Narrative language in autism

[PeterPan]

23 hours ago, mamashark said:

I can see how this makes sense. 

And page 14 of the Gillam pdf is for you, because it addresses that details vs. jist issue.

[PeterPan]

This doc is huge and has more people's presentations!!! Story Champs starts on page 70.

[PeterPan]

I didn't realize NLM Cubed was part of Story Champs. If it's standardized, it might be another way to show narrative language deficits.

[mamashark]

I've been watching mindwings webinars, and pondering how narrative language really fits into so much of life. A lot to digest, ponder, and figure out how to adjust.

I'm also realizing how important self-regulation is to the process and putting that priority on top of our list each day. We've been working through the book Breathe Like A Bear by Kira Willey and everyone is loving it, especially when I bring my own interoceptive comments into the picture and make them all laugh! 

I also love how my son was able to tell me today that he's not looking forward to grandparents coming this weekend "no! not this weekend! It's always crazy when Gramps comes!" with an alarmed look on his face. So we talked about ways we can have calm, and set up a quiet closet space in an off-limits room so he can be alone and quiet and calm whenever he wants. 

[PeterPan]

page 88, imagine that, they found that kids needed more intensity, group instruction wasn't enough, needed to be customized, and had difficulty getting it to generalize to everyday/personal stories. 

So ponder that. SLP teaches some really stiff form with graphic organizers and heavy prompts. SLP "did" it. Kid cranks it out as SLP wants. SLP scores, kid is done. But nothing in real life. But yeah with prompts at school with graphic organizer with with.

And it's what we're talking about, the long walk from with prompts and supports to natural sounding at home.

It also bugs me that their intervention approach never mentions that it's not ENOUGH to teach the form. It won't sound natural and nobody really talks like that. It's a valid structure and instructional approach, but it has to be done enough that it becomes natural.

pages 106-107 get interesting because they're showing language complexity goals across 3 kids with ASD during intervention with Story Champs. So in what I assume is the 9 yo, they were tracking:

plan

location

causality

temporal adverbial subordination

adverbs

adjectival subordination

To all appearances working in context like that was good for increasing use of adverbs and bunk for anything more complex.

pg 123 gives the Story Champs Blitz levels of targets, which are those and a few more. They bring up the important point of getting included/target vocabulary.

page 145 gives the beef that we've mentioned here on the boards, that SCD as a diagnostic category has little evidence reliability or even validity. They're saying it's comorbid and that something else is going on that needs to be diagnosed. 

[PeterPan]

3 minutes ago, mamashark said:

the book Breathe Like A Bear by Kira Willey

Our library has the dvd, hmm. Maybe we could do that when we do our magic trick of the day (also on dvd), haha

[Lecka]

Well I have just been looking through more, and I feel a lot better with seeing options and ideas, now that I am not hung up on trying for an independent narrative so much.  

Btw Peter Pan — there is a section in Book 3 about the importance of generalizing and strategies for generalizing.  Nothing was really new to me but it’s laid out well and I think I could show it to someone if I ever needed to.  

It starts on page 4.35 in Book 3.

I am getting ideas reading through 🙂. Now we’ll see how I do implementing lol.  

I do always think something is better than nothing lol.  

[PeterPan]

2 hours ago, Lecka said:

Btw Peter Pan — there is a section in Book 3 about the importance of generalizing and strategies for generalizing.  Nothing was really new to me but it’s laid out well and I think I could show it to someone if I ever needed to.  

It starts on page 4.35 in Book 3.

I'm canning peppers, but I'll have to go look! You're right, it's such an important topic.

[Lecka]

This is something I have known but had forgotten a little — a visual prompt is a lower level prompt than verbal, so if I could use the SGM more it could be a way to reduce verbal prompts.  

It’s mentioned in the generalization section.  

Edited September 19, 2019 by Lecka

[kbutton]

I don't have that book, but that sounds like great information!

 

[Lecka]

Progress!  We talked about picking out his Halloween costume last year and used the SGM student manipulative!!!!!

