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43: LSL Strategies for Itinerants with Kristen Temprine
583 Plays1 year ago
Kristen Temprine, LSLS Cert. AVEd. shares how she implements listening and spoken language strategies with a school-aged itinerant caseload.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Todd Pod
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Todd Pod, a podcast to support itinerant teachers at the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, SLPs, and other deaf education professionals.
Introducing Kristin Temprine and Today's Topic
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fund, and today we're talking with Kristin Temprine about applying listening and spoken language strategies to school-age students. Thanks so much for being here today, Kristin. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. This is exciting. Yes, it
Kristin's Experience and Current Role
00:00:26
Speaker
is. So could you tell everyone a little about yourself and your background
00:00:30
Speaker
Sure. I have been in the field of deaf education for about 12 years now. I'm a teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. I am also listening and spoken language certified as an auditory verbal educator. I also mentor some clients to get certified. I've worked in birth to three, three to five, elementary school, middle school, all in a listening and spoken language classroom.
00:00:52
Speaker
That was really neat to see kids go from, you know, babies up through middle school. And then I've also worked as an itinerant teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and currently I am mentoring, like I said, I'm also an adjunct professor at Bloomsburg University in their Deaf Ed department, and I'm working right now as an educational consultant for
00:01:13
Speaker
an intermediate unit in pennsylvania so that's basically just a special education hub in different counties so i support literacy mts s and deaf hard of hearing so.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's been fun to try out some different roles, but that's my background in a nutshell. Yeah, amazing. I feel like it's always nice when people have like a breadth of experience to like pull from because you've done like the little thing with babies, but then you've also done it with the bigger kids.
Adapting LSL Strategies for School-Age Kids
00:01:40
Speaker
And a lot of like itinerant teachers, as you know, as a former itinerant teacher, it's a lot of school age kids. Like you might get some preschool here and there, but a lot of it. Absolutely.
00:01:49
Speaker
bigger kids who still need support in their listening sometimes, sometimes even more than we realize. So what's like the high level overview, like the important need to know information of using whistle strategies with school age kids? I think it's important to look at, if you look at the strategies, a lot of them are geared towards our birth to three, three to five population.
00:02:13
Speaker
But you can use all of them with our school age kids, middle school kids, high school kids. I think the really important things are when you're in that session with a student to make sure that you're in a quiet location, make sure you are checking equipment. Like you can't have a good session if you don't have functioning equipment and then making sure that
00:02:33
Speaker
you know you're working in those strategies into whatever goals they might be working on and what we do in a session is probably gonna be different than what i would recommend to the teacher in the classroom so we can hone in on those listening skills in the session and apply some of those strategies with the older kids but then what i would recommend for the teacher in the classroom.
00:02:54
Speaker
is going to look a lot different. I want them relying on visuals in the classroom. I want them to get everything they can get in the classroom, whereas in our sessions, I'd rather them focus on strengthening those auditory skills. Can you expand on that a little bit and give an example of what's a strategy that you think would be useful in a session, but then that's different than what you would recommend for the teacher to do in the classroom?
00:03:15
Speaker
Absolutely. I think self-talk is one that we do with our little ones when we're playing. Maybe we're using language to play, you know, saying, oh, I just made the car go. Ready, set.
00:03:27
Speaker
go, and we're doing our auditory closure and we're kind of self talk as we play. But then in a school age session, if I'm maybe doing a read aloud, or if we're just working through a new vocabulary word, I might stop and think and say, Hmm, okay, it said he has a heart of stone. When I think of a stone, it's kind of cold and hard. But when I think of a heart, it's like warm and fuzzy, and it's soft, and it beats. And so
00:03:53
Speaker
I might kind of talk through my thought process, modeling that for the student and that self-talk. And you could also use that modeling and expansion and auditory closure. It just looks a little bit different than it would with our little ones. I think there's a lot of strategies that we use in the little sessions that we use as we get older too, to say it before we show it. That might not be for a toy that you're introducing, but maybe it's for a vocabulary concept or maybe it's for
00:04:23
Speaker
a category or maybe it's for a whole section of self-advocacy where we're maybe talking about the language surrounding accommodations in their IEP before we actually look at their IEP and their accommodations and thinking about the language that is used there. So it's less focused around play, I would say, and more focused around language and their different educational topics.
00:04:46
Speaker
But I think if you look at those lists of the strategies, it's just like, OK, take away the toys and take away the playing. And how can we adapt to that for our older students?
