General Use: Authentic Assessment

In graduate school. our program really stressed the use of authentic, dynamic assessment to supplement the ever-present and ubiquitous standardized tests. Of course we all learned how to administer the CELF and the GFTA, but it was drilled into us that standardized tests are not the "be-all and end-all" solution for assessing students with speech and language concerns. This was especially important for those of us, who, like me, were preparing to enter a high-poverty, multilingual, and multicultural school district. As I hope we're all aware, standardized tests often don't include standardization samples reflective of diverse students and there are many tests (e.g. the CELF, EOWPVT, ROWPVT, etc.) that we legally cannot score formally when assessing African-American students.

So with all that in mind, today I'm going to highlight and discuss my favorite ways to assess our students that don't involve standardized tests. There are certainly some valid standardized tests, and I always include at least one standardized measure when I write my reports, but more often than not, I feel like standardized tests don't paint an accurate picture of my teens with speech and language needs.

**I won't be discussing fluency assessment here since I devoted an entire post to that!**

Classroom Observation
When I look back at my students' files and read their last SLP report, I am stunned to find that there is frequently a lack of any classroom observation! Maybe classroom observations aren't as common practice as I had assumed them to be, but I highly encourage you to get in the classroom and check out your student's behavior in their true learning environment (if you don't already do so)!

To help guide my observations and create official notes that can be put in the student's file (I used to just scribble  on scratch paper... not exactly file worthy!), I created a student observation form. Using this form helps to ensure that I don't forget to look for anything and that when writing the report I can easily find organized examples of student behavior that otherwise might be buried in a scribble of random notes.

I can't underscore the importance of classroom observations enough; I have been surprised by student behavior in several ways - sometimes I see them using great strategies (e.g. repeating key words to themselves) and sometimes I discover that their disruptive classroom behaviors are much worse than anyone was telling me! In the end, I always learn something new about my students that I otherwise would have never known.

Social Thinking Dynamic Assessment by Michelle-Garcia Winner
OK, so you didn't hear it from me, but you can find a .pdf of this tool on the internet for free by simply googling it. Hopefully you're all aware of Social Thinking and Michelle Garcia-Winner's awesome books, materials and products! But you may not be aware that buried within the Thinking About You Thinking About Me book is a full assessment tool designed to identify strengths and weaknesses for students on the autism spectrum.

With my high schoolers, I tend to employ the following sections:

Section 2. Questionnaire for Teachers and Related Service Professionals
     - I distruibute this to all my student's classroom teachers by turning it into a .pdf to e-mail out
Section 3. Writing Sample: Asking for Help
     - I may not do this section with the highest functioning students, but it can be eye-opening to see that some students don't even know their address and don't know how to ask for help!
Section 4. The Double Interview
     - This is the bread and butter of this assessment. It examines student responses to questions and how well they are then able to interview you. It's also pretty interesting to discover that your students may be unable to identify you in a picture and may be unable to make guesses about who is with you in the pictures. I once had a student guess that my mother was my sister or friend (and not to insult my mother, but this was obviously not the case!). So much good info can be gathered from this.
Section 5. Thinking with Our Eyes
     - Again, I likely would not complete this section with the highest functioning of students, but I have been surprised before by students I assumed would ace this section... and did not. Being unable to follow along with eye gaze can be detrimental to student success in the classroom and this portion can identify real weaknesses in this area.
Section 6. Sequencing Pictures
     - The recommended series of pictures is expensive and I haven't found a really good cheap/free alternative. This section is interesting, but I don't find it as informative as the other sections. Some of the scenarios are legitimately very complicated and I don't blame students for having a difficult time sequencing them!
Section 7. Social Scenario Pictures
     - I tend not to use the pictures recommended by MGW for this section because they're very outdated and it's not always easy to decipher what's going on. But since this is a dynamic, non-standardized assessment, you can use whatever you want! This .pdf has some great pictures if you don't have the funds to shell out $$$ for the official deck. Sometimes students surprise me by doing really well on this section - which only proves that they understand the concept but are having trouble generalizing.

I tend not to get into Section 8, because generally this is the realm of the RSP or SDC teacher and I don't want to step on any toes. However, if for some reason I was the sole provider for a student with autism, I would definitely complete this section to gain an idea about the student's organization in class.

Overall, it's a fantastic tool that can provide you with an overabundance of good information about your student's ability to perspective take, engage in conversation, follow social cues, and decipher non-verbal information.

