43: LSL Strategies for Itinerants with Kristen Temprine
Kristen Temprine, LSLS Cert. AVEd. shares how she implements listening and spoken language strategies with a school-aged itinerant caseload.
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43: LSL Strategies for Itinerants with Kristen Temprine
[MUSIC]
D: Hello and welcome to the TOD POD, a podcast to support Itinerant Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, SLPs, and other Deaf Education Professionals. I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fun and today we're talking with Kristen Temprine about applying listening and spoken language strategies to school age students. Thanks so much for being here today Kristen.
K: Absolutely thank you for having me, this is exciting.
D: Yes, it is so could you tell everyone a little about yourself and your background?
K: Sure. I have been in the field of deaf education for about 12 years now. I'm a Teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, I am also Listening and Spoken Language certified as an Auditory Verbal Educator. I also mentor some clients to get certified. I've worked in birth to 3, 3 to 5, elementary school, middle school, all in a listening and spoken language classroom. So that was really neat to see kids go from you know, babies up through middle school. And then I've also worked as an itinerant Teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and currently I am mentoring like I said I'm also an adjunct professor at Bloomsburg University in their Deaf Ed department and I'm working right now as an educational consultant for an intermediate unit in Pennsylvania, so that's basically just a special education hub in different counties. So I support literacy, MTSS, and Deaf and Hard of Hearing. So it's been fun to try out some different roles. But that's my background in a nutshell.
D: Yeah, amazing I feel like it's always nice when people have like a breadth of experience to like pull from because you've done like the LSLS thing with babies. But then you've also done it with the bigger kids and a lot of like itinerant teachers as you know as a former itinerant teacher, it's a lot of school age kids like you might get some preschool here and there but a lot of it is bigger kids who still need support in their listening sometimes, sometimes even more than we realize. So what's like the high-level overview like the important need to know information of using LSLS strategies with school aged kids?
K: I think it's important to look at, if you look at the strategies a lot of them are geared towards our birth to 3, 3 to 5 population. But you can use all of them with our school age kids, middle school kids, high school kids. I think really important things are when you're in that session with a student to make sure that you're in a quiet location, make sure you are checking equipment like you can't have a good session if you don't have functioning equipment. And then making sure that you know that you're working in those strategies into whatever goals they might be working on. And what we do in a session is probably going to be different than what I would recommend to the teacher in the classroom. So we can hone in on those listening skills in the session and apply some of those strategies with the older kids. But then what I would recommend for the teacher in the classroom is going to look a lot different, I want them relying on visuals in the classroom, I want them to get everything they can get in the classroom whereas in our sessions I'd rather them focus on strengthening those auditory skills.
D: Can you expand on that a little bit and give an example of like what's a strategy that you think would be useful in a session but then that's different than what you would recommend for the teacher to do in the classroom?
K: Absolutely. I think self-talk is one that we do with our little ones when we're playing. Maybe we're using language to play you know saying 'oh I just made the car gooooo, ready set go.' So and we're doing our auditory closure and we're kind of self-talk as we play. But then in a school age session if I'm maybe doing a read aloud or if we're just working through a new vocabulary word I might stop and think and say 'hmmm, okay, it said he has a heart of stone. When I think of a stone it's kind of cold and and hard. But when I think of a heart it's like warm and fuzzy and it's soft and it beats.' And so I might kind of talk through my thought process modeling that for the student and that self-talk and you can also use that modeling and expansion and auditory closure. It just looks a little bit different than it would with our little ones.
D: Mhmm.
K: I think there's a lot of strategies that we use in the little sessions that we use as we get older too. You know, the say it before we show it. You know that might not be for a toy that you're introducing but maybe it's for a vocabulary concept or maybe it's for a category or maybe it's for a whole section of self-advocacy where we're maybe talking about the language surrounding accommodations and their IEP before we actually look at their IEP and their accommodations and thinking about the language that is used there. So it's less focused around play I would say and more focused around language and you know there different educational topics. But I think if you look at those lists of the strategies it's just like okay take away the toys and take away the playing and how can we adapt to that for our older students.
D: Yeah I think that like say it before we show it or like auditory first or auditory sandwich any of those types of strategies where we talk about like listening first before the visual...
K: Absolutely.
D: I feel like with the kids that are older that really just comes through as like conversation.
K: Yes.
