Last week, toward the end of an exceptionally rainy day,
three of my first grade speech students (all boys) came bounding into my
classroom, overflowing with unspent energy. I had an appealing speech game laid
out on the table, ready for this exuberant group, but as we started the
activity, their wiggling bodies and wandering eyes made it obvious—their minds
were not fully engaged. And so, with a quick sweep of my hand, I gathered the
articulation pictures, folded up the game-board, and stood. They looked a bit
worried when the game disappeared but their wrinkled foreheads cleared and
their eyes sparkled when I said, “I think we need a story.” I had their full
attention from the moment I spoke those words and their minds didn’t wander
through the rest of the session.
Stories are powerful. Whether the students are listening to
them, reading them or helping create them, I can’t think of a better way to
reach a child or help a child reach their goals. Since that has long been my
belief, I was delighted to find two story-related courses at the California
Speech, Language and Hearing Association Convention last week. I guess I’m not
alone in my desire to use literature with my students. The massive ballroom at
the San Francisco Hilton was packed with speech therapists during both courses.
The first one, entitled Narrative
Intervention: Teaching “Once Upon a Time” was taught by Teresa A.
Ukrainetz, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Wyoming, in the division of Communication
Disorders. From her first PowerPoint slide, I knew I had found a kindred
spirit, or mentor, or story-telling guru, (after all, she has a Ph.D and has
written numerous research articles on the subject.) But back to that first
slide. Under the bold printed title, Why
Narratives?, she listed, among other things,
Bridge
between orality and literacy
Teaching
language and literacy through stories
The magic
of story
Parents and professionals, both, will easily catch the
direction of her research findings. Stories build a bridge. What child, after
hearing a good story, does not want to decipher those letters and watch them
turn into words, then lift off the page to become unicorns or castles or wild
horses running through their imagination? As Dr. Ukrainetz indicated,
literature provides a perfect avenue for teaching speech, language and literacy
skills, and that is when the magic
happens.
Later that same day, I attended a course by Dr. Shari
Robertson, a professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This one was
entitled, The Best of Both Worlds: Using
Children’s Literature to Meet Oral and Written Language Goals. Once again,
I was hooked by her first slide. This course was in the afternoon and after a heavy lunch, but I had no
problem staying alert, even when she pulled out a picture book and read, what
easily could have become, a bedtime story.
In the course description she stated, “Put some
evidence-based zing into your therapy sessions by using books to target oral
and written communication development.” Dr. Roberson put some zing into her
entire presentation, and if I hadn’t already been enthusiastic about using
literature with my students, I would have come away committed to doing so. As
it was, I came away with fabulous new lists of books to use with my speech and
language kids, one of which is a picture book written by Dr. Robertson herself—Capering Cows—the story of a sleepless
child who counts cows instead of sheep.
This book, illustrated by Alexandra Crouse, is perfect for
children who need practice with their “k” or hard “c” sounds and it is full of
descriptive words and rhyming stanzas, like this one:
Cows that are cowardly
Cows that are brave.
Cows that have ears that waggle and wave.
The book includes tear-out flash cards for vocabulary
practice and story extension activities. And at the back, you’ll find instructions
on how to effectively use the book to address several National Reading Panel
targets.
Dr. Roberson introduced other books produced by her
publishing company, Read With Me! Press, which support language and literacy
development. Speech therapists will especially appreciate the stories in their
“Word Menders” series, which target specific phonological processes.
You don’t need to be a speech therapist or to understand those
processes to read these stories to children. Elizabeth Redhead Kriston’s Go By Goat, charmingly illustrated by
Gary Morgan, will help children listen to and pronounce the final consonants in
words. Since this sound often disappears
when some of my younger students speak, I’ll be putting the book to good use.
And when my exuberant speech group comes in for their next
session, I’ll be armed with several new stories that are certain to delight them
as we work toward their goals.
I received these books for
review purposes. The opinions are completely my own, based on my experience. I
was not financially compensated for this post.
