Transcript Developing narrative skills, communication and literacy

Developing narrative skills,
communication and literacy using
symbol supported text and
transferring to SymWriter
Justin Drew
Thank you
 A big thank you to Toby Churchill
What is COSST – Communication and
Symbol Supported Text
Aim of this presentation
 This presentation describes how Sandwell
Speech and Language Therapist’s are using
a simple, cost effective approach to develop
language, communication and literacy skills
for students in mainstream and special school
using symbol supported text.
 It combines approaches to develop narrative
and literacy using sequence cards, story
telling and recalling events and use of text
and symbolised supported text.
Background
 Originally designed to help students say
longer spoken utterances.
 Realised that students were also learning to
read, develop structured word order and
grammar skills, and students could read and
remember what they had written.
 But I also wanted schools to work on
narrative and story telling – so I combined the
two.
Why work on narrative
 Telling stories, narrating experiences and
explaining (as well as following) events in a
correct, logical order is a very functional
language skill.
 If a student can’t tell you a simple event using
pictures and without pictures – how can they
tell you what just happened in the playground
or the story book they looked at or how to
make tea or what they are going to do in the
next lesson or at the weekend.
Why work on symbol supported text
and not phonics
 For many students – phonics is too difficult.
 Too much work on phonics and decoding
doesn’t cover understanding of written words
CASA’ or
‘QUIERO BEBER’
or text – can you read ‘
Why previous approaches fail
 How reading developed – a tool kit of 26 letters to
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read any English book in the world.
Speech and vision are innate and in our DNA – but
we have to use existing elements of the brain to learn
to read
We make new connections and rewire a new brain
Universal literacy only occurred over last 100 years
Different parts of the brain – many different areas to
make sense of what we see, from shapes,
perception, colour, even face recognition – and
estimated that 6 – 8 million American’s don’t
recognise peoples faces
Phonics continued
 Marryane Wolf states ‘It takes the brain 500
milliseconds to understand a written word – from
attention, to pattern recognition to sound connection
to phonology to vocabulary denotation and
connotation’ (p145-55) – Proust and the Squid (2010)
 To read phonics you need to attend and to be able to
hear and break a word into sounds (phonemes),
match sounds to shapes, match shapes to sounds,
remember the order and sequence of sounds and
letters, understand complex concepts such as first /
last and a memory load that can put these things
together to make a word – and understand it
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NOTE: Cat and thought both have 3 phonemes
Phonics cont…
 Wolf states: children's reading actually starts much
earlier, with their awareness of oral language and the
sounds of language. A child's ability to differentiate
sounds, recognize rhymes, and engage in word play
can strongly predict later reading ability. Wolf joins
this research to other, neurological work on the
structure of the reading brain and the absolute
necessity for the myelination of brain neurons in the
angular gyrus region before a child can really learn to
read. For most children this occurs between the ages
of five to seven years; before then, the brain simply
cannot easily "integrate visual, verbal, and auditory
information rapidly" (p. 95)-a necessity for reading.
Providing a bridge to success
What is COSST
When to start COSST
 If child is at P5
 Ideally at P6 (3 word level comp)
 When child is on commenting stage of PECS
Level 5 / 6 (e.g. I see ball, I hear phone) and
you want to move on to something else –
extend commenting
What do you need
How to get started
Video Examples
 C – Aged 17
 S and K – Aged 12
Any questions
 Thank you
Reference
 OLIVER SACKS (2010) The Mind’s Eye, Penguin
 MARYANNE WOLF (2009) – Proust and the Squid,
Penguin
 BOTTING, N., 2002, Narrative as a tool for the
assessment of linguistic and pragmatic impairments.
Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 18, 1–21.
 NORBURY, C. and BISHOP, D., 2003, Narrative skills
of children with communication impairments.
International Journal of Language and
Communication Disorders, 38, 287–313.
 CROSBIE, S ET EL., 2011, Narrative skills of children
born preterm International Journal of Language and
Communication Disorders. 46, 1, 83–94