Figurative Fun

Last week I had lunch with a friend and her teenage son, Mason. He had a great story about communication. When he was picking up his cousin from school, she came out of her first-grade classroom wearing a large sticker on the front of her shirt. He asked, “What does your sticker say?”  She gave him a “look” that seemed to mean, ‘Do you really think I am that gullible?’ then tore off the sticker and said, “It doesn’t say anything, Mason - it’s a sticker.” He wasn’t about to fool her!

I loved that story. So many kids in the early years of elementary school are very literal-minded. Image the confusion when they hear things like: Are your ears burning? Could you lend me a hand? I’m in a pickle.

Is it any wonder there are Common Core Standards to address that issue? If you aren’t familiar with these standards, they were developed to specify what students are expected to learn and teachers expected to teach at each grade level. (I’ve added a link on the sidebar in case you’re interested.) In kindergarten, teachers use grade-level stories to teach their students to “identify new meanings for familiar words . . .” For example, the word “duck” can mean a feathery kind of animal or the action you take when something comes flying too close to your head. This standard is upgraded slightly as students get older, and they are taught more sophisticated multi-meaning words and idioms as they progress through their school years.

In speech, I often get to work on this standard with students who have language delays. I’m always on the lookout for books that will make it fun, so I was thrilled to find Ted Arnold’s three books, Parts, More Parts, and Even More Parts. They are full of idioms and hilarious illustrations to match the phrases. In the last book, my students cracked up over the pictures accompanying the phrase, “It cost an arm and a leg.” A child is pictured in a store with his detached arm and leg on the counter, ready to make his purchase. The cash register is open and full of appendages. At the bottom of the page there is an illustration of a child saying, “I had to pay through the nose.” I won’t go into the details of that one but I’m sure you can picture it on your own. Then there is the boy who said, “I lost my head.” He’s wandering around headless with arms outstretched in search of his missing body part. There are clever depictions throughout the book that kept my students in stitches.

Now, let’s get down to brass tacks. Don’t you think Mason went the extra mile by giving his cousin a ride home from school? I have a gut feeling – the sky’s the limit for this guy.

Round and Sparkly!

Last week, I had a group of kindergarteners in speech, discussing animals. It’s a good subject for learning about categories and building vocabulary. When I asked them if they had any pets, the youngest student in the group said, “I have a snake.”

I asked, “What does it look like?”

“It’s round and sparkly,” she said.

Before I could probe further, the other students were blurting out their response. I heard about the usual cats, dogs, and hamsters but I was still wondering what kind of snake is round and sparkly, maybe a stuffed toy.

During the first few months of school, the child with the snake wouldn’t speak at all in her classroom. That’s why she was referred to me - her teacher thought she was nonverbal. It didn’t take long for her to open up in a small speech group. But it soon became apparent she had significant language delays. I wasn’t about to make her uncomfortable that morning by putting her on the spot but I wanted more information about that snake. I was getting ready to ask when she spoke again, “I have a dog.”

“Oh,” I said, “tell me about it.”

“It’s round and sparkly.”

Adjectives! They must be working on descriptive language in her classroom. Now they just need to be fine-tuned a bit. It was easy to take the adjective, “sparkly,” and apply it to her shoes; they were glittering with pink and silver sequins, which reminded me of the perfect book to demonstrate more descriptive language – Shoes for Me! by Sue Fliess, illustrated by Mike Laughead. It is full of vibrant illustrations, vivid word pictures and rhymes.

“Girls shoes, boys shoes, flowers, stars. 

Jewels and glitter, trucks and cars.”

Shoes clattered and clopped, zipped and hopped and generally entertained my students while they listened to this story. By the end of it, the kids were bubbling with adjectives and they wanted to show off their own shoes so I took some pictures. Take a look:

Our group will return to the topic of animals in a week or two and I’ve asked them to bring in photos of their pets so we’ll have more information to go on. I can’t wait to see the round and sparkly snake and its twin – the dog.

Helpful Highschooler & Hurt Go Happy

In my work as a school speech therapist, I provide consultation services to our local high school. Of course, if I’m going to consult with a teacher regarding their student’s communication skills, it helps to meet the kids. I check in with a few of them on a regular basis and those kids expand the dimensions of my job in a wonderful way.

Last spring when our Special Education department purchased a few iPads, I took one of them to the high school, planning to make a video of a student so he could evaluate his own speech. At the time, I knew very little about how to use an iPad. However, it took only one consultation with this student and he set me on the right path. (I had to promise first, not to post his video on YouTube.) I was amazed at his improvement after one self-assessment.

