How do you teach grammar to a young child?

[StarkAndWitchesWillFindYou]

And any book recommendations for me to learn about basic grammar?

Many tia.

Stark
You might be better posting this in the SN section of the website, because for a parent of a NT child, it is difficult to understand why you would want to teach grammar to a 4yo. The posters on the SN topic have much more experience and can give you better advice.

Otherwise, keep a look out for Moondog as she is a very wise SALT who frequents MN and gives excellent advice.

Was the therapist you saw trained in working with children with SN?

Thank you Mme, I wanted a more of a general education perspective. I know how ds learns, but I know nothing of the subject I want to teach him iyswim.

His SLT works in the SLT base at his school so I should hope she has experience. But I don't think ds has every uttered a sentence to her for her to know it is disordered.

Thank you Taking and tin

Ok. You might be better to look at books designed for teaching English as a Foreign Language - aimed at maybe aged 8yo?

Would he be interested in online grammar games?

op do you think your DS will respond to number/colour cards, as you could assign a number/colour to a type of word, to then lay them out in order.

subject
verb
object

Have a base sentence- I like chocolate

then have i/he/she/we and so on on white card
then have like/love/hate/eati/buy/need/want on blue
then have chocolate/milk/cheese/in red.

Keep playing around with the cards and putting them in the right colour order.

I would not bother with telling your DS about nouns, verbs etc for a while until the order became something they could get to grips with.

Grammar and syntax is something that is linear and based on step by step progression. Start small, and build up slowly.

ooooh Thank you. That might work.

At least give him the 'concept' of individual words in a sentence which I think he is really struggling with.

Once he understands that written words are useful to him he'll probably fly and hopefully that could support his spoken English.

Mme That's a really good idea wrt to the type of book.

I'm not sure about online games. He doesn't really like computers or TV type things, but if any come to mind I could have a go.

Stark. Can I just ask what kind of a speech disorder your DS has, and what the SLT has recommended?

The reason I ask is because I'm an SLT and would be very weary about "teaching" grammar to children with some disorders.

Perhaps you could ask to see a different SLT? Where abouts in the country are you?

xx

ASD IBlame

Probably something a bit like SPD if you wanted to label the language bit, but I'm guessing.

Sorry if my questions seemed rude, that wasn't my intention.

The colourful semantics as mentioned above may be good, I would definately recommend using visuals.

Maybe have some pictures to talk about. You could model a sentence for him, and then ask him to give a sentence. Talk to him about using "linking words" or little words, then maybe use visuals to re enforce this.

I'm really sorry you've had a bad experience with SLT. You are well within your rights to contact the dept and ask to see someone else.

Please let me know if there's anything I could help with. I havent been qualified long, but could always pick my colleagues brains.

xx

IBlame I have had a number of SALTs. I'm sorry to be rude about your profession but I have not yet met one who has made any difference at all to ds' progress.

The problem I believe lies in the lack of understanding and training in autism. Where you may be lucky to get a SLT who has some experience the assumptions are generic 'he has problems generalising' (ds doesn't) 'he is a visual learner' (ds isn't, in fact visuals interfere with his auditory processing and confuse him) 'he has no imagniative play' (he has loads, although possibly not at the level of his peers).

Then follows a whole load of solutions to things he doesn't have problems with, and predictably progress is slow.

I'm not blaming the SLTs as a whole. Resources are finite, parents cannot just be believed because they 'say' their child isn't a visual learner, but I am a bit cross at the reluctance to engage with me or even acknowledge potential learning.

So, not wanting ds to fall behind any more I've decided I'd better just get on with it and attempt to address the issues myself.

I don't think you rude at all. I think you are an asset to your profession for questioning and challenging.

Thank You Stark. I do feel genuinely sorry that you've had such bad experiences.

I would agree with you. There is very little training in Autism on the degree course, or at least that was the case when I trained which wasn't that long ago. Most of what I have learnt has been through experience and reading. For me though, the MOST importat thing is to listen to what the parents of the kids on my caseload say - they are the ones who live with the difficulties day-to-day, and know he effects they are having.

