Speech-Language PLC Our Journey as a PLC Defining our next steps October 30, 2009

Activating Our Prior Knowledge KnowWant to knowHave come to learn

What Research says… From: Oral Language Pedictors of Literacy Skills: by Charles Haynes, EdD, SLP Diagnostic Findings For students who can decode, receptive vocabulary is the single most powerful predictor of language comprehension. Teaching Implications Structure the lexicon – teach vocabulary in a systematic, structured way that is linked to an organizing theme.

Diagnostic Findings If the student’s confrontation naming (expressive vocabulary) score is significantly below their receptive vocabulary score, this is a red flag for a word retrieval problem. Word retrieval difficulties are associated with sentence and paragraph level language formulation difficulties. Teaching Implications Provide Students with pneumonics and strategies for word retrieval. Provide single word- sentence- and paragraph- level opportunities for use of key vocabulary.

Diagnostic Findings After vocabulary ability, receptive sentence processing is the best linguistic predictor of language comprehension. Teaching Implications Systematically teach students how to recognize a hierarchy of sentence patterns, from simple to complex. Begin with extensive scaffolding, and gradually remove scaffolding to ensure independent recognition.

Diagnostic Findings Students who struggle with oral sentence formulation tasks are particularly at risk for deficits in oral and written language expression. Teaching Implications Systematically teach oral and written formulation of a hierarchy of sentence patterns. Employ strategies and techniques that reduce load on STM and/or scaffold development of phonological WM (mnemonics, sentence hierarchies, sentence templates, oral practice prior to writing)

Diagnostic Findings Phonological awareness performance is highly associated with, and is the single strongest predictor of word recognition ability, particularly, word attack. Phonological awareness performance is highly associated with spelling performance. Teaching Implications Teach PA early (and in conjunction with decoding and encoding of phonetically regular words.) In addition, teach phonological awareness of new vocabulary words to aid recall and production in language formulation tasks.

Diagnostic Findings Weak phonological awareness and weak word attack in the presence of strong underlying language (vocabulary and sentence processing) is a classic flag for dyslexia. For students with unremediated dyslexia, their decoding deficits typically result in deficits in reading comprehension. Teaching Implications Teach decoding systematically and in conjunction with phonological awareness. Teach decoding using multi- sensory teaching principals. Teach to automaticity.

Diagnostic Findings Rapid automatic naming is strongly associated of decoding automaticity and fluency particularly in the early grades. Delays in rapid automatic naming appear to predict delayed word retieval in spoke and written language formulation tasks. Teaching Implications Teach the component skills epeated reading has been shown to mprove text levelreading fluency.