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Intro
Um, jobs. I mean, there aren't. Too many jobs where there's no reading required. So, um, civic life, you know, understanding different opportunities for your community and things like that. I mean, literacy is very much embedded into all of that, even navigating your way across town. Um, so it, it's really hard to over estimate how important literacy is for someone's daily life.
Kate Grandbois: Welcome to SLP nerd cast your favorite professional resource for evidence based practice in speech, language pathology. I'm Kate grant wa and I'm Amy
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Kate Grandbois: Welcome to SLP Nerdcast. We are very excited to welcome our two guests today to talk about a topic that is very near and dear to our hearts. We are here to discuss literacy and AAC with two expert guests, Tim DeLuca and Christine Holyfield. Welcome Tim and Christine. Thanks.
Tim Deluca: Thanks for having us.
Amy Wonkka: We're really excited to have you here.
Um, and today you're going to talk to us about AAC and literacy development, but before we get started, can you please tell us just a little bit about yourselves?
Christine Holyfield: Yeah. Hi, I'm Christine Holyfield. I'm an associate professor of communication sciences and disorders at the University of Arkansas, and I do research and teach classes on augmentative and alternative [00:03:00] communication and language learning, literacy learning, social communication development for individuals with developmental disabilities of all ages, including individuals with developmental disabilities who are, you know, In the emerging stages of building symbolic communication or really emerging literacy skills.
Tim Deluca: And my name is Tim DeLuca. Um, I just finished my PhD this past year, um, beginning a new position as an assistant professor at UMass Amherst in the fall. Super excited about that. Um, I had the great pleasure of working with and learning from the phenomenal Amy Blanca, Back in my clinical days, which, um, really got me interested in this topic of AAC and literacy, we did a lot of work related to supporting our AAC users within our school district to access a lot of different reading skills.
My PhD work so far has been thinking a lot about systems in schools, how we can leverage things like interprofessional practice and collaboration in order to support all learners in [00:04:00] gaining different language and literacy skills. I've had the chance to meet Christine working on different projects that we'll talk with you about later today, but really thinking about.
Um, emerging communicators and how we can support those emerging communicators and accessing literacy skills, which I think will hopefully make the case for today is an extremely important direction for people like speech pathologists, educators, caretakers, and obviously as users to be thinking about in the future.
Kate Grandbois: I love that shout out to Amy. That was so nice. And to second that, she also taught me everything I know. So here's a little shout out to my co host, my, my brilliant partner in crime. Um, and that's, that was very nice. And it's really lovely to meet both of you. I'm very excited to hear about the projects that you all are working on.
Um, and before we get into the exciting stuff, I do need to read our learning objectives and disclosures. I will try to get that. Let's get through that as quickly as I can.
Learning objective number one, describe why literacy is important for all, especially [00:05:00] AAC users. Learning objective number two, describe the two primary components of reading comprehension. Learning objective number three, describe three strategies to support word identification for AAC users. Learning objective number four, describe three strategies to support language comprehension for AAC users.
And learning objective number five, list strategies to embed literacy supports within AAC users systems. Disclosures. Tim's Financial Disclosures. Tim is an employee at a university, Tim's Non-Financial Disclosures. Tim has no non-financial relationships to disclose Christine's financial disclosures.
Christine is an employee at a university, Christine's non-financial disclosures. Christine has no non-financial relationships to dis. Kate, that's me. I'm the owner and founder of Grand Bois Therapy Consulting, LLC, and co founder of SLP Nerdcast. My non financial disclosures, I'm a member of ASHA SIG 12, and I also serve on the AAC Advisory Group for Massachusetts Advocates for Children.
Amy Wonkka: [00:06:00] Amy, that's me. You guys, like, Really filled my bucket. Also. Thank you. Um, my financial disclosures that I'm an employee of a public school system and co founder of SLP Nerdcast and my non financial disclosures are that I am a member of ASHA, Special Interest Group 12, um, and I also participate in the AAC Advisory Group for Massachusetts Advocates for Children.
All right, we've made it through all of the disclosures and learning objectives, all of those bits. Now we're on to the good stuff. Um, Tim and Christine, why don't you start us off by introducing yourself? Just talking to us a little bit about literacy. What is literacy? What is incorporated in that when we talk about literacy skills?
Tim Deluca: Great. So, literacy, big word, means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Also, that word reading, right? We hear the word reading a lot, but that's another word that can hold a lot of different meanings depending on how we're using it, who we're using the word with. So, what is literacy? When I first learned about reading, one of the ways it was explained to me [00:07:00] was through a quick story where, um, a grandfather can't quite see books anymore, uh, really loves reading German literature, and his grandson got in trouble, had to go help him out, and so the grandson was a pretty good, fluent decoder.
So Never understood German, but was able to go and kind of decode and say the words out loud from the German books to his grandfather. And then the question is, which one of those two people, the grandchild or the grandfather, which one of those two is reading? Does anybody have any, like, feels, thoughts?
Amy Wonkka: I love this question.
Kate Grandbois: I'm grimacing. I don't know.
Amy Wonkka: I, I think if I had to guess, I would say the grandfather is reading because the grandfather's interacting with, interacting with the content, whereas the grandson is decoding, but that's part of reading. I don't know. Feels like a trick question. It is a trick question. Nailed
Tim Deluca: it.
Trick. Exactly. Wonderful. So, but that's, that's what's important, right? Because when we say [00:08:00] reading, we're often meaning a lot of different little skills that have to come together in a meaningful way to really not only see and understand, um, see and be able to produce the words that are in text, but also understand the words meaning, understand how those words go together in the text, and then, you know, Use our background knowledge, activate all that information to really make sense of the text as a whole.
So when we say reading, and when we're thinking about teaching anybody how to read, we're not just thinking about how to identify words, but we're also thinking about that overall language comprehension piece.
Amy Wonkka: So just to say back to you, when we're talking about reading, when we're talking about literacy, we're really talking about the process of integrating multiple different types of skills all together.
