MORE Teach me Language by Dr Freeman and Dake:4 techniques

Here finally is the continuation of the post where I first talked about Dr Freeman's and Dake's  fabulous book "Teach me Language " that the wonderful  M  referred me
Its here on Amazon

This will probably be my last post on "Teach me language" becasue I think I have covered some of the generally applicable things here.

For  more you will need to read the book

Dr Freeman also has a very nice website called "The Autism Pundit".
( I love her slogan "Question Everything . Expect Evidence")

This spring summer these are the 3-4 techniques we - the fabulous trio of Mrs K , Miss S and Mrs G - have been using with a lot of success

The beauty of these tools is that they can be used perennially , they make a ton of sense, they give the language scaffolding and practice that our kids need.

 Finally, they mimic typical language development

For me the most important thing is that we are getting R's own original thoughts and these are priceless

SIMPLE WORD ASSOCIATION  

Why  do we we do this?

The idea is to

1. have the child see and verbalize the relationship between words 

2. develop the ability to answer why questions and to understand the concept of "why-because"    

There are two ways to do simple word association 

WAY 1

Therapist writes down  a word pair

She  asks R to give the reason why they go together.

For example, therapist writes down " green .... sprite " and asks "R why do these words go together "?

 Therpaist introduces a prompt in writing like " "because a ----- is ......."

Once R  figures out the meaning of "is" we will introduce other concepts like tastes , sounds , feels

example therapist writes down "sweet... sprite" or "fizzy.. sprite"   

WAY 2

Therapist suggests a word  : a noun

Example:

Therapist writes down "flight of a bumble bee"  and then asks  child
"R what goes with the flight of a bumble bee?"

When Ro answers "Miss sadie's phone"

Then therapist writes down what R said  and then asks "why do" flight of the bumble bee" and "miss sadie's phone "   go together ?

WHY : the idea is to help the child express his/her ideas without having to frame them in a sentence  this will show the therapist the gaps in the child's general knowledge 

CONTINGENT / TURN TAKING WORD ASSOCIATION 

The therapist begins by saying a word and writes it down.

The child must say a word that is associated with the word and the therapist writes it down.

Then the therapist says a word that is associated with the word and so on    "snow-- january...new year ".

The idea is to complete a whole page  

Here is one made my R and his Miss S

I am enthralled with the  fantastic association R did with monster - "yellow eyes"

 I have fantastic associations that Mrs K and R did - as during this time Mrs K was getting married. She took this opportunity to teach R about weddings and as R went to her wedding - he had many opinions about this :-)

SUGGESTION :

If the child has difficulty completing the whole page then go sentence by sentence

WARNING:
 it may take many times before the child picks this up - persevere .
DO not allow the child to come with the same train of thought over many turns
VARIATION : after the set is complete do the "why do --- and --- go together ?
like this...


 BUILDING ANALOGIES

Take the contingent word sheet and point out the related words and describe the relationship between the two words

Here is one made by R and Mrs G ( those are the initials on the top - this is one clever thing that Mrs G does - by putting his initial on the top - she provides a reminder that its his turn )

Tell me does not the last one make you smile

TALKING ABOUT A TOPIC 

In this the therapist asks the child to choose a topic ( in the example I will show below, "Beach" was the topic R chose)

The therapist then asks the child to talk about the topic

The child gives a few words ( in this case  R chose- Pebbles, Sand, press your toes and Rocky )

Then the therapist uses each of those words to build a sentence and writes it down

In this way, R is expressing his own ideas and Mrs G is helping him turn his ideas into full sentences

This is genius becasue its a window into R's world  - you can see that R experienced the beach in a sensorial way - clearly he expereinced it( I think unpleasantly )  through his feet and it explains why R does not like beaches :-)

 or

If you do nothing else just the writing down of questions and answers has been so great

What I never thought of - is that a guy who does not process well auditarily - does not just miss out on what others say to him but  possibly does not hear what he says himself

In this way, he gets to explain his own true feelings and bargain

Our motto with R has always been First, love and it has served us well

But I think any time we attempt to teach a child our moto has become "First understand and then customize to your child's needs"

Teach me language by Freeman& Dake : General Priniciples

Earlier  this year DH and I were wondering how to add some structure to our home program without ABA .

That is when  I discovered this book owing to my good friend M's recommendation

This is a book written in 1997 by Sabrina Freeman and Lauralei Dake .. it seems a little pricey on paper ( on amazon here its for around 55 dollars ) but its worth every penny

  Its a very easy read

  Anyway back to M,

M has two very bright boys with autism and hyperlexia and she has given me a lot of good advice over the years

Her BEST advice for me has been her recommendation on this book

This book is for a very specific kind of autie

  Skip over this post my dear friends whose kids dont fit this specific description

But if you child is a hyperlexic table ready child - let me give you some crib notes on things DH and I have been using for R in his home therapy program

  This book is for the following type of kid

1. Kids who are hyperlexic

2. Table ready 

Here are the basic Principles you employ in each session

WRITTEN SCHEDULE

Each session must have a written schedule

This  give the child a feeling of control and its very important that the entire schedule be completed

We also must find a way to make each session be pleasurable -

We should praise the child for correct answers
We must   give choices when we can and also have a reward at the end of the schedule

    A schedule at the beginning of each session can be as simple as this

REPETITION

All the exrecises should be done multiple times but the therapist must encourage many different correct answers ( its possible that answers are atypical and that is fine )

  Exercises must be presented by the therapist by modeling correct answers and in  writing

Eventually, we will want R, to complete the exercises himself but only after he has seen the therapist model it and then help him several times

TEACH USING THE CHILD's STRENGTH :
This is critical . R is a child who processes the world visually ( I think this is true of all hyperlexic kiddos )

In this curriculum, we are teaching oral language using visual channels .

Once the child can read a sentence , understand the sentence and then eventually identify the sentence when someone else reads it then his oral ability is strengthened 

PROMPTING AND FADING

When an exercise is first introduced the child will have to be helped but eventually the help needs to be reduced and then faded away till the child does independent work

EMPHASIS ON GENERAl KNOWLEDGE:  

One of the problems with R is how little general knowledge he has !!

  Bright kids with autism will often not pick up the most basic things fom the environment  :due to following reasons

1. because they often do not process oral information due to their visual brains

2. Due to their great ,memories they may remember many minute details BUT They may not have the ability to discern the main idea from the detail -

the book has a section on general knowledge and the idea is to give the child a structured way to acquire the general knowledge 

IT Is IMPERATIVE THAT THE THERAPIST WORK ON THE DEFICIT ( AUDITORY PROCESSING ) BY RELYING ON THE STRENGTH ( VISUAL PROCESSING)  HOW OFTEN :

We want to work daily and if possible multiple times a day  we are introducing language visually

- so that the child will acquire language in the same way that an adult acquires a foreign language
     ESSENTIAL TO CUSTOMIZE: IF SOMETHING IS NOT WORKING WE MUST GET TOGETHER
 AND FIX IT 

Ok that is the introduction

Tomorrow I will write on the three techniques we have been  using

Simple Word Association,Complex word Associations, Writing an Essay etc