D: Like we talk about things before we do them like I'm not necessarily never going to write the word down on a piece of paper. It's just that I'm going to say it first because I want them to register it in like the auditory part of their brain like I want it to be like processed in that way versus like when we tell the teachers like if you're teaching new vocabulary like write it on the board, have a visual, X Y and Z, and it's because like we don't... It's different like my goal is to work on their listening skills first because if they have strong enough listening skills then they'll be able to access their classroom stuff without so much support.
K: Absolutely.
D: But when they're learning new material for the first time like you can't stress their auditory skills and their brain content knowledge at the same time that's too hard.
K: It's too much.
D: So it's like it's interesting because like when we're applying these little strategies in our sessions like they're specifically meant like for the sessions like it's to strengthen listening skills not to do in the classroom because in the classroom they should have like all gears firing everything they could possibly use learn going at the same time. [LAUGH]
K: Right exactly. Right. We want them to have access to all of it and use whatever they can there. But in our sessions, it's like you said, about a vocabulary word just saying it first and then even just asking the simple question of have you heard that before, does it sound like anything you've heard before, what do you think it has to do with? Asking those open-ended questions where they can kind of give us some more information about what they know about that word. I think if we look at the way our job as a Teacher of the Deaf varies from a special ed teacher, it's like a special ed teacher might sit right down with the list of words and the definitions and the worksheet or whatever it is and just start going over it whereas like you said we're going to introduce the word through conversation. Maybe we'll use the word in a sentence and acoustically highlight it and then see you know I want you to listen even just that skill. 'I'm going to emphasize a word with my voice tell me which word I'm emphasizing.' Even just that being able to pick that out and have that understanding of just how our inflection changes in something is a good skill to develop because that impacts even all of that pragmatic language too. So I think vocab always ends up being like the biggest content area I think for us and it's the most bang for our buck I think in a session because it can be applied to educational, conversational, pragmatic language. So I think that always ends up being like the meat and potatoes of our session and it often gets us off on different subjects which I would say is still just a helpful session.
D: Absolutely.
K: Like I think sometimes if you're just like watching in on a session and it looks like oh all they did was talk, I think that's an amazing session. Whereas somebody else might say well you just talked with the student and it's like well no, actually we were making connections and then diagnostic teaching. We're taking the time to stop. 'Wait what did you just say? What do you know about that? Hold on a second. Let's go into this.' And you know that's still ah that's still an important path to go down with our students.
D: Yeah, could you talk a little bit more about what diagnostic teaching is? Because that is an important part of listening is spoken language and I feel like even if you can kind of guess what it means like from the words I feel like how it's applied is helpful to talk through.
K: Absolutely I am going to relate it to one of my first LSLS observations. I had my lesson all planned out because of course in our teacher prep programs it's all about the lesson plan and having your materials and everything ready to go and I had a bunch of 3 to five year olds with cochlear implants in front of me and were doing this lesson and I'm following every step of my lesson to a T. I'm getting observed for my LSLS certification and at the end of everything my supervisor said 'ok that was great, you really stuck to your lesson.' [LAUGH] She's like 'but you missed so much language and you missed so many opportunities to expand on how the kids were responding to you because you were so married to your lesson plan that you actually missed the the real-time processing of that information in front of you.' So that's where we got off on a topic of diagnostic teaching and looking at, okay, if you say who is the character in the story and they respond with a place and then you just keep going, you're not expanding on that teachable moment and being able to realize okay they might not have processed the the who question or they might not know that who has to do with a person where where deals with a place. And to be able to stop what you're doing and put your lesson aside and actually give that student what they need in that moment, that's your diagnostic teaching. You're real time assessing their comprehension and engagement in whatever you're doing. And to just breeze by that to stick to your lesson plan is not going to be very meaningful for that student and we know that language happens in meaningful contexts. So it's going to mean more to that student to stop and talk about those WH questions in that moment. Then it would be to just keep going and hope that they you know answer my other questions on my lesson plan. [LAUGH] So um, you know I think we get especially newer teachers I think we can get hung up on sticking to our plan that we miss out on all of the language and processing that's happening in front of us. So really honing in on what our students are responding to, how they're responding, and then changing course depending on that.
D: Yeah I've also had it in the opposite direction where I start doing an activity and I realize the student is understanding everything I'm saying the first time I'm saying it which is indicating to me that it's too easy...
K: Yes!
