Speech and Language
Speech and Language
1. Language Promotion
This programme should be a focus of your session and will work on increasing
the frequency that the child is engaging with you and communicating his needs
and wants with increasing clarity.
If the child is a determined and decisive child who is already using spoken
language to communicate some requests, e.g., biscuit, drink and saying
“steady, go”. The key to this programme is teaching the child to use language
more and more and shaping his language so that this is increasingly clear. You
should working hard to set up extremely motivating situations and scenarios
that your child will want continued or repeated.
When working on these skills it is crucial that we are observing the child and
are confident that he is motivated – as with all of us motivation for an object or
an activity does not last forever, it builds and then it fades and we must be
aware of this, we should be putting lots of energy into building motivation until
he is hooked and at his most interested but stopping this before he loses
motivation so that we are not asking him to respond to an activity that he does
not want to do.
If Your child makes his best approximation, then this should be reinforced by
continuing the activity and also modelling the word back to him in a happy and
excited tone. If he does not make a sound, or it is not his best approximation, ,
present the word a maximum of three times before continuing with your
activity. You should not be presenting your model more than three times in
any one sitting to ensure he will not become frustrated and is still enjoying the
activity.
2. Receptive Instructions
(“Drink” and the child will take the cup and pretend to drink. If the child
doesn’t respond then you prompt hand over hand a couple of times. Then you
try again “drink” and you prompt by modeling for him, doing the action
yourself. After you ask again “drink” and see if the child copies you. Fade
prompts until the child does the action independently).
This programme has been introduced to further develop The child’s receptive
language and teach him to respond to a range of instructions which involve
objects, including “wipe”, “drink”, “push” and “bang (drum)”.
For example if the first target in this programme is “drink” across two sittings
using a cup, the child required point prompts to the cup and was correct in the
final sitting before he went to play, then you continue to work on this, fading
your prompts until he is able to do this independently. As there are no other
mastered skills in this programme, you would then need to teach a second skill
and when that is correct mix between those (for example drink and hug)
before these are mastered.
Remember to have three items on the table so that we can be sure that your
child is listening to the instruction, and not just using the only object available
to him. Once you complete all items on the item list, continue to add to these
with other object related actions, e.g. shake (maraca), ring (bell), roll (rolling
pin).
This programme has been introduced to build upon the work you probably
have been doing teaching your child to imitate different mouth shapes which is
a crucial pre-requisite to more detailed verbal imitation and articulation. Some
of these sounds are directly linked to specific sounds (e.g. moving your bottom
lip to touch your top teeth will form an fff and vvv sound). If during the course
of a session your child has mastered opening his mouth very wide and pursing
his lips to make a small o. You are now teaching him to move his tongue in and
out of his mouth in mass trial. Continue this and when correct without prompts
you can mix this with his other mastered items.
4. Verbal Imitation – Sounds and Words