Description
The world is full of interesting places to go, if you know where to look. In this resource, we showcase 22 of our favourite places on Earth; and use them to stimulate language comprehension and world knowledge.
Up to 15% of young school kids don’t have the language comprehension skills to cope fully with the demands of school (Hart & Fielding-Barnsley, 2009). Many of these kids struggle – some for their whole lives. So what can we do to improve students’ understanding of language?
Well, it helps to have a plan. And good plans are based on tried and tested frameworks. For language comprehension, one of the most influential frameworks was developed by Dr Marion Blank, a developmental psychologist. Dr Blank proposed four levels of abstraction, from least to most abstract:
Level 1: Directly supplied information (Matching perception).
Level 2: Classification.
Level 3: Reorganisation.
Level 4: Abstraction and Inferences.
Not all kids start school with an ability to complete Level 3 and 4 tasks. In this resource, we target Blank’s Levels 3 and 4 language comprehension tasks.
We have used these resources in our busy speech pathology clinic to support students with a range of different needs, including students with language and learning disorders, as well as students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. These resources are also appropriate for students of all ages who are learning English as an additional language.
This 31-page resource can be used for face-to-face sessions or for distance learning/telehealth sessions.
