Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Brain Development and Bed Time Stories


Brain Development and BedTime Stories

Dr. Perri Klass on family health.

A short excerpt

“A little more than a year ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement saying that all pediatric primary care should include literacy promotion, starting at birth.

That means pediatricians taking care of infants and toddlers should routinely be advising parents about how important it is to read to even very young children. The policy statement, which I wrote with Dr. Pamela C. High, included a review of the extensive research on the links between growing up with books and reading aloud, and later language development and school success”

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Sentence Development in Preschool


Tools for Measuring Sentence Development: Some unanswered questions.

Unanswered questions from the August 13th posting:

What tools are there for monitoring language development across all 4 levels—sounds, words, sentences, discourse?
How often should we monitor progress?
What do we do with the information we gain from monitoring?

Standardized Tools for Monitoring Sentence Development

1 Developmental Sentence Scoring

Research Report on the DSS by Laura Lee, 1970, giving a very detailed description of what this tool entails.  It involves collecting via audio tape (perhaps now video tape) 50 samples of a child’s spontaneous speech, for children ranging in age from 3-0 to 6-11.  This article gives a very detailed description of the range and complexity of sentence production skills.  I suggest this tool not so it will be used as a formal test, but because it offers a very detailed listing of all of the sentence structure (syntax/grammar) elements.


2 Here is another standardized commercial tool with multiple measures of language, including sentence knowledge: Preschool Language Assessment-5


3 For a more recent tool see Appendix B of Anne Toolen Rowley’s dissertation:


4 American Speech Hearing (Language) Association Annual Convention

Got Grammar?  An Easy Way to Review Grammar and Syntax


 

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For the most part, the tools noted above were designed for Speech/Language Pathologists.  At the same time, the information presented in the tools provides good insight into the range of syntactic knowledge norms we should pay attention to in preschoolers (0-5) language development.  Many of these tests are for children 3 to 5 or 3 to 7.  We will need to pay attention to sentence development from 18 to 36 months.  In this age range, knowing the developmental norms is critical, since so much of syntactic development occurs between 18-36 months.  Although even in the 3-5 range, some syntactic elements are more complex than others.

 

Laura Lee’s DSS test is especially informative.  Because so many language development authors suggest that “syntax” or “grammar” knowledge/skill is essentially complete by age 5, it is easy to assume that there is little need to pay and to the more sophisticated elements of syntax: embedded clauses,  auxiliary verbs and secondary verbs, use of conjunctions, and question forms.  These syntactic elements may tax a child’s cognitive, processing, and memory skills.

 

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In addition to monitoring sentence grammar, we need to pay attention to the pragmatics of language at the sentence level.  Do children understand and use sentences for the full range

of purposes?  There are several ways of talking about “using” sentences to communicate: pragmatics, functions, speech acts, communication purposes, intentions.  Researchers have studied babies’ communicative purposes even before the babies can put words together to make sentences.  Hoff describes the work of R. S. Chap showing a wide range of “speech acts” at the One-Word Stage, including labeling, repeating, answering, requesting action, calling, greeting, protesting and practicing. (Hoff, p 103).  Nino (l995), cited in Hoff, lists “communicative intention” by a 1-1/2 year old, including, greetings, agreeing, refusing, disagreeing, asking a yes/no question, disapproving and expressing surprise.

 

Although addressing function relative to older children, Pinnell (in Power and Hubbard’s Language Development: A Reader for Teachers) suggests using Halliday’s seven categories for language function to assess children’s repertoire of language functions: instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, imaginative, heuristic, and informative.  In that same text, Halliday describes each function in detail. For further details, see https://classroomdiscourse.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/sentences-function-part-3-of-3/   We will come back to the “functions of language” topic again as we move to the discourse level of language.

 

Timing

As with other levels of language, given that children start to develop 2 word sentences as young

18 months, it is important to start tracking their progress and pace of development on a regular basis from age 2 on.  The data tell us that the typical development of sentences (grammar, syntax) is essentially complete by age 4 or 5.  That being the case, it seems reasonable to suggest tracking progress every 4 to 6 months between 2 and 5.  Again, we don’t want to miss tracking those “optimal” periods of development only to find that a 4 or 5 year old child is well behind the typical milestones.  We have too much information and research that tells us that children who arrive at kindergarten with under-developed language skills are likely to struggle to keep up as they go through school.

