Provision of Language Based Intervention in Middle School Classrooms

Question

Answer

These are common dilemmas we face when we transition to alternative service delivery options, including classroom-based collaboration (particularly when the students in the classroom are a ''mix'' of regular education, special education, speech-language impaired with various types/severities of disorders, etc.). Accordingly, I find it is best in these contexts to address broad-based communication skills that all students can benefit from improving, such as formal classroom discourse (Sturm & Nelson, 1997). We can think of formal classroom discourse as ''what do good communicators do'' in a classroom setting in order to communicate efficiently and proficiently with teacher and peers. I often provide the classroom teachers with a checklist first (see various forms in Chapter 8 of Intervention in Language Arts: A Practical Guide for SLPs, DeKemel, 2003) to determine if the students are adept at taking and negotiating conversational turns, raising their hands and waiting to be recognized before speaking, asking for further clarification of oral directions or seeking additional information from the teacher if needed, using appropriate ''body language'' such as facial affect, eye gaze, gestures, proxemics, etc. in the classroom (and interpreting the teacher's nonverbal cues as well), etc. Chances are all of the students (and especially those with language-learning disabilities) will need assistance in these areas in classroom contexts. Sturm and Nelson (1997) also provide a list of ''10 Rules for Participation in Formal Classroom Discourse'' that some students may be aware of implicitly, but not explicitly (for example, ''Teachers mostly talk and students mostly listenexcept when teachers grant permission to talk,'' and ''Teachers ask questions and expect explicit answers.''). All of these formal classroom discourse ''rules'' provide potential content for collaborative-classroom lessons. In terms of how to incorporate the ''rules'' and lessons into a fun and functional instructional format, I highly recommend Ellen Pritchard Dodge's program The Communication Lab (1998), which uses various role plays to help students understand ''what good communicators do.'' For instance, several of the students, the teacher and SLP might design a role-play where a student makes an off-topic or tangential comment during a formal lecture or classroom discussion. The group would pause after the role-play and discuss how and why the communicative interaction ''broke down,'' then re-play the role-play using ''good communication.'' These types of activities provide a constructive critique of the kinds of behaviors that damage ongoing communication in the classroom. The outcome is that all of the students and the teacher develop a ''language of communication'' for dealing with common pragmatic difficulties as they occur in ''real'' classroom contexts.

As for the second part of your question (i.e. concerns about not providing the same intensity of service during classroom-based intervention as in pull-out sessions), this may be partly a problem of perception rather than reality! There are skills/abilities you can address in the classroom setting (such as those we discussed above) that cannot be addressed as effectively in the pull-out venue, and vice versa. That said, if you still have concerns, have you considered a ''balanced'' approach where you see these students one time a week for a classroom-based session and one time a week for a pull-out session (assuming you are seeing them for the ''traditional'' two times per week for 30 minutes model?). That way, you are giving them the ''best of both worlds'' (i.e., more individualized attention during pull-out sessions, combined with contextual-based support in the classroom). Do consider combining a variety of service delivery options, depending on the types of children you serve and their individual needs.

References

DeKemel, K. (2003). Alternative Service Delivery Models. In Intervention in Language Arts: A Practical Guide for Speech-Language Pathologists. St. Louis, MO: Butterworth Heinemann/Elsevier Science.

Dodge, E.P. (1998). Communication Lab I: A Classroom Communication Program. San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group.

Sturm, J.M., & Nelson, N.W. (1997). Formal Classroom Lessons: New Perspectives on a Familiar Discourse Event. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 28, 255-273.