from topic to topic in conversation and writing.  Ben reads at the second grade level and has good literal comprehension.

Martina is the class artist.  She spends hours working on craft projects and can be found drawing and making costumes for paper dolls in her spare time.  She works extremely slowly at academic tasks, which in the past frustrated her general education teachers, and, as a result, caused her to lose confidence in her own abilities.  She reads at the third grade level and has excellent critical thinking skills.  Her writing is less strong, as she lacks organization and structure, and her spelling is poor.  Like Ben, Martina’s primary language is Spanish.  Martina takes three times as long as anyone else to complete assignments, but is thorough and methodical and neat, and rarely makes mistakes.  She excels at social studies and invariably wins the class Jeopardy! Games.

Toby is an excellent reader and thinker who lacks executive functioning skills.  His desk is a mess, his work is all over the room, he loses everything, and he forgets his homework four days out of five.   He is three grades behind in math and reads at grade level.  He rushes through most assignments and pays attention to about 45% of what is going on during instruction.  He is articulate, uses powerful vocabulary in speech and in writing, and participates actively in class discussions.

Amanda is  a very bright kiddo with a bubbly personality.  She struggles with multiple-step tasks and her working memory is extremely limited.  She has low numeracy and, despite years of work, doesn’t know what makes ten, cannot remember her multiplication facts, and cannot do grade-level math.  She reads at the third grade level and, although her spelling is atrocious, writes descriptive pieces about topics that interest her.  When it comes to narrative writing, she exhibits less skills – her tendency is to skip details and important parts of the story, leaving the reader to try to figure out what’s going on.  Amanda is very emotional and struggles with friendship skills – she prefers to play with kids who are 2-3 years younger than she is.  She has severe ADHD and medication helps a bit, but not as much as for some other kids in the class.

Sam has Asperger Syndrome (which is now considered a mild version of Autism Spectrum Disorder) and ADHD.  He also is a profoundly anxious child with limited social skills.  He is easily frustrated by academic tasks and has difficulty paying attention and understanding what is going on in class.  He loves science and sports, and will listen to anyone read stories for hours on end.  Sam needs repeated review and drill on a daily basis in order to master new skills or understand new concepts.  After 20 minutes or so in a large-group, fast-paced setting, Sam often has a melt-down, and either tantrums or cries, which causes his peers to make fun of him.

Grant has moderate-functioning autism with accompanying hyperlexia. He can decode any text but doesn’t understand much of what he reads.  He loves Sponge Bob and The Doors, and marching to his internal beat.  Grant doesn’t do well in groups or cooperative learning activities but is an excellent sight words and spelling coach.   When it comes to auditory processing, you can forget it:  Grant doesn’t process much of what he hears, but has amazing visual perceptual skills and remembers everything he sees.

These nine students can and will learn grade-level science and social studies in the fourth and fifth grades.

Fourth and Fifth Grade Science and Social Studies Standards:

Minerals

In California, fourth grade science includes a unit on Magnets and Electricity, one on Rocks and Minerals, and one on Biomes and the Food Chain.  Social Studies focuses on the history of California.  Fifth grade science involves learning about the human circulatory, digestive and respiratory systems, water and the water cycle and the weather.   In Social Studies, students learn about American history, from the Meso-American civilizations to just before the Civil War.

Whether the kids are in a Special Day Class or mainstreamed into a general education class, they will need differentiated instruction and assignments.  This is what the fourth grade science class might look like:

Rocks, Minerals  and Erosion Unit:

Types of Rock:

• The entire class sings the Rock Cycle Song every day at least once.  The lyrics, sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, provide an excellent way of memorizing the facts about Sedimentary, Igneous and Metamorphic rocks.
• All of the kids have the opportunity to work on three hands-on projects:  Make your Own Sediment; Sedimentary Rock In A Bottle; and  Make a Metamorphic Rock.
• Matt, Freddy and Sam read easy-reader books such as “Rocks”, and “Crystals”.  Grant, Alex, and Ben participate in a guided reading group to read “The Rock Family” and “Digging for Dinosaurs.”   All of them gather with the class for a read-aloud of “Dinosaur Hunters” and Martina and Toby serve as table leaders when the class discusses fossils.
• The teacher has prepared two sets of sorting cards with photos of different kinds of rocks (limestone, sandstone, slate, agate, quartz, etc) and cards with the names of rocks.  Every day, kids get together with a partner to match the words to the photos, or to use the cards for a Memory game.  Students use a classroom chart or, in the case of Toby, Ben, Alex, Martina, Amanda and Grant, their “rocks and minerals journal” in which they’ve filled in graphic organizers about different types of rocks and minerals.
  

