Read It Once more provides a comprehensive preschool / early babyhood curriculum that promotes and establishes an early on literacy-based foundation for the evolution of basic skills. It likewise provides the educator with student goals and objectives based on developmental milestones with structure and rationale. The curriculum engages the parent/guardian in the instructional process and fosters communication betwixt the habitation and school.

Using Literature Combined With Repetition to Enhance Language Development for Young Children with Language Delays by Rae Schaper BA, MEd

Young children with language delays and autism thrive in an environment filled with visual cues, familiarity, and predictability. When these three factors are combined with repeated readings of familiar children's literature, cognitive learning and language skills flourish.  At that place are specific strategies for combining literature with repetition that have been proven to be successful in helping children with language delays and autism brand significant gains in spoken language and language.  Why does using literature combined with repetition work and so well?  What strategies are near successful when using repetition combined with literature in your therapy sessions?

It is important to cull appropriate literature.  Children with language delays or autism often think in pictures and are well-nigh successful when you choose books that have uncomplicated illustrations on each page.  At commencement the pictures should serve every bit visual cues to help the children understand the meaning of the written text.  As the children's language skills begin to emerge, the pictures volition continue to remind them about the meaning of the written text.  Earlier selecting a book, read the text in accelerate.   Cull books with repetitive words or phrases, words that rhyme, and stories with predictable endings.  Lucifer the length of the volume to the kid'south attention bridge, the level of his language skills, and his interests.  Count the number of nouns and verbs used in the story.  You may be amazed to acquire that some traditional picture books commonly used at the preschool level comprise far too many words.  This makes it difficult for children with linguistic communication delays to process all of the vocabulary.  Choose books that offering opportunities to expand a diversity of language and cognitive skills.

All children benefit from repetition.  It is particularly of import to echo stories, rhymes, and songs when working with children who take linguistic communication delays.  During the early babyhood stage, the brain is most active and bombarded with hundreds and hundreds of new concepts in every expanse of development.  The brain is designed to create a new neural pathway every fourth dimension a child encounters a new situation or new slice of information.  Each new concept or situation creates another neural pathway.  The brain cannot effectively process and retain every new piece of information (neural pathway) that the child is exposed to in this phase of evolution.  The encephalon is biologically designed to choose neural pathways that are virtually important and prune off those that are not necessary.  How does the brain know which neural pathways to keep and which to prune?  Thicker neural pathways are recognized as "of import" and they are retained.  Thinner microscopic neural pathways are biologically pruned off.  How practice neural pathways get thick?  Repetition!  Every time a concept or slice of information is repeated, that neural pathway becomes thicker and thicker.  The brain begins to recognize and receptively process the information found on the thicker pathways.

A new neural pathway is created every fourth dimension a kid encounters a new situation or a new piece of information. Many children find information technology hard to procedure new information because besides much data comes too chop-chop.

Some other fashion to consider looking at a preschool child's brain might be to envision it as an empty file cabinet.  Each time yous introduce a concept, the brain creates a new file folder. When the data is not repeated or is presented without visual cues, the result is most ofttimes a very frustrated child.
Visual cues and repetition aid children strengthen neural pathways.  Information technology helps them receptively classify and organize new "file folder" information and concepts.

Many children with language delays suffer from frustration and anxiety, which interfere with their ability to learn. Repetition fosters predictability.  The ability to predict words and phrases relieves anxiety for young children and fosters an "I tin practice" attitude.  Repeating a story for an extended period of time creates a predictable and familiar environment for learning.  The length of time the story is repeated depends on the age and ability of the child; the younger the child, the longer the duration.  There are 3 typical stages of linguistic communication development as the story is repeated.  In the commencement two weeks (stage 1), children learn to procedure language skills receptively every bit the story is repeated every twenty-four hours (creating and strengthening neural pathways in the encephalon).  Around the third week (phase 2), receptive language processing results in the ability to experiment with expressive language skills.  Here is where we often fall short.  In one case the child starts to utilise expressive linguistic communication, we often motility on to new vocabulary and concepts too apace.  That is why the quaternary week (stage iii) is and so critical.  The third stage is where nosotros allow the child opportunities to exercise foundational skills using both receptive and expressive language from the story.  Over time as the children's language skills abound and develop, they volition advance through these stages at faster and faster rates.

Generalizations of abstract and cerebral skills are a challenge for children with linguistic communication delays and autism.   Children often memorize words and provide correct answers in the familiar format in which they are presented.  If the format is changed, nosotros sometimes find the kid cannot generalize vocabulary and concepts in a diverseness of situations.   This is where it becomes of import to weave the storybook throughout the child's solar day.  This involves providing activities using characters and objects plant in the story to teach or reinforce foundational skills.  Information technology is near effective when speech-linguistic communication pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, classroom teachers, and parents collaborate with each other using the story every bit a common theme to aid children with language delays grasp abstract concepts in a variety of different situations.  When all educational activity professionals share the common focus, goals and the same repetitive story, concepts are no longer taught in isolation and the kid makes greater gains.

