Helping clients organize their language is a huge part of what we do. Using boxes to represent language concepts can help the abstract become concrete. In this podcast we describe many ways a box can take your therapy to the next level. 

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Free Resource Library

Prime to Rhyme cards

Developmental Sequence of Phonemic Awareness – Ep. 004
Autism Language Breakthrough – Ep. 025
Essential Language for Autism – Ep. 026

Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission

Transcript

Denise: I have the bottom and top of the box. So I have two open boxes and I get two swords in my hand and I model for you. And I put it in the child’s box. And I also point with my finger, actually touched their chest, because their box is by them. This is for you. This is your sword, I put it in their box. And then I say for me, and my index finger points to my own chest and my sword drops in my box.

Welcome to The Mindful SLP, the show that explores simple but powerful therapy techniques for optimal outcomes. I’m Denise Stratton, a pediatric speech language pathologist of 30 years. I’m closer to the end of my career than the beginning. And along the way, I’ve worked long and hard to become a better therapist.

Join me and I’ll do my best to make your journey smoother. I found the best therapy comes from employing simple techniques with a generous helping of mindfulness. Joining me in the conversation is Dan, my technical wizard and office manager.

Dan: Welcome back to The Mindful SLP. This week, we’re going to be talking about organizing language – now with boxes! Okay, this sounds kind of fun. Now I will admit I am a sorting organization… okay, I’m OCD, and I love boxes. I love sorting and I love organizing. Boxes are great for that, but how do you organize language with a box?

Denise: A box can help children visually separate concepts that aren’t really clear to them, aren’t really distinct in their mind. If you give them a physical object to sort, to represent, say pronouns, he and she, so you have girl dolls and boy dolls and you practice he and she, and so something that’s very sort of confused and tenuous in their minds suddenly becomes really clear. Because one goes in one box, one goes in another box.

It’s a great way of saying this belongs here and this belongs here to help them get those categories in their mind.

Dan: Okay. Well that makes a lot of sense.

Denise: So today I’m going to talk about four ways I use boxes with pronouns, rhyming words, and syllable sorting. Now Apple products come in the best boxes.

Dan: Oh, I love Apple boxes.

Denise: Did Steve jobs has something about boxes?

Dan: I think he did. He loved his packaging, that’s for sure.

Denise: Anyway, I save many Apple product boxes just for this very reason.

Dan: Well, let’s start with pronouns. Tell us a little bit more about how you use boxes for pronouns.

Denise: Well the first way I want to talk about is with the personal pronouns of me and you or yours and mine, which can be really confusing, especially if a child is on the autism spectrum.

So I have a game called Pop-up Pirate, and I know many speech therapists have Pop-up Pirate. Um, it wouldn’t have to be this game necessarily, but it’s got many, many swords that you stick into the barrel. And one of them randomly makes the pirate pop up. So I have, um, the bottom and top of the box. So I have two open boxes and I get two swords in my hand, and I model ‘for you’ and I put it in the child’s box. And I also point with my finger, actually touch their chest, because their box is by them. So, uh, this is for you, this is your sword, I put it in their box. And then I say ‘for me’ and my index finger points to my own chest and my sword drops in my box.

Then I hand them two swords, and I help them put one in their box, and one in my box. And I just model for me, for you, or you can say, this is mine, this is yours.

Dan: And then after you get all the swords sorted, then you can play the game.

Denise: Then we can play the game. Yeah, definitely. I just want that repetition. I want all the swords sorted first and then I bring out the barrel.

Dan: So that’s the fun part after they have the work of doing all the pronouns. Okay, that’s good.

Denise: Varying the language around for me, for you, red for me, blue for you, this is yours, this is mine. That’s exactly like we talked about in our essential language for autism podcast. Just that children’s brains will pick up on the pattern if you vary all the words around what you really want them to learn. So I vary the words around the pronouns as much as I can.

Dan: Oh, so the ELA podcasts are episodes 25 and 26, if you want to go back and listen to those.

Denise: And ELA stands for Essential Language for Autism, by the way.

Dan: Right, and you can find those at slpproadvisor.com slash blog, and then the number slash 25 or slash 26 or on your favorite podcast engine of choice. All right. Well, tell me about the second activity, He and She.

Denise: So I referred to this a little bit at the beginning. Um, but let me do a little caveat here about the pronouns He and She. Now, while these pronouns typically develop around three years old, they can be really, really challenging for language impaired children, the words he and she sound really similar. S H can be a later developing sound, it isn’t for all children, but it can be, so that makes she sounded a lot like he. And there seems to be a certain level of phonological awareness needed before they can absorb he and she. A real quick story here that I did tell on a earlier podcast about phonological awareness, but I was working with a kindergarten student on phonological awareness and her pronouns were all mixed up with he and she.

I was just really focusing on phonological awareness and my consonant vowel rhyming cards, which we’re gonna talk about later. And the day she sort of figured out that bo and ho and no rhymed because she was taking off the first sound and putting in a different sound. She couldn’t figure it out, the synthesization.

Then I had a stack of verb cards with he and she just off to the side and she picked them up and she went through like 25 of them and only made like one or two mistakes. You know, she was walking the dog, he was drinking milk, just went through them like that. Oh, okay. That’s interesting. And since then, I haven’t been, so gung-ho about he and she, if phonological awareness is something that needs to be addressed first, I’m kind of like, well, maybe that’s the thing that floats the boat for he and she. So I just wanted to get that out there before I talk about this, I don’t focus on he and she too much if the child was already using pronouns but mixing them up. And if they’re just learning to tell stories and make more complex sentences, I’ll wait until they’re more solid on putting sentences together, getting early story grammar internalized, and getting some phonological awareness going, and then I’ll tackle he and she.

However, if they aren’t using pronouns at all, to just totally leave him out, then I figure well, let’s just do this from the beginning. Now you need to be using some kind of pronoun. And I also did this with a three-year-old who was saying it for he, she, and they, just it every time. I was like okay, not it. So what I did, again I have two open boxes. I have boy dolls and girl dolls. And so I’ll put one boy doll in one box and one girl doll in another box. So they know, this is the way box, this is the girl box. And before we even say he and she, I will just separate boy, girl, boy, girl, because sometimes they need that. Sometimes they’re not even really used to thinking that way. This is a boy, this is a girl.

And once they’re solid on that, then they’ll go with a he and she and separate them out. And then we’ll substitute pictures. And once they’re real solid on that, you know, you can just start taking the whole box thing away and start creating sentences. But there was one young man who struggled with even the boy girl thing.

He was just mixing it up. And I noticed once he said like grandpa, he was holding one of the boy dolls and he said like, grandpa. So we went from there and we took all the boy dolls and we said like, grandpa liked dad and all the girl dolls, like mom, like grandma. And then from there, he, he figured it out.

And by the way, now he’s using he and she in sentences, that was just a few months ago. So, yeah. Cool.

Dan: It’s, I don’t know. I always find it fascinating how some kids, you know, the trigger that makes everything click for them is just fascinating.

Denise: Yeah. So it’s finding that perfect level and to zooming in right there.

Dan: Alright. Rhyming words, you talked about this activity a long time ago, back in episode four in the phonological awareness episode, but how do you do that with boxes?

Denise: There’s a lot to do here. So let me just explain a little bit first. Okay. This seems like a very simple activity and it’s going to be too low for some clients.

There are some clients who are so delayed in phonological awareness. They have no prayer of advancing to phonemic awareness without getting more ability to even recognize the similarities and differences in the simplest syllables. Often I see it with apraxia once I get the motor challenges largely managed, then the phonological awareness is boom, right there. Like, oh man, we got a lot of work to do.

What I do is I start with again, two open boxes, the top and the bottom. Okay. And I have a mirror. And I have my consonant vowel rhyming cards. So what these are, I have several words that are consonant vowel that rhyme, like the oh set, no, bow, so, the ooh set, to, shoe, new, right? Like that. Okay. All those basic vowels that are real easy to see, E A I.

Dan: Those cards are available on our website.

Denise: So then what I do is I will take two sets and mix them up. So say I mix up E and ooh. Okay. Okay. And then we’ll look in the mirror and we’ll say the word like me. Okay. And we’ll look at what our lips do, and then we’ll put it in the box that matches and believe it or not, some kids struggle with this, not even aware of what their face is doing.

Dan: Right. So do you put like the lip shape for E in that box so it triggers?

Denise: I forgot to mention lip shape’s very important, yes. With each of these vowels I have a card that shows. So we’re trying to match the lip shape.

Dan: Okay, that’s their visual trigger.

Denise: That’s their visual trigger, okay. And so once they get really good sorting, you know, with the mirror, I take the mirror away and see if they can still sort without the mirror.

And then you can also use the boxes to have a set of three cards, two that rhyme and one that doesn’t, and you have without the lip shapes in there. Okay. Which do go together, which one doesn’t go together, a more analytical task. Well it’s analysis, which is really, really important.

Dan: One of these things is not like the other…

Denise: But I have a ton of activities I do with these cards that go on from there, but I describe those in episode four. And also I’m going to make a video someday. I haven’t yet, but that’s just how I start. And it’s really fascinating to see who struggles with that and who doesn’t. Oh, what I said earlier about needing to be able to think about sounds analytically. So to synthesize something is to put something together, buh oh, bo. To analyze something is to take it apart.

And as David Kilpatrick points out in his book about dyslexia and reading success, the analysis is really, really important. And sometimes that’s missed, it’s missed in our approaches to dyslexia and to teaching phonological awareness. We don’t teach them to analyze. We just say ooh they can synthesize, when the analysis part is really, really important.

Dan: Do you have another activity where you teach analysis?

Denise: Sorting syllables is sort of the beginning of analysis. Now I love to use David Kilpatrick’s Equipped for Reading Success and bang right off the bat, he starts with kids analyzing syllables, meaning you would say, say birthday, say birthday and then say, okay, say it again, but don’t say day, right?

Like that. Some of them it’s a huge struggle because you’re taking it apart. So I’m not doing that yet, but some kids have no prayer of doing that kind of activity until they get greater syllable awareness. One thing to do that is to teach them to sort syllables, to even be aware of how many syllables there are.

So here’s a little trick. Some kids have trouble clapping, right, number of syllables, but a syllable is where the vowel happens. And so your mouth opens more when you say a vowel, you can feel it move. So if you put your hand under your chin and your jaw like this, and you say like, baby, how many times did your chin move?

Twice. Yeah. So that’s a really, really good tip I picked up and we just do the chin check. I call it the chin check to check how many syllables are actually in that word. And I really like to sort one to three syllables. I mean, four is way out there. I leave four syllables til later.

Dan: How do you do that with a box?

Denise: Well, you need three boxes, right?

Dan: Obviously. Are you putting sounds in there?

Denise: Pictures.

Dan: Oh, like a picture of a baby and then when they figure out that it’s two, you put it in the two syllable box? Yes. Okay. I was thinking you put a bay here and a be there. Okay. I was making you this way too complicated.

Denise: So yes, we number the boxes 1, 2, 3, and then we mix up all the cards and suddenly they figure out that strawberry is three and dog is one and that kind of stuff.

So that’s one of the things you can do with syllables to get them ready to really analyze, just one of the many things. And with this, I’ve just noticed that I need to make it really accessible and fun. I’m typically doing this with kids who have already been exposed to it at school, but they can’t do it. And sometimes they feel embarrassed or ashamed because they’re older.

And so I had one little girl who would just go into the corner. She said, give me a moment and she’d go and she’d turn her head in the corner. I knew she was doing the chin check to herself and then to turn around and say the answer. So I was like, oh, okay. I’m glad you’re trying. But you know, sometimes that happens, they’re just, they feel like…

Dan: You gotta get confidence in that stuff, because I remember struggling with that in school for a while too. And it finally clicked, but yeah, I, yeah.

Denise: They feel embarrassed.

Dan: Exactly. That’s a horrible feeling and it’s nice to be able to do it in the corner. I like that.

So in a safe place, just make your therapy room a safe place.

Denise: And I know all speech therapists try and do that. So with all this talk about phonological awareness, I just want to refer people to the tracking chart I made for phonological awareness skills, because you just can’t notice a child is having trouble with syllables and say, I’m going to work on syllables.

There might be stuff even earlier than that they need to work on. So I’ve made this tracking shot that’s developmentally appropriate and I don’t, I’m not hard and fast about it. Like, I’m not like you have. Every single skill in this level before we’re moving on, need to be doing pretty well in that area.

And then move on to the next area, then move on to the next area because you’re building a really firm foundation and that’s available in our free resource library slpproadvisor.com slash free.

Dan: Yes. And there’s two episodes on phonological awareness, episodes, 10 and 11, that you can listen to, to kind of get that understanding of how to use that.

Denise: Yes. In addition to episode four, so we’ve spent a long time on this, haven’t we? It’s super important, that’s why. I have noticed as I’ve spent more time on phonological awareness, after the motor skills are well underway because that’s really primary if there isn’t a motor issue. After those are well on their way to being resolved, if I just really, really hit phonological awareness, I noticed the other things don’t need so much attention, like their ability to sort out grammar on their own kind of comes, just like what the he and she. Their ability to do a lot of things seems to progress quicker. If you can say this the thing I really need to be focusing on right now.

Dan: Well I’ll admit when I first read this notes for this episode, I could not figure out what it was you were going to do with boxes, but this really makes it simple. It’s, it’s almost too simple to sort things with using a box, but, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? I mean, when you master the simple, the complex takes care of itself and that’s really what you’re helping these kids, give them a visual cue.

Denise: I love my boxes and my post-it notes. Come back next week. Well should say sticky notes, right? Come back next week and find out how I organize language with sticky notes. I keep them in business.

Dan: We do buy them by the pound. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next week.. Thanks for listening to The Mindful SLP. We invite you to sign up for our free resource library at slpproadvisor.com slash free. You’ll get access to some of Denise’s best tracking tools, mindfulness activities, and other great resources to take your therapy to the next level. All this is for free at slpproadvisor.com slash free. If you enjoyed this podcast, subscribe, and please leave us a review on Apple podcasts and other podcast directories.