Resources for comprehension of complex sentences

[kirstenhill]

With DS9 (dx is dyslexia/dysgraphia), we've gotten to the point where his word level decoding ability has gotten ahead of his ability to comprehend more complex sentence structures.  He's reading a book right now (aloud, with me) that's at the edge of his decoding ability and also has some longer sentences.  This sentence:  "The more Jenny thought about it, the more amazed she grew that she, who was so small and shy and black, had been able to do such glorious deeds."  -- was super confusing to him until I read it aloud with lots of pauses and inflection.  The only word he needed help decoding was "glorious" -- all the other words were pretty straightforward -- but the structure is so complex! I don't really have any tools in my toolbox to help him work on this skill formally.   All my other kids naturally picked up on the idea of pausing for commas and looking for those sentence structures to inform comprehension.  We have talked multiple times while reading books about various places to pause as an aid for understanding, but I think we need something more than informal discussions to  work on this skill. 

ETA: Most of the sentences in the book aren't quite this complex. 😊  The book started out easier and has gotten progressively more challenging toward the end, but he has had comprehension issues with sentences that just have one clause set off by commas as well in this and other books.

Edited March 16, 2021 by kirstenhill

[PeterPan]

Ooo this is the best topic!! Is he getting SLP services? Because if he's having these issues and they're due to anything more than just low working memory, then he really needs to be seen by an SLP. Not only do you have this developmental language question (which you could quantify with the SPELT or CASL2 btw), but also there will be other areas that might need attention, like his narrative language. (test=Test of Narrative Language or a dynamic assessment or the I forget the name)

https://mindwingconcepts.com/pages/methodology  Here's the info on the narrative language just so you can look at it later.

https://hub.lexile.com/  And here's a lexile search engine, so you can control for syntactical complexity in your book searches. Look for the lexile of a book that completely works for him and then look at the lexile of the book you're using now where he's needing significant support and see what the difference is. It may be you can land on a range where you can move forward without it being SUCH a stretch.

https://www.rootedinlanguage.com/instructional-materials/big-bug-grammar-3-phrases  This system is one some people have used. I'm not sure it would be worth anything with my ds, but my ds is sort of your worst case scenario, with ASD2 on top of his other stuff, kwim? So who knows, might be just enough analysis for your ds. There's also Shape Coding, same idea, with instruction via analysis.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5c7f/9d9d217bc3ab7eb01d2a800f3361464dd8d3.pdf  Here's a start, a little article.

I'm going through my browser tabs, because I usually have several that are that kind of overview of current thinking on syntax intervention. 

I think you have two problems. One, sometimes what you're given is a quick and dirty list. The pile of what they COULD work on is so big that they pick a few target skills and sorta get you there. Two, there can be some precursor skills needed for the syntactical complexity to come together. For instance, it's really hard to understand an adverbial phrase if you don't get adverbs, kwim? Or adjectival to adjectives, etc. Which is why I was saying that actually you need the SLP eval, because you don't know what else you're missing. You can figure it out, but testing would be helpful. 

I think just in general, I woudn't assume a clinical problem without evidence (data). I would DEFINITELY back up and look at those lexiles for what works and what doesn't and start controlling for lexile. If you do that and his comprehension is progressing forward, maybe you're fine. What book is that sentence from btw? 

Ok, I just put your sample (repeated 4X to make it long enough) into a readability checker https://readabilityformulas.com/freetests/six-readability-formulas.php  and it came back 10th grade. LOL Now that's not the context of the whole book, but still, lol. 

So I'm happy to keep pulling articles and names for you, but I don't think that reading selection is probably giving you good data on where he's at. 

There are SLPs who specialize in literacy, and they will often have some of these more detailed language tests. You don't want something basic like the CELF, because you're not going to see much. They're going to need to dig in, which means you want an SLP who specializes in expressive language or literacy who owns those tests. 

So what was the lexile of that book and what is a lexile for a book that he can read or use as a read aloud with better comprehension?

[Kanin]

14 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

Ooo this is the best topic!!

Why was I not surprised to hear you say this? 😄

[PeterPan]

https://www.theinformedslp.com/qa_treatingsyntax.html  Here's one of those overview docs to get you started. She has a citation list that has excellent resources. You can google their names and find their research and write them. These phd SLPs will send you their articles for free if you can't find a free version online to access. Some have written me and they're delightful.

I own a couple of the books on the list at the link above. They're very in the weeds and like I said I really think you need some basic testing done before you jump in like that. Has he had an APD eval? You really don't know what you're treating and you can end up treating the wrong thing when you make assumptions. You have some pieces, but data and thorough evals would be your friend on this. An SLP would want data and I'm not an SLP but I would want data. 

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Improving-clinical-practices-for-children-with-and-Kamhi/61eff3e9fbffeb18fac849e38c7c457dc6afd514

https://www.edutopia.org/article/scaffolding-complex-sentences

 

[PeterPan]

https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Conjunctions-Assessment-Activities-Language/dp/1416404694/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=conversations+with+conjunctions&qid=1615934651&sr=8-7  I own this but it's no longer readily available. 

