Our feature this week is written by the founders of Talking Wizard – two speech language pathologists with a combined total of 20 years of experience working with children. Together they created Splingo’s Language Universe which was featured previously on our App Friday program. Eleanor talks about tuning into our children, observing what interests them, and factoring their cues into learning experiences that will be fun and engaging for teacher and student.
Let them teach you
There are days when I actually can’t believe someone pays me to do my job. Don’t get me wrong, there are also days when I think there must be easier ways to earn money, but generally the former is true. These are the days when I’ve spent time messing about with shaving foam, Jell-o and bubbles – that beats an office job any day! As a children’s Speech and Language Pathologist I have found the key to teaching any skill is to let the child teach you how to teach them. Quite literally in the case of one of my students, whose favourite ‘reward’ in therapy was to turn the tables and do therapy right back to me! It certainly helped me to reflect on my practice!
Look for their interests
With most children the lesson isn’t quite so obvious. Having worked with the whole range of children from typically developing kids with minor speech difficulties, to non-verbal children with learning difficulties and Autism, there’s always something to be learned if you look closely. It might be the way they gradually disappear under the table limbo-style, as though to say “I really need you to teach me in a comfier chair, so I don’t have to work so hard to sit still”. It might be the way their eyes are magnetized to a toy on the shelf behind you, telling you “that’s what I really want to be doing right now; that’s the thing that motivates me”. Or it could be the way they bounce, spin, squeal or flap which says “this is what I’m interested in; this is the key to helping me learn”. Children are actually very good at teaching us what they need in order to help them learn.
Become familiar with new educational tools
This was the inspiration behind Talking Wizard, a company formed together with another SLP. Our mission is to provide high-quality, motivating speech and language resources. We want to make use of all we’ve learned from the children in our lives, both in and outside of work, to develop the kinds of resources for learning that kids would invent themselves. The biggest lesson we have learned from children is how important technology is to them. Even something as simple as using a calculator function on a basic model cell phone to teach number recognition is so much more enticing than the traditional means of learning.
Direct them to learning by listening first
We started at the beginning with the most fundamental skill upon which learning is built; the ability to listen and understand language. Our first App, Splingo’s Language Universe, has allowed us to combine our clinical knowledge about how children develop listening and language skills with the insights we have been given into how children like to learn. We’ve consulted our ‘teachers’ at every stage of the process and the feedback from the whole spectrum of children in our acquaintance has been immensely useful and at times very entertaining!
Our moments of triumph have ranged from being patted down by students in search of “the alien game”, to recent feedback from a fellow SLP about how a non-verbal child with Autism and motor difficulties spent 40 minutes engaged with the game. Using a child’s natural fascinations as the vehicle for the learning process means that learning happens naturally as part of the fun. (Take our friend the Jell-o fan. He loves Jell-o, but math…not so much. He wasn’t the least bit interested in his learning objective to match numbers, but hide the numbers inside the Jell-o and bingo! Quite literally.)
As Plato put it: “Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” Though I’m not sure he had Jell-O in mind at the time.
So true! Wise words indeed. Following a child’s lead can take you on some amazing journeys and remind us what its like to be a kid again!
My 3 year old PDDNOS son loves Splingo. it was one of the first apps we purchased from moms with apps Friday salea. He learned on top, beside, in, and big or little in just one week! The reward of the spaceship makes it even more fun to learn. My little Owen will choose a harder level of difficulty when he feels like a challenge! I pray that you are able to create many more apps like this one…maybe a similar app for learning numbers, letters, and colors. Thanks again!
great post! we learned the same lessons when making our first app, let the children guide you 😉