 

One study that highlights the role of “sentences” in the “readiness for school” literature is an “old”  monograph study: Language Development, Kindergarten through Grade Twelve Walter Loban, NCTE, 1976.  I quote this study here because of the insight it gives us on the importance of   sentence structure.  The following are direct quotes from the text:

 

“In the elementary school, the members of the High group were superior in tentativeness or flexibility of expression; they avoided the flat dogmatism of the Low group, the stark statement without possibility of qualification or supposition.  They used more subordination than the Low group, thus reducing the number of communication units by combining them in complex fashion.  Even so, the High group still exceeded the Low group in number of communications units in oral language.”

…..

Although all subjects knew and used all the basic structural patterns of English sentences, the High group had a much greater flexibility and repertoire within the pattern of a sentence: that is, they had more ways to fill slots like the subject, the modifiers, the objects.  Their usage was also more conventional that the rest of the group.”

…..

“Both in reading and in written composition, the proficient (High) group excelled and they were superior in using connectors--like meanwhile, unless--in a test which showed their median to be almost double that of the Low group.  The High group also excelled in the use of adverbial clauses of concession and condition.  On listening tests, those who were superior with oral language ranked highest.  IT IS OF SPECIAL NOTE THAT THOSE SUPERIOR IN ORAL LANGAUGE IN KINDERGARTEN AND GRADE ONE BEFORE THEY LEARNED TO READ AND WRITE ARE THE VERY ONES WHO EXCEL IN READING AND WRITING BY THE TIME THEY ARE IN GRADE SIX.  OUR DATA SHOW A POSITIVE RELATIONSHIP OF SUCCESS AMONG THE LANGUAGE ARTS.”

Loban goes on to note that these differences are not attributable to poor cognitive development.

 

“NOTHING THAT WE HAVE EVER FOUND SUPPORTS THE IDEA OF ANY BASIC ABILITY DIFFERENCES AMONG ETHNIC GROUPS.   WHAT WE DO FIND IS THAT THOSE WHO USE THE FULL RESOURCES OF LANUAGE USUALLY COME FROM FAMILIES WITH REASONABLY GOOD SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS.  SOCIAL INJUSTICES, NOT GENETIC DIFFERENCE, ACCOUNT MOST PLAUSIBLY FOR THE LARGE NUMBER OF OUR MINORITY SUBJECTS WITH LOWER SOCIOECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS.  ANGO SUBJECTS FROM LOW SES STATUS FELL INTO THE NONPROFICIENT LANGUAGE GROUP JUST AS INEVITABLY AS THE SUBJECTS FROM MINORITY GROUPS.”

If Loban’s study were inconsistent with current data on the “Achievement Gap,” perhaps we could ignore it as old data.  It is not inconsistent with the current attention to the Achievement Gap.  Too many children are still arriving at kindergarten without the oral language skills that they will need to succeed.

Use

Backtracking to our discussion of both sentence structure (grammar and syntax) and function, we need to look at both of these dimensions of sentences in determining how to use the developmental data gleaned from standardized tests, formalized checklists or naturalistic observations.

 

I would suggest that the easier starting place it to note to what extend the child uses all of the functions of sentences (as per Halliday).  In those instances where a function is not being used to an appropriate developmental level, then we might look more closely at the syntax/grammar of the utterances. 

 

At the same time, when a 3 year old is not using fairly complete basic sentences or continually lags behind the developmental norms, we should determine whether more attention, more stimulation or scaffolding or more direct intervention is needed.

 

The next set of questions:
What do we know about monitoring discourse?
 
How do we write/talk about discourse?
 
What are the tools, timing, and uses for monitoring discourse?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, August 17, 2015

Sharing Books With Toddlers


Sharing Books with Toddlers, The Hanen Way

By Lauren Lowry, Hanen Certified Speech-Language Pathologist and Hanen Staff Member

http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Fun-Activities/Sharing-Books-with-Toddlers,-The-Hanen-Way.aspx

A Short Excerpt

”Toddlers (aged 18 months – 2 ½ years) have figured out what books are all about, but may or may not  be ready to hear a whole story. They enjoy holding a book, turning the pages, looking at the pictures and talking about what interests them. They often have their favourite books, which they want to read again and again!