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think that like say it before we show it or like ah toy first or ah toy sandwich any of those types of strategies where we talk about like listening first before the visual. I feel like with the kids that are older that really just comes through as like conversation. Like we talk about things before we do them like I'm not necessarily never going to write the word down on a piece of paper. It's just that I'm going to say it
00:05:21
Speaker
first because I want them to register it in the auditory part of their brain. I want it to be processed in that way versus when we tell the teachers, if you're teaching new vocabulary, write it on the board, have a visual, X, Y, and Z. Show a picture.
00:05:39
Speaker
It's different. My goal is to work on their listening skills first because if they have strong enough listening skills, then they'll be able to access their classroom stuff without so much support.
Emphasizing Listening Skills vs. Visual Aids
00:05:51
Speaker
Absolutely. But when they're learning new material for the first time, you can't stress their auditory skills and their brain content knowledge at the same time. That's too hard. It's too much.
00:06:01
Speaker
It's interesting because when we're applying these whistle strategies in our sessions, they're specifically meant for the sessions. It's to strengthen listening skills, not to do in the classroom because in the classroom they should have all gears firing everything they could possibly learn going at the same time. Right. We want them to have access to all of it and use whatever they can there.
00:06:25
Speaker
In our sessions, it's like you said about a vocabulary word, just saying it first and then even just asking the simple question of have you heard that before? Does it sound like anything you've heard before? What do you think it has to do with asking those open-ended questions where they can kind of give us some more information about what they know about that word? I think if we look at the way our job as a teacher of the deaf varies from a special ed teacher, it's like a special ed teacher might sit right down with the list of words and the definitions and
00:06:55
Speaker
the worksheet or whatever it is and just start going over it. Whereas like you said, we're going to introduce the word through conversation. Maybe we'll use the word in a sentence and acoustically highlight it and then see, you know, I want you to listen, even just that skill. I'm going to emphasize a word with my voice. Tell me which word I'm emphasizing. Even just that being able to pick that out and have that understanding of just how our inflection changes in something is a good skill.
00:07:22
Speaker
to develop because that impacts even all that pragmatic language too. So I think vocab always ends up being like the biggest content area, I think for us. And it's the most bang for our buck, I think in a session because it can be applied to educational, conversational, pragmatic language. So I think that always ends up being like the meat and potatoes of our session. And it often gets us off on different subjects.
00:07:48
Speaker
which I would say is still a helpful session. I think sometimes if you're just like watching in on a session and it looks like, oh, all they did was talk. I think that's an amazing session. Whereas somebody else might say, well, you just talked with a student and it's like, well, no, actually we were making connections and then diagnostic teaching. We're taking the time to stop. Wait, what did you just say? What do you know about that? Hold on a second. Let's go into this. And you know, that's still a, that's still an important path to go down with our
Real-Time Assessment Through Diagnostic Teaching
00:08:17
Speaker
students. Yeah.
00:08:18
Speaker
Could you talk a little bit more about what diagnostic teaching is because that is an important part of listening in spoken language. And I feel like even if you can kind of guess what it means, like from the words, I feel like how it's applied is helpful to talk through. Absolutely. I am going to relate it to one of my first LISLs observations. I had my lesson all planned out because of course in our teacher prep programs, it's all about the lesson plan.
00:08:45
Speaker
having your materials and everything ready to go. And I had a bunch of three to five year olds with cochlear implants in front of me. And we're doing this lesson and I'm following every step of my lesson to a T. I'm getting observed for my LISL certification. And at the end of everything my supervisor said,
00:09:04
Speaker
Okay, that was great. You really stuck to your lesson. She's like, but you missed so much language and you missed so many opportunities to expand on how the kids were responding to you because you were so married to your lesson plan that you actually missed the real time processing of that information in front of you.
00:09:27
Speaker
That's where we got off on a topic of diagnostic teaching and looking at, okay, if you say who is the character in the story and they respond with a place and then you just keep going, you're not expanding on that teachable moment and being able to realize, okay, they might not have processed the who question or they might not know that who has to do with a person where
00:09:51
Speaker
where deals with a place. And to be able to stop what you're doing and put your lesson aside and actually give that student what they need in that moment, that's your diagnostic teaching, your real time assessing their comprehension and engagement in whatever you're doing. And to just breeze by that to stick to your lesson plan is not going to be very meaningful for that student. And we know that language happens in meaningful contexts. So
00:10:17
Speaker
it's going to mean more to that student to stop and talk about those WH questions in that moment than it would be to just keep going and hope that they answer my other questions on my lesson plan. So I think we get, especially newer teachers, I think we can get hung up
00:10:34
Speaker
on sticking to our plan, that we miss out on all of the language and processing that's happening in front of us. So really honing in on what our students are responding to, how they're responding, and then changing course depending on that.
