MORE ON HOW TO PROVE NON-VERBAL KIDS CAN READ!

The Sentence Builder

This tool is absolutely beautiful for enabling kids who are non-verbal to “show their stuff.” It’s clear and indisputable evidence that they are, indeed, reading. I’ll begin by showing you a video of Elizabeth. Elizabeth is one of my students: 6 years old, with DS and  CAS (Childhood Apraxia of Speech). She is non-verbal but reads like a champ; her mom and I are racing to keep up with her. In this video, I’m asking Elizabeth to build a randomly chosen sentence, “Mommy saw a white cat with four legs.”

It’s quite a long sentence (8 words) for a 6-year-old, but since she can easily do short, simple sentences, I wanted to test her with a complex sentence with many words. She’s nearly mastered the first 100 high-frequency words that our schools require, and can read them in the context of my “Riddle Books 1 & 2;” but can she generalize that sight vocabulary? That’s what I wanted to find out.

So here is Elizabeth (in two parts, since I haven’t yet figured out how to upload an iPhone 90-second video clip in one piece.)

Elizabeth, Sentence  (Part 1)

Elizabeth, Sentence (Part 2)

For many of my students, I work with sentences of only 3-5 words, and keep the type and the cards larger; it all depends on how experienced the student is. And notice how I sometimes use my hand to guide her eyes back and forth across the whole line of cards; this helps her to avoid getting stuck on the wrong word, especially when there are many words to cognize.

Notice also that, though Elizabeth is non-verbal, she sure gets vocal when she picks the wrong card! Remember last week’s blog on “Fear of Failure?” Well, some of our kids have “Aggravation At Error” instead, and you can definitely hear her expressing that!

I found this sentence builder at Lakeshore Learning Store; it is one of 4 wooden sentence builders in a set called “Creating Sight-Word Sentences Center,” designed for classroom use. It has pre-made sentence strips and word cards for inserting in marked “blank” spots, and though you can get some use out of the strips and word cards, our kids need individual word work primarily, so I’m lukewarm about recommending the whole kit. Why? I’m opposed to using rebus cards, as they delay real learning for our children with Down syndrome; but the flip sides of the cards show word only–yay! So you can still use the kit wisely.

You can also buy separate wooden name card holders at Lakeshore and use them as sentence builders. Make your own cards using small 2×3 blank index cards, also found at Lakeshore Learning. Here’s what they look like; you’ll find them in the language section:

As I’ve recommended in past blogs, if the school staff isn’t yet aware of your child’s reading progress, videotape that progress in action and send them the video.

So have fun with this, and prove your child can read!