 

[PeterPan]

So then just my informal nothingness and two cents. My ds has significant language issues, despite a seemingly large amount of excellent (memorized) language. Other things came to the forefront this year, like the auditory processing and interoception, so we've been hitting those hard. It's my *plan* to actually start working on syntax again with him. But first I want to get him through gr2-6 of the Evan Moor Language Fundamentals series. I'm making sure he has solidly all these basic concepts of adjectives, adverbs, pronouns/antecedents, who/that clauses, etc. etc. BEFORE we go deep diving farther. 

I'm also really concerned about the Yoda talk issue, ie that he understands in one order and not with a different word order. So with my ds, scrambled sentences are very hard! This is true for single word scrambles, and I think it will be true for working on phrases and clauses. So what you see when you look at the materials is this recognition that many structures occur in many locations, which adds to the comprehension challenge.

The APD as a language processing delay was holding him back from thinking of the language in terms of the smallest bits (pitch, phonemes, syllables, later phrases and sentences). He had learned language whole to parts, so everything was memorized in chunks. That's why rearranging the chunks destroys his comprehension, because it only worked if the order was the same as what he memorized!

So none of these are simple things, at least not for my ds. Adverbs are not simple for my ds, whether they're single words or phrases or clauses, and changing order is not simple. I've basically been collecting games with pictures or words, dice with words, etc. etc. hoping that by practicing many ways I can build flexibility into his comprehension and gently stretch across the structures. You'll notice the best articles suggest some form of paradigm where you do the same thing multiple ways. You might do it as analysis (shape coding, tearing apart), sentence combining (building up when given pieces), turn taking where you build sentences, and finally completely original composition. 

So that's all I've got. Lotsa theories, haven't really tried to do it yet. But I think if you work on it and don't have the foundational pieces, the dc could get frustrated. There are exceptionally few premade resources for sentence complexity intervention. I've already used with him the Spotlight series from ProEdInc for it. It's brief and fine. I think the HELP for Grammar had something. Also there's a book I have of Grammar Games that probably has some stuff. It just got back burnered. I just don't have *one thing* that is super wow, only pieces.

Fwiw, I don't think most people get this far, not when they have significant language issues like my ds, because they bottom out, because it takes so long just to deal with the more precursor issues, and because it would take so long. If the problem is not all the way to what I'm describing, the simpler intervention is something like Writing Revolution. If you're lucky, maybe it's all you need.

https://www.thewritingrevolution.org  

[kirstenhill]

Ok, this is a firehose of information....LOL.  😁

First, the book.  We have a lot of vintage books in our home and I was so excited when we finally got him pretty solid on the basic phonograms so I didn't have to control the vocabulary in books quite as closely.  But complexity is a whole 'nother issue that can make a book hard to understand while still being in the range of being decodable.  So, the book is Jenny and the Cat Club, which isn't in the Lexile database.  When I put in a couple paragraphs from the beginning of the book, it gave the lexile range as 410-610.  He spent a long time before this book working through Aesop's Stories by Edward Dolch, which is also old and not in the lexile database.  A couple paragraphs from the same book got the same estimated ranking, but my gut feeling is that it has easier sentence structures overall.  The last books he read that were fairly easy for him - one was ranked 390 and another, despite being newer was not in the lexile database either.  It's one from the Good and the Beautiful that they call a "level 2 reader" - it was super easy for him, but weirdly when I put it in the lexile estimator, it gave it a ranking of 610-710.  Who knows. 

We haven't had APD testing.  His dyslexia testing wasn't as thorough as a full neuropsych testing either. This was done about 18 months ago,  We went with a local place with a really great reputation that specializes in dyslexia testing, but their testers are more masters-level qualified people.  They did do the TAPS-4 Language Processing assessment, and his sentence memory was super low compared to his other scores on that.  Number memory was 50th percentile, Word memory 63rd percentile, Oral direction processing, 91st percentile, auditory comprehension, 75th percentile, sentence memory 16th percentile!!!   So there's the low score in an area he maybe needs more of now that his decoding skill has improved significantly.

ok, our dinner is ready...be back later. 🙂

[kirstenhill]

I scanned through more of the links - lots of interesting stuff there! I feel like his expressive language is pretty complex.  I'm not really seeing a lot of deficits when he narrates a story to me, for example.  So the issues come when he is reading, or sometimes when I am reading something to him that requires comprehension of a lot of steps and terminology (like, the directions on a page for beast academy).  He's working ahead of grade level in math, and the instructions are getting pretty complex.  I know I would rather read it for myself than listen to multi-step math instruction, so I'm not surprised that sometimes it's hard for him to catch everything with me reading it aloud to him. 

I already own Writing Revolution and have tried a couple of activities with him, but I feel like I need to put more time into wrapping my brain around that program.  I've always used very structured writing curricula with my other kids, so this more methodology-focused book is a bit different and I haven't quite figured out the best way to use it.  The activities we did were a bit "meh" but I would pin that on my execution of it, not the method.  It seems liek a great concept.