Wordless Picture Books - Narrative Language Samples

Many of you who have worked in the elementary setting may be familiar with the Frog books, Dr. De Soto, Good Dog Carl, and many other wordless picture book aimed at the little ones. It's hard to imagine that there could be a wordless picture book appropriate for older students, but let me introduce you to Tuesday, by David Wiesner. It's the story of magical frogs and the mayhem they cause as they journey across a sleepy suburban town on flying lily pads. Perhaps it sounds childish, but the artwork is very mature and I promise you that the teenagers I have done this with were genuinely interested in the book. Perhaps there are better wordless picture books out there, but Tuesday definitely works!

I start by telling the student that we're going to look at a book without words. I let them know that we're going to look at it together first, but that after I want them to tell their own version. Together we thumb through each page of the book and while I don't tell my own story, I highlight some vocabulary I might want them to use (e.g. "Look at how they're floating," "They've really built up some momentum!" After we've looked at each page together, I turn on my recording device and ask the student to use the book to tell their own version of the story. Note that this is different from elementary re-tells where you would model the story first. By high school, we would expect students to generate a simple story using pictures all on their own, right?

I'm looking for vocabulary choices, complexity of sentences, and overall cohesion of the story. Did it make sense? Did they skip over something and tell a confusing narrative? Did they employ any of the words I modeled minutes earlier? Were their utterances short and concise or did they launch into detailed explanations? I take this narrative language sample and transcribe it so I can use it in...

SALT: Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts - Expository Language Samples

SALT is an amazing software tool that takes a lot of the pain and time out of analyzing a language sample. Of course we all know about counting morphemes to achieve an MLU and getting a Type-Token Ration (TTR) and such... but that's only for little kids, right?

Not at all!!

You can very easily and quickly use language analysis to gain great insight into your teenage students' language performance! And with SALT, you can compare your students' samples to a large sample group and make comparison between their performance and a standardized performance. I was under the impression that all graduate programs were teaching language analysis via SALT nowadays, but after talking to my district's new CFs a few weeks ago, I learned that no... not everyone is teaching SALT! So here we are; if SALT is new to you, please check it out. There's a handy introductory video in a series of instructional videos on their website to help you get started here!

I currently have the 2008 version of SALT; the only downside of this version is that the Expository Database only extends to age 15;6, not beautiful and amazing age 18;9 that the latest SALT version encompasses. If you're new to SALT and work with teens, I highly recommend springing for the new version for this reason alone (There's also a Persuasion database for teens included in the new version, I wish I knew more about it!). The Expository Database works on the premise of eliciting an expository sample through explanation a sport or game and use of a graphic organizer to sequence thoughts. This official SALT publication goes into way more details about the process! You can then code the sample to look at the nitty-gritty of grammatical errors, TTR, etc. But you can also score the explanation holistically based off of this scoring system and then compare the holistic scores to the standardization sample.

You can code the narrative sample I outlined previously and run it through SALT as well! As of now, there is no standardized sample for narrative samples for teenagers, but you can always compare a student's performance to their expository sample or code for anything your heart desires. For example, you can enter a different code every time a student uses a coordinating clause or a subjunctive clause and then run an analysis to get a percentage of how frequently they use different grammatical forms. You can also make up your own codes to mark every time a phoneme is distorted, you can code for all types of dysfluencies, and an intelligibility percentage is automatically calculated for you as long as you mark "X" every time a word was unintelligible. You can also code for pragmatic discrepancies, such as every time a student makes an off-topic comment, physically turns away from you, laughs inappropriately - the list goes on! Language sample analysis is truly a tool that you can use with all your students!

Getting an expository sample and/or a narrative sample from my students can reveal some strengths and weaknesses I would not have otherwise seen in standardized tests. For example, I have students who bomb the Formulated Sentences section of the CELF-5 and then use those target words correctly in their explanations. We have to be willing to accept that many of our students have a lack of exposure to the material being tested, are simply bad test takers, are bilingual, or have a whole host of other cultural or dialectical differences that make them poor candidates for standardized measures.

SALT is not complicated to learn; I had the benefit of being forced to learn it in graduate school, but I recently trained my SLPA in a matter of about 2 hours. She now codes my language samples for me so the hard work is done ahead of time and all I have do is click a few times to run the analysis and the write the results into my report!