  Sorting cards

• Freddy, Sam, and Matt like to take the teacher’s collection of small rocks and minerals and sort them, putting them in labeled squares on a 3×3 piece of wood.   Amanda and Martina and Toby often supervise, prompting the three boys to speak in complete sentences about at least three of the rocks they sort.  (ex: “This is a piece of quartz.  It is pink.”;  “Sandstone is a sedimentary rock.”)
• Matt, Sam and Freddy complete a sequencing activity based on the text “A Rock Collection”, which the teacher has copied, cut up, and laminated.  After listening to a peer or an aide read the story, they work independently or together to put the story parts in the proper order.  In the meantime, Martina, Amanda and Toby, having read the story, write a summary of it.  Alex and Ben also write a summary, but they use a word list provided by the teacher and a sentence starter for each paragraph.

Erosion and Changes to the Earth’s Surface

• All of the students listen to several read-alouds by the teacher using picture books about glaciers, volcanos, and earthquakes.
• Freddy and Sam sit with an aide and read “After the Flood” together.  The aide helps them make a list of things that floods and water do to the earth’s surface.
• The kids watch a short film about the San Francisco Earthquake.  A peer or aide reads from the textbook to the kids about earthquakes and the earth’s surface.  The higher level kids work in partners to answer questions from the textbook, while the lower level kids start working on sorting cards and sight words using the vocabulary for the unit.
• Matt, Freddy, and Sam read about what to do in an earthquake.  They work with an aide to make posters to display in the classroom telling people what to do.
• The kids watch a short film about the Grand Canyon.  The higher level kids create a thinking map in their journals about what they learned about water and wind erosion.  The lower level kids get coloring pages about the Grand Canyon to color and, when they’re done, write a sentence about each picture at the bottom.
• The higher level kids complete a cloze activity about glaciers.  All of the kids work on daily review activities, identifying types of events and weather that affect the earth’s surface and whether they are fast or slow influences.
• After a mini-lesson about how water affects the Earth’s surface (weathering, transport, and deposition), the kids participate in a variety of activities in which they identify which part of the process pertains to a photo or event.
• All of the kids do a culminating report on either volcanos, wind and water erosion, glaciers, or earthquakes.
  • The higher level kids work in small groups to complete graphic organizers as a pre-writing activity, and then, once they’ve completed their first drafts, participate in editing and revising activities using a class-generated rubric.  They are expected to type their reports on the computer and use spell check and  any other aids such as a thesaurus and grammar check, if available.
  • The lower level kids use templates which pictures to identify and sentence starters about each of the different things they’ve learned.  All but Matt are expected to write one general statement and give 2 supporting details for each fact about their topic.  Matt gets a set of labels on which the teacher has typed vocabulary words for his topic and he sticks them underneath the pictures on his graphic organizer template.

accessing grade-level · ADHD · autism · decoding · differentiated instruction · dysgraphia · executive functioning · expressive language · grade-level standards · hyperlexia · Inclusion · low numeracy · modifications · receptive language · Sara Finegan · science · social studies · sorting cards · standards · vocabulary

By Sara Finegan 

         Kids with learning disabilities often struggle with reading comprehension.   As I stated in an earlier post, reading comprehension is a relationship with the written word comprised of a number of behaviors.  One of these behaviors is inferring.  

         Making inferences about characters, the setting, motives, the problem, and possible solutions requires that a reader move beyond literal comprehension and start putting pieces of the story together.  This is often very difficult for the struggling reader and when a child has expressive or receptive language deficits, it can be even more complicated.

         In General Education, we teach that making inferences while we read is like reading  between the lines to see what the author is showing us about what’s going on in the story.  This is an excellent explanation for most of us, but when a child is a concrete thinker who focuses almost entirely on the surface meaning of things, it doesn’t resonate very well.

          Students with learning disabilities who don’t make inferences while reading are not going to learn how to do so by explanation:  I can yack all I want about inferring and even model how it’s done, but that is unlikely to have positive results unless we get the kids to actually start doing it.

          And the way to do that is to show the kids that they already do make inferences, constantly, in their own lives.

          Start by taking a look at the types of inferences we all make each and every day: 

• We infer how people are feeling by their facial expressions and body language.
• We infer people’s attitudes by comments they make and tones of voice. 
• We make inferences about why our students are behaving certain ways based on what we know of their home situations, health, or relationships with their peers. 