D: ... and I need to make my vocabulary more challenging or I need to increase the auditory load and make it more challenging but I only have to go through 1 or 2 or 3 questions to decide to do that like I don't have to wait for them to get 10 out of 10 correct perfectly like I can just move straight along [LAUGH]
K: Right? We've got this. Let's go to more challenging stuff.
D: And scaffold it up I feel like the easiest way to do that with school age kids is to use more specific vocabulary. So like if we're talking about a, I don't know like I don't know we're looking at a picture we're talking about something and I say like oh like that's a cool lizard and they say yeah that is a cool lizard. I say I wonder if it's a chameleon and they are like what's a chameleon? I've reached the point where I can now talk about chameleon with them.
K: Right, yes.
D: Versus if I say, I wonder if that's a chameleon and they go no, that's a gecko obviously. I'm like ok I have to go further.
Both: [LAUGH]
K: [LAUGH] Okay I have to go genus species, you know.
D: And then maybe I can't go further them out with types of lizards but you get my point.
K: Right
D: Like you just kind of keep probing until you get to the point where they don't know anymore and then that's where you teach them. So I'm not going to keep talking ah on the level of lizard if they can name 5 types of lizards like that's so useless to them.
K: Right? Which also ties into the you know input plus one strategy of like you always want to be at a conversational or language level just a little bit higher than where they are right now so that we're always moving that target up. So there's another strategy that we can use in our sessions with our students. But I agree I think you know if something's too easy you don't want to be like well you did great on that we're done now moving on. [LAUGH] You can kind of whether it be enriching or breaking it down for a student using their responses and how they're engaging in something and like you said a lot of that is through conversation and I remember watching one of my mentors in a session with students and I watched her all day and the first 10 to 15 minutes of all of her sessions were conversation based. And I remember sitting there the first couple times just thinking like you're wasting so much time like you have so many other things to do with this student. And I was, that was you know right out of college me saying that thinking well don't you have goals to track and all of these other things but they got more out of that conversation and the LSLS professional got more information out of the kid by having that conversation. By noticing, are they picking up on the jokes that I'm saying, are they responding, are they even asking me questions, or are they taking the entire conversational turn and going on a long rant about one topic where we started here and now we're somewhere else. So even just that regulating the back and forth of conversational turns and and oh wait a second I asked you how your weekend was what do you think you could ask me now? You know you told me about your weekend, what do you think you could ask me now? So to even just having the time to work on language conversationally I think is so so meaningful for our students.
D: Yeah. I want to jump into some like specific like TOD goals that like itinerant teachers tend to target a lot and maybe how we can use a little strategies to be more intentional about targeting those goals like through audition or focusing on listening and that sort of thing. So I'll just rattle off a few that like come to mind I feel like multiple meaning words, idioms, self-advocacy like learning about their hearing loss or learning about their equipment, challenging listening situations.
K: Yes.
D: These are all like I feel like goals I come across I feel like we touched on vocabulary already which is another big one.
K: Absolutely.
D: But I feel like those are things that come up frequently and you can address them from like a very academic standpoint of like I'm going to teach you how to do these skills. So how could we add some like LSLS strategies to some of those?
K: Sure I think advocacy is probably at least when I was an itinerant teacher especially taking over someone's caseload when I transitioned into that role, advocacy was on every IEP and I think obviously it should be if you have an itinerant student in you know the mainstream setting. I think there's a lot of language that goes into advocacy and making sure that we understand the language of what's needed for self-advocacy whether it be self-advocacy in challenging like listening situations, or self-advocacy in their ownership of their equipment. I think making sure that we understand the language surrounding that is important but then also looking at okay maybe we're using sabotage for checking equipment when we first start and and then creating situations where they need to use those self advocacy strategies with me. And then talking about okay, if that happens in the classroom, what are we going to do? Because sometimes we have those goals of a okay if a communication breakdown happens or an equipment troubleshooting situation happens, what will the student do? But we don't always get the opportunity to have those breakdowns happen in our sessions. So I think using sabotage to create those in our sessions is a really helpful way to do that.
Something else, you've brought up a couple times is making sure that we're not testing the student before we've taught it.
D: Mhmm.
K: Spending time teaching them how to report a problem with their hearing aid. So if their hearing aid battery is dying, how do we report that? And making sure we're modeling that through maybe self-talk, making sure we're modeling that through expansion, showing them what to say, how to say it, when to say it. And creating opportunities for it to happen.
D: I feel like modeling, modeling is like THE strategy.