Tim Deluca: Perfect. Yeah. And the simplest way to think about this is often called the simple view of reading. Came out in the 80s, used all the time in research still, and it's the idea that reading comprehension is often what we're aiming for when we're thinking about educating individuals. Reading comprehension is that distal measure that we're often looking for in [00:09:00] a lot of our assessments in education.
And reading comprehension is just the product of our ability to identify words and our ability to comprehend language. Right, so we need both of those things to be intact in order to comprehend text. Simple view. Simple way of thinking about it, but there's more that we'll, I'm sure, dive into today.
Amy Wonkka: Okay, so why is literacy important, especially for AAC users? Why is this skill such an important skill and something that we should be, as speech pathologists or special educators, um, why, why should we make that a primary
Announcer: focus?
So
Tim Deluca: literacy so important because one thing I just mentioned is a lot of times when we're thinking about educational progress, we're measuring reading comprehension, regardless of the content area we're testing students in, whether it be science, social studies, math, word problems, right? A lot of times, reading comprehension is the thing we have to be able to do to show what we know.
Um, and then when we think about AAC users and thinking about the modality of communication, um, if we're using symbolic learning, Systems with that are maybe more icon picture [00:10:00] based. There's only a certain set of things that we're able to stay with those systems. But if we have access to generative text and are able to spell decode fluently, then that expands what we're able to communicate tremendously.
Christine Holyfield: Yeah. And just to add, um, about the importance of literacy. I mean, Tim, Tim talked about the academic piece, which is so important. And we talk about, um, Tim, correct me if I'm wrong, but in third grade, the shift that occurs from learning to read to reading to learn. And so if you're not someone who has functional literacy skills, you're missing out on a lot of learning opportunities that other people are getting.
Through reading books and reading materials in in school. So that education piece is huge. Um, there's also a social component. I mean, starting from a pretty young age. Now kids text each other. Adults text each other all the time. [00:11:00] Social media is often not all social media, but a lot of social media has text components to it.
And then, as Tim said, you know, for individuals who use AAC, it's got that added potential of allowing them to communicate anything that's in their head with 26 letters. And that means that if the SLP doesn't know what they want to say and hasn't programmed a word on their device yet, that's okay [00:12:00] because they're able to type it out.
Kate Grandbois: I feel like we can't really have a conversation about the importance of this without also acknowledging the barriers in terms of the communication partners or individuals within certain settings being very dismissive. So, for example, saying things like, they're not ready for that, or particularly for a complex communicator or an emerging communicator they're not going to read, and kind of automatically placing that that ceiling.
What can you tell us about how to combat that? I think our field has come a really long way in shifting away from that mentality, but I'm not sure that other, other domains have, have, have shifted away from that. What can you tell our listeners about, um, about how we can kind of push, push back against that expectation or that, that ceiling?
Christine Holyfield: Thank [00:13:00] you for asking that, Kate. I think that's so important. And, um, I can definitely relate to that. I was an SLP in schools, and I remember adding literacy goals, um, to, for the students on my caseload. And I remember a parent saying to me, You know, why are, why are you working on this? My son's never going to read.
And that parent got that message from someone, right? Someone before me in the school system, most likely. And so, um, it's, it's a huge barrier and adults who use AAC, who are literate, they talk about it as being a huge barrier, um, that they had, had Based it had to overcome. So it's a really important thing for us all to think about in some ways.
I think there's probably potential to do research in this area to find the best answer to your question, Kate. And, um, we need that research to figure out how do we change people's attitudes? How do [00:14:00] we raise expectations? One of my favorite things to say when I worked in the schools was, well, let me just try it.
And. A lot of times, um, I would try and people would see success and when success happened, it could kind of show people what might be possible in terms of someone learning literacy skills and expectations can start to shift. Um, I mean, that's just one small example. I think another one is. For everyone to truly understand and Tim, you can speak more to this, but what is literacy because it includes the language comprehension piece.
So if you're working on language comprehension, you're making strides towards literacy and, um, why not try some of the word identification side of things as well.
Tim Deluca: I love that you said that piece. I think that's so important and so relevant that we're thinking about both parts of that simple view of reading, [00:15:00] not just the word decoding, but also the reading cover or the language comprehension piece.
Um, I think, I'm thinking back to the beginning of my clinical career, and I was working in a school, um, not with anybody here, don't try to figure it out, um, but working in a school where, where students were just having literacy goals removed from IEPs because educators weren't sure quite how to teach, especially the word identification piece, um, and then I realized, oh my gosh, somebody's gotta do something, and then I realized, Oh, no, I'm the one who's supposed to be doing something and I realized I had no idea how to teach reading, um, based on the time I had gone to school and what my clinical training looked like.
I never really learned about the whole picture of reading, the many different skills we're putting together to help support fluent reading comprehension. And so. I had to do a lot of extra work to think about how I could, um, what, what typical instruction for word and word reading looks like, and then thinking about, okay, I have [00:16:00] these students in front of me who access these modalities of communication, have these different preferences, interests, how can I take what I know about what typically works for word reading, and how can I adapt that to meet these students where they are?
Um, and I think. One of the big takeaways that we could always go to is in AAC so far there's much more research in the language comprehension piece of reading development than there is in the word reading piece. Uh, but we can take what we already know and adapt what we already know for Our learners who might be AAC users.
And so the big takeaways from a whole whole large body of research across multiple fields right now related to word identification or word reading is the idea that we need to be systematic and explicit within our instructions. So not just trying something for a little bit. If it doesn't stick. Moving on, but rather really sticking with teaching certain skills and slowly building those skills together in meaningful ways, having a really clear scope and sequence of how we're moving through.
Um, and also having a really clear way that we're monitoring progress in a way [00:17:00] that's valid for our learners. If we think about working in a typical public school system, we're probably, we probably have access to a lot of, uh, typical tier one General education classroom instruction, and we probably have access to progress monitoring tools related to either that curriculum or just general progress monitoring and we're greeting.
However, if we use those same tools for users, the users might not be able to show what they know with those tools. So how can we adapt those tools? How can we think about building our own curriculum based measures to think about how students are progressing through? Our systematic and explicit instruction to gain access to that word identification, word reading piece.