           I like to tell the kids stories about real-life events and encourage them to recognize the inferences we make:

Me:  Yesterday morning, the sink in the kitchen was clogged, and my husband spent about 30 minutes before we left for school trying to fix it.  I was popping in and out to check on his progress while I was getting dressed.  He had his head in the plumbing and was giving these deep sighs, like this (sighing heavily) and muttering under his breath like this (muttering) and at one point he even cursed at the cats.  (Pause for comments.) 

Me:  Anyone?

Jonathan:  Oh, he was mad.

Sandra:  I bet he was frustrated! 

Me:  See, you two made excellent inferences!  Jonathan, what made you infer that he was angry? 

Jonathan:  He was cursing.  And that muttering thing. 

Me:  Yep, yep.  And Sandra, how did you know he was frustrated? 

Sandra:  He was sighing.  And muttering.  And my dad curses when he’s frustrated or mad. 

Me:  Terrific!  Both of you could support your inferences with info from my story.  Anyway, this afternoon when we came home, he called the plumber.  I had to go to the grocery store, so I missed it when the plumber got there.  But when I came home, Richard was calling to the bank to find out how much money we have in our account, and looking very serious.  He said “We might not be able to buy that new stereo this month.”  (Pause for comments.) 

Jayme:  He was disappointed. 

Simone:  It’s going to be expensive to fix the sink. 

Me:  Oh, wow!  Two good inferences!  Jayme, what made you infer that he was disappointed?

 Jayme:  Because he looked serious and he can’t buy the new stereo now.

 Me:  Ah, good!  Simone?  What makes you infer that the repair is going to cost a lot of money? 

Simone:  Because he had to call the bank. 

Me:  Anything else?

Tommy:  Because he won’t be able to afford the new stereo.

TIP:  Keep showing the kids how they already make a lot of inferences.  Name what they’re doing:  they won’t connect the fact that they’re making inferences with the reading strategy unless it has a name that is used frequently and that they understand through experience.

          The next step involves making inferences about visuals in print.  I like to use cartoons and comics.  I’ve got a bunch of them laminated that I pull out and let the kids mess with for awhile.  I like to listen to them talk about the pictures, and I ask some open-ended questions, such as “how do the people feel?”  “Why is he doing that?”  “What is the problem in this picture?” 

         When we have a share-out about the comics and illustrations, we identify all of the inferences that the kids have made.  Then I explain that they are going to learn how to do it when they read stories, too.  

         You can also have kids practice making inferences during read-aloud time.  When you are reading a high-interest story out loud, whether it’s Harry Potter, or The Book of Three, or Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, you can pause periodically and ask for some inferences.  Keep a chart of all of the inferences the students suggest, and ask them to track those inferences as the story moves on. 

         I like to have kids do some short-text inferring practice in guided reading groups and also independently before they move to practicing the strategy with their independent reading books.  You can throw together some paragraphs and multiple-choice or short answer worksheets that ask kids to make inferences about characters or situations based on passages.  I’ve included some here as examples.

         Practicing making inferences in independent reading work should take place over a period of time with accountability and exclusivity. 

• When I say “a period of time,” I mean that you should encourage and support the reader for between a week and a month as she or he develops competence in the strategy. 
• When I say “accountability,” I mean that your student needs to be able to show you the inferences being made.  Sometimes this can be by giving the child post-its and asking him or her to record each inference on a post-it during reading time and placing the post-it in the margin of the passage in question.  Then, during conferring time, you can talk about the inferences made and see how the child is thinking and processing.  This will give you insight into where there still may be some weaknesses and what supports you might need to add.
• When I say “exclusivity,” I mean that we should not ask a child to practice more than one brand-new comprehension strategy at a time.  Give the student time to develop strength and ability in making inferences, to gain experience in how it’s done and what it means during his or her independent reading. 

         There will be time later to work on other strategies.  In a demanding classroom, students learn one step at a time, strengthening each new facet of thinking until it can be added to their repertoire of skills.

connections · demanding classroom · expressive language · high expectations · inferences · inferencing · inferring · language deficits · learning disabilities · learning disabled · reading behaviors · receptive language · rigor · rigorous instruction · Sara Finegan · special education · standards · understanding

By Sara Finegan 

         Kids with expressive and receptive language deficits need to learn how to use and understand words.    The speech section of the brain is an amazing thing, and synapses can be created, formed, and reformed without medical intervention.  It is by using and reusing words, practicing them in different contexts over and over again, that our students can overcome, or at least significantly diminish their language disabilities. 