Both: [LAUGH]
K: Yes, yes, it is! It's like oh my hearing aid just died, I need to tell my teacher. And I think again, maybe when you're checking the equipment at the beginning of the session you very sneakily take out that hearing aid battery and you give it back to them and they put it back in and you see okay are they going to report anything or are we going to sit through this next couple minutes where they're not reporting that happening. Or maybe you are muting the microphone on the remote mic and just seeing are they going to say anything. Or maybe as you're working on something you cover your mouth as you're talking and like all of these are situations that we might be talking about or quote unquote testing them on when we're taking data for their goals. But if we haven't created any of those situations where they actually have to report that, I don't think we're really doing the child justice because they need to know what it feels like when that happens they also need to have the language to report it. So like you said, modeling it, using sabotage. Those are all LSLS strategies that we can then apply to how we're preparing them for those goals.
D: And just like you're saying like sometimes just giving them the right language like I always a lot of times will start with like what does it mean to be a good self-advocate like what does that word even mean they don't know what the word advocate means half the time they've never even heard that word.
K: Right.
D: Like I like they don't even understand what we're working on and like I always want to tell them what we're working on. So I realize I was like okay, we're going to work on self-advocacy about this and then they're looking at me with this blank stare and I'm like I never told you what self-advocacy is did I?
K: Yeah exactly.
D: My bad like...
K: Yeah, exactly this is your self advocacy goal.
Both: [LAUGH]
K: Do you know what self-advocacy is?
D: Because like I always make sure they know what goal we're working on in the session, especially for older kids because like 1 otherwise they don't know who I am they think I'm a speech therapist. Um several kids still think I'm a speech therapist no matter what I tell them they're like okay um.
K: Time for speech, time for speech.
Both: [LAUGH]
D: Because I think the teachers say time for speech too.
K: I think so too yeah...
D: So I think it confuses them. So I try to make sure they know who I am what my role is and then also like what we're there to work on like specifically because I think if you don't know what you're working on you can't really work on it effectively. It's like that like meta cognition part of it.
K: Agreed absolutely.
D: So if I tell them we're working on self-advocacy so that you can be a good advocate like that means nothing to them unless you teach them what the word... I tend to find it easier to teach the word advocate than advocacy like...
K: Correct.
D: Because an advocate is a person. So like that's a little more like um concrete. So like what does it mean to be a good self advocate like that's how I approach it. And then we start there once they have the words to describe what it means to be a good self advocate then I can go into this is how you tell your teacher you need XYZ, this is how you report a problem... all of these are examples of being a good self advocate and it like mends together in their brain a little bit of like like it sticks because it's connected to the bigger goal of what we're working on.
K: Right exactly.
D: And I feel like that's very LSLS-y in the sense that it's like digging deep to find like the the base vocabulary word they need to know.
K: Right? Absolutely and I think too something I've just noticed across the board because of the lack of incidental language learning, I feel like those overarching categorical words are missed. It's like oh I know that there's carrots and broccoli and peas. But I don't know that they're all vegetables if you ask me to list vegetables because we just never maybe put those 2 together or we never never maybe took the time to directly instruct that the overarching theme of vegetables and then having your different types of vegetables or you know I think I think it's on maybe the listening comprehension test and it asks What is a basement? And every single student that I ask what is a basement. They tell me about their basement and what happens in their basement or what they have in their basement or what their basement is used for. But not one of my students ever said it's you know the underground first level of a house.
D: Yeah.
K: Because they're learning it in the only way that they know it. They're not learning it in the general sense of this is what a basement is. So again self advocacy. It's like we might be saying it and throwing it around. But if we don't take the time to actually find out if they know what it means or explain it to them like I think, it's not, it's a missed opportunity. and I also think sometimes we assume that that might be too high level for say a first grader. But if you actually take the time to explain it to a kid a lot of it's it's pretty amazing what they're capable of when you take the time to explain the meaning behind something why we're doing something. You're also going to get more buy-in from the student if they know what they're doing, why they're doing it. So I feel like that's kind of best practice. Overall, just let's let our students know. Why they're with us what we're doing and what all these words mean that we're talking about. [LAUGH]
D: Yeah, and speaking of like those types of words too. This is why I like to really work on analogies like even if the student doesn't have a goal for analogies if they have any vocabulary goal I like to work on the vocabulary goal through analogies because analogies require an understanding of like word relationships and word nuances. So like if you had like our house is to basement as tree is to what? Like it would take a deep level of the understanding of the word basement to come up with roots.