When reading with a toddler, the main goals include:

  1. Developing his interest in books
  2. Having him interact back and forth with you
  3. Learning some interesting new words
  4. Having fun!

Types of Books for Sharing

How to Share a Book

Adding Language During the Reading

Make A Book

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, August 14, 2015

Monitoring the Development of Sentences


On the August 6th blog, I ended the post with the following questions:

Should we approach monitoring of progress at each level of oral language development (sound, word, sentence, discourse) in the same way?
How much knowledge, skill or training is required to monitor progress?
Are there other factors that influence monitoring progress?
How well do we use the data from monitoring progress?

That posting focused on monitoring at the “sound” level of language, with specific reference to the type of skill “sounds” represents.  Using a reference from Hoffman, Teale and Piagia, I noted that “sounds” reflect a “constrained” skill.

“In discussing the Common Core State Standards, Hoffman, Paciga and Teale point out that some literacy standards (“Foundational Skills” which they call “constrained” skills) are relatively easily conceptualized in terms of component parts that follow a fairly linear trajectory.  …. https://www.academia.edu/4622466/Common_Core_State_Standards_and_Early_Childhood_Literacy_Instruction_Confusions_and_Conclusions

Words, sentences and discourse are “unconstrained” skills: that is, we continue to develop these skills throughout our lifetime and development of these skills is more challenging to trace beyond an initial level of “mastery.”  At the same time, by the time children reach “school age/kindergarten” we have a pretty good sense as to whether or not these skills are developing at a “typical” rate.

Before tracing development at the sentence level, note that the same “guidelines” for monitoring progress apply:  tools, frequency of monitoring and use of the data.

Tools:  Standardized, formalized checklists and naturalistic observations.

Frequency:

*concerns of teachers and parents about the “pace” or “rate” at which the skill is being developed by individual children,

*meeting the goals of the specific curriculum (assuming there is a specific curriculum),

*sensitivity to the predictive power of the skill (for subsequent development of other skills).

Use:

Using data to plan instruction and timely intervention. Yes!, we should use the data--assuming that we know what the monitoring tells us about what we need to change about the curriculum, the teaching/learning, the context, or our understanding of the child.  Even if we don’t see anything to change, having a record of the child’s development is useful for both teachers and parents.

Sentence Development

The developmental norms for sentences provide a great deal of information about when sentences develop, what those sentences consist of, and how the sentences are used.

When and What Develops?

First, let’s note that the basics of sentence structure (syntax, grammar*) begins around 21 months or when children have acquired a basic 50 word “vocabulary” and are completed by the time children reach 4 or 5.  Hoff says, “The last major syntactic development is the production of multiclause sentences.  This course of development usually begins some time before a child’s second birthday and is largely complete by the age of 4 years.” (p 228)

Hoff (pp 228-244) gives us lots of examples of what develops, showing examples of a child’s two word utterances: possessives (daddy coffee; mommy book), property-indicating patterns (big shell, ho sand), recurrence number and disappearance (more raisins, two shoe, all gone), locatives (sand ball (on), ball daddy (to), actor/action (mommy sit, daddy work) and “other combinations”.

Hoff also describes morpheme development and sentence type development: negative forms, question forms, and complex sentence forms.  These sentence forms become increasingly important as we help children engage in the “extended” conversations that reflect and predict a critical dimension of school success—the ability to elaborate and engage in more abstract language.

Roger Brown, an early researcher on language development gives us additional information of sentence development, including embedded and co-joined sentences.  Brown traced sentence development from 12 to 47+ months, noting that “and” appears between 22 and 26 months, and “ but, so, or and if” appear between 31-32 months.  See the link below for a more detailed outline of Brown’s work.


Sentence Function or Use.  While children are learning to produce sentence grammar (structure), they are also learning how sentences are used to convey meaning.  Michael Halliday gives us a list of the “functions” of sentences.

Instrumental: I want a banana

Regulatory:  “First I … you need a rake and you have to build over the rake.”

Interactional:  “Do you like cricket too Henry?”

Personal:  “I know that song ‘cause we sang it at Kindergarten.”

Heuristic:  “We could make a water thing to tell how much rain we got.”

Imaginative: “Alice the camel has one hump, one hump, one hump.”

Representational:  “It is raining really heavy and heavy all day.”