         One of our favorite ways in the classroom is to play Jeopardy.

          I use Jeopardy games primarily for Social Studies, but it can be adapted for any content area.  All you need is some sort of board (I took a large portable bulletin board or white board, covered it with contact paper, and it can stand on an easel quite easily), a document camera, those little envelopes they put in books at the library (or laminated construction paper envelopes you affix to the board), and index cards. 

         I keep five columns of four card slots each on the board at all times.  Then I can switch around the categories and the answer cards with ease.

NOTE:  Our school district is putting smart boards, or Promethean Activboard smart boards in all of our classrooms.  (Lucky us!) This is going to change the way I do Jeopardy because I can set up a Jeopardy game right on the computer and work with it on the smart board.  But I haven’t done that yet.

         If you’re not familiar with the television game show, Jeopardy, it’s essentially a trivia game where the answers are provided and the contestants have to formulate the correct questions.  In a demanding classroom, we play Jeopardy at least once a week, sometimes twice, depending on where we are in a social studies unit, and our games last anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on how much fun the kids are having.  And they have a lot of fun.

          All of the “trivia” in our games consists of information from our current social studies unit. 

TIP:  As the year goes on, our Jeopardy game may expand to include prior units.  Thus, at the end of last year, one category was about ancient India, one about ancient China, one about ancient Mesopotamia, and on category was just about vocabulary related to history.

         Most of the time, the categories are something like this:  geography, lifestyle, religion, leaders.  But that is not cut in stone; we often have a vocabulary category, one on military matters, one about trade, one about inventions.  It just depends, as I said, on where we are in the unit.

          I will preface my description of the game by saying that you should not have high expectations at first.  At the beginning of the year, students will just not do very well and will need lots and lots of coaching and extra time.  Even later in the year, in the early part of a unit, kids just aren’t as familiar with the facts as they will be.  What’s amazing is that within a matter of a day or two, the kids are really learning, integrating the facts, internalizing the information, which is better than simple memorization.  And did I mention they are having FUN?

How do I know this?  Because years later, my students are able to discuss with ease historical facts and ideas and concepts that they learned long ago in our classroom.  My student teacher, on a tour of the school by one of my students this year, was treated to a long description of  prehistoric humans and the development of key concepts including domestication of animals and plants, inventions of new tools, and ideas about religion and nature.  Another of my students from years ago recently texted me that he got an A in world history in high school because he had so much background knowledge from our sixth and seventh grade history class.

         Jeopardy is played, at the beginning, with teams of two or three students.  You’ll find that as the year progresses, many students want to play alone, and others will still want a partner.  This is fine.  It’s great, even.  And you’ll be amazed at who emerges as the stars of the game, confident in their ability to formulate correct questions properly.

         I have prewritten the answers on index cards and put them in the slots or envelopes on the Jeopardy board before we begin. (when the kids see me changing the cards earlier in the day, they get excited knowing that we’re going to play – they really look forward to it.)

          The first team picks a category and an amount (I have 100, 200, 300 and 500 points as our amounts, but you can use any numbers you like).  I pull the appropriate card, and show it under the document camera.  (This is a big help to those kids who are visual learners and need to see the words of the “answer,” not just hear them.)  I remind the team to put their response in question form.  I don’t use a timer, because I want the kids to feel pretty relaxed as they figure out their response and put it in the proper words.

 An example of an “answer” might be:  Wheat and barley.  The proper question could be:  “What grains did the ancient Mesopotamian farmers raise?” or “What are two grains domesticated by Mesopotamian  farmers?” 

         Periodically, I do a mini lesson or reminder lesson about clues we can use to determine the question form.  Sometimes, the kids need reminders, for example, that an answer that contains a date needs a question that starts with “when”, or that a location implies a “where” question.  Often, however, I’ll catch kids coaching each other on this, even if they are on different teams.

         According to our former Speech Language Pathologist, the effort of thought it takes the kids to use the answer/fact to form a question is a challenge that results in significant improvements in their speech skills.  We’ve noticed a huge jump in confidence, mastery of facts and concepts with great ease, and a terrific increase in use of rich vocabulary and complex sentences.  

         We also have a classroom full of history buffs, who are proud to demonstrate their mastery and expertise  both orally and in writing. 