[PeterPan]

2 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

They did do the TAPS-4 Language Processing assessment, and his sentence memory was super low compared to his other scores on that.  Number memory was 50th percentile, Word memory 63rd percentile, Oral direction processing, 91st percentile, auditory comprehension, 75th percentile, sentence memory 16th percentile!!!   So there's the low score in an area he maybe needs more of now that his decoding skill has improved significantly.

Yes, the TAPS is a test that has been done on my ds. You probably know this, but we're less concerned with percentiles and more concerned with how many standard deviations those scores are, ie. the significance. Your report or scoring page should have some jibberish about that. Like it may say the mean is 100 and a standard deviation is 15. (I forget for this test.) Or it may have kicked out scaled scores. I don't really remember, sigh. But you want to check that to see how *significant* that 16%ile is. 

I think TAPS=test of auditory processing. So they point out it's language processing, because that's what APD, from the SLP perspective is, a language processing problem. My ds failed about half that test and he tests with an audiologist as having some mild APD issues. 

So then for that sentence memory, they don't test that to tell you to work on it. They look at it because it's a screener, something that can indicate larger language problems. It can just mean he has poor working memory, but look how strong it was at the word level. Ideally the sentences are structured in a way that the reason he struggles is because he's demonstrating language difficulties (syntax, etc.), not merely low working memory.

So you're seeing language issues and you have data showing language issues. You would get an SLP eval. You can try to work on it yourself, but I would get the SLP eval. If you can find someone who specializes in expressive language or who works with literacy, you'll probably be the most happy. What you don't want is some basic screener like the CELF, which won't show anything. 

43 minutes ago, kirstenhill said:

So the issues come when he is reading, or sometimes when I am reading something to him that requires comprehension of a lot of steps and terminology (like, the directions on a page for beast academy).  He's working ahead of grade level in math, and the instructions are getting pretty complex. 

That seems really fair. Have you worked on RAN/RAS (rapid naming) with him? We talk about learning to read vs reading to learn and the idea that until there's automaticity in the reading the brain is expending so much effort just to read/decode the text that not a lot is left for comprehension. It's completely appropriate to provide supports in that process.

44 minutes ago, kirstenhill said:

I know I would rather read it for myself than listen to multi-step math instruction, so I'm not surprised that sometimes it's hard for him to catch everything with me reading it aloud to him. 

It's not all bad for him to read something twice and monitor his comprehension. I do that with my ds. He can read it silently and then I ask if he understood it or if he needs to reread to understand. He could also use strategies like using a highlighter to circle important words.

46 minutes ago, kirstenhill said:

I already own Writing Revolution and have tried a couple of activities with him, but I feel like I need to put more time into wrapping my brain around that program.

Ok, this is just a question, but is he doing a really basic, normal grammar program of some kind? Is he reading that aloud? And how is that going?

I agree with you there's always this challenge when the material the dc is drawn to is ahead of their ability to make happen independently. 

I found your Cat Club book through our library btw, so maybe I'll get to see it for myself. 

[PeterPan]

3 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

When I put in a couple paragraphs from the beginning of the book, it gave the lexile range as 410-610. 

Is it possible the book is very uneven? I'm looking at some amazon samples from another book in the series, and as you say they're much simpler than that sample was you gave where he was stumbling. How does he do with the rest of the book?

 

[PeterPan]

9 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

Most of the sentences in the book aren't quite this complex. 😊  The book started out easier and has gotten progressively more challenging toward the end, but he has had comprehension issues with sentences that just have one clause set off by commas as well in this and other books.

So does this confusion or drop in comprehension occur if you *say* the sentence to him or only when he *reads* the sentence? If you were to put a cute picture in front of him and tell him to touch that picture that (and imitate the structure of your Jenny Cat sentence) where there would also be in incorrect option, would he be able to touch the correct picture?

[PeterPan]

Ok, I'm whipping out my Syntax Handbook and we'll see what it says about ages for your structures. I just got it and have only been skimming chapters.

[PeterPan]

9 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

"The more Jenny thought about it, the more amazed she grew that she, who was so small and shy and black, had been able to do such glorious deeds." 

-nonrestrictive clause="who was so small and shy and black" 

-embedded relative clause="who was so..."

Sorry, I'm so tired I can't finish it out. But the point is, you've got a lot of complexity there, not a 2nd or 3rd grade level sentence. And my brain is saying "amazed that" is starting into a relative clause functioning adverbially, which I'm not sure makes sense. There's a word for those extra words that go with verbs and it just slips my mind. But you see you have so many things going on in one sentence. It's why she liked it but it's why he could get maxed out.

So I'd be much more concerned if he's not comprehending simpler sentences with ONE of those structures instead of multiple embedded. I'd be concerned if he can't pick the correct picture from a field when given a sentence that uses only one of the structures. I'd be concerned if he doesn't use those structures at all, ever in his speech/narratives. 

What if you said something simpler like "I'm surprised that it's cloudy outside!" Would he understand that? I just think there's so much complexity in your model that you can't tell whether it's an anomaly. But given that you have a low score on sentence memory *and* some concerns, evals would be in order, sure. 