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah, I've also had it in the opposite direction where I start doing an activity and I realize the student is understanding everything I'm saying the first time I'm saying it, which is indicating to me that it's too easy and I need to make my vocabulary more challenging or I need to increase the auditory load and make it more challenging. But I only have to go through one or two or three questions to decide to do that. Like I don't have to wait
00:11:17
Speaker
for them to get 10 out of 10 correct perfectly. Like I can just move straight along. Right. We've got this. More challenging stuff and scaffold
Teaching Vocabulary Through Analogies
00:11:27
Speaker
it up. I feel like the easiest way to do that with school age kids is to use more specific vocabulary. So like if we're talking about a
00:11:36
Speaker
I don't know, we're looking at a picture, we're talking about something, and I say, oh, that's a cool lizard. And they say, yeah, that is a cool lizard. I say, I wonder if it's a chameleon. And they go, what's a chameleon? I've reached the point where I can now talk about chameleon with them. Versus if I say, I wonder if that's a chameleon. And they go, no, that's a gecko, obviously. I'm like, OK, I have to go further. OK, I have to go with genus species.
00:12:01
Speaker
And then maybe, I can't go further than that with types of lizards, but you get my point. You just kind of keep probing until you get to the point where they don't know anymore and then that's where you change them. So I'm not going to keep talking on the level of lizard if they can name five types of lizards. That's so useless to them. Which also ties into the input plus one strategy of
00:12:24
Speaker
you always want to be at a conversational or language level just a little bit higher than where they are right now so that we're always moving that target up. So there's another strategy that we can use in our sessions with our students, but I agree. I think, you know, if something's too easy, you don't want to be like, well, you did great on that. We're done now. Moving on.
00:12:44
Speaker
You can kind of, whether it be enriching or breaking it down for a student using their responses and how they're engaging in something. And like you said, a lot of that is through conversation. And I remember watching one of my mentors in a session with students and I watched her all day and the first 10 to 15 minutes
00:13:04
Speaker
of all of her sessions were conversation-based. And I remember sitting there the first couple of times just thinking like, you're wasting so much time. Like, you have so many other things to do with this student. And I was, that was, you know, right out of college me saying that thinking, well, don't you have goals to track and all of these other things? But they got more out of that conversation. And the LISLS professional got more information out of the kid by having that conversation.
00:13:30
Speaker
by noticing, are they picking up on the jokes that I'm saying? Are they responding? Are they even asking me questions? Or are they taking the entire conversational turn?
00:13:41
Speaker
and going on a long rant about one topic where we started here and now we're somewhere else. So even just that regulating the back and forth of conversational turns and, oh, wait a second. I asked you how your weekend was. What do you think you could ask me now? You know, you told me about your weekend. What do you think you could ask me now? So even just having the time to work on language conversationally, I think is so, so meaningful for our students.
00:14:07
Speaker
Yeah, I want to jump into some like specific like TOD goals that like itinerant teachers tend to target a lot and maybe how we can use the whistle strategies to be more intentional about targeting those goals like through audition or focusing on listening and that sort of thing. So I'll just rattle off a few that like come to mind. I feel like multiple meaning words, idioms, self advocacy, like learning about
Integrating Self-Advocacy into Sessions
00:14:35
Speaker
their
00:14:35
Speaker
hearing loss or learning about their equipment, challenging listening situations. Yes. These are all like, I feel like goals I come across. I feel like we touched on vocabulary already, which is another big one. Absolutely. But I feel like those are things that come up frequently and you can address them from like a very academic standpoint of like, I'm going to teach you how to do these skills. So how could we add some like little strategies to some of those?
00:15:02
Speaker
Sure. I think advocacy is probably, at least when I was an itinerant teacher, especially taking over someone's caseload, when I transitioned into that role, advocacy was on every IEP. And I think, obviously, it should be if you have an itinerant student in the mainstream setting. I think there's a lot of language that goes into advocacy and making sure that we understand the language of
00:15:26
Speaker
what's needed for self advocacy, whether it be self advocacy in challenging listening situations, or self advocacy in their ownership of their equipment, I think making sure that we understand the language surrounding that is important. But then also looking at
00:15:43
Speaker
Okay, maybe we're using sabotage for checking equipment when we first start and then creating situations where they need to use those self-advocacy strategies with me and then talking about, okay, if that happens in the classroom, what are we going to do? Because sometimes we have those goals of, okay, if a communication breakdown happens or an equipment
00:16:05
Speaker
troubleshooting situation happens, what will the student do? But we don't always get the opportunity to have those breakdowns happen in our session. So I think using sabotage to create those in our sessions is a really helpful way to do that. Something else you've brought up a couple times is making sure that we're not testing the student before we've taught it. Spending time teaching them how to report a problem with their hearing aid.