Everyone is different. Another high school student loves to talk about books - no iPad for her. Literature is easy to use for communication development. I can listen to her rate of speech and fluency as she reads or discusses a story; I can see if she slips into an old speech pattern - using “w” for “r”; and I can check her comprehension. Recently, I had the pleasure of introducing her to the book, Hurt Go Happy, by Ginny Rorby, a local author and friend of mine.

Joey, the main character in this YA novel, has a severe hearing impairment. I won’t go into the plot except to say that another major character, Sukari, is a chimpanzee. I fell in love with her. Sukari opened my eyes to the controversies around animal testing. Hurt Go Happy also touches on many areas of communication: American Sign Language, lip reading, written communication, voice quality and miscommunications in relationships. It certainly opened a good discussion with my student.

For a detailed review of this book check out this link:   http://www.books4yourkids.com/2012/02/hurt-go-happy-by-ginny-rorby-256-pp-rl.html

On a related note, this past week Ginny was in St. Louis serving on a federally funded panel, helping to establish writing standards for 8th and 12th grade students. The majority of the panelists were educators but many others were writers. I’m grateful for the work they did. Just think of all the young authors who will become better writers because of their hard work. And think of the books we may get to read some day, by those young authors.

Young people and education… recall the high school student at the beginning of this post? At my next consult, he suggested he could show me how to play the game, “Angry Birds.” I don’t know, it sounds like too much fun. But I imagine there are readers out there who could turn Angry Birds into an educational tool. What do you think?

Happy (Almost) Valentine's Day

I love the approach of Valentines Day with all the colorful decorations, children’s artwork and the lovingly-made cards. I thought you might enjoy a peek at some of the decorations from around our school.

Hand-made cards

"Stained glass" window hearts 

I bet you can guess what these are. 

They are just waiting to be filled on Valentine's Day.

Our school librarian, Allison Brown, is in the spirit of the holiday. Take a look at our library:

And yesterday, I got to see her at work; it looks like she's having fun to me. She loves children's literature and children. It certainly comes through when you see her with students at story time.  Here she is introducing her favorite Valentine's book, Slugs in Love, by Susan Pearson. Illustrated by Kevin O'Malley.

And here she is with a happy crowd of First Graders listening to the story:

What a perfectly charming Valentines tale! It is full of poetry, love, devotion, and slug-slime. Who could resist such a combination; certainly not our kindergarten, first, and second grade students - nor those of us who work with them. 

The kids didn’t take their eyes off the book as Allison read about the shy slug, Marylou who “loved everything about Herbie—how his slime trail glistened in the dark, how he could stretch himself thin to squeeze inside the cellar window...." She was too shy to approach him directly so she used her slime trail to write secret poems for him. Marylou didn't see what Herbie wrote in return and so, like any good love story, the tension mounted. You’ll have to read the book to find out how it ends but since it is a picture book, you’ll probably guess - the ending is a happy one.

If you have any favorite Valentine’s Day books, I’d love to hear about them!

Super Snail

Last Wednesday, during my final speech group of the day, I played a board game with my students. It’s a simple game. It has a very short racetrack for six colorful, wooden snails. One of the students picked up a snail and started racing him down the track and the others soon followed his example.

 “You can’t make him zip down the track,” I told them. “He’s a snail, after-all!”

Their faces fell and began to get that glazed over look kids often get after a long day of instruction.

So I added, “That is, unless he has super powers.” You should have seen their faces light up. Suddenly they were engaged, fully.

I have to remind you, this group comes to me at the end of the day and focusing is not one of their strengths at the best of times. But they were focused now. All eyes were on me  - and they were very bright.

 “What kind of powers should he have?” I asked.

“A rocket,” one student suggested.

“What shall we name him?”

“I know, I know,” The student’s hand was waving frantically. “Lady Bug!”

“But he’s a snail,” I said. “Are you sure that name captures his personality?”

Another student’s hand shot up. His eyes went wide and he said, “Bumble Bee! Let’s call him Bumble Bee.”

At first I wondered, what they could be thinking, but then I remembered the book, Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy by David Soman and Jacky Davis. This story has been very popular with the younger set around our school. In fact, the students have been introducing the book to their teachers. I can see the appeal - a playground adventure where imagination turns two young friends into super heroes. With bug-wings, they zoom around to save the world from scary monsters and terrifying robots. It’s no wonder kids enjoy the entire series.