My book is saying to do intervention in the context of narratives, which makes sense. 

[PeterPan]

http://www.e4thai.com/e4e/images/pdf2/language_fundamentals/LgFdm4.pdf  Just for your trivia, a book from that series.

[PeterPan]

So I'm digging in on this syntax handbook textbook for SLPs (Justice/Ezell) and I can tell you they do a measure called a subordination index. As you would guess, it's quantifying how much (relatively) they're using subordinate clauses in speech, and there are tables looking at subordination index and mean length total (terminable) utterances by age for both oral and written. They expect more in written than oral and for those to merge as the child gets older. Also interestingly those numbers go down in later adulthood, which they attribute to drops in working memory. So working memory does play a part, but well done testing will tease that out.

Again, the more I think about this, the more it seems to me you can't draw big conclusions off ONE SENTENCE, especially one crunchy, older sentence that is complexly written with like 3-5 things going on in the middle of a book that was otherwise written at a 2nd-3rd grade reading level. I've been looking at Jenny Cat samples on amazon and the series is not consistent syntactically either. I think this is a book well used as a read aloud vs. a reader. 

To draw conclusions, you really want to be looking at more instances, not just this one, and you want to be looking at how he comprehends and uses *individual structures* or a string of several similar structures. If you look at the intervention for syntax, they're usually talking a bit older kids when they're worried about them not comprehending longer, multi clause sentences, and even then they're not talking sentences written at a 10th grade level, which that particular sentence is.

So you can see the table of contents for the Syntax Handbook or any other text. Just go through the list of individual structures and ask yourself whether he would comprehend them in isolation, if it were just one in the sentence either written or orally, and whether he uses that structure in his narratives. That's where you start.

-who clauses

-that clauses

-appositives (restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses)

-multiple adjectives (yes, this is a thing to make sure of, because even that is an element of complexity)

-clauses functioning nominally and adjectivally, which are not what you have happening here

-clauses functioning adverbially. Adverbs are super complex, super abstract, and not only do you have adverbs in the sentence but I think, in my pea brain, you've got a clause functioning adverbially

-changes in sentence order. Untangle that sentence, boil it down, put it back in a really standard/simple order.

and so on.

I've been using some National Geographic Reach grade leveled reading texts with my ds this year. They're WONDERFUL, highly recommend. They're not controlled for decoding, however they are controlled for grade level and syntax and they pair fiction and nonfiction writing, making for great discussions. 

https://nysed-prod.engageny.org/resource/grade-2-skills-unit-6-reader  Grade leveled history reading.

https://portal.flyleafpublishing.com/instructional-resources/  Flyleaf books, fully decodable, free for a while longer. Super adorable.

I would not draw major conclusions from his comprehension of one sentence in one book. Do you have other examples where you are concerned? If you're seeing a pattern of him struggling to comprehend structures even in less complex settings, that's an issue. If he's struggling to comprehend grade appropriate material, that's an issue.

Partly what you're saying is that he's super bright/gifted and he wants to read beyond his comprehension. Or you're assigning him texts beyond his comprehension. So what you're going to run into is the standards for SLPs don't take IQ or discrepancy into account. So I AGREE with you that it's discrepancy to have a gifted IQ and average or slightly below average language skills. But until he has objective discrepancy from the mean (not from his IQ),they're probably not going to care. That's what happened with my ds that there was a point where I was arguing for the obvious disabilities that they wouldn't yet care about because it wasn't discrepant according to their little charts, only by IQ. Sigh. However you started to give some other examples that were simpler situations (one clause in a sentence, not understanding the referrant, whatever) that were concerning. That would show up on the SPELT or possibly the CASL2.

So I'm NOT saying you're not seeing anything. But you either inventory it yourself or get evals. You want to look at the structures they're putting into grade leveled materials that are syntactically controlled so you can start to see this point where his comprehension is becoming an issue. 

Looking at the developmental charts in that book, the structures (embedded clauses, relative clauses, etc.) all appear by 67 months. However the subordination index (how much they're using it in speech or written) increases from grades 3,4 to grades 12 and the mean length of total terminable utterances also increases. In other words, we're much more concerned that he has the structures AT ALL because having them more complexly, with more and more together in sentences, comes with time. That's why that sentence is grade 10 level writing while the rest is not, lol.

Edited March 17, 2021 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

https://www.proedinc.com/Products/31005/100-grammar.aspx

https://www.proedinc.com/Products/31025/50-quickplay-grammar-games.aspx?bCategory=OLA!GRAM

https://www.proedinc.com/Products/31609/handbook-of-exercises-for-language-processing-help.aspx?bCategory=OLA!GRAM

https://www.proedinc.com/Products/33809E/spotlight-on-grammar-compound-and-complex-sentenc.aspx

You could also look on TPT.

Edited March 17, 2021 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

19 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

but he has had comprehension issues with sentences that just have one clause set off by commas as well in this and other books.

Will your insurance cover an SLP eval? If you find the right SLP, not just some generic person who throws a CELF at him (spit spit), you'd probably uncover stuff, yes. That's way better than trying to do it yourself with no baseline and no information.