00:16:31
Speaker
So if their hearing aid battery is dying, how do we report that? And making sure we're modeling that through maybe self-talk, making sure we're modeling that through expansion, showing them what to say, how to say it, when to say it. I feel like modeling is like the strategy. Yes, it is.
00:16:50
Speaker
It's like, oh, my hearing aid just died. I need to tell my teacher. And I think, again, maybe when you're checking the equipment at the beginning of the session, you very sneakily take out that hearing aid battery and you give it back to them and they put it back in and you see, okay, are they going to report anything? Or are we going to sit through this next couple minutes where they're not reporting that happening? Or maybe you are
00:17:12
Speaker
muting the microphone on the remote mic and just seeing are they going to say anything or maybe as you're working on something you cover your mouth as you're talking and like all of these are situations that we might be talking about or quote unquote testing them on when we're taking data for their goals but if we haven't created any of those situations where they actually have to report that I don't think we're really doing the child justice because
00:17:40
Speaker
They need to know what it feels like when that happens. They also need to have the language to report it. So like you said, modeling it, using sabotage, those are all little strategies that we can then apply to how we're preparing them for those goals. And just like you're saying, like sometimes just giving them the right language, like I always a lot of times will start with like, what does it mean to be a good self advocate? Like what does that word mean? They don't know what the word advocate means half the time. They've never even heard that word.
00:18:09
Speaker
They don't even understand what we're working on. I always want to tell them what we're working on. I realized, I was like, okay, we're going to work on self-advocacy about this. Then they're looking at me with this blank stare. I'm like, I never told you what self-advocacy is, did I? Yeah,
Deep Contextual Vocabulary Teaching
00:18:23
Speaker
exactly. This is your self-advocacy goal. Do you know what self-advocacy is?
00:18:27
Speaker
Because I always make sure they know what goal we're working on in this session, especially for older kids. Because one, otherwise they don't know who I am. They think I'm a speech therapist. Several kids still think I'm a speech therapist, no matter what I tell them. They're like, OK. Time for speech. Time for speech.
00:18:44
Speaker
Because I think the teachers say time for speech too. I think so too. I try to make sure they know who I am, what my role is, and then also what we're there to work on specifically. Because I think if you don't know what you're working on, you can't really work on it effectively. It's like that metacognition part of it. Absolutely. If I tell them we're working on self advocacy so that you can be a good self advocate,
00:19:09
Speaker
like that means nothing to them unless you teach them what the word, I tend to find it easier to teach the word advocate than advocacy. Correct. Because an advocate is a person, so that's a little more concrete. So what does it mean to be a good self advocate? That's how I approach it. And then we start there. Once they have the words,
00:19:29
Speaker
to describe what it means to be a good self advocate, then I can go into this is how you tell your teacher you need XYZ. This is how you report a problem. This is all of these are examples of being a good self advocate. And it like, men's together in their brain a little bit of like, like it sticks because it's connected to the bigger goal of what we're working on.
00:19:48
Speaker
And I feel like that's very little Z in the sense that it's like digging deep to find like the base vocabulary where they need to know. Absolutely. And I think to something I've just noticed across the board because of the lack of incidental language learning.
00:20:04
Speaker
I feel like those overarching categorical words are missed. It's like, oh, I know that there's carrots and broccoli and peas, but I don't know that they're all vegetables if you ask me to list vegetables because we just never maybe put those two together.
00:20:21
Speaker
or we never maybe took the time to directly instruct that the overarching theme of vegetables and then having your different types of vegetables. I think it's on maybe the listening comprehension test and it asks, what is a basement? Every single student that I ask, what is a basement? They tell me about their basement and what
00:20:42
Speaker
happens in their basement or what they have in their basement or what their basement is used for. But not one of my students ever said it's the underground first level of a house because they're learning it in the only way that they know it. They're not learning it in the general sense of this is what a basement is. So again, self-advocacy, it's like
00:21:05
Speaker
We might be saying it and throwing it around, but if we don't take the time to actually find out if they know what it means or explain it to them, I think it's a missed opportunity. I also think sometimes we assume that that might be too high level for, say, a first grader, but if you actually take the time to explain it to a kid, it's pretty amazing what they're capable of when you take the time to
00:21:28
Speaker
explain the meaning behind something, why we're doing something. You're also going to get more buy-in from the student if they know what they're doing, why they're doing it. So I feel like that's kind of best practice overall. Just let's let our students know why they're with us, what we're doing, and what all these words mean that we're talking about.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, and speaking of like those types of words too, this is why I like to really work on analogies. Like even if the student doesn't have a goal for analogies, if they have any vocabulary goal, I like to work on the vocabulary goal through analogies because analogies require an understanding of like word relationships and word nuances. So like if you had like our house is to basement as tree is to what?