Amy Wonkka: I think you, you both have referenced a little bit the interconnection too, between language comprehension and reading comprehension. So I don't know if you want to talk to us a little bit about two primary components of reading comprehension, but maybe also connect that back to some of the more traditional language comprehension approaches that SLPs may be [00:18:00] feeling more familiar with.
So maybe making that connection, um, for listeners.
Tim Deluca: Perfect. So I love that you, you talked about this when we think about the language comprehension piece of the simple view of reading, we can think about that Blum and Leahy model that we all use. No one use all the time is SLP is right of form content use of those areas of language.
Um, if let's start with content, teaching vocabulary, teaching semantics, there are a lot of different strategies, curriculum, um, and specific protocols that exist to teach different vocab. Um, and I think what's important for our users, maybe individuals who have complex communication needs, maybe individuals who are, um, Who have neurodiverse neurodiverse identities, thinking about how we can leverage their interests and what their background knowledge already is in order to make connections to learn new words in a deeper way, so I think a lot of times, especially in special education, we get really stuck and creating IEP objectives related to vocabulary and saying the students going to [00:19:00] learn this many words and then they learn that many words and we move on, but we're not really being thoughtful around the depth of vocabulary knowledge as well as thinking about it.
generalization of that vocabulary knowledge. So when we're teaching the meaning of a word, we're not just teaching one meaning of the word, we're maybe thinking about how it's used across different contexts. We're connecting it to content knowledge that that individual can see this word in certain content and understand what it means within a science unit versus within a social studies unit.
And, um, we're revisiting that word over and over and over. So it's not just a one and done thing, but really something where we're building depth of that vocab, right? So Taking those traditional goals that we always use, taking those traditional teaching methods of thinking about the word and its definition, but then using it across multiple different opportunities in multiple ways, um, thinking about how it could be used as a noun versus a verb, right?
Uh, building that, that meta linguistic knowledge, which for some of our users is not quite where they [00:20:00] are yet, but we can still provide opportunities, still provide models and access to those types of learning opportunities. From there, we can think about our morphosyntax, right? So if we're teaching word identification, the phonics or decoding piece, we can also, along in the same lesson, teach, hey look, here's a prefix, here's what that prefix means.
So we practice sequencing the sounds, then we connect it to meaning, so we learned a little about morphology, we learned a little bit about semantics, we learned a little bit about decoding, and we did it all in a single lesson. Then we connect that into a sentence and thinking about how that prefix is being used in a sentence, how it can connect to some of our different vocab words that we just practiced for our science unit the day before.
So really thinking about integrating our instruction so that students are getting multiple opportunities to build breadth and depth of vocab and seeing vocab, not just in individual as individual words that [00:21:00] are being used to show mastery towards an IP objective. But really thinking about aligning. Our instruction to the curriculum and, um, aligning across different content areas across the day.
I don't know if I even really answered your question there, Amy, but hopefully we're getting in the right direction.
Amy Wonkka: No, I think you did. I think that you're building a base, right? We're building a base when we're thinking about our vocabulary intervention and ways that we can connect that to literacy. Um, and then I think the other piece of the question, because I asked you like a multi part question, so.
Sorry, was just thinking about what are those primary components of reading comprehension, right? So what are the big pieces that a student needs to have in place for that reading comprehension to happen?
Tim Deluca: Perfect. So thinking again about the language comprehension, we just said form, content, use. All are going to be relevant.
Um, we've talked a little bit about form. We've talked a little bit about content so far. Use, right? So when we're thinking, we've touched upon this when we think about words [00:22:00] with multiple meanings or words that can be used as both nouns and verbs. That's part of language use as well. How we're being flexible with how we're understanding how words are used within different sentence structures within different content areas.
That is, um, maybe something that When we're writing IEP objectives, when we're working with students, we're not always zooming out and thinking about the big picture of how each of those three areas of language are working together, or how we can integrate them within our lessons. But in order for somebody to achieve reading comprehension, we need to be flexibly thinking about language, thinking about how it's being used, meaning how it's, how it looks within a sentence, in order to really understand it.
So, um, Building off that simple view of reading there, there are always researchers proposing new models for how we're thinking about reading comprehension, how complex it is. One of my favorites is, is a kind of a newer summary of a lot of the emerging research by Duke and Cartwright. It's [00:23:00] called the active view of reading, and they have a ton of podcast episodes.
I think it's a free access article, so it's a really nice usable tool, regardless if you're a clinician researcher, however you're coming to this topic. But they break down that language comprehension piece a little bit more, thinking about really putting form, content, and use together. And they also add something to the model called bridging processes.
Um, and again, some of the research that they're pulling from here is more emerging, not as much evidence that this accounts for a lot of the variability in reading comprehension, but some promising areas, right? And one of those bridging processes is a super long phrase, uh, grapho, phonological, semantic, cognitive flexibility.
So too many things, right? But if we break it apart, grapho, the actual letters we're seeing, phonological, how those letters might sound different depending on the sequence that they're being put in, right? So if we put an s versus an sh, s is not saying anymore, it's saying sh, right? Um, so [00:24:00] grapho, phonological, and then semantic, thinking about how a word like wound how it's gonna maybe look the same graph Graphenically graphologically, what word, whatever word I should use there, right?
And then how the phonology of the word might be a little bit different. And that phonology maps onto different semantic meanings. We have to be cognitively flexible to think through. All of those pieces together to really understand what we're reading. So that's a lot for us as educators to be thinking of, and that can be a little bit daunting, right, to hear all of this and think, how am I ever going to account for this?
But what we can do is just add on little by little. So maybe you feel really confident. You guys always talk about, um, your scope of competence, right? So maybe your scope of competence is super strong in, in vocab instruction. So how can I now add or embed some more morphosyntax into my vocab instruction?
How can I embed some phonology into my, into my, uh, vocab instruction, right? So start with little [00:25:00] pieces and work your way up to thinking about how all of these skills are becoming aligned to support that end goal of reading comprehension.
Amy Wonkka: I think that that's such, such a nice way to think about it though, Tim, like you said, I think, you know, think about what feels comfortable for you, what you're already doing that feels comfortable, that's working and then how you can add one small piece into it.
