Fives Booklet

Sean J. Sweeney CCC-SLP 12/1/10

Introduction: SLPs, Context and Technology

While working in the public school setting for the

past 10 years, I developed a specialized interest in

the integration of technology in speech and

language interventions. I am referring to technology

not so much in the AAC sense, but rather to help

build and present contexts to students, much like a

clinician would use a storybook. This booklet is

designed to present a framework for using

technology as the friend that it is- a friend that helps

you implement context-driven therapy sessions that

engage students and move them toward their academic goals.

So why is context so important? As public school Speech-Language Pathologists (for

whom this book is primarily designed, though the principles presented may assist

those in other disciplines, settings, or those who work with other populations) our

clients are actually students, and our role is to assist them in accessing the curriculum

by building their language skills and use of strategies. To facilitate their success, we

need to incorporate the topics, concepts and activities they struggle with in the

classroom setting, while keeping a strategic focus (Ehren, 2000) and avoiding acting

as a tutor or aide. In Contextualized Language Intervention, Ukraintz stresses the

importance of SLPs knowing "how to systematically scaffold learning within a whole,

purposeful, complicated activity" (Ukrainetz, 2007, p. 2) rather than focusing solely

on discrete skill instruction.


Why turn to technology? Despite many clinicians feeling naturally nervous to start

dealing with the learning curves associated with technology, once steps are made in

that direction, technology can actually make the job of an SLP a whole lot easier.

Presenting context to students is simplified greatly by using interactive web activities

and simulations that would be cost- and time-prohibitive to develop in a traditional

manner. Additionally, clinicians will find that students are hugely motivated to learn

while using computers, and that employing technology does not mean the clinician is

taken out of the equation. Rather, there is much scaffolding to be done when

technology is used to present a "purposeful, complicated activity."

Take for example, the Forces and Movement activity from the BBC Schools Science

Clips website. In this activity, students follow steps to interact with "objects" onscreen

in order to demonstrate concepts around forces and movement. Clearly, this is a

complex activity whose context fits right in with early-middle elementary science

curriculum. However, when the task is analyzed, this activity also is quite language-

based, with a number of

embedded skills and targets

appropriate for a language

session. Many students

receiving school-based SLP

services would be unlikely to

be able to complete this

activity accurately and discuss

it meaningfully without the

SLP's scaffolding.


Choosing Classroom Activities

In selecting activities appropriate for language

interventions, I apply certain criteria that I would

like to call the FIVES framework. When looking

at a web, software or hardware resource, it is

helpful to consider these five factors:

Free—Is it free or nearly free? This isn't always an

excluding factor, but most public school SLPs don't

have much of a budget!

Interactive—Does the site use technology well to provide opportunities for students to

make decisions, perform actions, and possibly create, or does it mostly consist of text?

Visual—Using the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), does it provide a

multisensory experience that our students' classrooms might lack, or that bears

repeating?

Educationally Relevant—Does it relate to topics, skills, or strategies that mirror or

enhance classroom content?

Speechie—(a cutesy term, I know, but it fits...) when a task analysis is done, does the

activity target language goals specific to the students' Individualized Education Plans?

A resource that meets all these criteria is The Jamestown Online Adventure by History

Globe. While many students may have missed key details of the story of the early

settlers when it was presented auditorily or through readings in their classroom, this

activity allows them to make decisions from the colonists' point of view and

"experience" the results.


The clinician's role is key in helping the students navigate the steps of the activity,

repeat and rephrase key points (especially in the texty sections) and process the

implications of their decisions. The Jamestown site could serve as a context for many

activities that target language goals; one example is using a graphic organizer to

track key details. An example of a graphic organizer that I created to complement

this site is linked here. Give it a try!

Does it Have to be Free?

I am not going to spend a lot of time elaborating on why we want educational

resources for a public school setting to be free (or mostly free). As a school-based

SLP, some years I felt lucky to have a materials budget of $50, which might buy you

an activity book, and definitely would not go far towards buying software, web-

subscriptions, or equipment. Sometimes you have to endure a modicum of advertising

to access the site (if it’s obtrustive, I generally rule it out), though in some cases a site

that is essentially a big ad can present some great language-learning opportunities

(see Old El Paso’s El Tacodor Games). That said, some software, apps, or web

subscriptions are definitely worth paying for, even more so if you can secure a grant


or district allocation (Brainpop is a notable example). I should close this section by

acknowledging that SLPs sometimes have a difficult time even getting their own

computer to use with students. If you travel between schools, the schools may not feel

they owe it to you, and your department may not

have the funds. I would say you should lobby,

lobby, lobby for the necessity of your having a

laptop, for all of the reasons outlined in this

booklet. In the event that you do not succeed, or

need to wait, I would say buying one (even a

cheaper or refurbished one) to use with students

is one of the best investments you will ever make.