[kirstenhill]

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

Will your insurance cover an SLP eval? If you find the right SLP, not just some generic person who throws a CELF at him (spit spit), you'd probably uncover stuff, yes. That's way better than trying to do it yourself with no baseline and no information.

I have my doubts...LOL.  We have an HSA that we can use for health stuff, though we also have 2 kids that need to start braces so I had been earmarking HSA funds for that.  It's not out of the question, but I've also been wanting to see what I can work on him with him first.  The dyslexia testing wasn't as helpful for anything as I thought it might be, other than telling me what I already 95% knew for myself, that he is dyslexic.  And gifted or close to it.  His nonverbal logic scores are practically "off the charts".   So it makes me hesitate on more testing, thinking that it's just going to tell me things I already know, and my money would be better spent on books or training for myself.  After DS9's diagnosis I took a 100 hr OG training that included a short practicum and it was challenging and expensive but I love having the tools to directly teach him without relying on what a curriculum says to do step by step. 

 

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

So I'm digging in on this syntax handbook textbook for SLPs (Justice/Ezell) and I can tell you they do a measure called a subordination index. As you would guess, it's quantifying how much (relatively) they're using subordinate clauses in speech, and there are tables looking at subordination index and mean length total (terminable) utterances by age for both oral and written. They expect more in written than oral and for those to merge as the child gets older. Also interestingly those numbers go down in later adulthood, which they attribute to drops in working memory. So working memory does play a part, but well done testing will tease that out.

Again, the more I think about this, the more it seems to me you can't draw big conclusions off ONE SENTENCE, especially one crunchy, older sentence that is complexly written with like 3-5 things going on in the middle of a book that was otherwise written at a 2nd-3rd grade reading level. I've been looking at Jenny Cat samples on amazon and the series is not consistent syntactically either. I think this is a book well used as a read aloud vs. a reader. 

To draw conclusions, you really want to be looking at more instances, not just this one, and you want to be looking at how he comprehends and uses *individual structures* or a string of several similar structures. If you look at the intervention for syntax, they're usually talking a bit older kids when they're worried about them not comprehending longer, multi clause sentences, and even then they're not talking sentences written at a 10th grade level, which that particular sentence is.

.

It's more than just the one sentence.  BUT, I do think that a huge factor in sentences he struggles with is that he is annoyed with having to pay attention to punctuation, and will read right past a lot of commas (sometimes even periods between sentences) without pausing.  Then he stops and says, "That sentence makes no sense."  I 'll tell him to try again, pausing for the commas, which sometimes helps, and sometimes it seems like having to think about pausing for commas in a longer sentence also makes it hard for him to hold the meaning of it all in his head. I feel like some simpler, directed practice at the sentence level would be really good....which is kind of what I think I am looking for - a source of practice material grouped by sentence structure type or maybe short paragraphs to practice with that I don't have to write or source individually.  Like, when he wrote the the word "drum" as *derum the other day, I created 5 practice sentences for reading and spelling dictation for our lesson the next day reviewing the dr blend.    But I am frequently using books like "Everything You Want to Know and Exactly Where to Find it" by William Van Cleave to source words (and the companion book has sentences sorted by syllable type or phonogram or morphological structure), and that makes my life so much easier because if I need 5 sentences on choosing ou or ow,  I don't have to write them all myself.  In my head I was imagining that maybe the same type of thing exists sorted on the structural level rather than on the sound level. 



 

[PeterPan]

5 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

will read right past a lot of commas (sometimes even periods between sentences) without pausing.  Then he stops and says, "That sentence makes no sense."

To what do you attribute this? If my ds does it, it's because he learned language whole to parts and has a language disability. So it reflects my ds' language disability that the idea of what makes a complete thought isn't entirely apparent to him. However if you're thinking it's say ADHD, then sure some meds and strategies could help. 

Have you tried something basic like a marker that he reads with or index cards? With my ds we alternate sentences when we read together, so I'm always reinforcing the natural pauses and structure of the language. He's motivated to stop reading as soon as possible, haha, so noticing the end punctuation suddenly becomes valuable. If you're alternating paragraphs or he's reading all by himself, what motivation does he have to pause and notice?

5 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

The dyslexia testing wasn't as helpful for anything as I thought it might be, other than telling me what I already 95% knew for myself, that he is dyslexic. 

Were there any other numbers in the testing that had 1+ standard deviations of discrepancy from the mean? That sentence memory score on the TAPS *is* important. It's also good information about the areas where he *didn't* have discrepancy. It eliminates stuff you don't need done. 

5 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

We have an HSA that we can use for health stuff,

I hear you. So technically you could make this happen through the ps by requesting evals. They may or may not do what is actually needed, sigh. Most likely not, but you could try. 

5 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

my money would be better spent on books or training for myself. 

Backing up, what has he already done for grammar and how has that gone? 

This is a video of someone administering the preschool level of the SPELT. The SPELT is my favorite test for this, because there's no where to hide. You're shown a picture and led into a grammatical construction, and you can either say it or you can't. 