I think that that's like, Always helpful because we, we do these podcasts and we talk to experts like you guys, and it feels sometimes like it's just so much, it's so much and it's kind of overwhelming and you get this sort of like paralysis around, like not quite knowing where to start. Um, I do feel like, you know, for me, I could say vocabulary was always an area where I felt a little bit more comfortable working with that intervention.
Um, some of the other pieces, like word recognition, I think have been an area that for me has felt like I need to learn more about, um, And I don't know if you guys want to talk a little bit about that. So talking about some of that word identification, I know, Tim, I saw you speak at a [00:26:00] conference, um, I don't know, maybe it was a year ago, but I felt like you had talked about some apps and some different strategies that you were using to help support a C user.
And some of them like were. Pretty emergent communicators in, in this area of word identification. So maybe you guys could talk to us a little bit just about how we could get started there.
Tim Deluca: Yeah. So I actually recently joined on to projects that Christine's been working on for a number of years related to supporting these word identification pieces for emerging communicators.
So I'll, I'll hand it off to Christine to share a little bit about some pretty cool work.
Christine Holyfield: Yeah, so I mean, I think and relating it back to these two components of the simple view of reading. I think it's It's reasonable for us to say that for every student or, um, you know, client, there should be at least one goal, of course, hopefully more related to the language comprehension side of things.
And then at least [00:27:00] one goal related to the word identification side of things as well. And, um, we talked about the attitudes at the beginning that. Maybe we shouldn't be focusing on word identification with someone who's more emerging on the language side of things. Maybe we should be focusing on language and probably we should be focusing on language, but that doesn't mean we can't add in opportunities for the word identification learning and and those two goals don't have to be competing goals.
They can be complementary goals. Um, so, One thing, um, that we've worked on related to that is making a a c systems more supportive of literacy, um, through use of the a a C systems. And I wanna be very clear that, um, Tim mentioned that we need explicit systematic instruction, and that's absolutely true. We should, um, not just hope that [00:28:00] someone learns, identify words, we need to make sure that they have.
Instruction that's appropriate for them with opportunities to participate that are accessible to them. Um, if we truly want to build. Word identification, but, uh, why not have increased opportunities through a so a lot of the work, um, related to that has been. Tim and I work together on the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Augmentative and Alternative Communication.
And that's a research center housed at Penn State University led by Drs. Leighton McNaughton. And for, uh, close to a decade now, there's been work making AAC devices more supportive of literacy. So one example of that, um, is Rehabilitation This class of features called the transition to literacy features and the idea is just to promote extra [00:29:00] opportunities for learning.
And so, um, one of those is a site word feature. And with that feature, uh, someone can. Select on their AAC device, whatever they would typically say. And in addition to the voice output coming out text output is dynamically displayed along with it. And so Tim can explain this better than me, but someone's, um, you know, more likely to learn to recognize a word if they're seeing, um, the orthography.
Orthography of the word paired with the phonology of the word being sounded out, or it being spoken aloud. Um, and there's been a number of research studies with children and adults with developmental disabilities, including down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, and most of the participants do increase their word.
their recognition of words through use of the feature with [00:30:00] interacting with researchers, um, using the AAC technology. Another version or another feature of the transition to literacy suite that's newer is the, a feature that supports decoding as well. So, um, Tim touched on this a little, but in word identification, there's sort of.
Different ways to recognize the word. But if you're learning to be functionally literate, you have to learn to sound out words. And the T12 decoding feature is designed to support that by when you make a selection, not only does the text come up while the whole word is spoken, but it sounds out the word.
So if the child were to select cat while reading a Pete the Cat book, the AAC device would say. Cat and the letters corresponding to those sounds would be illuminated, um, as the AC device was sounding that out. [00:31:00] So that's a newer feature that still, um, we're still doing a lot of research on, but it's just an exam.
These are just examples of ways that AC technology can be set up to support literacy. Another example is, um, I've done some research, um, around picture symbols versus text learning and, um, in the field of AAC, you all know we love picture symbols and it's kind of the default for every word for everyone all the time.
And, um, there really isn't research to support that. And we have More research coming out to set to show that there might be other representations that might be more meaningful to someone. So if we're thinking about the language comprehension side of piece side of things, um, color photos are very powerful
Announcer: representation.
Christine Holyfield: So nowadays with AC devices or tablets or [00:32:00] phones all having on board cameras and with Google image search options, there's really not a reason not to use color photo representations for those high meaning, uh, high image ability words.
We know that. Children who are learning language might be more likely to find meaning from those photos than from the picture symbols. And there's some emerging research, um, I've done one study and a colleague of mine, Lorne Marie Pope, has done another to show that, uh, for low imageability words, so words that are more abstract, things like go or want or, Come, um, these words, um, the research, the limited research we have shows that children don't learn the picture symbols for those words any quicker than they learned the text for those words.
And so I feel very strongly that if, if we have to teach a representation, right, if it's [00:33:00] not just going to be transparent to the person and we have to spend time in a session teaching them what that representation is. Why not teach them the orthographic representation? Because, as we talked about, that's a representation that they'll see all throughout.
Life. Um, it's text is everywhere versus a symbol on an AAC device that's abstract and we spend time teaching and then it doesn't even help them if they decide to use a new app in the future and they, and it has a different symbol set.
Kate Grandbois: That makes so much sense. I mean, you know, thinking about what. Providing individualized instruction is like, right, we're all, we have limited resources, we have limited time. So we need to be putting our instruction to where it counts most. And if, if it is more meaningful to a learner to have the orthographic representation, to have that sight word, then let's teach that instead of these two random [00:34:00] squiggly lines with a dot on it, or whatever it is.
So that makes a lot of sense to me.
Amy Wonkka: It also makes me, this is sort of like outside of the scope, so feel free to shut down this question, but it does make me think about, I've often gotten a lot of questions about picture supported text and whether, you know, using something that creates a long line of symbolated text, should I be putting that symbolated text into the customized books that I'm creating for my students?
Or is it better if I Print out this recipe using symbolated text versus regular text. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or any, um, information from the research that would help guide somebody as a clinician who's sort of being asked those types of questions.
