Have you been trying to figure out how to promote language in your special education classroom? There are some simple steps that can help with this to get started. My next few podcasts are going to focus on some of them, starting with this episode.
Have you ever thought about the importance of being quiet in your classroom? In this episode I have a challenge for you. Have you ever stopped and just listened to what’s happening in your classroom? We often don’t do this just because we are focused on moving everything in the room forward. But there is true value in stopping periodically to listen to what’s going on.
What Language Do You Hear?
Do you hear children talking to adults and to each other? Or do you hear lots of adults talking? What are they saying? Is most of the language you hear from adults to students? Is it primarily focused on what the adults want the students to do? If the answer is yes, is that the language we want to model for our students? If most of what you hear is adults talking and directing students, you may be undermining your opportunities for developing the language of your students.
We all know the importance of modeling language for learners with language disorders and this often makes us think that we need to be talking all the time in our classrooms. Couple that with the need to provide reminders and prompts and often times we find ourselves talking throughout the day.
One of the easiest ways to promote language in your classroom is to be quiet. I know that sounds counterintuitive but it’s true. And in today’s episode, I have 5 reasons WHY it’s so important to listen to (and modify) your language in the classroom.
Who Needs Language Facilitation in the Classroom?
Communication difficulties may occur as an isolated problem, like a student with a speech and language disorder. It can also be part of autism spectrum disorders. We know communication is a hallmark of that, but we also see communication issues in many of our students with intellectual disability. I see it sometimes even with students with our emotional behavior disorders, uh, because one of the reasons that their behavior is happening is because they have a hard time expressing themselves effectively.
So this episode is really going to focus on all kinds of different communication issues. And what I want to talk about today is going to focus on those students who need to talk, talk more, expand how they’re talking and really using their language in an everyday environment. And I’m going to start by talking this week about it broadly and what we need to think about in terms of our classroom and the way we interact with our students.
Facilitating Language in the Special Ed Classroom
I would say that most of us in special education know the importance of modeling language for our students modeling good communication skills, just like we model good behavior skills and really trying to provide an enriched environment of language and communication for our students. This is certainly something you hear a lot about, especially in the early ages, but it’s no less important than in our high school and adult populations as well. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should always be talking. And when we couple our desire to model language, and then we add in the reminders, the directions, the prompts, and all the other things that we use to keep our students on task and engaged and things like that, we have a lot of adult talking going on in our classrooms.
Take the Challenge
So did you take that challenge I issued at the beginning and listen to your classroom? Is most of what you hear in language and communication your staff, or is it your students? If your students are non-verbal, are you seeing them communicate? Are they getting lots of opportunities for that?
Because here’s the thing. If we’re talking all the time, we’re not giving our students the opportunity to practice their skills and modeling without rehearsal and practice is not going to be terribly effective for most of our students, they have to learn how to do this by encountering consequences of doing it. Students learn to communicate just the same way little kids do where they do something. It gets a response and they continue to do it if they like that response. So it gets that by its reinforcement.
Take the Challenge #2
The other piece of that challenge that I want you to think about is what do you hear the adults saying? Because a lot of times when we hear the adults talking, what we’re hearing and thinking about, isn’t really modeling for our students. We’re not using the language that we want our students to use. We’re using directions and prompts and redirections and discussions. Are we doing a lot of talking, but it isn’t really the language that we want to hear our students give back to us. So within that challenge, as you listened to your classroom, what language are you hearing? What are you hearing the adults say? So along those same lines, we need to be using our language in a judicious way, meaning that we’re selective about it and that what we’re using really highlights those models for our students.
5 Reasons to Talk Less – Smile More
Thank you Hamilton for that song lyric (everything is better with song lyrics, right?). But it’s a true thing to remember if we truly want to facilitate language in our special education classrooms.
Reason #1: Listening to Facilitate Language
Communication is a two-way street and we often work very hard to help our students understand that they are only communicating with others if someone is listening (i.e., they have a communicative partner). We need to model listening for them in the same way we need to model speech. This is particularly important if the student struggles with language.
And sometimes that means really having to focus in and watch them because maybe their communication is non-verbal. Or their communication is soft. Maybe their communication is indirect. We have to really work at listening to them. But if they’re trying to communicate with us and we aren’t listening, then they’re not going to continue to do that. They’re not going to continue. So we need to listen to them to give them that opportunity, but we also need to listen to them because we need to model listening. We want our students to be able to listen to others too. So we have to make sure that we’re modeling that as well.
Reason #2 Expectant Waiting
For many of our students, language is difficult to process and speech (or other types of communication) are difficult to formulate. Consequently, they need time to process the information from our language and formulate their response. This means we need to wait quietly. Have you ever had someone ask you a question and then immediately start talking before you could answer it? Isn’t that aggravating? It’s like they don’t value our answer enough for wait for it. We don’t want to send that message to students that we are trying to get to communicate. So, we need to wait, quietly, for them to respond.
