Cozy chats about speech, language and learning

Education

Four Ways to Provide Supports to the Curriculum

Four Ways to Provide Supports to the Curriculum

The Law The most significant legislative action that affected children with disabilities passed in 1975 with the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This legislation means that students with disabilities have equal access to a free and appropriate public education. Access means that that students…

How to Teach Narrative Structure

How to Teach Narrative Structure

“Once upon a time” we begin telling stories to our children even before they are born. Nighttime storytelling is part of our culture but do children understand the story structure? Understanding text structure aids in comprehension. It assists in anticipating and determining the information that…

How to Build Background Knowledge for Comprehension

How to Build Background Knowledge for Comprehension

Reading requires us to decode the words, understand the surface code of the words and sentence construction and then use our background knowledge to fill in the picture. But what happens if you don’t know anything about what you are reading? As an adult you…

Speech and Language Teletherapy Reflection of the Year

Speech and Language Teletherapy Reflection of the Year

It has been a very different school year! Starting in March 2020 there has been a need to switch from in-person learning to entirely online and now a hybrid model with seeing students in-person and some students online. It has been a year of professional…

Prepositions their Importance and How to Teach

Prepositions their Importance and How to Teach

Why should we teach prepositions? Prepositions are part of our everyday conversation. They are a big part of what we use when we give directions. Think about some of the early directions that we give our own children. ” Put on your shoes”, “Get in…

TILT-WHIRL: School Year 2020-2021 and Some Solutions

TILT-WHIRL: School Year 2020-2021 and Some Solutions

I am not sure what your year has been like, but mine has been crazy.  Our administration has told us that we need to ‘pivot’ to adjust to the changes that seem to happen daily.   I begin to feel like I am on the…

School Reopening 2020

School Reopening 2020

The opening of the new school year is going to be a challenging one this year. There rightfully is a great deal of anxiety as there is a multitude of plans offered for school reopening. It is hard to prepare for something so fluid especially…

Looking at Non-Verbal Language in Children

Looking at Non-Verbal Language in Children

Not all of our communication is verbal. When we examine a child’s speech and language skills we need to include observations and descriptions of how the child is communicating non-verbally. Eye Gaze: A child might look at something they want and then back to the…

Kindergarten Screening: A Peek Into a Child’s Mind

Kindergarten Screening: A Peek Into a Child’s Mind

  Kindergarten speech and language screenings are part of the educational requirement. I typically do these the first week of school giving me a chance to meet each of the new students. The purpose of the screening is to pick up any student that might…

Active Learning at the College Level

Active Learning at the College Level

This has been a FABULOUS summer integrating gamification, technology, and active learning during a graduate course at Providence college on Language Disorders. Regretfully this is the last summer as the program it was part of has at this point been discontinued. It has been a…