Christine Holyfield: Tim can probably answer this more on the literacy side, but my guess is if you're trying to help someone become literate, maybe not.
Um, but I think, again, going back to the individual, um, side of things, That it's within the realm of possibility that someone has already learned those [00:35:00] picture symbols, right? And they've not yet learned to read. And if that's the case, like they've gotten instruction in those symbols and they haven't gotten instruction in the, in orthography, then perhaps that might be useful for someone, right?
Where they can recognize this picture symbols that they've been taught. Um, again, we would never want to You know, not provide someone access to understanding if if these are symbols that are already meaningful to them. Um, I don't know of any research that shows that that's a helpful approach. Um, It's possible that that research is out there, but outside of the field of AC, because honestly, if it's outside of the field of AC, I don't know it very well.
Um, Tim, I don't know if you know more.
Tim Deluca: No, I totally agree with everything you said, Christine. I think what I always go back to is what's my goal within an activity, right? So, [00:36:00] if I'm working clinically with somebody, what is my goal here? Am I hoping to provide opportunities for decoding? That I'm not going to have.
Those images that might help the individual, quote unquote, guess what the word, the orthography is there. If my goal is for somebody to demonstrate comprehension, and I know that they have a certain level of language comprehension, a certain level of orthographic knowledge, then I'm going to adapt that activity to meet them where they're at.
So if they could show me what they can do related to that, integrated skill of reading comprehension. So that's why it's so important to understand these component skills that go into reading comprehension, so that we can be prescriptive with how we're adapting lessons and activities, how we're providing instruction for learners.
Christine touched on something earlier that I don't feel like I was clear about when I was thinking about that word identification part of reading comprehension, the simple view of reading. And it's the idea that, um, I think a lot of commercially available curricula for AAC users or for individuals who have limited [00:37:00] access to verbal communication or speech, a lot of those curricula do a lot of whole word instruction where students are getting multiple repetitions of seeing a word and hearing the production of that word.
And what we talk about there is that that is the skill of word identification, right? It's being able to map sounds. onto the orthography of a word. And that is in of itself a skill that can support reading comprehension. It is word identification. But what we see is that for, um, if that's the only form of instruction you're getting, if you're not learning the code, the phonics code of how Sounds and symbols can be put together within a word to generate novel words so that you can spell words independently in the future.
You're probably, the individual getting that instruction is probably not going to progress past just being able to identify these whole words that they're being shown over and over and over. We're not seeing generalization of that skill into fluent. Reading, which therefore doesn't allow us to support that [00:38:00] individual in developing that reading comprehension skill.
So I think it's easy. A lot of times to take these out of in the box or out of the box curriculum and implement them. But we have to think about how, um, what we might expect is outcomes for that type of instruction, and we would probably expect that those outcomes would be fairly limited in supporting future independence for that.
That individual so understand the components understand how we have to. Speech. Systematic. Explicitly. phonic skills, if our goal is to support fluent decoding and fluent reading in the future.
Announcer: And that
Tim Deluca: eventually will help word identification. So that all comes together, we build our orthographic memory after we see and understand the code a bunch of times. So it does help us get to that more quick, accurate, recognition of words.
Amy Wonkka: I don't know if you want to talk to us a little bit about what that might look like.
So for those of us who do work in [00:39:00] schools, we might be more familiar, um, with some of the curricula. I'm thinking of things that might be used in the general education classroom in like kindergarten, first grade, and to, to work on some of those, um, decoding and encoding skills, right? So not just that sight word identification.
And a lot of that involves like Call and response. And so I think that that is one area that becomes really complicated for AAC users and the people who are trying to support them in learning to read, because it can be confusing to think about how to bypass that element that seems like such an ingrained piece of that instruction in gen ed.
Tim Deluca: Love it. So there are some curricula that are directly related to AAC. Um, and I'm going to let Christine talk about that. But before we even get there, if we're thinking about, I'm in a school, I don't have access to any materials other than what's happening in the Gen Ed classroom, we'll go back to that set framework, right?
That common assistive tech framework of thinking about who is [00:40:00] my learner, what is the task that they have to do, and what are the tools I have available, and what is the environment that it's happening in. A little out of order there, but we're all on the same page. And thinking about, okay, if I know this individual can't do that call and response piece, they have an AAC system, that AAC system probably has a phonics keyboard on it that's going to allow them to participate.
in a way that matches their modality of communication. Perhaps they don't have that. Perhaps we're then just having to start with demonstrating knowledge through receptive opportunities. So we're practicing the sound,
Announcer: um,
Tim Deluca: and they're shown a number of, of graphemes and they have to choose the grapheme that corresponds to the sound.
It looks different. It doesn't demonstrate that expressive knowledge as quickly, but it's our starting point. It's using what we have and it's beginning to build those important phonics skills. And I think the other positive thing we could take away from what's in general ed is that a lot of times there is a specific scope and sequence of instruction.[00:41:00]
So it gives us that really great place to anchor our work and to make sure that we're monitoring progress and then adapting when students are not making progress and thinking about, am I measuring their progress in a way that's valid for that individual? They can't call and respond. I've worked with teams that are like, well, they're not making progress.
I'm like, well, how are you seeing if they make progress? And they're. Like, they can't read the word, of course, right, so we have, we have to think about giving access to tools that are going to allow the individual to demonstrate what they know.
Christine Holyfield: Yeah, it's really important, you know, when we're We need to be able to measure progress meaningfully if we're going to teach someone and, you know, um, support them down a path toward literacy and, um, that I think I agree to my think that's a gap really in what's available. And so, um, people, you know, don't never really learned how to make those adaptations and so they're [00:42:00] not making those adaptations and.
Um, you know, that's, that's more work that we have to do on the pre service and service training and even on the research side of things. But, um, the what, uh, the way Tim described, you know, providing visual options. For responses is typically what researchers have done. Um, when researchers have evaluated skills for word identification, such as letter sound correspondence or single word reading or, um, even encoding, so typically how, uh, researchers have approached it and what's been found to be, um, effective in the research is to provide.