K: Right? Correct.
D: Like you know, like because of a roots are not a room like roots are not roots are part of a tree. They're the part of the tree that's underground just like a basement is a part of a house that's underground, but like that you might know what your basement is like you said but like to actually understand the nuance of what a basement is like...
K: Exactly.
D: Those are the types of thinking that like analogies can really help with and I love analogies for school age kids because of the word nuances and the vocabulary nuances but also because they challenge their auditory memory because it's 4 words.
K: Yes!
D: And like it's four words and you have to think about how they relate to each other so you have to remember the order of the words matters. So like it's really more than four because you have to remember the order.
K: Exactly.
D: So it's like it's a challenging auditory memory task but not too challenging but challenging enough that it's like in their it's in their working memory for sure. And you're really challenging their vocabulary so I feel like if you're trying to apply LSLS strategies to older kids doing analogies verbally...
K: Absolutely.
D: is a really good way to like get into the nitty-gritty of what kind of vocabulary gaps they have and then that's when the diagnostic teaching comes in and if you say house is to basement as tree is to what and they say dirt you're like okay, why? Like what, like what made you think of that and then you can find exactly where the breakdown is. Is that that they didn't understand the word basement or they don't understand the relationship of house to basement.
K: Right.
D: Or they don't know enough about trees like it could be either like and you don't know that until you dig deep in?
K: Right? Or maybe they live in an apartment you know, maybe they live in a split level house where there is no basement and that's you know it's, it's you do you get to kind of find out how it's all coming together for them and then taking that time to break it down. You're using auditory closure by seeing if they can fill it in and then if you need to hopefully you can get there through discussion. But that's where that auditory sandwich could come in where maybe you're then okay, draw me a picture of a house. Draw me a picture of a tree. Where are the roots? I don't see the roots when I look at the tree. I don't see the roots, or I don't see the basement when I look at the house and then maybe you take that visual away and then you talk about how those are similar and kind of like you like you said breaking it down of where did where did we lose you here. Um.
D: Yeah, because for some kids it might have been the word basement for other kids it might have they might not know that roots are a thing like you and like you don't know where the gap is until you like dig in a little bit.
K: Exactly.
D: And then the other thing I do with the analogies is the way that I have them solve them is like by creating a sentence with the first half of the analogy. So like you just have to use those 2 words in a sentence. So if it's house and basement. You could say my house has a basement and then you say well my tree has a well that doesn't help trees have a lot of things so you have to go back and be more specific. My my house has a basement underground or like below the first floor.
K: Yes, yes.
D: Like and then that's when you can get into like the nitty-gritty and like recalling a sentence is also a challenging auditory memory task. So if you're doing all of this through audition and they're repeating the sentence and they have to remember that sentence and apply it to the next set of words.
K: Yes.
D: Like that's really challenging their auditory memory in a way that will help them beyond them learning the word basement like it'll also just like strengthen their listening skills so that the next time they have to listen to a complex sentence like it's not the first time they've listened to a complex sentence.
K: Right!
D: And they have like that ability to like hold it if you do this somewhat frequently like it gets easier over time and then if they're really if they really need help. That's when I get out the whiteboard and I write it down.
K: Yep.
D: And we do it on the white board and then maybe I can scaffold it up or down I could go to an easier analogy.
K: Sure.
D: And try to do it Ah through audition again or I can stay on that level of analogy but do it on the whiteboard until they can do it on the whiteboard consistently and then I take the whiteboard away. That's like the diagnostic part.
K: Exactly yes and I think too when you're doing all of that you are helping the student get to the connection on their own where they're going to hold onto it more. They're going to have more meaning attached to it or value attached to it because they got there instead of us just saying a basement is the underground level of a house roots are the underground level of a tree. Okay moving on. [LAUGH] It's it's getting them to make that connection and that's always the best when they're like oh right! Because the basement is underground and roots in our underground like that's where it sticks and you know they're going to hold on it versus us just telling them about it and moving on, or us just saying self-advocacy and moving on and not actually talking about what that looks like. So I think too having them...
D: And you know if you spend 7 minutes talking about the word basement like it's got to stick. [LAUGH]
K: It has to! [LAUGH]
D: I feel like people feel rush sometimes like they have so much to get to. They can't possibly spend 7 minutes on 1 vocabulary word but I would argue that it's better to learn 1 word deeply than to learn a bunch of words superficially and have none of them stick.