This chart from Michael Halliday is from a 1969 article in Educational Review titled “Relevant Models of Language,” which appeared in Language Development: A Reader for Teachers edited by Brenda Miller Power an Ruth Shagoury Hubbard, Merrill Prentice Hall, 2002

To see the more detailed blog post:


Three other important notes about sentences.

Sentence comprehension.  According to Hoff (p 247), although it is harder to measure with naturalistic observations, “the sequence of grammatical development that occurs in comprehension is like the sequence in production, but it occurs earlier.”

Sentence complexity.  Sentences can be more or less complex (orally or in writing) because of three factors:  (1) features of open class words (nouns and verbs) and their relationships. (2) number and types of syntactic operations (usually reflected in sentence length) and (3) type of syntactic operation (order of main and subordinate clauses.  See Scott (pp 342-344) in Handbook of Language and Literacy edited by Stone, Sillman, Ehren and Apel.

Sentences and smaller and larger units of speech.  Sentences are not independent of the prior level (words) and the next level (discourse). In order to understand and use sentences, you need to know the words that make up the sentences and the larger unit into which the single sentence fits.  Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek point out (pp 157-8):

    “Babies find the units in the language stream.   Where are the words? The phrases? The clauses?  Although babies have to find these, this doesn’t mean that they have to be able to name the units.  In fact, they can’t…At some unconscious level, however, babies need to be aware of these grammatical units if  they are to learn to produce grammatical sentences….”

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Should we approach monitoring of all levels of language in the same way?  No.  What we are monitoring will be influenced by the complexity of the skill, the rate at which the skill “typically” develops, at what age development is largely complete (constrained vs unconstrained skills), how complex a task the monitoring is, and the tools we have available.

How much knowledge and skill are required?  Lots… especially important is the knowledge of language development, including a sense of the rate or pace at which the child is developing the language skill.

Are there other factors that influence both the development and the monitoring of the skill?  Yes, specifically important are the context in which the monitoring takes place and the task the child is engaged in.  Some contexts will be more typical for the particular child, some less.  That needs to be judged and noted.  Some tasks are more difficult (in general and for a particular child), some tasks less so. It may be necessary to monitor several types of tasks to get a complete picture.

How well do we use the data collected?  Ideally, we are monitoring how well a particular child is progressing on a schedule that will allow us to intervene at an optimal time .  We need to share the information with parents and other important persons in the child’s life (teachers, para-educators, supervisors, specialists).  And, most importantly, we need to intervene if the child is not progressing at a pace that will allow him or her to be successful.

I will need to save the following topics for the next blog post, continuing with Sentence Development
Tools for Tracking
Frequency of Monitoring
Use

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Language Learning with Books


 


Promoting Language with Book
 By Lauren Lowry, Hanen Certified SLP and Clinical Staff Writer for The Hanen Center   A short excerpt

 
“It’s hard to find a website or pamphlet today about child development that doesn’t say something about the importance of reading with young children. But what exactly is it about books that makes them such a powerful tool for promoting children’s development? And why should families concerned with their child’s language development ensure they are reading regularly with their child?”

 
Books: The Perfect Language-learning Tool

“A recent article by some American researchers who study early language development suggested that there are six conditions in a child’s environment that promote language learning [1]. Furthermore, these six conditions for language-learning can be promoted while parents read with their child, which makes books a terrific language-learning tool.”

 
“The six conditions in a child’s environment that promote language learning are:

 Children need to hear many words often
Children learn words when they are interested
Children learn best when adults are responsive to them
Words are learned when meanings are made clear.
Vocabulary and grammar are learned together.
Read, read, read”

 

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Monitoring Progress Across 4 Levels of Oral Language Development


On the most recent Thursday (7/31/15) blog, I ended the post with the following questions:

What tools are there for monitoring language development across all 4 levels—sounds, words, sentences, discourse?
How often should we monitor progress?
What do we do with the information we gain from monitoring?

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Our choice of tools, frequency of monitoring, and what to do with monitoring data should depend on the skill being assessed and our understanding of the individual child and his/her development.

TOOLS

Monitoring:  The Developmental Perspective

There is an abundance of research tracing and establishing typical ranges for oral language development across the sound, word, sentence and discourse levels.  Once we have an understanding of the developmental norms, we can begin to trace the course of development for individual children in a range of contexts as they engage in a variety of tasks.  I will focus this post on monitoring the development of “sound” skills.