Choices a set field of choices for responses. So like Tim said, you know it rather than showing the, um, the orthography for a and then expecting the child to produce a were saying, ah, And the child's [00:43:00] either pointing to the A or the M or the T or the P. Um, for example. Uh, same with words. You know, if we're wanting them, wanting to know if they can read the word cat.
We're showing them the word cat in orthography. And we're showing, for example, For photos. Um, and this is where it can get really interesting to think about the photos that we show. Um, because for instance, you don't want a photo of a cat to be the only photo that starts with the letter or with the sound.
So you might have cat as another option as well. Um, so you can think strategically about what the different choices are so that you can do an error analysis and. Be even more precise in the instruction that you're providing. Um, because, um, Tim could tell you better, but I know that good [00:44:00] readers don't get.
And so we don't want kids guessing based on the 1st letter. And so, if we're, if they always have the opportunity to just. Pick the word with the correct first letter sound. We're not really building them towards good reading with sounding out all the word. Um, an important thing to think about when you do that is to make sure you do some pre teaching of the representations that you use if you're.
Um, so again, Tim said something really important earlier. He said, we always want to make sure. That we're measuring what we're think, what we think we're measuring. And we want to make sure that we're measuring the specific literacy skill that we're testing. So if I'm trying to test if they can read the word truck.
I don't want to show them a photo of maybe a truck that they wouldn't recognize or a truck that they might that to them, they might call a semi or a pickup [00:45:00] or whatever. So, um, it's just as easy as. You know, labeling each picture before you are testing in this way. Um, you can even, if these are pictures you're going to use over and over again, you can even do some testing to make sure they recognize just the pictures on their own.
And then when you go in to test the word by putting the word that they are paired with picture options, you know, that. It's not just that they don't see a picture of truck. It's that they're not reading that that word is truck.
Tim Deluca: I really appreciated that. I think the other thing we could think about too that I think Christina and I get us questions a lot is how much time we should be spending on this kind of instruction, right? So that's a really tricky thing because we know that a lot of students On caseload to our users might have a lot of different goals that they're hoping to target within a given day have a lot of different needs within a given day, and therefore, time is limited.
So, the [00:46:00] national reading panel, which. The report was published in the early 2000s, but the. Work there is still pretty relevant The recommendation there for emergent readers is that we're doing about 30 minutes of phonics instruction a day Um for really early readers, right and christine mentioned this earlier Are any ac users getting even close to that amount of word reading instruction?
Probably not Um, and maybe that's not feasible right now, right? We have to find the balance that works within That individual's day, and we don't necessarily have the research for people who use AC for different reasons. The exact amount of time that they need for different skills. That's probably going to happen on individual basis, but we know what the general guidance is, and then we make adaptations based on the learner that we're working with the system that we're working within and also maybe thinking about how we can leverage other professionals.
So if I'm the speech pathologist, I'm embedding some products opportunities within my Okay. Vocab and more person text [00:47:00] lessons. If a special educator is working with them on word reading, they're embedding some of the language language comprehension pieces within their phonics instruction later that day.
So kind of almost thinking about how we can double dip within services across the day to get that integration and alignment of knowledge building.
Christine Holyfield: That's a really important point, Tim. I think collaboration is really critical here to make sure that students are getting the minutes that are required in literacy instruction for them to make progress because what we don't want to happen is.
Um, to kind of create this self fulfilling prophecy where we don't give them that many opportunities to learn literacy because we don't think it's a good use of time. And then they don't learn literacy because they haven't been given enough opportunities. And, um, you know, it's just this Self fulfilling prophecy that really doesn't serve anybody.
Um, and so collaborating is really important. And I remember when I was [00:48:00] working in the schools, there were teachers who had set literacy blocks for a certain time of day. And I asked them, could I, um, work with you and help make it so that, you know, the four students in the room who use AAC can participate meaningfully in those literacy blocks as well.
Or can I just have a table on the other side of the classroom and I'll just come in and I'll, um, do work at the same time, uh, that's been adapted. So, um, collaboration is, you know, I think that's an important piece of it. And I think it's an opportunity for us, um, to advocate as well. Um, for maybe this is a student who should have more minutes, uh, every week for services.
And if we really want them to make progress in a timely manner.
Tim Deluca: One thing I think about there related to the more minutes, because I'm working with a lot of teams who are like, I don't have more minutes. And if you say that again. I [00:49:00] Throwing hands. So the thing that we could think about when we're when we're coming to a team and we're saying, Hey, as a member of this team, I think this student needs more time to access this skill, really thinking about.
I, this is my, my scope of competence. And here's also what my role can look like, what my time available is to teach this skill. But can it, just like you were saying, Christine, how can it then compliment the other things that are happening throughout the day? So that nobody needs to necessarily add minutes, add to their workload.
Rather as educators, we're effectively sharing information, effectively sharing knowledge with one another. If we're putting those B grid minutes collaboration or, uh, a good minutes collaboration time on the grid. Like, how are we using that effectively to share our knowledge to make sure that our services are super aligned so that that student is getting the same language intervention or the same way of talking about [00:50:00] skills, the same way of getting input about skills across multiple different professionals so that we're maximizing each individual's time with that learner.
Christine Holyfield: I know you're right, Tim. I, I'm a little idealistic on this, but I do think that SLP should feel confident in what they know about, um, what a student needs and. Um, you know, try to advocate in the sense of, you know, that might mean telling an administrator for me to effectively serve all this for us to effectively serve all the students in this school.
I'm not enough, and it's our job to teach them to read teach them language do all these things. And we could do that job more effectively with more. So, um, I know that's not an easy thing and I know that there are a lot of people I'm sure who've tried that and heard too bad. But, um, I think we can try to advocate because [00:51:00] Um, you know, it's right.
Amy Wonkka: I agree. We talk a lot on this show about like we get on soapboxes about the importance of advocating for better working conditions for ourselves and for our clients. Um, and while it may take years and years and years to have that conversation, and we may end up at a different workplace entirely where they have more open ears to hear our, to hear what we have to say.