Or put another way, with some imagination you can elicit yourself the structures and see where the glitches start. But you're not starting with complex sentence and clauses and embedded stuff, haha. You start with the basics of using adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, who/that clauses, prepositions, etc. You can notice what of those he's actually using (unprompted) in his narratives. 

You can also do some work for working memory and see what improves. But really, given that all his other memory scores were fine, it makes you think the problem is connected to how he understands the language he's repeating. Think about it. If you are repeating something you KNOW and comprehend, you can repeat more and with larger chunks. If you're repeating JIBBERISH, the amount you can chunk meaningfully and repeat will be very small. So it's telling you language at that level is jibberish to him, which is why he's struggling to repeat it. And the question is how much is jibberish and how widespread this is, how much of language is jibberish to him. 

I'm torn on the whole do it yourself thing. Obviously I am. I've been through how many SLPs with my ds, and some say upfront they do motor planning or this and that and don't touch expressive. Some claim to do expressive and don't really know what they're doing. Some do expressive by going on TPT and buying cute like $5 packets. So does any of that satisfy me? Obviously not. But does that mean NOBODY is doing a good job with expressive language? Of course not. 

We had someone here who was using an SLP at a school for the deaf and getting the most thorough intervention. I've never tried, but I really ought to. Some dyslexia/SN schools will offer therapy only services, even when you're not enrolled. So that might be another way to find someone.

https://www.amazon.com/Syntax-Handbook-Everything-Learned-Forgot/dp/141640998X/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=syntax+handbook&qid=1616010610&sr=8-2  This is the book I was referring to.

There's another blog that tries to simplify things and the name is slipping my mind. The woman is more about making money and I thought she was kinda trite (slam).

https://www.wvced.com/resources#1532319289778-fe9e5f9b-ac3f  Have you looked at Van Cleave's stuff? His market is the intervention for SLDs and he has a developing sentence skills in kids who struggle download. I have it as a pdf so I must have found it somewhere, probably his website. He has all kinds of stuff and is well respected. And it's sort of that middle ground where it's addressing the amount of language disability in dyslexia vs. some kind of deep super deep dive for autism, kwim? If you're looking for middle of the road and the right fit, his stuff might be it.

http://drkarenspeech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/TreatingLanguageDisorders.pdf  Ok, here's the SLP I was remembering. She has a bunch of stuff she puts out there, not saying I'ma  great lover. It's a pretty good wake up call to realize that systematic, completely thorough intervention is NOT the goal of the ps (or even private, but mainly ps) SLPs. These people are under time constraints, are looking for efficiency. She has another pdf on syntax intervention, but it's her streamlined gig. Still worth reading.

 

[kirstenhill]

17 hours ago, PeterPan said:

So does this confusion or drop in comprehension occur if you *say* the sentence to him or only when he *reads* the sentence? If you were to put a cute picture in front of him and tell him to touch that picture that (and imitate the structure of your Jenny Cat sentence) where there would also be in incorrect option, would he be able to touch the correct picture?

Coming back through with a few more thoughts.  If I read the confusing sentence, he can almost always get it - unless I forget and read as fast as I normally talk.  I talk REALLY fast and that is more of a problem for him it seems than my other kids.  I do have to think and slow down for him.  Weirdly though he can listen to audiobooks at 2x, which I think is bizarrely fast! (All my boys listen at those kind of speeds).

16 hours ago, PeterPan said:

-

What if you said something simpler like "I'm surprised that it's cloudy outside!" Would he understand that? I just think there's so much complexity in your model that you can't tell whether it's an anomaly. But given that you have a low score on sentence memory *and* some concerns, evals would be in order, sure. 

My book is saying to do intervention in the context of narratives, which makes sense. 

Yeah, understanding things like that is no problem in verbal speech. 

17 hours ago, PeterPan said:

Is it possible the book is very uneven? I'm looking at some amazon samples from another book in the series, and as you say they're much simpler than that sample was you gave where he was stumbling. How does he do with the rest of the book?

 

Yes, the book is definitely uneven.  He wanted a book about cats and I read the first two pages of this one and knew he might need help with a few words here and there so I thought it would just be a good "stretch" read.  But some sections are more difficult than others.  Today he read about 8 pages and only got confused once, when he forgot to stop for a period at the end of a sentence.

17 hours ago, PeterPan said:

That seems really fair. Have you worked on RAN/RAS (rapid naming) with him? We talk about learning to read vs reading to learn and the idea that until there's automaticity in the reading the brain is expending so much effort just to read/decode the text that not a lot is left for comprehension. It's completely appropriate to provide supports in that process.

It's not all bad for him to read something twice and monitor his comprehension. I do that with my ds. He can read it silently and then I ask if he understood it or if he needs to reread to understand. He could also use strategies like using a highlighter to circle important words.

Ok, this is just a question, but is he doing a really basic, normal grammar program of some kind? Is he reading that aloud? And how is that going?

I agree with you there's always this challenge when the material the dc is drawn to is ahead of their ability to make happen independently. 

I found your Cat Club book through our library btw, so maybe I'll get to see it for myself. 

