Instructional Strategies - Speech or Language Impairment

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Teaching Strategies for Students with Speech or Language Impairment

All Students:

• Consult with your SLP on strategies that are being used in the therapy room that you can implement in the classroom.
• Use tactile and visual cues (e.g., pictures, 3-D objects).

Speech:

• Be a good speech model and avoid correcting speech difficulties.
  
• Encourage participation in classroom activities and discussions.
• Be patient when the student is speaking

Language:

• Listen for meaning and respond to content; do not criticize or call attention to speech difficulties
• Allow the person to finish his thought; refrain from filling in words of your own
• Pre-teach vocabulary 
• Give simple one-step directions, or include visuals to help student follow directions
• Ask questions so they can be answered with a few words; work toward more detailed responses.
• Read aloud; point out rhyming words and repetitive sounds.
• Create opportunities for conversation; designate special times to talk about the day's activities; make choices about food or activities; discuss a favorite book or game.
• Teach the meaning of new words; use multiple concrete examples; explain how the same word can be used in different situations.
• Provide a list of new vocabulary to the SLP prior to use in the classroom. 
• Allow alternate response modalities, such as oral or written, small group presentation vs. whole classroom. 
• Allow student to tape lectures 
• Provide the student a copy of class notes
• Provide verbal models of corrected sentences 
• Ask open ended questions
• Paraphrase back what the student has said or indicated 
• Use active listening
• Modify classroom activities so they may be less difficult, but have the same learning objectives.
• Design tests and presentations that are appropriate for the student (written instead of oral).
• Have the student sit in an accessible location to frequently monitor their understanding.
• Modifying assignments such as one-to-one presentation or use of computer
• Be aware of the student's functioning level in auditory skills, semantics, word recall, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics (and how they affect academic performance).

Stuttering: 

• Keep eye contact and give the child enough time to finish speaking.
• Try not to fill in words or sentences.
• Let the child know by your manner and actions that you are listening to what she says not how she says it.
• Model wait time taking two seconds before you answer a child's question and insert more pauses into your own speech to help reduce speech pressure.
• Order ' whether he wants to be one of the first to present, in the middle, or one of the last to present;
• Practice opportunities  ways he can practice that will help him feel more comfortable, such as at home, with you, with a friend, or at a speech therapy session;
• Audience size: whether to give the oral report in private, in a small group, or in front of the entire class;
• Other issues: whether he should be timed, or whether grading criteria should be modified because of his stuttering.

The above information has been pulled from the following websites:

http://www.stutteringhelp.org/faqs-teachers

http://nichcy.org/schoolage/accommodations#part2

http://www.niu.edu/success/accommodations.shtml

http://nichcy.org/s-l-i-8-tips-for-teachers

http://www.do2learn.com/disabilities/CharacteristicsAndStrategies/SpeechLanguageImpairment_Strategies.html

http://www.fentress.k12tn.net/countywide/AccMod.pdf

http://www.bridges4kids.org/Disabilities/SLI.html#2