In the end, (even though I thought Shelly was a girl’s name) he became:

Shelly the snail
with a rocket tail.
Who zipped and zapped
but never, ever napped.
Who slimed and climbed
Over words that rhymed . . .
                                  you get the idea.

Now if I were to analyze this speech session, I’d have to say the kids were so engaged they were saying their target sounds more frequently than usual. They didn’t even mind when I stopped them to correct their errors. And if we look at the content standards, we touched on phonemic awareness, building vocabulary, comparing and contrasting,  rhyming and following directions (or not).

At the end of the session, I had a hard time scooting these kids out the door – and the school day was over. I wouldn’t be surprised if, when I see them next, I’ll be hearing of Shelly the Snail’s weekend adventures.

Is it tomorrow yet?

Last Monday I was at my desk writing a report when one of my students peeked around the door and asked me, “Do I have speech today?”

 “No,” I answered, “You have speech tomorrow.”

“But it’s already tomorrow!”  

Most likely, the day before his parents had told him he’d go to school “tomorrow” and he was at school so he jumped to the logical conclusion. He stood looking confused (and in need of attention) so I invited him in, took out my calendar and gave him a quick lesson on, “yesterday”, “today” and “tomorrow” then sent him back out to recess.

Later, I looked for a picture book to help teach the concept but I didn’t find one. I did, however, find an excellent book on yesteryear, several of them. One of my favorite discoveries was, Verla Kay’s, Hornbooks and Inkwells.  It is beautifully illustrated and when read aloud its perfect rhythms and rhymes are an auditory delight.

I imagine many of you are familiar with state content standards for education; there are now numerous common core standards that have been adopted across the country. One of them is for students to identify and create rhyming words – what better way to teach rhymes than in an appealing story written in verse?

Another activity that is right out of the common core standards is to retell stories and to sequence the events. After listening to Hornbooks and Inkwells, my students had no trouble retelling many of the details. They loved hearing about the two brothers Peter and John Paul and the mischief they made. They were appalled by the neck yokes and they rooted for John Paul in his struggle to learn to read. And when . . . well I’d better stop there. I don’t want to spoil the story for you.

Speaking of stories, if anyone out there can recommend one to teach the concepts of “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow,” I’d love to hear about it.

I’ve got to run now; I have a birthday party to attend. I’ll look over this note tomorrow, before posting it. But if you are reading this, I guess it already is tomorrow.

Twenty Thousand . . . What??

On Friday, during a speech session with a group of seven-year-olds, we had an interesting discussion about books. Our discussion of one book in particular I found VERY interesting (if somewhat hard to decipher). But let me back-track a moment.

Just so you don’t think we waste time in speech, I’d like to explain that, to begin with, when a child is learning how to pronounce a certain sound, I teach them how that sound is made. Here is a child demonstrating how to make the “ l” sound – at least she is heading there.

(Photos of children on this blog are used with parent permission.)

Once they can produce the sound with their own mouth, they practice it in words, phrases and then sentences. Finally, they need to carry this new skill into conversations, and what better conversation to have than one of books? Book discussions are full of language-enriching possibilities. And they have an added benefit for me - I write stories for children so I love finding out what is currently popular with the younger crowd.

And that brings me back to the group of seven-year-olds in my speech room on Friday. They were at the conversation level in working on their "L" sound so I asked them to tell me about their favorite books. One child told me his was, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”. (At least I thought that’s what he said.)

“Isn’t that kind of hard to read?” I asked.

“No.”

Before he could say more, another seven-year-old interrupted. “I love that book!”

“You’re reading it too?” I know the educational standards are getting fairly rigorous but this seemed a bit excessive. I was amazed but doubtful, so I asked, “What is ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea’ about?”

One child told me it was about an octopus with LOTS and LOTS of legs but the first student looked a bit confused and asked, “What’s a League?”

“A measurement,” I told him, “a large one”.

“Not League, - legs! You know. Twenty Thousand LEGS Under the Sea.” Then he walked his fingers across the table to make sure I got the point. (This is a speech group after-all and we are used to using alternative forms of communication when necessary.)

I have since searched the Internet trying to locate this book and have found a children’s version of Jules Verne’s original but I have not located, “Twenty Thousand Legs Under the Sea”. Does anyone out there know if it exists? If not, I know a couple of young authors with great imaginations who would be willing to work on it.