His RANS composite was right around 50th percentile, so it didn't seems like a super strong area of need to work on.  Do you have any differnt thoughts along those lines?  We aren't doing any formal grammar.  My "philosophy" of grammar (if you want to call it that) has been to just do very informal introductions to grammar with picture books, mad libs, etc and not do any formal grammar until 5th grade.  That was perfect for my other kids but maybe less of a good idea here.  I mean, daily we we talk about beginning a sentence with a capital and ending with punctuation, because in a spelling dictation sentence he remembers maybe 10% of the time to do both things on his own, despite working on this for a year.  

17 hours ago, PeterPan said:

 

I'm going to leave it there for this post...I'll be back a bit later to respond to your last post.  DD wants to make soda bread for our St. Patrick's day dinner but I left too many dirty dishes in front of the mixer.  😄

[PeterPan]

5 minutes ago, kirstenhill said:

Today he read about 8 pages and only got confused once, when he forgot to stop for a period at the end of a sentence.

That's a lot better! You might check out those National Geographic readers. 

https://www.amazon.com/Reach-Student-Anthology-National-Geographic/dp/0736274251/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=national+geographic+reach&qid=1616014777&sr=8-2  I'm not sure which grade this is. There are two volumes for each grade, and as you can see the used versions would be quite affordable.

[PeterPan]

7 minutes ago, kirstenhill said:

His RANS composite was right around 50th percentile, so it didn't seems like a super strong area of need to work on.  Do you have any differnt thoughts along those lines?

Well then why not work on it a *little*? Usually what you do with disabilities is take UP something that is weak and take it up even higher than you normally would, because it compensates for other things that are going to stay weak. So upping RAN/RAS, working memory, things like this just gives you some cushion for low processing speed, decoding difficulties, etc.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4rcl6f0uo70esmv/AAAaGAHw3_YTMEQZSw_WI-t_a?dl=0

link to my RAN/RAS files

9 minutes ago, kirstenhill said:

My "philosophy" of grammar (if you want to call it that) has been to just do very informal introductions to grammar with picture books, mad libs, etc and not do any formal grammar until 5th grade.  That was perfect for my other kids but maybe less of a good idea here.  I mean, daily we we talk about beginning a sentence with a capital and ending with punctuation, because in a spelling dictation sentence he remembers maybe 10% of the time to do both things on his own, despite working on this for a year.  

Well interesting. So talking at a person with a language disability isn't working. We can check that box and say that lesson got learned.

I already linked for you the Language Fundamentals series from Evan Moor. I found most of the grades online for free. Some systematic, brief work might be in order. 

I mean, do what you want. I'm tired. I already linked the handbook. You can be as freeform or structured as you want. Make data, identify the problem, make a plan, work the plan. Doesn't really matter if it's Grammar Bugs or a sentence building game or a file from TPT or whatever you want. You can take blank foam dice from Dollar Tree and write a part of speech and fish pictures out of a bin and take turn building sentences using the targets. It can be anything you want. I like it all. 

13 minutes ago, kirstenhill said:

DD wants to make soda bread for our St. Patrick's day dinner but I left too many dirty dishes in front of the mixer. 

Oh dear, I didn't get anything done and I'm so dog tired now. I'm doing HBOT and after the sessions I become droopy dwarf. I had some green/lime m&ms I meant to do something festive with. I don't usually do anything beyond that.

[PeterPan]

Your OG training told you that kids with language based disabilities need multi-sensory instruction. So you need to go multi-sensory.

[PeterPan]

58 minutes ago, kirstenhill said:

Weirdly though he can listen to audiobooks at 2x, which I think is bizarrely fast! (All my boys listen at those kind of speeds).

Interesting. Does his comprehension drop? You could check lexiles on the books where he can do this. I don't think my ds could do this. I wanted him to and it's advisable. What kinds of books or what titles has he done this successfully on? He does it on all books?

[kirstenhill]

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

Your OG training told you that kids with language based disabilities need multi-sensory instruction. So you need to go multi-sensory.

Yes, the multi sensory techniques for reading/spelling come pretty naturally now since that's what the focus was in the training I took.  We had brief sessions on grammar and comprehension but it wasn't the focus. I just haven't given it any thought before this week about how to work on those areas (esp. in a multi sensory way).  I subscribed to the SPEL-talk list after you mentioned it a few weeks ago.  I actually love "watching" the professionals argue...I like knowing that even the experts don't have it all figured out.  They are currently arguing about which multi sensory practices are actually evidence based.  😄
 

47 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

Interesting. Does his comprehension drop? You could check lexiles on the books where he can do this. I don't think my ds could do this. I wanted him to and it's advisable. What kinds of books or what titles has he done this successfully on? He does it on all books?

He will do it with all but the most complicated books he tries to listen to. Sometimes older books like E. Nesbit titles he has to slow down on because the vocab is different.   TBH I am not 100% about comprehension on these audiobooks, but I do hear him discussing the books with his older brothers, so it is passable.  Some of them are a bit lower level like Wings of Fire, but he's listening to the Magesterium series, all the Brandon Mull books, Harry Potter (a million times over and over), a lot of other middle grade fantasy and sci fi.  He even listened to the first Stormlight Archive series that his older brother checked out (which might be considered either YA or adult, but seemed clean enough for my teen to listen to). I wasn't super keen on that for DS9, but he liked it enough he asked when the next one was coming from the library.