And if you do private therapy after school, well,

then, it’s a write-off, isn’t it?

Why is the “Interactive” Element of Technology So Important?

Much of what this booklet referrs to are resouces that could be used in students in

direct therapy, rather than drill-and-practice activities better relegated to completion

in the classroom or with a paraprofessional. To clarify what I mean by direct

therapy, I am referring to what would be on the sections of the Individualized

Education Plan that outline the time you will spend conducting or facilitating therapy

with the student, whether individually or in a group. This is an important distinction to

make, because there are certain technology resources that would be great to set up

as part of a student’s program, perhaps under your consultation services, but would

not make much sense to use in direct therapy (Some examples of these quiz-based

resources include Earobics or certain commercial flashcard-like programs,often on

CD-ROM). If the student can guide him/herself through the activity without your


scaffolding, or with only the supervision of a teacher or paraprofessional to remain

engaged...well. An important principle of using technology is that it probably

shouldn’t count as direct therapy if the instruction is really being provided by the

computer.

This is where the I in FIVES- Interactive- can help us to make good technology-based

choices for our direct therapy. True interactive resources differ from quiz-based

technology in that students are given more room to make choices, solve problems,

and to make mistakes that your scaffolding will help prevent or review, so that it is a

richer learning experience. Interactive resources also tend to be more deeply rooted

in an educationally useful context, and ideally move at a pace that allows you as a

clinician to “get a word in”- whether to model language, question, extend, and of

course to provide a pre- or post- activity that emphasizes language targets. Let’s take,

for example a resource that is indeed Free, Interactive, Visual, Educationally relevant,

and Speechie- Earth Sun and Moon- An Interactive Learning Experience.


I have always considered the concepts involving the relationship among the earth, sun

and moon as planetary bodies to be pretty abstract, and not quite suited to the 2nd

grade curriculum where this unit is placed in my district. After an engaging and

thankfully brief and forgiving arcade game, students are able to navigate their rocket

to the earth, sun and moon and use

key strokes and mouse movements to

make things happen! The activity

creates a strong visual experience that

helps kids move beyond the simple

knowledge that “Yep, we’re on Earth”

to understand some of the larger

scientific concepts. In the classroom

setting, I have seen kids left to their

own devices to complete this activity

and then be largely unable to articulate what any of it meant. However, with

discussion facilitated by the SLP throughout the activity, kids can be scaffolded to use

more complex language to produce some wonderful descriptions and connections.

Visualizing the Abstract

So what about the V, those visual elements that can be so critical for our students who

spend a good deal of time in classrooms missing key points of auditory instruction?

It’s clear that resources such as Earth Sun and Moon- An Interactive Learning

Experience are not only interactive but highly visual. Technology is a great tool for

making abstract curriculum elements visual for our students. It also provides visual

supports that assist us in scaffolding students’ production of all those things we put on


their IEPs- vocabulary, complex sentences, discourse. To take another example, for

students studying U.S. Geography who have never been outside of their own state, a

resource such as Sheppard Software’s USA Puzzles provides tons of pictures--and

interaction with pictures--that will likely leave students with valuable associations when

the activity is complete.

Technology can also be a good tool for us to use to create materials for students that

bring challenging concepts into reach. With the advent of Web 2.0- the “Read/Write

Web” in which we don’t merely read webpages but can actually publish to them with

ease- many creation tools are at our fingertips! Some of these might be too

complicated to expect a student to use, but we can certainly navigate them, with a

little practice. One good example of this type of creation resource is Pixton, an online

comic creator. Pixton is in the vein of Kerpoof, but gives you much more leeway in

customizing your comic to emphasize body language, facial expressions and other

aspects that might be useful in a pragmatic language/social thinking skills group. I

recently used Pixton to create a set of comics to introduce the concepts of expected

and unexpected group behaviors (See Michelle Garcia Winner’s work) to a new

group of students. My goal was to use the visuals to help the students verbalize what

they saw in the pictures, which would then serve as a working list of expected

behaviors for our group. See Appendix II for a sample of the comics we discussed.