I think it's an important thing. Um, to state that, you know, it is, it is definitely something that we should, that we should make sure we don't back down from doing. Um, you both said so many things that I think were really helpful, uh, in terms of being thoughtful about just going back to, um, teaching some of those.
those sound skills and how you might construct those tasks and being thoughtful about the materials that you're using so that you can do an error analysis, that you can really think about what patterns may be [00:52:00] present, what error patterns might be present in your learner. Um, I wonder if there are similar examples that we can sort of picture as clinicians when that comes to language comprehension.
So, um, How might we structure some of our comprehension interventions so that we're doing the same thing, right? We're not just showing this one picture and then the student learns, like, this is what I do when I see this one picture or this one string of text. What are some strategies that we could use as clinicians to sort of help support that language comprehension that are unique to students who are also using AAC?
Tim Deluca: That's such a good point. I think for a long time we were monitoring progress by having students read the same story, read quote unquote the same story over and over and over and asking them the same questions over and over and over and then teaching them specific responses and saying, hey look, they've moved up a level or whatever it might have been.
Um, and we know that that is not a valid way of monitoring progress towards the skill of reading comprehension, but rather is just showing that the [00:53:00] individual learned a response to a specific You ABA people know all about the words there. So, um, we really need to think about Again, I go back to this word alignment.
When students are in school, our role as special educators is to support access to the curriculum. Um, and this is obviously going to look different for different learners, but if there is a science unit, this individual is interested in. That aspect of science. How can we provide a different short story each day that maybe has some of the phonics elements that we've been teaching, right?
Maybe they're working on CBC, consonant, consonant words. How can we take what the class is reading about in science, maybe make a quick adaptation with AI now? These things are Not easy, but easier to at least get a starting point for how can we adapt so that they're getting access to the content knowledge of science.
The topic they're interested in. They're motivated to learn about it. [00:54:00] Um, and they're also getting practice with the word reading instruction. And then because it's an area of high interest, the individual maybe has some background knowledge of it, we're actually able to see, like, are they comprehending the new information we're providing in this text?
So are they able to answer a question that reflects new knowledge presented in the text versus their background knowledge? Or Are they often answering questions in a way that shows that they're relying more heavily on their background knowledge rather than the new information provided in the text?
That now gives us some prescriptive information about, okay, perhaps they decoded the words for me here, but the comprehension wasn't there, whether it be because of fluency, whether it be because they weren't thinking about the text, right? That, that monitoring we all have to do when we're reading to make sure we're making sense of what we're reading.
Those might be why they're not demonstrating knowledge, or it could be because The fluency in the actual decoding the CBC words was more challenging, but that kind of integration, um, I think is [00:55:00] becoming easier and easier with updated technology. But the big takeaways for me always are, how can I make sure it's high interest?
And how can I make sure that there's motivation to participate in this activity? Because if somebody is not motivated, they're not learning, they're not gonna be able to show or demonstrate progress in that skill.
Announcer: And I think you said so much
Christine Holyfield: important stuff in there. I agree. I think, um, you know, bringing in someone's interest is really important, particularly someone who has yet to really make meaning out of text at all. Um, we need to bring that meaning in somewhere for there to be a motivation to learn. And if there, if they have a favorite character from a TV show, then I make adapted books with that character.
Holding all kinds of different, you know, CBC words that I can, you know, have them read book after book, uh, that's of interest to them. Um, even if the target words that they're working on might not be as exciting. Uh, I think also, [00:56:00] you know, This can be an opportunity to collaborate with families as well to find out what is meaningful to them.
What experiences have they've had, have they had that have been, um, you know, particularly impactful and providing opportunities for learning around those experiences. Um, For individuals who are really in the more emerging language learning stages, it's important to think about the words that they're hearing and and are meaningful to them most often.
So, you know, we, everyone learns words by someone else saying those words and that being paired with a referent or an experience out in the world. And so. If we're trying to build up someone's language, the more, as Tim said, we can align the words we're working on with the words that they're more likely to be hearing and experiencing elsewhere.
That's important. I can give [00:57:00] a silly example, but, um, my sister, for some reason, decided to teach her, uh, daughter, um, The word pup instead of dog. Right? And so that's a silly example. But if I were at school and I was her SLP, I would never assume that she associates that picture with pup and not dog. Um, but that's just one example.
But in general, you know, um, just like we talked about, uh, before. We want to make sure we're providing language that is giving someone the best opportunity to learn as possible. And a lot of that is going to be learned through individual assessment about
Announcer: what's meaningful to them.
Christine Holyfield: Individualized assessment is really important to know for each student what type of input is most meaningful to them. So, there are some students who might, Have a bottleneck or barrier and understanding spoken input, but they [00:58:00] understand input that scaffolded with visuals more effectively. So we want to make sure that they have the opportunity to learn language with those maximal support.
Um, In the field of AAC, we talk about something called the input output disconnect, um, for communication language learning. So, for an individual who uses AAC, um, they're in this unique position for learning language where they're expected to express language one way and everyone else is Giving them language input through a different modality.
Um, and so that's where things like aided input become really important to try to address that disconnect. So we're using the child's AC device when we're reading the books with them. Um, so that they're getting input. In a modality that matches their output and they have, um, more opportunities to learn language in that way.
Amy Wonkka: I I think that that [00:59:00] is all really helpful to think about I know you've both mentioned Customized or adapted books and I think that that's something You know that can be so powerful because you can hook on to what's interesting for your student or what, what is just a life experience that they've had.
Uh, I think about some of the early like A and B level readers and they're not particularly riveting texts, right? Like, like there's one page, there's an apple, it says apple, there's another page, it's a cup, it says cup. Um, so the idea of, you know, taking a character that they like and then putting those kind of mundane items like in the book with this fun character is, is just a really nice example.
I don't know if you had any other tips for SLPs who might be hearing this and thinking, oh my gosh, I would love to make some adapted books for my student. What are some things that that SLP should be thinking about?
Tim Deluca: First and foremost, thinking about the goal of those adapted books. Is it to build language [01:00:00] comprehension knowledge or is it to build opportunity for practice for word reading?