          In a demanding classroom, kids talk about information in a variety of ways instead of just repeating back what we tell them.

complex sentences · demanding classroom · expressive language · high expectations · Jeopardy · language deficits · learning disabilities · learning disabled · mastery · Promethean board · receptive language · rigor · rigorous instruction · Sara Finegan · special education · speech language pathologist · speech skills · standards · vocabulary

 By Sara Finegan

         A huge number of students with IEPs, particularly in elementary school, have expressive and/or receptive language deficits. 

         Difficulty finding the right words can mean that a child struggles to speak in complete sentences, but most commonly, I think, it manifests in a child’s inability to come up with specific verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.   What does this look like in a classroom?  It looks like this: 

• Excessive use of what I call “cottonball” words – vague, generic words such as “things”, “stuff”, “that one”;
• Use of bland verbs such as “went”, “does”, “says”; and
• An absence of most adjectives and almost no use of adverbs at all.

         Difficulty in understanding words is a little different.  I will never forget working with one of my students on a math word problem, trying to figure out where he was getting stuck, and finally realizing that he really didn’t understand the difference between “each” and “every”.  (What do we call these, distributive adjectives?)  This presents a problem not just in math, but in science and other subject areas that require students to follow directions, visualize, or comprehend text.

         We teachers need to recognize both types of disabilities, and carefully craft ways to teach students to use language, and ways to cope with their deficits.  If we do not do both, we are going to shortchange some very bright kids who simply are lacking the right tools to make it known.

Sorting Cards for new vocabulary 

         One of the first interventions I ever used in my classroom is one that I continue to implement on an almost-daily basis.  It’s one of the simplest ideas, and the materials are cheap and always right at hand:  markers and index cards.  I call them Sorting Cards, because they are, well, cards that my students sort.  They also do other things with them, and I’ll explain that as we go along here.

         How they work:  A sorting card is an index card with a word written on it.  I make cards for every new vocabulary word in social studies and science.  I also make cards of verbs associated with the vocabulary words.  Thus, for example, if in our study of an ancient civilization the new words are:   loom, weaver, pottery, potter, fabric, flax, craftsman, agora, peddler, merchant – the verbs might be:  created, manufactured, designed, wove, sold, bought.    As we proceed through a unit, we add cards about farming and crops, government, religion, etc. 

         At first, I just have the kids read through the cards in pairs or small groups, familiarizing them with the vocabulary as new sight words.   I want them to recognize the words automatically, as that will eliminate any struggles to decode the words during later activities.

         Then I start having them create sentences using the words.  I might model:  If I take “agora”, “merchant”, “sold”, I can say “merchants sold goods at the agora.”  My aide or I will work with them at first, then gradually withdraw to  the kids make up their own sentences.  The particularly good sentences get written down on chart paper in the classroom.

         As the kids become more and more comfortable with the rich vocabulary, I start them on sorting activities.  By this time, we have a huge stack of cards (25-50) all relating to whatever unit we are studying.  I ask pairs of kids to work together to sort the cards into categories.  At the beginning of the year, I will suggest the categories for them (“how about farming, trade, religion, and government?”) but later on, they become quite good at determining the proper group names.  The students work together to sort the cards into the chosen categories.  When they’re done, my aide or I will take a look at what they’ve done. 

         We ask the kids to justify their organizational choices.  We do this for several reasons.  First, some words can go in several categories, and we are always interested in understanding why the kids chose one or the other.  Second, it’s a good way to make sure the kids really understand the words.  Third, we want the kids to be able to explain their thinking.  That way, if they put a word in an obviously wrong category, we can quickly grasp the nature of the error, and help repair the misunderstanding.

         What happens with the sorting card activities is that the kids engage in conversation with each other about the words and concepts that the words represent.  They begin to use the words themselves, both in our class discussions and in their writing.    I’ll hear them encouraging each other to use specific words:  Last week, as my kids were starting to write about Ancient Egyptian farming, Benny said to Alex, “they what canals?  They……you don’t want to say “made”, do you?  How about “dug”?

        My students don’t talk about making fabric, but weaving it, not writers but scribes, not strength but power, not winning a war, but conquering, or, in the alternative, victory.

...trot, run, jog...

         Sorting cards aren’t just for content-area vocabulary.  We develop series of cards to practice and learn different ways of saying things – not just similes, but similar acts.  For example, we might make an entire set of cards related to the way we get from one place to the other (amble, wander, climb, crawl, walk, trot, run, jog, fly, race, tiptoe, creep, dance, skip, gallop……)  I’ll mix those cards up with cards from other categories (ways of expressing words:  “yelp, whine, whimper, moan, gabble, whisper, yell, shout, screech…).