K: Right, or mean anything to them.
D: Because it's more of like it's also like once you understand that words have that level of nuance you're more open to seeing that in other words. So like once you get in the habit of thinking deeply about words you might not not need to be there for them to think deeply about other words and like that skill can transfer even if the number of vocabulary words they learned is less. They've learned the skills of thinking more critically and that alone is worth it.
K: Yes! Well you just touched on something that I've always found difficult in IEP goal writing for our students because when we talk about vocabulary goals, I always find it frustrating when there's a vocabulary goal with ah a word list because I'm like okay we can meet this goal. That's great. But if we have any sort of word vocabulary goal, that's an ever moving target like our students are never going to learn all of the words but like you just said. If we can teach them the skills and the strategies to use to better understand word meaning, to use what we know about other words to help us understand a new vocabulary word. It's having those skills I'd rather you write an IEP goal about that strategy or these the skills to break down a word versus they're going to learn this many words or they're going to understand this many words in a sentence or something. It's like having a vocabulary goal can be a little of a catch 22 because like that's always going to change and evolve and we're never going to meet that goal of vocabulary because we're still learning vocabulary. You know there's new words I hear all the time.
D: Yeah, but but how how do we learn new vocabulary? By like incidentally or like through context clues or by looking it up.
K: Correct.
D: Like and that's totally fine like.
K: Just teaching that skill yes.
D: Like when I write vocabulary goals now I always try to do it like strategy based or even just like it doesn't even have to be a specific strategy. Sometimes it is like context clues or um, sometimes I just write like will use strategy like I don't have to name the strategy.
K: Yes, yes, we'll use a strategy exactly.
D: And like affixes is a great strategy like guessing it.
K: I was just going to talk about that.
D: Yeah I feel like that's a really helpful one.
K: It is and I think so in my role now as an educational consultant. We're focusing a lot on literacy and obviously the science of reading is the big topic right now but 1 of the things that I it's fun to look at science of reading through the lens of a deaf educator or or a LSLS professional because it's all related. Just learning about the english language and how it's morpho-phonemic so it's based on how it sounds and it's based on what it means. So if I add -ed to the end of the word and it might sound different in different words it might sound like /ed/ or it might sound like /d/ or it might sound like /t/ but if I see that I also know that the -ed means it happened in the past and if we can use just like you said affixes and just how they change the meaning of a word. We're giving students so much power in understanding how adding 1 letter or 2 letters to a word can completely change the meaning of it and knowing what those affixes mean so you know, it might not sound the same. But if I see that -ed at the end I know that that means it was in the past or if I see -ing I know it's happening right now. And having that ability to use morphology in our vocab instruction too and I think we can start doing that so early with our students
D: Yeah I had a example recently with like an early elementary student like a young student but very bright who we were talking about something and the word polyester came up I don't know why. I think, I think we realized we were wearing the same sweater like like from Old Navy like I was wearing the adult version and she was wearing the kid version. It was like the same sweater. So I was like let me see the tag like I think we have the same sweater on and we both looked at our tags and it was the same Old Navy sweater we're like oh that's so funny and like I read the rest of the tag and it said like polyester. And we were talking about the word polyester about what that means it's like a type of fabric. It means there's like whatever and then we happen to be working on like multislaabic words. So I was like oh can you write the word polyester because we're working on breaking down into different syllables and she spelt it P O L I E S T E R with an “i” for polyester. And I said oh it's there's a Y not an I for polyester because poly means many like if you see the word poly in a word it means more than one and polyester is made up of more than one fabric. It's like not just one fabric. It's a bunch of fabric put together.
K: Yes.
D: That's what polyester is and that's why it's a Y and not an I. I know it could be an I because English is annoying but we spell it this way because Poly means more than one. I was like this is ah and then I wrote the word polyglot because that was the only word I could think of besides polyamorous that had the word poly in it.
Both: [laugh]
D: And um I said this is a word about someone who speaks languages . Do you think they speak one language or more than one language and she was like well it has poly so it's more than once it's more than one language. It's like does a third grader need to know the word polyglot or the word polyester for that matter? But it came up.
K: So you taught poly.
D: And now whenever she is, now she knows that I don't know if it's an affix a root word, whatever um the morphology of the word of that part poly so that when it comes up again, she won't I don't know the next time she's going to have to spell polyester. But I think she'll remember as opposed to just writing it.