Isolating the specific behaviors depicted was challenging for these students, and they

did indeed benefit from cues such as “Think about his word balloon, then look at

hers.” In the end, however, we did have a nice list that came from more of a

constructivist activity than if I had just told the kids what I expected, and more of a

visual (and fun) activity than if we had just generated them verbally. If you are

interested in Pixton, check out the great tutorial here.


Educational Relevance and Interventions

Another way technology can assist us as

SLPs lies in its power to infuse connections

to classroom content into our sessions. This

is the E in the FIVES criteria for selecting

good technology resources for our

interventions- Educational Relevance. Our

students receive our services specifically

because their speech and language

impairments affect their progress in the

curriculum- IDEA says this must be so. So

although we need to build their basic skills-categories, following directions, among

many others- it makes sense to be building skills while using classroom materials as a

context. We all resort to commercial SLP materials that may not always have a lot to

do with our students’ classroom content. This is necessary given our extremely busy

schedules and the need to focus intensively on specific skills. However, I always

consider it important to at least touch on the classroom’s major units (not every unit!)

and construct language enhancing activities within these contexts.

This becomes easier when we become familiar with the state and/or district academic

standards, usually available online (the pretty-good MA DOE website is one

example). These standards are broad and can be overwhelming, but like everything,

we can take them a bit at a time. I always find it striking how language-based the

standards are; IEP objectives could not only be aligned with state standards, in many

cases you could use the actual standard as an objective!


Now, when we consider using academic content as our context for some sessions, it

may become uncomfortable to envision ourselves drilling facts and running simple

tutorials with our students. Here is where it can become important to “keep a

strategic focus” (Ehren, 2000- again, what a great article!) and to use the activities to

develop strategies such as notetaking, using graphic organizers, questioning,

consulting word or conjunction banks, etc. Technology makes it easier, though,

because there are many interactive websites that align with curriculum standards,

keeping our students engaged while minimizing our material preparation time.

Below is a brief (I could go on and on about this) list of standards from my district

(Newton, MA) and state, linked to fun activities that are language-enhancing and

relevant to the standard.

Grade 1 Describes adaptations that allow various organisms to survive in their

habitat

Grade 3 Understands that land and weather affected Wampanoag, Pilgrim and

colonial food, housing, clothing, celebration and activities

Grade 5 Describes characteristics and interrelationships in an ecosystem

Grade 7 Recognizes that every organism requires a set of instructions for

specifying its traits

Grade 10 Shows connections… between particular historical events and ideas

and larger social, economic, and political trends and developments.


What is “Speechie?”

The FIVES criteria- so far we talked about

the benefits of resources being Free (or

nearly free), Interactive, Visual, and

Educationally Relevant- can be useful for

our own thinking as well as to justify our

use of a resource, should that need arise.

So, I will wrap this booklet up by discussing the last and possibly most important

factor, that of how the activity targets speech and/or language skills and strategies. I

used an S at the end of the acronym to call this factor “Speechie,” a convenient term,

though I have some issues with its cutesy qualities!

What makes an activity Speechie, then? As I have mentioned previously, we want to

look for activities that are more broadly related to speech and language skills, that

provide a context so that clinicians can scaffold the emergence of skills in our

students. Often, technology-related activities that specifically zone in on speech and

language skills (e.g. CD-ROMs from commercial publishers) can be completed by

students in a self-paced manner, providing valuable practice, but sort of taking us out

of the equation. To keep ourselves in the equation, we can select resources that are

not really labeled for “Speech,” but are Speechie in that we can structure the activity

and engage students in developing the wide range of skills and strategies that are

laid out within IEP goals and objectives.

Locating Speechie activities requires us to do somewhat of a task analysis, looking at

the activity through a language lens. Of typically written IEP objectives, does the

activity provide a context for students to do any of the following?


● Follow verbal (written or auditory) directions or sequence steps to complete a

task?

● Comprehend story- or information-based language and discuss its elements

(e.g. “main ideas and details”)?

● Organize elements into categories, describe, define or create associations?

● Generate complex sentences or discourse (narrative or expository)?

● Use discussion, balanced-literacy, or problem-solving strategies (e.g.

inference)?

● Apply selected academic strategies (e.g. note-taking, use of graphic

organizer)?

● Respond verbally so as to use accurate articulation, voice or fluency strategies?

● Utilize social interaction or social thinking skills to complete a task?