 

 

3 hours ago, PeterPan said:

To what do you attribute this? If my ds does it, it's because he learned language whole to parts and has a language disability. So it reflects my ds' language disability that the idea of what makes a complete thought isn't entirely apparent to him. However if you're thinking it's say ADHD, then sure some meds and strategies could help. 

Have you tried something basic like a marker that he reads with or index cards? With my ds we alternate sentences when we read together, so I'm always reinforcing the natural pauses and structure of the language. He's motivated to stop reading as soon as possible, haha, so noticing the end punctuation suddenly becomes valuable. If you're alternating paragraphs or he's reading all by himself, what motivation does he have to pause and notice?

Were there any other numbers in the testing that had 1+ standard deviations of discrepancy from the mean? That sentence memory score on the TAPS *is* important. It's also good information about the areas where he *didn't* have discrepancy. It eliminates stuff you don't need done. 

I hear you. So technically you could make this happen through the ps by requesting evals. They may or may not do what is actually needed, sigh. Most likely not, but you could try. 

 

 

Most of the  "skill based" tests were 1 standard deviation or more under (Oral reading, word reading efficiency, spelling inventory), but that would be far different now after 14 months that I've been working with him daily on those skills in a way that is actually sticking.  Some of his CTOPP sub scores were inching toward that low, but were still not quite as low as 1 standard deviation below. 

As far as not pausing for periods/commas, DS9 says he is so focused on the words that sometimes he doesn't notice the punctuation until it majorly causes the passage not to make sense.  I don't really suspect ADHD.  I do have another child with that diagnosis have filled out the inventories so many times...DS9 just doesn't really check the boxes like DS12 does.  He usually just follows along with a finger as he reads, but I could see using a card to look at one sentence at a time could be an interesting strategy to make sure he is really stopping at the end of a sentence. 

I am not completely ruling out additional evals, I think I just want to try a few more things myself first. 

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, kirstenhill said:

As far as not pausing for periods/commas, DS9 says he is so focused on the words that sometimes he doesn't notice the punctuation until it majorly causes the passage not to make sense. 

I think that's a pretty normal stage to be going through.

1 hour ago, kirstenhill said:

I think I just want to try a few more things myself first. 

Well I'm all for explicit. With my ds, anything I can do as a game is good as a game. If your ds would like the grammar bugs, you could do a hack version of that using simple constructions from your reading selections. I'm forever finding beautiful sentences in books we read aloud and thinking I want to use them for this or that. I don't think the order matters so much as the simplicity, one thing at a time, slowly accumulating what you're analyzing and noticing and applying. 

Barton does exercises in the reading instruction lessons where they read words, build phrases, and then play games assembling phrases (who, did what, where, etc.) to make sentences. In essence it's a worksheety version of that grammar bugs. 

And don't forget the Van Cleave stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Advantage-6006-Super-Sentence/dp/B00L88XSXE/ref=sr_1_20?dchild=1&keywords=sentence+game&qid=1616029645&sr=8-20  This is a game I've played with my ds. It's not going to get you all the way, but it's a start. There are plenty of games like this or you can just hack it yourself with anything you have lying around. (picture tiles, Pickles to Penguins, Story Dice, Dixit, whatever)

I love Eboo btw. I'm forever collecting Eboo games to use for language ideas. I just got another one from Rainbow Resource https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/078300/Mastering-Logical-Sequencing-All-in-Order.html   Such a sucker for Eboo. I'm always looking for things that are rich in language potential that connect to real life. So I'm looking at the pictures and thinking about the syntax I want to practice and thinking how I can set us up to work on those structures, kwim? It's not just whether he can put three pictures in order, lol. I'm not saying buy that game but just suggesting a way to look at things you already have. 

Edited March 18, 2021 by PeterPan

[kbutton]

Winston grammar is also multi-sensory.

One of my kids has an expressive language delay but no dyslexia (mild autism). He does better when he hears things read aloud, but in his case, he can read it aloud with expression using the punctuation. He does still have that language issue on top that shows up with some pretty narrow deficits in narrative language (critical thinking triangle and cohesive ties as Mindwing Concepts refers to things). He has off the charts non-verbal reasoning, but his language for problem solving was glitchy. Working through Mindwings was  amazing, and he is actually enjoying real literature at this point and is taking American Lit for his credit this year. I thought he’d find it depressing, but he’s very happy with it.

My other son has dyslexia, ADHD, and APD. He gets the overall gist of things but would miss details sometimes—his chief APD problem showed up as a listening rate problem and some other super quirky pieces. APD therapy fixed that. Some of what you say makes me think you might want testing for APD and ADHD. Dyslexic kids can often get the gist of a passage but struggle with specific sentences or details—same with kids who have APD and/or ADHD, and the three conditions are often comorbid.