So if it's Opportunity to build practice for word reading, making sure that the words like we see in those level texts, a lot of times like apple is not a word that there's a closed consonant or closed syllable and then a consonant l e syllable in there. That's not a, uh, early in our phonics scope and sequence typically, right?
So that would not be a good word if our goal was to practice these early phonics skills. So making sure whatever adapted text we're we're building, if we're expecting the student to be the one decoding, making sure the things that they're supposed to decode match what they've been taught so far.
Otherwise we're just asking them to guess and good readers don't guess.
Christine Holyfield: Yeah, so I think one strategy I've used, you know, if their favorite character has a name that's It's going to be difficult to decode, and I don't know why I'm struggling to think of one right now. Um, but, you know, that character might be up [01:01:00] here on every page of an adapted book, but the last word on every page that they're expected to read is a CVC word, and that, you know, like I said, that character might be holding a cup, or, you know, one of those boring words that, um, they're trying to, you know, build in their decoding repertoire.
Tim Deluca: Christine, you and I just used a lot of Clifford, the big red dog, right? So Clifford, not an accessible word for an early, early reader, but big red dog. Those all, those all could work, right? So, maybe I'm always saying Clifford, but they're expected to read Big Red Dog.
Christine Holyfield: Big Red Dog.
Tim Deluca: So, that joint effort there can also be a useful way of working through it.
Amy Wonkka: I think that's really cool. Yeah, that's a good example. I wonder, do you use any conventions? Like, I remember. Many, many years ago, going to an all curriculum training and they were using like a yellow highlight. So in the example that you gave where maybe the partner is reading Clifford, that word might not be highlighted, [01:02:00] but cup might be highlighted because that's something that we want our student to decode.
Do you ever use any, any strategies like that?
Christine Holyfield: I do, um, part of it is I've learned to do this from the people who created the all curriculum.
We should also mention that the All Curriculum is a curriculum that's available, um, in printed and app form, I believe, where, um, that can be helpful to people who want to spend less time adapting things on their own.
Kate Grandbois: In our last few minutes, are there any additional pieces of information that you would really, you're just dying to get off your chest that our listeners might benefit from? Your, your final words of wisdom, your parting words.
Christine Holyfield: I'll say mine's going to come a little bit out of nowhere, but I want to say it.
Kate Grandbois: Um, now I'm very curious. Go for it.
Christine Holyfield: So, uh, what I would like to beg people to do for Kids Use [01:03:00] AAC is Teach letter sounds, don't teach letter names. I've met so many kids who can learn, who know their letter names, but they don't know any letter sounds. And it's letter sounds that help you read, not letter names.
If someone can learn letter names, they can learn letter sounds. There's nothing more difficult about a letter sound than a letter name. So, let's just teach letter sounds instead, and then while we're at it, let's also teach decoding. Thanks for watching!
Tim Deluca: That's a good one. Um, I think I, I have two, two quick ones.
One is, I think it's Kathy Binger, who's been on your show before and always talks about when we're teaching AAC users, we often forget that we're still just teaching language, right? When we're, when we're trying to support AAC users, we're just, Teaching language the way we typically do just through a different modality.
And I think that's an important takeaway from everything we discussed today. There's a lot of research about how to teach word reading. There's a lot of research about how to teach language comprehension. [01:04:00] A lot of us have a lot of clinical knowledge about how to do both of those things. So now we're just thinking about how to adapt it to meet a certain modality.
And then the final takeaway for me is that I think you've heard both Christine and I say a few times now that the research is emerging or there's some research. This is The topics we discussed today are relatively challenging to study, um, and I think Christine and I are both interested in continuing to build on the body of evidence that already exists.
So, um, one way we're working towards doing that is building more research practice partnerships. I know both Amy and Kate, you've been part of papers about Thinking about the power dynamics of different research teams and all things like that. And that's that's an area of huge interest for me is thinking about how I can be more effective moving into a role as a researcher in better partnering with clinicians to do the work and answer the questions that are clinically relevant for specific teams and then working to generalize out from there.
So quick plug to reach out to me if you're ever interested in doing more of this work and building more of this, this evidence base [01:05:00] together.
Kate Grandbois: That just made me so happy. I can attest that Tim will answer your emails, and he's a very, very nice human being. So if you are listening and you are interested in reaching out and just saying, Oh, he's just saying that.
No, really? Well, put your email in the show notes. How about that? That was a wonderful thing to say. Uh, it's so important for us at the Nerdcast to really continue to focus on bridging that research practice gap, reducing power differentials between researchers and clinicians, bringing clinicians into the fold.
Um, the analogy that we use a lot is a lot of times, You know, there's no seat for us at the table, but it's not just that there's no seat for us at the table. It's that the table is in an office with a door that's hidden and we don't even know where the door is. So it really means a lot that you're extending, um, extending that and, and bringing that up.
That's, that's really wonderful. That's my nerdy soapbox for another episode. Another time. Um, thank you both so much for being [01:06:00] here. This was really, really wonderful. And we're so grateful for your time. Everything that you mentioned, all of the References and resources will be listed in the show notes for anybody who is listening while they drive or fold laundry or what have you.
Thank you again so much for being here.
Sponsor Post-Roll
Announcer: Thank you again to our corporate sponsor Ventris Learning, publisher of the Assessment of Literacy and Language, or ALL, and the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation, or the DELV. SLPs, school psychologists, and reading specialists use the ALL to diagnose developmental language disorder and to assess for emergent literacy skills, including dyslexia, for children ages 4 through 6.
The DELV is appropriate for students ages 4 through 9 who speak all varieties of English. To learn more, visit www.ventrislearning.com.
Kate Grandbois: Thank you so much for joining us in today's episode, as always, you can use this episode for ASHA CEUs. You can also potentially use this [01:07:00] episode for other credits, depending on the regulations of your governing body. To determine if this episode will count towards professional development in your area of study.
Please check in with your governing bodies or you can go to our website, www.slpnerdcast.com all of the references and information listed throughout the course of the episode will be listed in the show notes. And as always, if you have any questions, please email us at info@slpnerdcast.com
thank you so much for joining us and we hope to welcome you back here again soon.
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