00:22:14
Speaker
like it would take a deep level of the understanding of the word basement to come up with roots. Like you know like because roots are not a room like roots are not roots are part of a tree they're the part of the tree that's underground just like a basement it's a part of a house that's underground but like that you might know what your basement is like you said but like to actually understand the nuance of what a basement is like exactly those are the types of thinking that like analogies can really help with and I love analogies for school-age kids because of the
00:22:44
Speaker
word nuances and the vocabulary nuances but also because they challenge their auditory memory because it's four words and like it's four words and you have to think about how they relate to each other so you have to remember the order of the words matters so like it's really more than four because you have to remember the order so it's like exactly.
00:23:02
Speaker
It's a challenging auditory memory task, but not too challenging, but challenging enough that it's in their working memory for sure. And you're really challenging their vocabulary. So I feel like if you're trying to apply LISL strategies to older kids, doing analogies verbally is a really good way to get into the nitty gritty of what kind of vocabulary gaps they have. And then that's when the diagnostic teaching comes in.
00:23:26
Speaker
And if you say, house is to basement as tree is to what, and they say dirt, you're like, okay, why? What made you think of that? And then you can find exactly where the breakdown is. Is it that they didn't understand the word basement, or they don't understand the relationship of house to basement, or they don't know enough about trees? It could be either. Right. Or maybe they live in an apartment.
00:23:51
Speaker
You know, maybe they live in a split level house where there is no basement. You do, you get to kind of find out how it's all coming together for them and then taking that time to break it down. You're using auditory closure by seeing if they can fill it in. And then if you need to, hopefully you can get there through discussion, but that's where that auditory sandwich could come in where maybe you're then, okay, draw me a picture of a house, draw me a picture of a tree.
00:24:21
Speaker
Where are the roots? I don't see the roots when I look at the tree. I don't see the roots or I don't see the basement when I look at the house. And then maybe you take that visual away and then you talk about how those are similar and kind of like you said, breaking it down of where did we lose you here? Yeah, just for some kids, it might have been the word basement. For other kids, they might not know that roots are a thing. You don't know where the gap is until you dig in a little bit. Exactly.
00:24:46
Speaker
And then the other thing I do with analogies is the way that I have them solve them is by creating a sentence with the first half of
Enhancing Vocabulary with Affixes and Morphology
00:24:53
Speaker
the analogy. So you just have to use those two words in a sentence. So if it's house and basement, you could say, my house has a basement. And then you say, well, my tree has a, well, that doesn't help. Trees have a lot of things. So you have to go back and be more specific. My house has a basement underground or below the first floor. And then that's when you can get into the nitty gritty.
00:25:15
Speaker
recalling a sentence is also a challenging auditory memory task. So if you're doing all of this through audition and they're repeating the sentence and they have to remember that sentence and apply it to the next set of words, that's really challenging their auditory memory in a way that will help them beyond them learning the word basement. It'll also just strengthen their listening skills so that the next time they have to listen to a complex sentence.
00:25:39
Speaker
like it's not the first time they've listened to a complex sentence and they have like that ability to like hold it if you do this somewhat frequently like it gets easier over time and then if they're really if they're
00:25:50
Speaker
really need help, that's when I get out the whiteboard and I write it down. And we do it on the whiteboard. And then maybe I can scaffold it up or down. I could go to an easier analogy and try to do it through audition again, or I can stay on that level of analogy, but do it on the whiteboard until they can do it on the whiteboard consistently. And then I take the whiteboard away. That's like the dank girl stick part. Yes. And I think too, when you're doing all of that, you are helping the student get to the connection on their own.
00:26:19
Speaker
where they're going to hold on to it more, they're going to have more meaning attached to it or value attached to it because they got there. Instead of us just saying, a basement is the underground level of a house. Roots are the underground level of a tree. Okay, moving on. It's getting them to make that connection.