So we need to wait. And oftentimes we get more communication because we’ve given that silence. And that’s true, whether our students are verbal or not.
Expectant Waiting in Online Learning
I find it’s true with online learning. When I’m working with students. When I’m in Office Hours on Zoom with Academy members, I have learned that I need to be quiet for longer that I’m sometimes comfortable with. And if I do that, people are more likely to contribute to a discussion than if I just wait a few seconds and then keep going. And that sometimes feels uncomfortable to me. Expectant waiting sometimes feels uncomfortable and that’s okay. It’s an awkward pause at times, but we need to make peace with it.
Reason #3 Modeling Only the Right Language
I don’t mean the “right” language in the sense that it is appropriate. I mean that we need to be modeling language that is only 1 or 2 steps ahead of where the student is communicating. So, if Mandy is talking in 2-word phrases, we would model 3-word phrases, not complex sentences to explain what to do or comment. If we are working on Jake commenting on activities in his environment, we would model commenting for him (e.g., “Look, it’s yellow!” not “Oh look, it’s a yellow duck. It says quack quack and swims in the water.”).
We want our models to be really clear. We always want to keep our models one or two steps ahead of the student. So, talk with your speech language pathologist as a team with the educators on the team to determine what that looks like along those same lines.
Along those same lines, we forget that for our students using augmentative communication strategies or devices, we need to model their AAC strategy. If that’s Picture Exchange, we need to pair pictures with our language. If it’s a speech generating device, we need to model the language on their device. While we are typically pairing speech with that model, we still need to minimize our language and use the AAC to be an effective model the student can understand.
Reason #4 Silence Enriches Language
While it seems to be the opposite, decreasing our speech and language can help to highlight when we do speak. Ever know that person in the group who doesn’t say much, but when he does we listen? That’s who we want to be in the classroom. If we are talking all the time, people, including our students, stop listening. The more that we use our speech only when it is needed and in a thoughtful manner regarding what we are saying, the more attention students will learn to pay to our models.
If you’ve ever known a person in a group activity who doesn’t say much, but when he does people stop and listen, that’s how we want adults to be in our classroom. The more that we use our speech only when it’s needed and in a thoughtful manner regarding what we’re saying and how we say it, the more attention students will learn to pay to our models.
Reason #5 Avoid Prompt Dependence
I’ve talked about prompt dependence in previous posts, but one of the elements we have to be very careful about is that many students with autism pair our verbal directions with the task in such a way that it becomes part of the steps. One of the elements we have to be very careful about for many of our students with autism is that we don’t want to pair our verbal directions with a task in such a way that it becomes part of the steps of doing the task. But I would contend it’s true for many of our students in special ed who are surrounded by lots of people, helping them.
So, if I’m teaching Jenny to wash her hands and I tell her each step, I might be surprised to find that when I tell her to wash her hands and don’t tell her each step, she stalls out in the middle of the task. Often our students don’t focus on the relevant cues in the learning task and learn the wrong thing (i.e., my telling Jenny to get the soap instead of Jenny connecting having gotten her hands wet and knowing that the next step is to get the soap because her hands are wet). We want to make sure that we use language in a way to facilitate independence. When we verbally walk a student through a task, we do the opposite and she learns to rely on our verbal cues.
What Should We Do?
We are often better off giving the direction for the whole task (e.g., wash your hands) instead of verbally telling them each step and having to do that each time they do the task. It’s also why we use only nonverbal prompts in independent structured work systems….so that it is easier for the instructor to fade herself out and because the students can do the tasks independently.
If you have a student who is working on commenting or describing their actions, certainly you can stop periodically and say, what did you just do? And get that response from them. But remember that we’re trying to get a response for them. Oh, you’re washing your hands. What were you doing? Oh, you are washing your hands.
Bonus Reason: Peers
When we use our language. We also want to think about the fact that as a bonus reason, if we’re talking other students, aren’t talking to our students. If we’re talking, we are filling the silence that might be filled by students talking to each other. And that’s certainly one of the places that we’re trying to get.
Balancing Directions With Language Facilitation
I’m certainly not advocating that we should not talk to our students or that we shouldn’t give them directions. Obviously we have to do that, but we have to strike a balance and research indicates that people talk less to people who are non-verbal meaning that those who need to hear models most hear them less. They don’t talk to them. They talk around them. And that’s what we sometimes hear a lot of our language be in our classroom. And so I will talk more about that kind of issue and more in the upcoming episodes. But I am saying that we need just to take a moment periodically, think about what we’re saying, think about how we’re using language and thinking about the language that takes place in our class.
What Did You Hear When You Listened to Your Classroom?
I would love to hear what you found when you stopped and listened in your classroom. If you’re an educator hop over to the free Facebook group share that with us. I would absolutely love to have discussions around that. And, you can also just message me on Instagram or Facebook and share those thoughts. Cause I think it would be really interesting to hear what everyone’s hearing in their classroom.
Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you’ll join us next week for more talks about communication and I hope you have an amazing week.