And furthermore, if research is more your game, I encourage you to check out this article about use of SALT with bilingual students and this "myth-busting" article to ease any potential apprehension. SALT is ASHA-approved and makes for a very legally defensible assessment tool. Want to make the deal even sweeter? SALT offers ASHA-approved free CEU courses to help incentivize learning how to code your language samples!! Let's get coding!

Functional Communication Profile for Moderate/Severe Students

Perhaps like me, you struggle to authentically assess you Moderate/Severe teenagers. You know that they're going to bomb any standardized measure you give them. A story retell or expository sample is out of the question, What's an SLP to do?

Perhaps you've heard of it before; I'm a big fan of the Functional Communication Profile - Revised. It's a very thorough tool that helps guide assessment of students with complex needs in the areas of sensory/motor, attentiveness, receptive/expressive language, pragmatics, speech, voice, fluency, oral, and non-oral communication skills. It allows you to use direct testing, observation, or informant report as means to document a student's performance - something I've found invaluable when completing Non-Public School assessments on students I have never met before. my one-time assessment is likely not a very accurate picture of their daily performance so teacher and staff report is extremely valuable in gaining a better picture of their performance.

I tend to supplement my FCP-R findings with examples of direct utterances from the student and/or descriptive examples of how they get their wants and needs met. In my classroom observation section, I might detail how AAC or visual modifications are used in the classroom to facilitate communication. Since these students often have very complex communication needs, the more description the better! I have also been known to administer the EOW and/or ROW solely as positive evidence that these students are able to store and access some academic vocabulary (e.g. erupt, diamond, letter, number, etc), even if their standard score is, as expected, abysmal. I've also used the stimuli informally to elicit things like following directions, knowledge of basic concepts, etc.

I recently attended a professional development where the Pragmatics Profile, a free assessment tool, was discussed. It seems highly appropriate for teenage Mod/Severe students, but I have yet to use it. Are you familiar with this assessment? Please comment and share your experiences if you've used this tool before, I'm very interested in knowing more!

Student Interview and Teacher Input
Like with classroom observations, I've read a lot of previous reports lately where there was no information from the student themselves or from their teachers. Teacher input can be hard to get, I know, which is why I adapted my teacher input forms into .pdfs for easy completion by e-mail. But in reality, many teachers never return my forms by e-mail, so in my reports I often write down their concerns about the student that I gathered from a quick chat with them in between classes, at a staff meeting, or when I see them in the parking lot.

Hopefully this post has given you a few new ideas to spice up your assessment process and include some measures that get out of the box of standardized tests. I know how easy it is to administer the CELF and the GFTA and be done with it, but we really do our students a disservice when we focus on test scores and ignore the holistic picture. These measures are also helpful for moving students off your caseload who no-longer benefit from services. Even if they bomb the CELF-5, a solid expository sample, narrative sample, classroom observation, and teacher report can be your evidence as to why they no longer qualify. Please share your experiences and expertise with authentic assessment in the comments!

And as always, it doesn't have to be fancy, just keep it fun and functional!

• Jillian, the No-Frills SLP

General Use:"Off-the-Shelf" Materials

So I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again: in general, I dislike most "off-the-shelf" therapy materials. If it comes prepackaged with cards, a workbook, and an instructional manual, I probably have turned my nose up at it at some point in my career. Not to say the products are bad, but in my opinion, most "off-the-shelf" products simply aren't appropriate for teenagers or they just don't target their real needs.

Of course, there are always exceptions, especially when those products are modified heavily, such as the case with my use of Matt and Molly with my Mod/Severe teens. But sometimes, it's one of those days where I just haven't had enough time to plan my next session. A group is coming in 5 minutes and I need to just yank something off the shelf and survive the next 25 minutes. In occasions like these, I reach for a few special products that hold a dear place in my heart. I tend to use them as intended, but modifications are almost always at the forefront of my mind...

Language:

Jeepers Peepers or Headbanz (same game, I recommend whichever one you can secure funding for)
Hopefully you've all heard of this game before, or maybe you've heard of it but dismissed it as not appropriate for teenagers. Whatever the case, this is one of those games that should be in your arsenal. The premise is that each student has a card on their forehead that they can't see. The game can play out in a few ways:

1) The target student must ask yes/no questions about their card: e.g. "Am I an animal? Am I a tool?"
2) The target student must ask categorical questions about their card: e.g. "What category am I? What shape am I?"
3) The non-target students take turns providing individual descriptions of the target player's card: e.g. You are a silver tool with a handle used at home by mom and dad.

Depending on your students' goals, one method can be employed for the entire game or each student can use a different method. You can easily target goals like asking/answering questions, explaining, using complex grammar, etc.

The cards that come with the games are OK, but I have made a few specific cards with updated images (since, for example, some of the Jeepers Peepers technology images are very old).

Blurt!
Now I own a very, very old version of this game (as in I got this game when I was 9... so 16 years ago!), so perhaps the new game has a few differences I'm unaware of. But looking on Amazon, this latest version looks more or less the same.

Essentially, Blurt! is a combination vocabulary and memory game. The vocabulary that students will be asked to generate is not complex or difficult, but speed is the key to playing the game and if your caseload is anything like mine, you've got some students with dreadful word retrieval issues. Students take turns reading short descriptions (e.g. "A flat moving part that sticks out from the body of a fish,") and the first student to provide the correct answer wins a point.

You can play this game in several ways:
1) You read the descriptions and all students answer,
2) Students take turn reading one description at a time (use a die roll to select the number or just read the next in the line),
3) One student reads 2 - 6 descriptions in a row before moving to another student.

Lots of accommodations can be made for this game:
- A list of unfamiliar words is generated as a group
- After a pre-selected amount of words, students use and/or write a selected word/s in a sentence
- You provide the each student with a word and they generate their own description (after playing for awhile so they have some examples of what the descriptions are like) to test out on the group

Social Skills/Thinking:

Should I or Shouldn't I - Middle and High School Edition

Praise be to Michelle Garcia-Winner for the creation of this amazing game. I have used this game with my highest level Mod/Severe class and kids on the spectrum of all varieties - you will definitely get your money's worth if you work with any students with autism!

The game comes with a wide selection of scenarios, which I have since organized into categories like "conversations," "naivety," "manners," "college/job, 'etc. so that I can select specific cards for each group. The game starts as you read the selected card and students pick whether that scenario is:

1) Will give people good thoughts!
2) Is just fine, OK
3) Will give people weird thoughts...
4) Will annoy people...
5) Is against the rules!

Students are given a deck of cards from 1 - 5 so they can vote secretly and all reveal their choices together. After revealing, engage your students in discussion about why they selected their answer and what the consequences could be from engaging in that behavior. I have been very surprised by my students' answers; the game really highlights areas of weakness and strength for our students' social behaviors.

Bubble Talk
I picked this game up at a Goodwill for $2 this summer and BOY am I glad!! This game has been an absolute hit with my social thinking groups - so much so that we've struck up a deal to "work one week then play the next week" and alternate playing of this game every other week. Which is fine by me, because although they think they're playing, we're really targeting some great social thinking skills!

This game works a bit like Apples to Apples: a picture card is placed in the middle and each student selects a "bubble" card from their hand. This "bubble" card symbolizes something that a character in the picture card is saying... meaning that in order to play a successful, humorous card, your students will have to take the perspective of the characters in the picture!! After we all lay down our cards, I ask each student to explain who would say that in the picture and why their card is funny. It's great insight to watch them either give a great explanation or completely fail to understand what the character could be thinking or feeling.

In the end, we all end up laughing a lot. Sometimes we take extra time on specific cards where students are having difficulty and sometimes we spend extra time celebrating a student who plays a legitimately funny card. It's a good time all around - I highly recommend getting a copy!

Artic:
 

Artic Attack /r/ and /s/ and /z/
It seems to me that sooooo many articulation materials are made for the under 11 set! My teenagers are no longer amused by "Artic Flips" and coloring pages, and they have played more games of /r/ Go Fish than you can count. Don't even mention bingo or Chipper Chat. Don't even go there.

So what's a high school therapist to do? I ordered these great books with some Medi-Cal money last year and they're already proving to be invaluable. Artic is my LEAST favorite type of therapy and these books make it a little less painful when dealing with a group of 3 unruly 14-year-old boys who exhibit minor /r/ distortions (AKA boys who are leaving my caseload come their annual IEPs!).

These books are organized according to Pam Marshalla's hierarchies - you know, /or/, /ire/, /air, /er/, etc. - and different s-blends and word placements. For each context, there are 4 different games (tic-tac-toe, battle ship, etc.) that you can use to target specific /r/ and /s/ contexts that remain troublesome into adolescence! And chances are, these are games that have not yet been played-to-death in middle and elementary school! And you can print them out and send them home for homework! I haven't yet come up with modifications for these yet, let me know if you think of some new ways to use these games!

