Word Finding for Kids.com

Several of my posts have talked about the importance of a child’s awareness of her word finding difficulty.  It is a tricky balance:  we want her to be aware of her weakness yet not make her self-conscious about it.  It’s all  part of becoming a good self-advocate.

So when does a child develop the metalinguistic skills to be aware of word retrieval issues?   Most researchers agree that by age 4, typically-developing children recognize signals from their listener that their message was understood or misunderstood.  In my mind, that would correlate fairly closely to recognizing that the word they have chosen is not the specific one for which they were searching.  What an interesting topic for additional research!  I do know that there has been a great deal of variability among the many “word finders” for whom I have provided intervention. I have been successful teaching pre-schoolers to let their teachers know “I need more time,” or “Give me a clue.” On the other hand, I have also worked with middle-schoolers who have needed more time to develop the same level of self-awareness.

The important message we need to send is that we get it. We understand that they know the answer, it’s just “stuck.”  Encourage an older child to explain, “It’s on the tip of my tongue.”  If a child is reluctant to speak up, help her develop a nonverbal signal she can use with her listeners.  An understanding teacher will be happy to accept an index finger raised to mean “give me a minute” or a thumbs-up to mean “I know it, I just need more time.”

It’s time to plan ahead and pre-teach vocabulary needed during the next few weeks.  In what activities will your students be participating?  What special classroom and family events are planned?  What are their traditions?  I like to play some games that use some vocabulary common to most of my students.  Each student makes a stocking from construction paper, then draws a picture from a pile that includes:

ornament                    greenery                     wreath                    frost                    garland                    celebrate                   celebration                    custom

tradition                       holly                             mistletoe               carol                    sleigh                       pine cone                  candy cane                   Advent

poinsettia                     nativity                       Hanukkah              menorah            dreidl                       gelt                             resolution                    blizzard

tinsel                             mantle                        Kwanzaa                toy names that are on their “wish list”

I have drawn pictures of many of these objects or used Google images.  Old Christmas cards are also a great source of pictures.  Your students may want to bring in photos of some of their own family activities.  It’s so much easier now that most families have smart phones!  Ask your speech parents to email you some family photos to add to the mix.  Younger children will enjoy manipulating real objects.  The child should name the object and use the word in a sentence.

Any vocabulary that is difficult to retrieve will need to be reviewed  and mnemonic cues provided if necessary.*  Obviously, not every word needs  a cue.   I have listed some of the cues I have presented in the drop down menu at the top of this page.  Please email me with additional cues and I will add them to the spreadsheet.

Don’t forget that the curriculum will move forward during this time as well.  Check in regularly with your classroom teachers and be sure you pre-teach vocabulary words to your “word finders.”    Review often and be sure the kids say the words aloud.  You will find they are much more successful at retrieving the words they need to communicate with their friends, families, and teachers.  And successful communication helps build happy kids!

*The “cloud” cards (I all them “thinking bubbles”) are from the Word Finding Intervention Program, Second Edition, German, 2005  . Please refer to my “resources” page for additional information.

Tweeted from “Literacy Speaks”:  http://fb.me/3qYa16WZN 

Fun ideas for preschoolers! Great for language development, and especially for word finding!

Don’t forget to take advantage of reinforcing irregular past tense verbs when you get back to work Monday morning.  I’ll be publishing a list of holiday vocabulary and corresponding phonological cues soon.

Have you heard about “Giving Tuesday”?  Make a donation with your savings from Black Friday.  As for me, I’m not getting anywhere near a mall on Black Friday (but I promise to make some donations anyway).  Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of family and fun.

“Cloze” procedures, or “fill in the blank” can help retrieve words in both children and adults.  It’s almost like setting up your brain to finish a sentence.  I use examples for my students like these:

When my pants are too big, I need to wear a…..[belt].

I eat when I’m hungry, I drink when I’m….[thirsty].

When I get to school, I hang my backpack in my….[locker].

Once they understand the concept, I ask them to make up their own sentences to help a partner retrieve a target word.  Later, they can use this strategy to help themselves retrieve a word.