When all involved use the same curriculum with ane focus, the kid makes greater gains.

How exercise you lot go well-nigh providing activities that incorporate characters and objects (visual cues) from the story to be effective tools in instruction foundational skills?  Kickoff, identify the reoccurring objects and characters institute in the story.  Permit's use The Very Hungry Caterpillar past Eric Carle as an case.  Create a set up of visual cues (pictures/graphics).  These would include: leafage, caterpillar, apple, pear, plum, strawberry, orange, cake, ice foam cone, pickle, cheese, sausage, lollipop, ruby-red pie, salami, muffin, watermelon, butterfly, and cocoon.  For infants and toddlers, you would desire to accumulate and use existent or plastic objects. At present identify the foundational skills that demand to be addressed.  These are typically objectives that are constitute on the kid'southward IEP or educational plan. They may include skills such as:

  • Increase the number of spoken or signed words in his/her vocabulary.
  • Chronicle experiences with some understanding of sequence, kickoff, and closure.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of positional concepts.
  • Identify objects that are the same and different.
  • Use the plurals of common words past adding an "due south."
  • Use visual discrimination to place big and little objects.
  • Answer who, what, where, why, and how questions nearly the story.

This concept of teaching foundational skills using the graphics and characters from the story can be used with whatsoever storybook.  The foundational skills can exist consistently repeated and reviewed only changing the graphics when you introduce a new story.  In this way, you can build the expressive vocabulary by changing the graphics, but the delivery system of teaching foundational skills remains the same.  This helps to eliminate feet for children with auditory processing bug as well every bit those with language delays.

Use story graphics from Brown Carry, Chocolate-brown Comport, What Exercise You lot See? past Eric Carle  to master the same foundational skills.

Every time you change the story, you accept the opportunity to add new foundational skills along with repeating goals covered in previous stories.  Children with language delays oftentimes need the same foundational skills repeated in many different stories.

Another essential component, in addition to repetition of storybooks, is the repeating of rhymes, and especially Mother Goose rhymes.  Children with language delays and autism often struggle with expressive language.  Mother Goose rhymes usually consist of unproblematic, rhythmic, rhyming text and are ofttimes set to music.  The words are easily memorized and by and large have fiddling logical meaning.  Female parent Goose allows children to play with sounds and words without the stress of having to use the correct pronunciation or sentence construction.  Many children who are on the verge of acquiring expressive language are more likely to experiment with the rhyming nonsense words, which leads to an increase of expressive linguistic communication.

Unfortunately, we see more and more immature children entering our school systems who are lacking basic foundational skills.  In that location is an accelerated emphasis on academic achievement in kindergarten with no time for teachers to ensure that students have acquired the preschool foundational skills.  What does high school graduation accept to do with preschool?  Everything!  When at that place are holes and gaps at this basic level of learning, the kid will struggle all through his/her educational career.  Children may lose confidence in their ability to acquire.

Speech-language pathologists often enter the flick at the preschool or kindergarten level and have the golden opportunity to help children acquire the necessary foundational skills and the beloved of literature.   Using the strategies of literature combined with repetition is an constructive method of ensuring that children will have the receptive and expressive language skills, as well as the confidence necessary to exist successful in kindergarten and the years beyond.

Following are the xx Foundational Skills that Read It One time Once more has identified that are necessary for early learning success.

20 Foundational Speech and Linguistic communication Skills Necessary for Early on Learning Success Based on Read It Once Once again Level 1 Curriculum Units
  1. Label objects
  2.   Repeat familiar words and phrases
  3.   Sequence stories and experiences
  4.   Demonstrate visual discrimination
  5.   Match, sort, and proper name shapes
  6.   Match, sort, and name colors
  7.   Place numbers
  8.   Demonstrate number concepts
  9.   Repeat, extend, and predict patterns
  10.  Demonstrate visual retention skills
  11. Recognize and create rhyming words
  12. Demonstrate noesis of big and little
  13. Demonstrate knowledge of aforementioned and unlike
  14. Classify objects
  15. Understand positional words
  16. Reply "wh" questions
  17. Predict what comes adjacent
  18. Follow 3 step directions
  19. Demonstrate agreement of abstract concepts
  20. Retell a story or feel
To acquire more than virtually their curriculum, (click on the books on their website) that best describes how you lot work with young children.

Click here for more information.

For in-depth manufactures, webinars and upwardly-to-engagement product information and strategies, bank check out Closing The Gap Solutions. Contact hours available. Learn more