00:26:39
Speaker
that's always the best when they're like, Oh, right, because a basement is underground and roots are underground. Like that's where it sticks and you know, they're going to hold on to it versus
00:26:50
Speaker
us just telling them about it and moving on, or us just saying self-advocacy and moving on and not actually talking about what that looks like. So I think too having them- And you know, if you spend seven minutes talking about the word basement, it's got to stick. It has to. I feel like people feel rushed sometimes. They have so much to get to. They can't possibly spend seven minutes on one vocabulary word. But I would argue that it's better to learn one word deeply.
00:27:19
Speaker
than to learn a bunch of words superficially and have none of them stick because it's more of like, it's also like once you understand that words have that level of nuance, you're more open to seeing that in other words. So correct. Like once you get in the habit of thinking deeply about words, you might not need to be there for them to think deeply about other words. And like that skill can transfer even if the number of vocabulary words they learned is less. They've learned the skills
00:27:49
Speaker
of thinking more critically. And that alone is worth it. Yes. Well, you just touched on something that I've always found difficult in IEP goal writing for our students. Because when we talk about vocabulary goals, I always find it frustrating when there's a vocabulary goal with a word list because I'm like, okay, we can meet this goal. That's great. But if we have any sort of word vocabulary goal,
00:28:15
Speaker
That's an ever moving target. Our students are never going to learn all of the words, but like you just said, if we can teach them the skills and the strategies to use to better understand word meaning, to use what we know about other words to help us understand a new vocabulary word, it's having those skills. I'd rather you write an IEP goal about that strategy or the skills to break down a word.
00:28:41
Speaker
versus they're going to learn this many words or they're going to understand this many words in a sentence or something. It's like having a vocabulary goal can be a little of a catch-22 because that's always going to change and evolve and we're never going to meet that goal of vocabulary because we're still learning vocabulary. There's new words I hear all the time. How do we learn new vocabulary? Incidentally. Incidentally or like new context clues.
00:29:09
Speaker
or by looking it up. Correct. And that's totally fine. Just teaching that skill. Yeah. When I write vocabulary goals, now I always try to do it strategy-based. Yes. Or even just like, it doesn't even have to be a specific strategy. Sometimes it is, like context clues. Sometimes I just write, we'll use strategy. I don't have to name the strategy. Yeah, to use a strategy, exactly. And affixes is a great strategy, guessing it. I was just going to talk about that.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like that's a really helpful one. It is. And I think, so in my role now as an educational consultant, we're focusing a lot on literacy and obviously the science of reading is the big topic right now. But one of the things that I, it's fun to look at science of reading through the lens of a deaf educator or a LISLs professional because it's all related. Just learning about the English language and how it's
00:30:02
Speaker
morpho-phonemic. So it's based on how it sounds and it's based on what it means. So if I add ed to the end of the word, it might sound different in different words. It might sound like ed or it might sound like d or it might sound like t. But if I see that, I also know that the ed means it happened in the past. And if we can use just, like you said, affixes and just how they change the meaning of a word,
00:30:29
Speaker
We're giving students so much power in understanding how adding one letter or two letters to a word can completely change the meaning of it and knowing what those affixes mean. So, you know, it might not sound the same, but if I see that ED at the end, I know that that means it was in the past. Or if I see ING, I know it's happening right now and having that ability to use morphology in our vocab instruction too. And I think we can start doing that so early with our students.
00:30:58
Speaker
Yeah, I had an example recently with an early elementary student, a young student, but very bright, who we were talking about something and the word polyester came up. I don't know why. I think we realized we were wearing the same sweater from Old Navy. I was wearing the adult version and she was wearing the kid version. It was the same sweater.
00:31:17
Speaker
So I was like, let me see the tag. I think we're going to have the same sweater on. And we both looked at our tags and it was the same Old Navy sweater. We're like, oh, that's so funny. And I read the rest of the tag and it said polyester. And we were talking about the word polyester, about what that means. It's like a type of fabric. It means there's whatever. And then we happened to be working on multislabic words. So I was like, oh, can you write the word polyester? Because we're working on breaking down into different syllables.
00:31:43
Speaker
And she spelt it, P-O-L-I-E-S-E-R, with an I for polyester. And I said, oh, there's a Y, not an I for polyester because poly means many. If you see the word poly in a word, it means more than one. And polyester is made up of more than one fabric. It's not just one fabric, it's a bunch of fabric.
00:32:05
Speaker
put together, that's what polyester is. And that's why it's a Y and not an I. I know it could be an I because English is annoying. But we spelled it that way because poly means more than one. And then I wrote the word polyglot because that was the only word I could think of besides polyamorous.
