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Do we spend too much time on rhyming books? What else should we do to prepare pre-schoolers to read?

David Kinnane · 18 February 2014 · Leave a Comment

Duck in the Truck
The Cat in the Hat
Madeline, with her vines and twelve little girls in two straight lines

All great, fun books to read aloud – my sons love them; and so do I. But do we spend too much time playing around with rhyming books and not enough time working on other skills children need for reading before they go to school?

SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four-and-twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie;
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing;
Was not that a dainty dish
To set before the King?

(During the next verse, somebody’s nose gets nipped.)

Before I answer this, let me back up for a moment and explain a couple of key concepts.

Phonological awareness

A strong predictor of later reading and spelling skills in pre-schoolers is what we call their “phonological awareness”. Phonological awareness is hard to explain. Essentially, it’s the child’s ability to attend to, identify and manipulate sounds in spoken words. It covers a bunch of sub-skills, including an understanding of:

rhyme (e.g. cat-hat-mat-sat, etc.);
stress patterns in words (e.g. the stress is on the first syllable of “water”; and on the second syllable of “begin”);
syllables or “beats” (e.g. elephant has three syllables: el-e-phant);
how words can be broken down or “segmented” into individual sounds (e.g. dog (d-o-g) is not the same word as dot (d-o-t)); and
how individual sounds can be put together or “blended” to make words (e.g. d+o+g = dog, a four-legged canine.)

Speech pathologists and other experts in early education agree that the explicit teaching of these skills is critical for later literacy education. This is because, in English, our written language uses an alphabet, a type of code. Written words are made up of letters (not sounds). But, for most of our words (over 80% of the time), the letters we use to spell are determined by the sounds they usually make. In other words, to understand the alphabetic code and to be able to read efficiently, children must not only know their letters, but the sounds they make.

Phonological awareness skills and literacy – which skills are needed most?

The research evidence tells us that, for pre-schoolers who are going to school next year:

phonological awareness activities should focus on the development of skills at the sound (phonemic) level (Brennan & Ireson, 1997);
sound segmentation and blending skills, and recognising the relationships between letters and sounds, are more strongly related to later reading and spelling than syllable or rhyme awareness skills (Hulme, Goetz, Gooch, Adams, & Snowling, 2007);
teaching letter knowledge and phoneme/sound awareness together may help both skills develop more efficiently than teaching the skills separately; and
skills like rhyme awareness may develop with improvement in speech production – either naturally or with therapy – and through general language stimulation at home or in school (Gillon, 2005).

So, yes, by all means have fun with rhyming books, nursery rhymes and songs. But make some time to play with sounds with sound segmentation, blending and letter-sound activities and games.

Your speech pathologist can offer some suggestions, and help you design a phonological awareness program for your child, either in therapy or for you to deliver at home.

Image and poem source: http://tinyurl.com/k3w4ost

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Helping toddlers with their first words – mix it up and make them useful (the words, not the toddlers)!

David Kinnane · 17 February 2014 · Leave a Comment

A couple of years ago, in a trendy Inner West cafe, I spied a Very Committed Dad sitting across from his terribly young daughter. They could barely see each other over the small mountain of branded flashcards in the middle of the table. Dad scooped up a deck’s worth, and shuffled them like a croupier.

My super-speech-senses activated. I couldn’t resist eavesdropping:

Said Dad:

Ruby, say…

Tiger

Lion

Crocodile

Ostrich

Zebra

The list of wild animals went on and on. Then came fruit, and shapes, and numbers, and finally body parts. All the favourites you see in lots of colourful products targeted at parents, stroke survivors and speech pathologists, alike.

I rolled my eyes and went back to sipping my Long Black and ignoring the Norah Jones song. Why?

Consider: what did Dad’s words have in common? Two things:

1. They were all nouns, which couldn’t themselves be combined to produce meaningful phrases and sentences.

2. Unless planning a safari on a tropical island inhabited by shape-shifting surgeons, they were not the most useful set of words for a young child to know.

What should Dad have been focusing on?

Van Tatenhove has done lots of research on the normal language development of children. Her findings (2005) tell us that the focus for new vocabulary in children with developing language should be on high frequency, re-usable vocabulary that can be combined and used across a number of events and activities needed throughout your life. These words are sometimes referred to collectively as “core vocabulary“.

Like most great research, the answer seems obvious once you ask the right question!

But which words to teach?

Van Tatenhove has looked at this question in the context of which words to include in communication devices for young children with disabilities. She recommends words from a variety of word classes, including pronouns (I, me, you, it, mine, he, and she); verbs (do, put, is, make, let, get , want); negation (no, not, don’t); prepositions (with, for, to, in, on); question words (what, where); modifiers (gone, more, small, all) and generic locations (here, there, away).

In 2003, a Dr Banajee and colleagues identified the top 22 words used by typically-developing toddlers. For a late-talking child, these may be a good place to start – unless he or she also has a speech sound disorder impacting on expressive language – a complicated and entirely different topic for another day!

Banajee’s words:

1. all done/finished

2. go

3. help

4. here

5. I

6. in

7. is

8. it

9. mine

10. more

11. my

12. no

13. off

14. on

15. out

16. some

17. that

18. the

19. want

20. what

21. yes/yeah

22. you

Certainly all much more useful than teaching your child the words necessary to describe this:

Images source: http://tinyurl.com/mohbzqm

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

So what do Speech Pathologists do?

David Kinnane · 16 February 2014 · Leave a Comment

That’s a question we get asked a lot. I’m not surprised.

Compared to other professions, like medicine or law, Speech Pathology is a young profession. The scope of what we do keeps expanding as more research is published on speech, language, literacy, stuttering, voice, and swallowing disorders.

Banter Speech & Language specialises in helping:

preschool and school-aged children to:

speak clearly;

understand what people are saying to them;

put words and sentences together to express their thoughts and feelings;

manage their stuttering;

read, write and spell;

compose stories and recounts; and

improve their social skills, like taking turns, and making friends.

adults:

with voice and speech problems;

who stutter;

who want to speak more clearly for work or other reasons, e.g. those who are worried their accent is holding them back;

who are recovering from strokes; and

who have dementia (e.g. Alzheimer’s), Parkinson’s disease, or other disorders that affect their speech, language or memory.

Other speech pathologists work in hospitals helping adults to swallow safely, or newborn babies to feed. Some work in rehabilitation and health centres, e.g. giving therapy to people who have brain injuries or helping head and neck cancer patients communicate after surgery. And still others work in Community Health or in schools, with advanced skills and experience supporting clients with complex needs and disabilities.

At Banter Speech & Language, we know our limitations – no speech pathologist can be an expert in everything. You deserve the best treatment available. We know when to refer clients onto specialists in other areas – and we know many of the best specialists in the business.

Image source: http://tinyurl.com/lsse863

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language