Fluency:
So I did my best to try and think of an "off-the-shelf" material I use with my students and... I don't think I do! I highlighted some therapy ideas in my previous blog post on fluency, but something that I might pull out of my tool bag at the last minute is watching and discussing videos by comedian Drew Lynch (who happens to be a young adult who stutters)!

My favorite stuttering-related videos are:
1) Why My Stutter is Getting Better
2) I Try to Cure My Stutter
3) How to Deal with Bullies

But really, there is something valuable in nearly all of his videos. Remember, the same rule applies as when showing students any media: watch each video ahead of time to verify that it's OK for your students (he does talk about dating and more mature subjects in some videos). I suggest introducing Drew by watching his America's Got Talent audition to highlight his great attitude of not letting his fluency disorder get in the way of his dreams.

I hope you've gotten a few new ideas of what to keep on your shelves to help out in those last-minute pinches! Comment below with your favorite quick fixes, I'm always looking for ways to keep things simple and effective! And as always, it doesn't have to be fancy, just keep it fun and functional!

• Jillian, the No-Frills SLP

Life as an SLP: Why I Love Working in a High School!!

A lot of my colleagues who work in elementary schools or pre-schools have expressed a level of fear at the idea of working with students 13 and older. I've heard them make comments about teenagers they know (their own kids or otherwise), how dreadful they are, and how they could never deal with teenagers on a daily basis.

My thought? Different strokes for different folks!

Last year, I spent 1 day a week supporting an elementary SLP in my district by taking 10 of her students on my caseload. It's wasn't horrific and I did just fine, but... not my cup of tea. The experience only served to highlight just why I love working with teenagers and all the unique experiences that come with working in a high school!

Higher-Level Language and Pragmatic needs
I'll shout it from a mountain top, I'll say it right now: I think phonological awareness is boring! I think describing the features of items and comparing and contrasting them is boring! Superflex puts me to sleep!!!! Story Grammar Markers? Yawn!

Phew.

I feel much better.

Essentially, those elementary school language goals just don't do it for me.... Higher-level language it is! I enjoy leading activities like this... and this! Like I said, different strokes for different folks.

Transition
Maybe it feels like it's out of your scope of practice to write transition goals and coach students on their post-secondary life, but man is it important! So many of my speech-only students have no path to follow in life, no idea of what they're going to do once they graduate. It's important that there's a reliable adult in their life they can go to to talk about their future. Some students may find this in a teacher they bond with and some definitely connect with me in this way.

And for my Mod/Severe kids, pretty much everything we do is about transition, life skills, and functioning successfully once they graduate from the transition school at age 22. I love it!!

High School Clubs, Sports, ASB, and more!
Maybe my love of high schools stems from my own wonderful high school experience - I was one of those Associated Student Body (ASB) kids who was involved in every event that happened on campus. I planned prom, ran lunchtime activities, decorated the Homecoming float, and ran around with a spirit flag at the football games - the whole 9 yards.

So now as an adult working at a high school, I can still cheer on the football team, chaperone dances, and get involved in clubs and organizations. For example, I volunteered myself to be class adviser for the Class of 2019. Last year was a little rough; as freshmen they weren't really motivated to do anything and I could barely get them to attend weekly meetings. But now, as sophomores, we're planning our homecoming float and fundraising in preparation for prom next year. It's a fun way to meet general education students and stay connected to my school's culture.... and only possible in a high school!!


Circle of Friends!
And on the note of clubs, I'm sure y'all know about my passion for my Circle of Friends clubs by now. I've heard of similar clubs working in elementary schools (and I ran one at the middle school where I interned) but it's just not the same. High school students are old enough to actually have a hand at running the club themselves as an Executive Board and there are fun events like dances and football games to attend as a group. It's just more fun (and, admittedly, more work) in a high school!

Teenage Problems
OK, OK, hear me out on this one. I think the reason that high school scares SLPs is that they don't feel comfortable taking on the "therapist" role. They prefer adorable 5-year-olds who aren't being tempted by drugs, experimenting sexually, cutting class, experiencing drama with friends, and learning to assert themselves.