00:32:26
Speaker
I said, this is a word about someone who speaks languages. Do you think they speak one language or more than one language? And she was like, well, it says poly, so it's more than one. So it's more than one language. Exactly. Does a third grader need to know the word polyglot or the word polyester for that matter? But it came up and now whenever she, now she knows the, I don't know if it's an affects or root word, whatever.
00:32:48
Speaker
the morphology of the word of that part poly so that when it comes up again she will I don't know the next time she's gonna have to spell polyester but I think she'll remember as opposed to just writing it it's not just like a random correction like there's a reason it's a why and not an I
00:33:05
Speaker
It's not random. And if she sees that word poly again in a different polygon shapes and stuff, it'll click to her that that is something that means more than one. Exactly. And I think, yeah, it's okay to take the time to explain that. And it drove me nuts when I was in school when somebody would say, well, that's just the rule. It's like, well, why? There might be a reason why. And even just explaining that is
00:33:33
Speaker
We don't have to just assume that our students don't want to know the explanation or meaning behind it. And if it's something like that, they're going to remember it because it was meaningful to them.
00:33:44
Speaker
And we know, like we said, language is through meaningful context. If there's no background knowledge for it or if we don't build the background knowledge for it, it's not going to be as productive for our students.
Adapting LSL for Older Students
00:33:55
Speaker
Yeah. Like I'm sure if someone walked in on that session, they'd be like, why are you looking at your sweater tag? Like what's going on here? And it's just like we're learning about words. Exactly. We are actually learning a strategy about breaking down vocabulary.
00:34:09
Speaker
But all of this, except for the part where she wrote the word polyester on the whiteboard, was all done through audition. We were just talking. We were just talking about it. So I didn't have to get out any specific special materials or anything. I just saw the error.
00:34:25
Speaker
and like took 10 minutes to talk about it instead of moving on to whatever else we were supposed to be doing that day. But I do think that that's the kind of like even just knowing that like morphemes like that exists. So if you start to see patterns with other ones like that's
00:34:40
Speaker
to break it down. They repeat. Sometimes it's random, but it's not usually. There's usually a reason that it's like that. And if you're learning multi-syllabic words, having some awareness of affixes can be really helpful, even if they don't normally teach them until later. Right. And I think too, yes, we're going to check equipment at the beginning of a session. We're going to maybe do our LMH sounds and everything.
00:35:05
Speaker
And maybe they get all of them then. But then maybe when you're having that conversation, you might be noticing some speech production errors that you might be taking note of and just seeing, okay, let's stop really quick. Let's do a quick auditory discrim. Can you hear the difference between these two things? We're still adding in all of these little whistles tenants, I guess, or these like, you know, cornerstones of whistles that but it's just with older students, and we're just using different materials aside from
00:35:32
Speaker
home routines or play-based routines we're using, whether it be an activity we bring or something that they have for us, we're able to kind of, if we know what the strategies are and we know that, okay, I can kind of use all of these with my older students. And it might just be taking a look at the list and thinking, okay, how do I take this out of a play routine and put this into a read aloud or a vocab worksheet or a
00:35:57
Speaker
IEP accommodation and just looking at, all right, we are using these strategies all the time. It's just with higher level language, different topics, conversation, but we're still looking at speech acoustics. We're still looking at language comprehension. We're still looking at theory of mind development and making sure that they're understanding how we all take on perspectives of one another.
00:36:18
Speaker
being able to expand on that. Or like I said, with a conversation, I think it seems to be something that comes up a lot where the student, and I think it's just kids in general too, will just like talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. And you're just sitting there like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Are you going to ask me any questions? That's how a conversation goes. So I think even just that of, you know, when you're talking to somebody, it's usually polite to ask them a question, you know, just to be able to look at, okay,
00:36:46
Speaker
What do you think this person's feeling? How are they reacting to something? And I think a lot of the things we do can just be done through that conversation auditory first mindset. I feel like the how you get the kids to talk like that is because I'm guessing you're probably following their lead and talking about something they're interested in. Exactly. They follow their lead with a one year old means put things in a box when they want to put them in a box and follow their lead.
00:37:10
Speaker
with the third grader or fourth grader might mean talking about Captain America for 30 minutes. And that's fine. If you can work your goals into it, which you can for all
00:37:22
Speaker
creative problem-solving teachers, and I think we could work Captain America into any number of goals. Absolutely. And basements. Yeah, and basements. That's what I mean. It could literally be anything. It could be anything. And you can turn it into a good language vocabulary, self-advocacy. Yes.