In my November 4 post, I talked about using “FAVOR-C” or “Silly Sally….” to encourage students to try a variety of strategies.  The “F” in FAVOR-C stands for “Fill in the blank.”  Again, different children and adults are helped by different strategies.  Part of self-advocacy is learning what works for YOU.

Many commercially-available word finding resources use lists automatic associations which work the same way.   But wait!! Isn’t this the word association strategy?  Sure!  Sometimes they overlap.  In fact, a number of these strategies overlap.  Think of the Venn diagrams you learned in elementary school.  These strategies are not mutually exclusive.  Use these overlapping concepts and overlapping language to build more connections in the brain.

Sometimes getting started with an initial sound cue will help retrieve a word.  If a teacher or parent knows what word a child is searching for, he or she can provide the initial sound of the word.  Note that I said initial sound, not initial letter.   If the child is searching for the word “mitten,” provide the sound “mmm”.  Cuing with “it starts with the letter ‘m'” is not as helpful.  This sort of  “on the spot” cue can be helpful if the target word is known to the listener.  Once the word is retrieved, anchor it:  reinforce it with the 5-step procedure recommended by Dr. Diane German (please refer to my post of November 4).  Ask the child to “tattoo” it in his memory.  Ask for a “word finding 5” : say the word 5 times, use it in a sentence, and get a high 5.

The initial sound cue can also be used as a strategy to cue one’s self.  I ask the kids to silently go through the alphabet.  Think of the beginning sound of each letter.  That will sometimes jump start retrieval.  The research into “dense phonological neighborhoods” supports this strategy. A variety of studies demonstrate  that although it is more difficult to discriminate words from dense phonological neighborhoods, it is easier to retrieve such words.  In a nutshell, dense phonological neighborhoods are groups of words that sound similar.

Please remember that different strategies help different students.  Have your speech therapy clients try this strategy.  Does it help?  There seem to be a variety of different kinds of “word finders.”  For a child whose word finding difficulty appears to be phonologically based, this can be quite helpful.  I was surprised by the results of a very informal survey I took among the adults I work with:  I asked how they helped themselves come up with a word on which they were stuck.  A number of them mentioned think of the beginning sound.   In the “Silly Sally Always Draws Fuzzy Pandas” acronym, the “F” stands for “First sound.” So have your students go through the alphabet, prompting themselves with the possible sound their target word may begin with.

There seems to be a developmental maturity that is needed for this strategy to work.  A certain level of phonological awareness is needed.  This would be a great topic for further research!

Please share your experiences!  Let me know what strategies work for your clients.

I don’t care what you call it…winter has arrived in the Midwest with a vengeance.  It reminds me of a favorite word finding experience with a group of 3rd graders.  Last winter was the awful polar vortex, which may just be repeated this year.  In the Chicago suburbs, we had snow days and days cancelled because of extreme wind-chill conditions.  So of course it was important to be able to retrieve the term “polar vortex” in order to discuss the weather.  So I went to work thinking of a phonemic mnemonic cue…aha!!  “Polar for Tex[as]”.  So I drew a cute little picture of a polar bear reaching down over the globe toward Texas.  He was reaching for Texas, right?

Not being content to reinforce the syllables sitting down, I asked each child in turn to stand on my table and act the part of the polar bear.  My friend Jason was standing on my table, reaching down to touch the back of David, who was kneeling on the floor.  Polar vortex, polar vortex, polar vortex.  Say the word, but THINK the cue….

And who appeared at my door?  The superintendent of schools!   How to explain my multi-sensory lesson on retrieving the term “polar vortex”?  Oh, my… children standing on tables…. So of course I had the “polar bear” explain to Dr. Superintendent how he learned to retrieve the term more efficiently.  It was a hit!  (phew….).

Sherry Artemenko at Playonwords.com posted this great article:

Having Some Fun with Ripples, Pre-teaching Classroom Vocabulary in Word-finding Therapy

What a great example of collaborating with classroom teachers!