This is a broad and limited list, but gives us a frame of reference to look at a resource

and see how it might be considered Speechie. One of my favorites is the BBC’s What

is Weather?. This fun site allows students to view humorous animations describing all

the elements of weather (temperature, precipitation, etc) and then complete

interactive activities that apply the presented information. Clearly, weather is right on

target in terms of being educationally relevant, but bringing the clinician into the

equation is what makes this resource Speechie. Some things the therapist can do to

elicit skills include:

-Asking the student to verbally describe what they saw in each of the (basically

wordless) animations, to bring about a definition of each weather term.

-Modeling and eliciting complex sentences about the animations and activities

“Ohhhh, I see, WHEN the wind was moderate...”

-Moderating turn-taking and sharing elements if the student is completing the activity

with a peer.


-Questioning, reviewing and rephrasing the geographic and weather-based

information in the Clothing activity (as well as eliciting predictions about what kind of

clothing might be needed

on the trip).

-Having students track

results of their guesses on a

graphic organizer in either

the Clothing or Sport

activity.

-Creating follow-up activities

that target the content and

language skills (e.g.

weather journaling).

In this portion of the activity, students review weather information about a country,

then guess what sporting activities you could do there in a given season.

Conclusion

The FIVES criteria is just one tool clinicians can use in analyzing and integrating

technology resources into your therapies. For more examples of resources that meet

these criteria, follow me on my blog, SpeechTechie.


Appendix I: Five More Examples of FIVES Resources

Resource: Brainpop site and App

Free? “Featured Movie” and “Movie of Week” (Brainpop Jr.) are free,

others w/school or indvidual subscription.

Interactive? Quizzes for each movie, Jr. site has more interactives such as

games and writing activities.

Visual? Brainpop’s animated movies provide many visuals to illustrate

vocabulary and concepts. Movies can be paused to emphasize

visuals.

Educationally

Relevant?

Directly aligns with state standards (with pages showing exactly

how, and directing users toward movies that address specific

standards by state).

Speechie? Movies are organized, simplified explanations of topics; great

context for using graphic organizers and teaching expository

text structures such as list, sequence, cause-effect.


Resource: Lego Creative Builder

Free? Completely

Interactive? Drag-and-drop interface to “free build” or build objects

according to a model or plan.

Visual? Allows students to visualize spatial concepts.

Educationally

Relevant?

With regards to early learning standards, social development if

used as a barrier task.

Speechie? Key spatial concepts, skills at following directions and

cooperating can be addressed with this resource


Resource: Sites using Google Earth plug-in: Monster Milktruck and Globe

Genie.

Free? Completely.

Interactive? Sites allow you to teleport to a specific spot on Earth. Milktruck

is a driving activity; use controls to move. Genie lets you click

and drag to view the location.

Visual? Both sites offer highly visual way to explore geographic

locations.

Educationally

Relevant?

Can be used in conjunction with geography units (e.g.

continents, cities and states).

Speechie? Key spatial concepts (right, left, forward, backward), descriptive

skills and schema can be targeted with these activities.


Resource: Edheads Weather Activities

Free? Completely

Interactive? Kids are presented with a challenge to re-create lost weather

charts by following directions and using drag-drop interface.

Visual? Visual representations of weather conditions and chart

conventions.

Educationally

Relevant?

Weather is a continuously repeated unit in science curricula of

elementary-middle school.

Speechie? Great context for following directions, using weather attributes

and categories, geographic concepts.


Resource: Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab

Free? Completely

Interactive? Quiz follows listening exercises

Visual? No, but largely auditory activities can be completed using

visualization strategies as prompted by clinician.

Educationally

Relevant?

Some topics relate to curriuclum areas, relevant to standards

around listening and discussing.

Speechie? Wonderful resource for addressing deficits in auditory

comprehension (students who score poorly on CELF’s

Understanding Spoken Paragraphs or Listening Comprehension

Test), using strategies such as visualization, key word

generation. Pre-Listening activities prompt helpful discussions,

category item generation. Quiz results provide measurable

data.


Appendix I: Social Thinking Comic Created with Pixton

References

Ehren, B.J. (2000). Maintaining a therapeutic focus and sharing responsibility for

student success: keys to in-classroom speech-language services. Language,

Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 31, 219-229.


Ukrainetz, T.A. (Ed.). (2007). Contextualized Language Intervention: Scaffolding

Pre-K-12 Literacy Achievement. Greenville, SC: Thinking Publications

Fives Booklet

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Transcript of Fives Booklet