00:37:42
Speaker
Being in the adjunct professor role too, I try to urge the students, yes, obviously you need to be able to write a lesson plan. You need to be able to execute that lesson, but don't be so married to it that you're missing out on what's going on in front of you. But also when you're looking at, I think it's important to build, don't build the activity around the goal. Be able to apply the goal to whatever activity you're doing.
00:38:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was going to say is like you don't have to change because I think people hear that and they're like, okay, so I'll have to plan anything. I just walk in and wing it. It's like, no, no, no, hold on. You have to know your target. You don't have to know how you're going to target your target.
00:38:25
Speaker
And by target, I'm saying target and not goal for a reason because goal is like a year long thing. So but target is like what I want them to accomplish by the end of the session or by the end of like a short period of time, like a month or so. So if the target is, you know, using context clues in spoken language, like that's the target. Their overall goal might be a more detailed vocabulary goal or something. But my target is for them to use context clues
00:38:55
Speaker
And I can have activities because if they don't want to talk, obviously I'm going to have activities for us to do. Exactly. But if we get on off topic discussion of basements, like I can target context clues while talking about different houses with different basements. Yes.
00:39:13
Speaker
And I think having your target really clear and understanding what your target is and then what the next target is and what one target behind that was. That way you can use that diagnostic teaching is if they're not hitting the target and they're not understanding what is one step easier and what is one step harder. Exactly. If you have that, then I feel like you can wing the rest. But it's also like if you have your let's say you know your target is context clues.
00:39:42
Speaker
through spoken language and maybe you plan whatever activity you want to plan and they don't want to talk so you start the activity or you think you're going to do that activity. But you might go pick up that student from their classroom and the teacher might say, they have to get this done. Can you work on it with them? So you're going to take that with you and I guarantee that whatever you're doing with them,
00:40:05
Speaker
You can build in using context clues in language as you're working on that activity. And so if, like you said, if you know specifically what you need to be working on with the student, you can kind of apply it to whatever is thrown at you in that session. Even if that means that you're walking them to the nurse to get
00:40:23
Speaker
an ice pack or something. It's like you can use something as you're walking down the hallway to just kind of build that in. I think it's more important to really know what your targets and goals are versus like, I have this activity down pat. Yeah. And oh, we didn't end up working on any of those targets because we were so focused on this activity. So obviously be prepared, have your plan and still be ready to go. But you want to be able to know what you're working on so well that you can just kind of work that into whatever you're doing with the student.
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah, and I feel like I really had to get comfortable with doing less things more deeply. And even though that might be counterintuitive, especially for me, I feel like I'm a very like go, go, go kind of person. Like I wanted it as much as possible. Like it took a lot for me to learn to slow down.
00:41:10
Speaker
But I found that in the slowing down, I was able to go deeper and actually identify like those breakdowns or identify those shrinks and then move from there as opposed to just like running through a to do list.
Slowing Down for Deeper Understanding
00:41:25
Speaker
I feel like that's what my muscles training like really like. Yes.
00:41:28
Speaker
like forget like yeah I mean auditory sandwich, auditory closure, this that and the other thing but like more importantly more taught me to just like be more aware of what the skills are in front of me and then just having a stronger grasp of the hierarchy of skills so that I can move up and down more fluidly in the moment and I feel like we can apply that to older kids by just like slowing down having more conversations and focusing more on like going deeper
00:41:57
Speaker
with what's in front of us instead of covering a lot of different topics. Exactly. I think that's a good life lesson in general. Kind of probably a good mantra to keep in the new year to just slow down, do things more meaningfully, really dive into what's in front of you and go from there. Yes.
00:42:17
Speaker
Absolutely. So I think that that was a lot of great information. Is there any like links, resources, contact info you'd like to share with everyone before we
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:42:30
Speaker
wrap up? I am in the process of updating my website. So that's under construction right now. But I am on Instagram at
00:42:39
Speaker
listen dot with dot Kristin. And then I also have a couple resources and teachers pay teachers just under listen with Kristin. It's just a little handout to be able to give to teachers about why we wear the remote mic, why we need strategic seating, just some of the classroom accommodations that we didn't really touch on in here, but are great to just be able to say, here it is, this is what it is, this is why we use it. But yeah, other than that,
00:43:06
Speaker
social media and then hopefully listen with Kristin.com is up and running soon, but under construction for the time being. Sounds good. Thanks so much for being here today. Thank you for having me.
00:43:18
Speaker
All of those links that Kristin mentioned, as well as the transcript, will be available at listentotodpod.com. If you have any questions, comments, you could DM me on Instagram at listeningfun, or you could post in our Facebook group, the Teacher of the Deaf community. And that's all for this week, and we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.