This text-based course is a transcript of the seminar, “Listening and Spoken Language Strategies in the Classroom” presented by Ashley Garber, M.S., CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert AVT.”
>>Ashley Garber: I would like to start my presentation today by giving you our agenda and what we will be covering. We will begin by talking through some classroom issues related to working with children with hearing loss. We will define some listening and spoken language strategies. For those of you who are not familiar with the abbreviation of ‘LSL’ or ‘LSLS’, it refers to Listening and Spoken Language. We will talk about strategies for developing spoken language skills for children with hearing loss. We will talk about infusing those auditory opportunities into the classroom, and we will have time for discussion and questions at the end.
Before we jump into this first issue of classroom issues, I would like to ask the audience if you are a speech language pathologist working in a school environment. Then I would like to know if any of you who are classroom teachers, perhaps in the general education environment? I will move forward with the confirmation of my assumption that most of you are speech language pathologist in the educational environment. Would you consider yourself being the primary person who has knowledge and skills in the area of hearing loss, with relation to the children that you are serving? Hopefully, if you do not feel confident about your knowledge and skills on hearing loss, today's presentation will increase that. If you are the person who has that, then you will find some ways to increase the thought process into infusing auditory skills into the classroom environment for children with hearing loss.
Challenges: Maximizing Auditory Learning in the Classroom
We know one of our real challenges is maximizing auditory learning in the classroom. There are many children out there with hearing loss who have moved into a general education classroom. In some cases that is because they have achieved success such that they are ready to be in classrooms with their peers of the same age who have typical hearing abilities. In other cases, we are talking about children in environments in their particular counties perhaps where there really are not services that are specially designed for them and so they are learning in the general education environment and needing significant amounts of support. Regardless, our challenge is helping each child to maximize their auditory learning potential and how to do that when they are learning in a classroom environment.
One of the issues that comes up that is not explicitly stated in my presentation today is the idea that regardless of which of those scenarios resonates for you, if we are talking about a speech language pathologist who’s concerned with getting auditory skills into the classroom, it is likely that you are working as a professional using Push-In services. Perhaps you pull the child out some time for one-on-one skill development, but other times you are pushing in to the classroom where you are working with the classroom teacher as a consultant. You may be observing how things go and then communicating with the teacher ways that they can improve the child's success with different areas, or perhaps you are co-teaching lessons or modeling strategies and skills for the teacher. As we move through today's presentation, that is the lens through which we will look at some of this information that were thinking about. How do we plan for these situations?
I have started with just some quotes from some classroom teachers who are working with children with hearing loss and considering how to, in that classroom environment, plan for auditory learning. There are also some quotes from individual service providers who are watching the child participate in the classroom and want to increase these auditory opportunities. Here are some the things that I have heard:
