Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills & Comprehending More Complex Auditory Information (Sequencing, Concrete Details, Subtle Clues, Social Language) {Review}

As this is my first post for 2013 let me just start off by wishing you all a Happy New Year! 

I will be reviewing 2 items from Great Ideas for Teaching that can be utilized to target auditory processing skills for those with higher level abilities. 

Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills ($32) is meant to assist students in learning to interpret events, gaining an understanding of concrete and subtle interpretations, and helping to grasp the main points of each event. Students who have may have trouble working through Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills should check out my review of Auditory Processing of Early Language Comprehension Skills to determine if it would be a better fit.

While looking at an image, students are read a story about the picture. Various questions that gauge specific comprehension skills are then asked. Questions are related to sequencing, context clues, inferencing, as well as time and spatial concepts. 

The review questions are simple and straightforward, requiring students to recall important details from the brief passages (e.g. What is the horse's name?) Questions get progressively difficult as they prompt students to form their own conclusions, separate subtle information amongst stories, make predictions, and retell the story. See below for sample pages. 

               

Comprehending More Complex Auditory Information (Sequencing, Concrete Details, Subtle Clues, Social Language) ($32) includes questions that target similar skills as Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills with an emphasis on sequencing. Images are provided to students as they listen to a two or three part story. There is an abundance of questions provided for users, which I personally appreciated as it saved me some preparation time. Take a look below for a few sample pages. 

I use both books with my students to aggressively target note-taking skills. Middle school is a time to develop and hone the skills needed to succeed in high school, college, and beyond! Instead of having students listen to me read each of the stories, I require them to jot down salient information. Once their notes have been taken, they are encouraged to recap the passage using the information they have recorded. Afterwards, I have a student read the passage back to me while I take my own notes on the whiteboard. This models how students should be taking notes themselves. As a group, we compare their notes with mine and discuss ways to improve upon their notation skills. 

Another important skill I impress upon my students when note-taking is the use of symbols and abbreviations. It was surprising to see how many of my kiddos were trying to write down the sentences verbatim. Text messaging language is a frequent example I use to drive home the benefits of using shorthand. I also found a handout from the University of North Dakota to be a helpful way to introduce and review abbreviations.

There are an infinite amount of resources available for us to utilize with students, but there is also an infinite amount of ways to utilize the resources we already have. Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills and Comprehending More Complex Auditory Information (Sequencing, Concrete Details, Subtle Clues, Social Language) are both easy to modify and extend into lessons targeting critical thinking, memory, visualization, and so much more!



Disclosure Statement: Great Ideas for Teaching, Inc. provided resources for testing in exchange for a review. The opinions expressed in this review are mine. No other compensation was provided.   

Auditory Processing of Early Language Comprehension Skills {Review}

Frequently asking for directives to be repeated, delays in response time, difficulty following complex auditory directives, decreased comprehension in noise (the list goes on). According to ASHA's technical report (2005),             "(C)APD (central auditory processing disorders) may lead to or be associated with difficulties in higher order language, learning, and communication functions." Auditory Processing of Early Language Comprehension Skills is a useful resource from Great Ideas for Teaching Inc. meant to target the deficits those with processing disorders present.

Pages are perforated for easy tearing and photocopying

This 60 page workbook contains 30 reproducible black and white illustrations designed to improve comprehension skills.

While looking at pictures, students listen to a story pertaining to the illustration. Questions that gauge students' abilities related to comprehension, execution of directives, use of context clues, memory, inferencing, time, spatial details, etc. are provided (see below).

Despite being advertised as an activity for younger ages (6-9), students of any age who lack the aforementioned skills can benefit from these lessons. Activities can easily be expanded upon by requiring students to provide written instead of oral responses, as well as prompting students to provide supporting details to rationalize their responses. The activities in Auditory Processing of Early Language Comprehension Skills are straightforward, yet target a multitude of skills.

For those with skills that are a bit more advanced, Targeting Auditory Memory and Processing is a workbook from the same author that addresses auditory memory in addition to vocabulary, prepositions, verbs, etc.

Reference:
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2005). (central) auditory processing disorders [Technical Report]. Available from www.asha.org/policy.

Disclosure Statement: Great Ideas for Teaching, Inc. provided resources for testing in exchange for a review. The opinions expressed in this review are mine. No other compensation was provided. 

Multiple Choice Articulation {App Review & Giveaway}

Rarely do my students who transition to middle school have articulation goals on their IEP's, despite having obvious and consistent errors in their speech. Multiple Choice Articulation (below) is a newly developed app by Erik Raj meant to address articulation while targeting receptive and expressive language in a conversational manner. 

Users are able to target 7 phonemes.

For $9.99 users get:

• Over 500 multiple choice questions targeting 7 phonemes (above image)
• Option of having questions read aloud to user
• Option of having answers provided via audio to user

Users have the option to hear the question and answer

•  Users are able to select phoneme positions they would like to have targeted (below)

Things I liked:

• In addition to articulation, receptive (auditory processing, language memory, 'wh' question comprehension, turn taking, reasoning) and expressive language use (pronoun use, sentence formulation, word order, etc.) are also able to be elicited
•  Students/users will want to discuss these scenarios as they are a departure from the more "traditional" questions adults would ask them e.g. "What would you rather sleep on - a pillow made of smooth mud or a pillow made of itchy cloth? Why?"

Things I would change:

• Visuals of the absurd questions would have been a great addition, as it would add to the discussion as well as provide assistance to those with difficulty visualizing
• Price: Although Erik Raj has churned out some quality apps,  $9.99 is costly for the average SLP/educator who has little to no budget for materials at their place of employment.

App Compatibility:

Multiple Choice Articulation is compatible with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

For a chance to win this new app please enter below. Good luck! 

  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure Statement: I was provided a copy of this app by the developer. No other compensation was provided. This review includes solely my opinions. 

Language Builder {Review}

I had a great time reviewing Language Builder.  Rightfully so, as they were voted 3rd Best Educational app of 2011 by AppsForHomeschooling.com. Language Builder is a great app for children who need a fun and interactive way to address their receptive and expressive language skills. Real life pictures are used to stimulate production of a specific sentences. 

Users formulate and record a sentence based on a variety of pictures.  Users have the option to replay and rerecord the sentence as many times as they like.  Once happy with their sentence, users are able to save their recorded sentence and even email the photo and recording to friends and family.  Multiple user profiles can be created with Language Builder. Players are also able to switch back and forth between users.

For those who need some prompting, Language Builder offers three levels of hints.

• At level 1, users are presented with a sentence on the screen with two blanks that they need to fill in.
• At level 2 hint provides the user with a prompt such as "The girl..." and the student needs to formulate the remainder of the sentence
• At level 3, an audio clip is played that encourages players to use one or two key words in their sentence.

Level 1 hint where user is prompted to fill-in the blank.

There are a variety of themed photo modules preloaded onto this App.  Modules include themes related to pets, sports, school, places etc.

Home-screen where preferences can be selected.

Saved sentences are able to be accessed through the archive page. While on this page you are able to play, delete or share the sentence. If you decide to share it you can email the audio file and the image.

Saved sentences can be accessed via the archive.

An array of grammatical structures (pronouns, verb tenses, plurals, etc.) and language concepts (complex sentences, prepositions, synonyms, etc.) are targeted by this app.  Language Builder can also be used to work on sentence recall for those with auditory processing impairments.

Language Builder is a wonderful engaging app that my middle schoolers can greatly benefit from. I appreciate that its latest update includes all the modules (was available for purchase at $1.99 previously), providing users with over 200 images for only $9.99! Overall, this is a great app and well worth the price.

App Compatability:
Language Builder is compatible with the iPad and requires iOS 4.1 or later.

Disclosure Statement: I was provided a copy of this app by the developer. No other compensation was provided. This review includes solely my opinions.