But me (and hopefully those of you working in high schools)? I love it. Scenarios I have found myself in:

- A student broke down in tears in the middle of an artic session because he felt abandoned by his friends,
- A student broke down in tears in the middle of a fluency session because her mother had been hiding a cancer diagnosis from her and just told her,
-  A different student broke down in tears in the middle of a different artic group because his grandmother was on life support and they were ending her life the next day,
- One of my speech-only students was caught with marijuana on campus... so as case manager, guess who had to deal with that one!
- A different speech-only student decided to start cutting most class periods every day... guess who become BFFs with the attendance officer??
- I had some "Real Talk" with a group of Mild/Mod students about drinking and driving after they started recounting their weekend adventures,
- I witnessed one of my male students essentially sexually harass a female student in the hallway; in our next session, we broke down the idea of consent and why what he thought was OK was absolutely unacceptable.

These are not the easiest conversations to have, by far. But at a school where one counselor manages 400 students and the school psychologists are swamped with IEP testing, sometimes it falls on the nearest adult to step up. Sometimes I look at my students and realize that their speech and language concerns fall at #41 on the list of difficulties in their life. Sometimes other things take priority. We're in such a unique position as SLPs to be a constant force in our students lives... let's do some good with that sway!

How about you? Why do you like working with teenagers with communication needs? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

As always, it doesn't have to be fancy, just keep it fun and functional!

• Jillian, the No-Frills SLP

Higher-Level Language: Developing Critical Listening and Self-Advocacy Skills Part 2

Welcome back everyone! If you haven't checked out last week's blog, please do so before reading this post! You can find it here.

Last week, I started talking about ways to target our Speech-Language Impaired (SLI) or Specific Learning Disability (SLD) students who struggle to comprehend auditory language presented to them in their general education classes. These students are expected to take notes on what the teacher is saying and too often they resort to only copying what they see on the Powerpoint or on the board. Last week I went over the foundations for understanding what we're targeting when we look at auditory processing and critical listening skills in addition to some goals we might write for students that fit this profile.

This week, let's dive into the nitty gritty of therapy and how to target the development of these very important skills! Depending on the group's size, needs, and skill level, my lessons on critical listening have lasted anywhere from 2 - 4 weeks. For the purpose of the blog, I've broken the lessons down into 3 weekly sessions; however, as with everything, these lessons should be modified and extended/shortened depending on the level of the students!

Lesson 1: What is Self-Advocacy?

    ~15 Minutes – IEP Accommodation Worksheet

1)   Provide students with copies of their accommodations page and an IEP Accommodation Worksheet

2)   Work with your students to identify what each accommodation means in plain language. Ask each student to select (or you select if you know that they have certain accommodations for a specific class) a class and complete the graphic organizer (maybe even laminate it, as I have done for some students). Make sure you make a copy or take a picture of it because some students may lose it and it will be used in future activities!

3)   Explain to your students that they must explain their graphic organizers and take ownership of their needs. They are in high school now and they must advocate for what they need to be successful.

     ~10 Minutes – Practicing the IEP Accommodation Worksheet Script

1)   Discuss what the most important information is on their worksheet. Is it their extended time on tests? Is it copies of notes? Prompt the students to come up with what is most important to them. Make a list of the most important accommodations in ranked order; I believe that students should focus on explaining their most pressing needs instead of trying to go through the entire worksheet with their teachers. Give a model for how you would explain a set of hypothetical accommodations.

2) Time to role play! You now take on the role of their classroom teacher - it helps to physically move away from the group and sit at your desk like their teachers would. Have them practice walking up to you, gaining your attention appropriately (a weakness for so many of my students!), waiting if necessary, and then explaining their key, most important accommodations. This is a a great opportunity to employ video modeling if students are struggling with this. It's also a good tool to go back and watch their explanation and identify areas of weakness.

3) Practice, practice, practice! Have each student take as many turns as time allows so they can get multiple opportunities at explaining their needs. Depending on the level of student need, I might take another week to review video models and gain more practice with this skill. We might even go on a field-trip to another classroom to try approaching a teacher who is on their prep period to practice.

Lesson 2: Let's Apply Critical Listening in the Classroom

     ~5 Minutes – The Bus Riddle

1)   Provide students with paper and pens and tell them to take notes without further guidance or prompting. Show the “Bus Riddle” and read it aloud or just read it if technology access is limited.

2)   Elicit answers to the riddle. Prompt as needed to elicit the correct answer.

3)   Discuss why coming to the correct answer was difficult and make connections to their classroom note-taking expectations.

