Guest post by Anna Fredman, MS.CCC-SLP, A+ Solutions, Speech Pathologist
With summer winding down and fall on its way, most students will tell you with some measure of resignation that back-to-school means back to homework, back to tests and projects, and the end of fun days spent at the pool. All children must re-acclimate to sitting in the classroom and making time for homework, and a student who struggles academically in any area will likely have a harder time. But for students with speech/language challenges in particular, this back-to-school transition can bring more than just the typical re-adjustment to schoolwork.
We entrust our children’s schools with the lofty task of educating them and preparing them to be productive members of society. At the same time, school is generally the place where the most demands are put on children and the most is expected of them. In particular, with Ohio’s New Learning Standards (adopted in 2010) (http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Ohio-s-New-Learning-Standards/Ohios-New-Learning-Standards) and a new standardized testing system (put in place for the first time for the 2014-2015 school year), schools and teachers are under more pressure to meet standards, which can translate into higher expectations in the classroom.
For a child with a language disorder, we need to be conscious of an added layer of demands. These students must handle not only reading and language schoolwork itself but a variety of other expectations that can be challenging:
• Listening for an extended period of time: During the summer, children don’t often have to attend to one speaker for more than a few minutes at a time, but at school they must attend to a teacher talking for a longer period. In general, when bombarded with multiple stimuli, we tend not to focus on the ones that are the most confusing to us and instead we pay attention to what is most clear. For a student with a language disorder, spoken language comprehension may be more challenging. The noise of the lawnmower outside, the feeling of a pencil rolling in his hand, and the pattern of light and shadows on the ceiling may all be easier to focus on than the instructor talking.
• Auditory processing: In the classroom, students have to not only maintain attention to the speaker, but to process everything that comes out of the teacher’s mouth, often quickly. Think about your own comprehension of a foreign language. If you are somewhat proficient but not a native speaker, how much mental energy goes into listening to and understanding a lecture given in that language? You can do it, but not without sustained complete attention and a lot of effort. This can be exhausting.
• Following directions: By the time students reach grade school, they are expected to be able to follow multi-step directions: “Put away your book, get your lunchbox, and line up at the door;” or “Take out your math books, finish the first two problems on page 14, and check your work with a partner.” Attention, language comprehension, and auditory processing are all required for students to successfully complete such instructions; if there is a breakdown anywhere in that process, the student may struggle with the directions. Especially in a busy classroom, if directions are given verbally and then everyone starts moving at once, the task can be complicated for students with a language disorder.
• Social communication: Some children with a language disorder struggle with social pragmatics, or the social rules of language (http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/Pragmatics/). There is no place more challenging for these students than the playground, the lunch room, and certain settings in the classroom or hallway. During the summer, the child more often has choices about who to socialize with and for how long, but at school the peer group and schedule is fairly fixed. Students must navigate the complex world of body language, facial expressions, emotions, and social language. This is an all-day demand that begins when the student gets on the bus and lasts until s/he returns home.
In our next post Anna will discuss what parents can do to help make the back-to-school period smoother for the child with a language disorder…
Want to learn more?
Join us October 21st:
Odette Hankins, MS.CCC-SLP
Socially Speaking:The Link Between Language and Social Skills
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Socially Speaking:The Link Between Language and Social Skills