         I’ll put several categories of words together and have groups of kids sort them and reorganize them in like groups.  Just as happens with the content-area words, the kids begin to recognize the words, and use them, at first with prompts, and then independently. 

         As the kids use and re-use words, work with them and rework them, a great thing happens in their brains:  the words start popping forward as they think and speak.  More and more automatically, they choose specific  words instead of generic ones, richer vocabulary instead of bland words. 

         You might be wondering if the same lessons can be taught the standard way, with worksheets and mini-lessons.  Possibly, but not with as much engagement and sharing.  Maybe, but not with the relaxation and ease that comes when kids work together, without writing, to use words in ways that are new to them.  Perhaps, but I don’t think that the increase in vocabulary lasts, or that the synapses that are linked and refired when the kids talk together and experiment and think about how to use the words occurs.

         In a demanding classroom, kids use vocabulary, they don’t just memorize it.  When they use it, it becomes a part of them.

comprehension · demanding classroom · expressive language · high expectations · index cards · language deficits · learning disabled · receptive language · rigor · Sara Finegan · science · social studies · sorting cards · special education · standards · understanding · vocabulary

By Sara Finegan

           When I first started teaching, I thought that the school’s Speech /Language Pathologist was pulling kids out of the classroom once or twice a week to work on things like stuttering, lisps, and other impediments.  It was several years before I caught on to the fact that more and more kids these days, both in and out of special education, have expressive and receptive language deficits, which is quite different from my initial perceptions.

            That was back when I had no idea what the different types of learning disabilities were.  (Isn’t it odd that in the entire body of coursework we follow to get certificated in special education, most of us are never explicitly taught what each of the disabilities are?  When was the last time you discussed the nature of “Specific Learning Disability” or “Non-verbal Learning Disorder,” or “auditory memory weaknesses”?  It’s the weirdest thing, and one that if we’re smart, we’ll address on our own by doing simple research and talking to our Speech/Language and Psychology experts.) 

Language deficits defined 

            Expressive language deficits mean that a child experiences difficulty retrieving and using the words and grammar necessary to convey ideas.  Receptive language deficits means that a child struggles to understand language, the meaning of words, and the intent of the speaker.

            I have a theory about these deficits; that they involve both biological and sociological factors.   Hear me out.

             Think about the generation we’re working with.  Both parents generally work at least one job, sometimes two.  In-depth conversations, where adults model interactive communication and their thinking processes as they address world and family issues, conflict, and decision-making, tend to be less frequent and often non-existent when the family schedule is filled with activities, work, and time constraints.  What passes for conversation in many of our homes is really just direction-giving and reporting-out:

• “Put the eggs in the fridge and watch your brother.”
• “Get dressed.  You don’t want to be late for school.  I don’t have time to drive you.”
•  “You pick up Timmy today, right?  I have to work late.”

            For kids who already have difficulty with language, this is not a scenario designed to support improvement.  Kids don’t have much opportunity to talk and be engaged in discussions.  Parents don’t have time to think aloud or model how they think about what they do, read, or see on TV.    As a result, an area of need quickly becomes and remains a weakness which impairs not just communication, but learning.

             These deficits are rather unobtrusive and you won’t notice them right away, often not until it’s time for a child to talk or write about what s/he is learning.  Even then, if you accept language like “he got some stuff at the store” instead of “while he was at the store, he bought three oranges and a can of tomato sauce”, you’re not going to be pay much attention to it.

            And there’s the key:  Too many of us accept vague language and do not demand specificity and the use of powerful vocabulary, because we either don’t realize what’s going on, or don’t have time to figure out how to change things, or figure that expressive and/or receptive language deficits are something the Speech Pathologist is going to handle. 

Demand specific and powerful vocabulary 

            In a demanding classroom, specific vocabulary is taught and used, word choice is emphasized, and instruction provides daily opportunities to talk meaningfully and practice expressing and understanding one another in every subject area. 

            I’ll be writing about some things that have worked in my classroom.  I want to hear what you do as well.  It’s good to have a library of terrific ideas to pull out and select from each year.

demanding classroom · expressive language · high expectations · language deficits · learning disabilities · learning disabled · receptive language · rigor · rigorous instruction · Sara Finegan · special education · speech pathology · standards · vocabulary