     ~5 Minutes – Accommodations Tie-in

1)   Have your students pull out their Classroom Organization graphic organizers that were completed the week before. Specifically highlight the “note-taking section” and ask your students to identify if having a copy of the bus notes would have been helpful (or having a scribe, etc). Discuss why actively utilizing their accommodations will help them earn better grades. Also ask your students if any of them have tried to explain their accommodations to a teacher and reward those who have,

   ~5 Minutes – Teacher Signals

1)   Generate a list of things that teachers do to indicate that what they are saying is important, such as:

a.     Saying “This will be on the test!”

b.     Raising their voice

c.     Asking questions of the students

d.     Writing information on the board

2)   At this point I solicit information from the class regarding which of their teachers they believe lectures instead of just reading off a PowerPoint. Sometimes the students are under the impression that their teachers don't really lecture (when I know for a fact from classroom observations that they do). It's often hard for our students to realize that the information that the teacher is providing verbally may not actually be what's on the slides!

     ~10 Minutes – Practice Lecture

1)   By this point, I can tell that the students are only barely grasping this concept. Perhaps in theory they get it, but it reality... not so much. Time for a real world example! I pull up this PowerPoint that I found on-line that is a companion to a US History textbook. I ask my students to take notes like they do in class. There will be a quiz on this material next week, so take the best notes they can. 

      I skip down to slide #25 and begin to lecture on this slide as if I was their US History teacher. The information is fairly basic, but instead of merely reading off the slide, I provide real-world examples for each vocabulary word, and my own definitions. I talk about Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech" - would it be a primary or secondary source? Is it authentic? Reliable? Biased? How would we know? What does interpreting evidence mean? I talk about crime scenes and detectives and how historians are, in a sense, detectives. Essentially what I'm doing is providing them with a wealth of information that is not provided on their slides - information that will be helpful when they take their "quiz" the following week. At the end, I collect their "notes" to ensure I have them for the next week.

Lesson 3: Critical Listening Wrap-Up
    ~5 minutes - Time for a Quiz!

1)   I hand out the notes the students took on the history PowerPoint. For nearly all my  students, these notes are just the PowerPoint they copied down while I was talking without any additional examples or commentary from what I spoke on. I put 7 minutes on my timer and then give them a "quiz" with these questions:

           a) What is a primary source? (They can answer this one with the information from the ppt)

           b) What is an example of a primary source? (They would have this answer in their notes if they were critically listening and documenting my examples during the lecture... but since they merely copied, many have struggled with this question)

                 c) What does it mean to be biased? (Another answer found in the notes)

                 d) How might historians be biased? (I gave them this answer in my lecture
           but not the notes!)

      ~5 minutes - Quiz Discussion

1)   Next, we discuss how it felt to take that quiz and we review the correct answers. Which questions could they answer easily? Which questions were harder? Which questions required rote memorization? Which questions required critical thinking? Were all the answers in the notes? If not, how could you have gotten that information (Answer: critical listening!). Have you felt this way on other tests before? What can be done differently to ensure more success in the classroom? This is also a time where you can discuss asking Closed and Open questions (if you've already talked about this concept) and how teachers might provide open question answers vs. closed question answers found in the notes. I also take this time to model how to generate questions that you think might be on a test based upon notes.

   
      ~10 minutes Model Notes

1)   Now in order to help cement this process, the students have to practice. I return to the PowerPoint used previously and go on to slide 26. I lecture just as I did on slide 25, adding information, examples, and my own definitions to augment the information included on the slide. But this time, I assist the students in their note taking and model what key elements should be written down and how to structure it on a page to make it easy to follow for later review. This process alone may be extended into another session if I feel the students need even more practice.

      ~5 minutes - What next?

1)   I ask all my students to select one class where the teacher lectures and make that their "focus" class. This class will be their test run in critical listening - can they focus on taking good notes while paying attention and documenting what the teacher is saying? A good choice for this focus class might be a class where they are given copies of the notes or where the notes can be accessed later on a teacher's website. In the future weeks, I check in with these students about how this focus class is going and whether or not their quiz/test grades have improved.

I hope this two-part series on addressing the need to develop critical listening skills has helped you to examine the goals of your students, develop some news lessons, and think critically about how as SLPs we can are in a great position to set them up for success in their academic classes (and in the future!).

As always, it doesn't have to be fancy, just keep it fun and functional!

• Jillian, the No-Frills SLP