[Lecka]

Okay, I have some revelations for things that have been confusing me with Mindwings.

First, for a longer book, the book just will have more episodes and (depending on how the book is) the connections between the episodes will be more or less complicated.

My son does like some chapter books read to him (A-Z Mysteries, Calendar Mysteries, Bailey School Kids) and they are pretty sequential books, overall there is one main thing happening and a series of attempts.  It can be looked at that way (which is why they are a fit for my son probably).  OR you can look at each attempt as it’s own episode, and do the SGM just for that episode.  And then in this way, relate the attempts together with more depth.  But it’s also possible to look at it more like “first they did this, then they did this,” for the attempts, without analyzing each one as it’s own episode.  

Second, you can just pick.  You can pick to focus on just one scene (episode?) in a book.  You don’t have to do the entire book, and a lot of examples are for just picking a short part of a book to focus on.  

Third, some of the graphic organizers or lesson ideas will just happen to go with a certain book.  

We read Welcome Back, Amelia Bedelia.  In this book, Amelia gets fired, tries several other jobs, gets fired from all of them, and then gets her original job back.  

To analyze it — you could have each job just be an attempt (and I think this would be level 4).  I liked this because I could see if my son was getting the overall plot of the book.  I could see if he was connecting the kick-off from the beginning or the book, to the tie-up and resolution at the end of the book.  In this book — they are directly related, but I know in the past I have read him a book like this and by the end he  doesn’t know how the end and the beginning relate to each other.  

Or — you could focus on feelings, and just do a critical thinking triangle for each job she tries.  She starts excited, happy, proud and then she is confused, sad, and upset when she gets fired.  The employers are happy at first and then get mad at her.  There are good pictures and there’s only a few sentences for each job, so it would be manageable to go through this way and just focus on the Critical Thinking Triangle and talk about the feelings.  

Or — and this is a worksheet model I have seen — you could just focus on the attempts and kick-offs, and work on using the word “but.”  You could just identify all the attempts (jobs), and then identify all the kick-offs (how she messed up), and then have a lot of sentences using the word “but” — “she went to work for the doctor, but she got fired.” “She went to work for the hairdresser, but she got fired.”  Or — “she went to work for the doctor, but she did this (thing she did wrong).”  

You could use it to just work on “but,” and leave out “because,” if you’re not working on “because.” Or you can say “she wanted to work for the doctor, but she got fired, because she put the gloves on herself.”  And then that could be a longer sentence with what she should have done “instead” or saying what the doctor wanted her to do instead.  

So you can just pick!

This is also a good book for seeing some different character perspectives, with people mad at Amelia without her knowing why they are mad.  

Edited September 23, 2019 by Lecka

[PeterPan]

And you may find the type/stage of narrative fits with the language level of the book. So if you're targeting earlier stages, you can drop back the lexile and more easily find them. 

[Lecka]

What I’m finding is that the books he engages with helps me find his level for Mindwings.  They do match up!  I think that’s supposed to be obvious but it was not too me.  

There are book recommendations in Mindwings and I just tried introducing Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and — I think he is close to this book in ways, but he said he didn’t like it after I read him the Kindle sample — but it fits that that’s a recommended book for the next stage up than where I think he is now.

So it is giving some confirmation!

He is able to listen to some more advanced picture books now, which is exciting.  

I have read this Puss in Boots

https://www.amazon.com/Puss-Boots-Adventures-Enterprising-Feline/dp/0375813543/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=pullman+puss+in+boots&qid=1569250590&sr=8-3

and this Dr Seuss https://www.amazon.com/Bartholomew-Oobleck-Caldecott-Honor-Classic/dp/0394800753/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=dr+seuss+bartholomew+and+the+oobleck&qid=1569250728&sprefix=dr+seuss+barthlo&sr=8-1

this week and they are both books he would not have been able to engage with a year ago.  Or, I would have had to work really hard.  So things are coming together for him 🙂  

These two books are a little too hard for him to do anything with SGM but he is engaged, and they have a lot of good vocabulary and longer sentences and things like that.  