K: That it means more than one exactly right.
D: It's not just like a random correction like there's a reason it's a Y and not an I. It's not random. Um, and if she sees that word poly again in like a different like poly like a polygon like shapes and stuff you know like it'll click to her that that is something that um means more than one.
K: Exactly and I think yeah, it's it's okay to take the time to explain that and it drove me nuts when I was in school when somebody would say well that's just the rule. It's like well why there might be a reason why and and even just explaining that is we don't have to just assume that our students don't want to know the explanation or meaning behind it and if it's something like that they're going to remember it because it was meaningful to them so you know and we know like we said language is through meaningful context. If there's no background knowledge for it or if we don't build the background knowledge for it, it's not going to be as as productive for our students.
D: Yeah, like I'm sure if someone walked in on that session, they'd be like why are you looking at your sweater tag?
Both: [LAUGH]
K: I'm confused.
D: Like what it like what's what's going on here? And it's just like we're learning about words.
K: Exactly! We are actually learning a strategy about breaking down vocabulary words. [LAUGH]
D: But like all of this except for the part where she wrote the word polyester on the whiteboard was all done through audition we were just talking. We're just talking about it.
K: Yes through conversation, yes.
D: So like I didn't have to like get out any specific special materials or anything I just like saw the error and like took 10 minutes to talk about it instead of moving on to whatever else we were supposed to be doing that day. But I do think that that's the kind of like even just knowing that like morphemes like that exists.
K: Exactly.
D: So if she starts to see patterns with other ones...
K: To break it down.
D: Like that's, they repeat. You know like it's not some sometimes it's random, but it's not usually like there's usually a reason that it's like that. And if you're learning multisyllabic words having some awareness of affixes can be really helpful even if they don't formally teach them until later.
K: Right and I think too you know, yes we're going to check equipment at the beginning of a session we're going to maybe do our LMH sounds and everything. And maybe they get all of them then but then maybe when you're having that conversation, you might be noticing some speech production errors that you might be taking note of and just seeing okay, let's stop really quick. Let's do a quick auditory discrim. Can you hear the difference between these two things. We're still adding in all of these little LSLS tenets I guess or these like you know cornerstones of LSLS. But it's just with older students and we're just using different materials aside from home routines or play-based routines. We're using, whether it be an activity we bring or something that they have for us. We're able to kind of, if we know what the strategies are and we know that okay I can kind of use all of these with my older students, and it might just be taking a look at the list and thinking. Okay, how do I take this out of a play routine and put this into a read aloud or a vocab worksheet or a IEP accommodation and just looking at all right we are using these strategies all the time. It's just with higher level language, different topics, conversation. But we're still looking at speech acoustics. We're still looking at language comprehension. We're still looking at theory of mind development and making sure that they're understanding how we all take on perspectives of one another and and being able to expand on that or like I said with a conversation I, I think, it seems to be something that comes up a lot where the student and I think it's just kids in general too will just like talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and you're just sitting there like uh huh, uh huh, are you going to ask me any questions? That's how a conversation goes. So I think even just that of, you know when you're talking to somebody it's usually polite to ask them a question you know just to be able to look at okay, what do you think this person's feeling how are they reacting to something and I think a lot of the things we do can just be done through that conversation auditory first mindset.
D: And I feel like the how you get the kids to talk like that is because I'm guessing you're probably following their lead and talking about something they're interested in like we may follow their lead with a one year old me and put things in a box when they want to put them in a box and follow their lead.
K: Yep yep.
D: With the third grader or fourth grader might mean talking about Captain America for 30 minutes and that's fine.
K: And yep and that's fine.
D: Um, if you can work your goals into it which you can because we're all creative problem solving teachers and I think we could work Captain America into any number of goals like yeah, so...
Both: [LAUGH]
K: And basement!
D: And basement! Yeah, and that's what I mean and like it could literally be anything um and you can turn it into like a good language vocabulary self-advocacy lesson.
K: Yes, and that's so... being in the the Adjunct Professor role too. I I try to urge the students. Yes, obviously you need to be able to write a lesson plan. You need to be able to execute that lesson. But don't be so married to it that you're missing out on what's going on in front of you. But also when you're looking at, I think it's important to build like not don't build the activity around the goal be able to apply the goal to whatever activity you're doing.
D: Yeah, that's what I was going to say is like you don't have to...
K: Because that's gonna change.