The Sound Level

At the sound level, there are “norms” for when children are typically able to discriminate and produce specific sounds.  There are also norms for discriminating those sounds in words and producing those sounds in different “positions” of words (beginning-“middle”-end or release and arresting positions). 

Since sounds are such small units and even infants produce sounds, why is developing “sound” knowledge and skills a challenge?  For us as readers and adult listeners, we can easily recognize which sounds are in a word (in our own native language, of course).  But the toddler has the important job of separating words out of the long chains—sentences--he or she hears and then separating out the sounds within a word, a skill that becomes increasing important if you want to learn to read.

 In discussing the “developmental trajectory in children’s acquisition of phonological processing skill, Christie (2008 in Achieving Success in Preschool Literacy edited by Justice and Vukelich, p.32) references the work of Marilyn Adams who tell us “that before young children can become aware of phonemes—the individual sounds that make up spoken words—they must first become aware of the larger units of oral language.  Thus, children must first realize that spoken language is composed of words syllables and sound.  For example, they need to learn to recognize when words end with the same sound (i.e., rhyme) and begin with the same sound (i.e., alliteration).  They also need to be able to segment sentences into words and words into syllables….

And then they have the tasks of phoneme isolation, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation and phoneme manipulation (deletion, addition and manipulation.”

There are “norms” for phonological processing skills critical for learning to read and for subsequent phonemic awareness, phonics, morphology, and spelling skills.  All of these skills constitute a fairly discrete set (“constrained” skills to use the Hoffman, Piagle, Teale term—

“In discussing the Common Core State Standards, Hoffman, Paciga and Teale point out that some literacy standards (“Foundational Skills” which they call “constrained” skills) are relatively easily conceptualized in terms of component parts that follow a fairly linear trajectory.  …. https://www.academia.edu/4622466/Common_Core_State_Standards_and_Early_Childhood_Literacy_Instruction_Confusions_and_Conclusions

 Here are some links with more detailed information about the development of “sound” skills.

The Development of Phonological Skills By: Louisa Moats, Carol Tolman

Basic listening skills and "word awareness" are critical precursors to phonological awareness. Learn the milestones for acquiring phonological skills.
Teaching Phonemic Awareness and Phonics by L. C. Ehri, National Reading Panel Meta-Analysis
IRA Position Statement

Monitoring with Naturalistic Observations

I believe using a naturalistic observation is the first step in monitoring progress unless there is a particular concern about the rate at which the skill is developing or there is a specific intervention plan in place.  Because this is a “constrained” set of skill where the sequence of skills is specifically identified and there is a well-developed trajectory, the curriculum should indicate which skills are the current focuses of monitoring.

Monitoring with Formalized Checklist

See Mather and Welding, Essentials of Dyslexia Assessment and Intervention for an “Informal Assessment of Phonological Awareness “Checklist” that involves an adult interviewing the child based on a development progression of skill.  (pp.87-88)

Monitoring with Standardized Tests

There are a range of tests for example, CTOPP, PALS Pre-K.  Many of these tests focus on children in the K level and above. (See Mather and Welding, pp. 85-86.)

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When using knowledge of the developmental stages or formalized checklists, it is important to note the context (and, if relevant, the task) in which the monitoring occurs.

FREQUENCY OF MONITORING

Timing: I propose that the timing for monitoring should depend on:

*concerns of teachers and parents about the “pace” or “rate” at which the skill is being developed by individual children,

*meeting the goals of the specific curriculum (assuming there is a specific curriculum),

*sensitivity to the predictive power of the skill (for subsequent development of other skills).

USING THE INFORMATION FROM MONITORING

Using data to plan instruction and timely intervention. Yes!, we should use the data--assuming that we know what the monitoring tells us about what we need to change about the curriculum, the teaching/learning, the context, or our understanding of the child.  Even if we don’t see anything to change, having a record of the child’s development is useful for both teachers and parents.

The next set of questions:
Should we approach monitoring of progress at each level of oral language development (sound, word, sentence, discourse) in the same way?
How much knowledge, skill or training is required to monitor progress?
Are there other factors that influence monitoring progress?
How well do we use the data from monitoring progress?