He is finally starting to be able to figure out the meaning of vocabulary words from context clues, so that is good, and another reason for me to go back and read rich story books.  

[Lecka]

I am not having him read at home right now, because he does have some reading skills, he does read at school and summer school, and I think right now his listening comprehension and vocabulary are things that are hurting his reading, so I am focusing on those at home.  And background knowledge, but I think vocabulary is worse for him than background knowledge right now.  

[Lecka]

I definitely think for him — he is stronger on story grammar right now, and that aides his vocabulary growth and also frees up working memory for him to focus more on vocabulary words.  

I’m trying to re-read our library books too, I wish he had more patience for this, grrrr.  

[Lecka]

https://www.amazon.com/Werewolves-Dont-Summer-Bailey-School/dp/0590440616/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=werewolf+summer+camp&qid=1569251804&sr=8-2

This is his choice for a read-aloud right now, which I’m happy with because it has few pictures and it’s really good for his listening.  But it doesn’t have the rich vocabulary or longer sentences in the storybooks we can do now, so I’m trying for a balance.

And then I want to keep going with SGM but I think we are going to have to use easier books for me to be able to make it happen (for now at least!).  But I think that will be good, too.

So I’m planning on a variety for now.  I also don’t totally know how long I have to keep using rich storybooks with him because he is getting older, but so far it’s not an issue.  

[PeterPan]

2 hours ago, Lecka said:

I think that’s supposed to be obvious but it was not too me.

Yup, for me it was a happy surprise.

2 hours ago, Lecka said:

I am not having him read at home right now, because he does have some reading skills, he does read at school and summer school, and I think right now his listening comprehension and vocabulary are things that are hurting his reading, so I am focusing on those at home.  And background knowledge, but I think vocabulary is worse for him than background knowledge right now.  

So I've been trying two things, both of which seem to work with ds. One is paired reading, where we read something like the Dog Man comics and alternate cells. He's gone from fatiguing quickly and struggling to follow the format to doing well with the format. At this point he *could* read the whole thing for himself but we just keep doing it. We worked up slowly from maybe 1/2 chapter at first to now 3 chapters at a time. I'm not sure Dog Man is the right vocabulary level for your ds. I'm just saying the idea of paired reading, taking turns. The vocabulary is pretty out there honestly.

The other thing I'm doing (less, but doing) is reading to him where I just have him follow my finger. My version of really high tech kindle whispersync highlighted text, hahahaha. As long as the PRINT IS BIG that works pretty well. We're using the Deckawoo Drive books by DiCamillo, but really anything that strikes you would do. It's so low key, but I think it's worth while. Amelia Bedelia could be great for that. Just getting him to be willing to be beside me and follow along was a step. He was used to read alouds where he could be anywhere, doing anything.

2 hours ago, Lecka said:

https://www.amazon.com/Werewolves-Dont-Summer-Bailey-School/dp/0590440616/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=werewolf+summer+camp&qid=1569251804&sr=8-2

This is his choice for a read-aloud right now, which I’m happy with because it has few pictures and it’s really good for his listening.  But it doesn’t have the rich vocabulary or longer sentences in the storybooks we can do now, so I’m trying for a balance.

That book is FINE!!!!! It's a 580 lexile. The children talk nicely to each other, and it has dialogue and changing speakers to follow. It actually seems pretty complex to me. I get the beef with the syntax, but he is where he is. Instead of reading it to him while he does whatever, would he tolerate following along while you move your finger? If he did that, he'd be using what he *can* understand for language in a more sophisticated way. 

I am kind of iffy on cranking up levels on read alouds. A little can be good and too much and you're just turning off the expectation of comprehension. So I've gotten more fine-tuned about sticking with stuff he really understands. I would have no issue using that 580L book if he enjoys it. Just use it more ways now, since it's easy for him as a read-aloud. Do it as a follow-along. As narrative questions. Push up what you do with it instead of pushing up the lexile.

[Lecka]

He won’t.  He listens to this while he’s in bed at night and he will look at a chapter title, but that’s already a big ask.