D: Because I think people hear that and they're like okay so I don't have to plan anything I just walk in and wing it. It's like no no, that's not a thing.
Both: [LAUGH]
K: No no hold on. You've got to have something planned.
D: You have you have to know your target. You don't know have to know how you're going to target your target. And by target I'm, I'm saying target and not goal for a reason because goal is like a year long thing so but target is like what I want them to accomplish by the end of the session or by the end of like a short period of time like a month or so. So if the target is, you know, using context clues in spoken language like that's the target. Their overall goal might be a more like detailed vocabulary goal or something but my target is for them to use context clues.
K: Sure. Yes, yes.
D: Then I can, I can have activities because if they don't want to talk obviously I'm gonna have activities for us to do. But if we get on off topic discussion of basements like I can target context clues while talking about different houses with different basements and like.
K: Yes, yes.
D: I think having your target really clear and understanding what your target is and then what the next target is and what one target behind that was because that way you can use that diagnostic teaching is if they're not hitting the target and they're not understanding, what is one step easier and what is one step harder.
K: Exactly.
D: If you have that then I feel like you can wing the rest... no I'm kidding. [LAUGH]
K: Right. But if but it's also like if you have your let's say you know your target is context clues through comp or through spoken language and maybe you plan whatever activity you want to plan and they don't want to talk so you start the activity or you think you're gonna do that activity. But you might go pick up that student from their classroom and the teacher might say they have to get this done. Can you work on it with them?
D: Been there.
K: So you're gonna take that with you and I guarantee that whatever you're doing with them, you can build in using context clues in language as you're working on that activity. And so if like you said, if you know specifically what you need to be working on with the student you can kind of apply it to whatever is thrown at you in that session. Even if that means that you're walking them to the nurse to get an ice pack or something. It's like you can use something as you're walking down the hallway to just kind of build that in. I think it's more important to really know what your targets and goals are versus like I have this activity down pat.
D: Yeah.
K: And oh we didn't end up working on any of those targets because we were so focused on this activity. So obviously be prepared, have your plan and still be ready to go but you want to be able to know what you're working on so well that you can just kind of work that into whatever you're doing with the student. Yes.
D: Yeah, and I feel like I really had to get comfortable with doing less things more deeply and even though that might be counterintuitive, especially for me I feel like I'm a very like go go go kind of person like I want to as much stuff as possible like.
K: Mhmm, same.
D: It took a lot for me to learn to slow down. But I found that in the slowing down I was able to go deeper and actually identify like those breakdowns or identify those strengths and then move from there as opposed to just like running through a to do list. I feel like that's what my LSLS training like really like, like forget like yeah I mean auditory sandwich, auditory closure, this that and the other thing but like more importantly, more taught me to just like be more aware of what the skills are in front of me and then just having a stronger grasp of the hierarchy of skills so that I can move up and down more fluidly in the moment and I feel like we can apply that to older kids by just like slowing down, having more conversations, and focusing more on like going deeper.
K: Yes.
D: With what's in front of us instead of, covering a lot of different topics. Yeah, right.
K: Yes, yes, exactly. I think that's a good life lesson in general.
Both: [LAUGH]
D: Right.
K: To slow down and kind of probably a good mantra to keep in the new year to just slow down, do things more meaningfully really dive into what's in front of you and and go from there.
D: Absolutely. So I think that that was a lot of great information.
K: I hope so.
D: Is there any, any like links, resources, contact info you'd like to share with everyone before we wrap up?
K: I am in the process of updating my website so that's under construction right now. But I am on Instagram at listen dot with dot Kristen (listen.with.kristen) and then I also have a couple resources and Teachers Pay Teachers just under Listen with Kristen. It's just a little handout to be able to give to teachers about why we wear the remote mic, why we need strategic seating, just some of the classroom accommodations that we didn't really touch on in here, but are great to just be able to say here it is, this is what it is, this is why we use it. But yeah, other than that social media and then hopefully listenwithkristen.com is up and running soon.
D: Perfect!
K: But under construction for the time being.
D: Sounds good. Thanks so much for being here today.
K: Great, thank you for having me.
D: All of those links that Kristen mentioned as well as the transcript will be available at listentotodpod.com. If you have any questions, comments you could DM me on Instagram @ListeningFun or you could post in our Facebook group, the Teacher of the Deaf Community and that's all for this week and we'll see you next time. Bye!
K: Bye!
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