Good luck with helping your DS. I am by no means a specialist, but would be happy to do any "finding out" if you need me to.

xx

sorry to hijack your thread...i didn't mean to turn this into a debate about the merits (or lack of) of SLT

Stark I think the problem with ASD related language disorders imo is that there isn't a one size fits all approach. My ds was a screamer at three, at four his speech was very echolalic , at one point I thought he would never learn, never be toilet trained etc - he is six now and more leaning towards being HFA/mildly ASD - we tried everything recommended by SALT etc. Including going on PECs course.

What seems to have worked for my ds was time & it was very slow progress - maybe there isn't a particular solution. We did lots of modelling too, a running commentary on our lives, lots of reading, the backward step thing where you do everything to the last step and then the child does the last step(we did this with reading books, he would finish a much repeated sentence from the Owl and the pussy cat or The Cat in the Hat). I don't think one thing worked, but altogether this worked for ds, but once he started to copy he started to improve, though I cannot remember now when that leap came...
I suppose this is my convoluted way of saying don't despair - not sure if that helps, but language aquisition for my ds has been all over the place.

Only skimmed thread but IIRC there is a Children's book by Lynne truss, the author of eats shoots and leaves? May be worth googling.

I would tend to agree with FiveOrangePips. My DD with Asperger's traits (now 18) had delayed and then unclear speech. We had a couple of series of SLT sessions (not school based as she was home educated). They did not help a lot.

One thing that did seem to help was that, being HE, we had the time to be repetitive, take things at a slow speed, etc.

Have you considered that at 4 he may not be able to cope with learning at school (distractions, etc.) and you may be better taking him out for another year or two?

You may also find it helpful to post on the HE-Special list - many people there with a lot of experience with educating ASD children.

SDEUCH Unforuntately we lost a tribunal to home school him. We are legally obliged to follow the directions of the judge and his statement which says he requires to be in a nursery setting to learn peer interaction.

But thank you for that link. I might have a look.

What about things like the flip charts (sites like SmartKids have them, I think, or speech therapy resources sites) where you can change different parts of a sentence to make them silly/sensible - e.g., There will be about five sections of cards on a spiral flip board, like adjective, noun, verb, adverb, prepositional phrase, that you can mix and match to make sentences. So you might start off with 'The tall boy jumped quickly into the puddle' and then then you can change just one part of it at a time (and there will be pictures accompanying the words, to show what the different meaning is). Or eventually he could change them all to make a silly sentence, or you could categorise random sentences into silly or sensible, etc.

This is the sort of thing I mean

Ds had a puzzle that worked in the same way, Clouds. He didn't have any language disorders though.

'The Great Grammar Book' by Kate Petty and Jenny Maizels is great fun, and might be the sort of book you are looking for...link. There is also 'The Perfect Punctuation Book'in the same series of interactive pop-up books. You might like to take a look at the reviews on Amazon.

Ooh, thank you everyone. I have a few ideas now.

'Unforuntately we lost a tribunal to home school him. We are legally obliged to follow the directions of the judge and his statement which says he requires to be in a nursery setting to learn peer interaction.'

What country are you in? I wasn't aware that a parent could be over-ruled like that - certainly not in England/Wales. I'm not quite so sure about Scotland.

I can't recommend any particular books but try looking for TEFL or ESL books for young children. These are designed to help children acquire a second language and usually have a teacher's book too to help with directions. There's a selection here:

www.eflbooks.co.uk/browse.php?level=2&area=VYCO

It's a bit of a mine field so if you think that sort of thing might be useful, PM me and I'll do a bit more research for you (ie; ask a friend who knows!)

Tin When your child gets a statement the LA is legally responsible for their education.

Of course, most don't hold you to it since they can save on resources, but they CAN if they want enforce it through the courts and certainly through Social Service, who, incidently got involved as soon as we sent off our tribunal appeal, as is, I'm told, quite common.

www.education-otherwise.org/SEN.htm

is a link to EO and the legal aspects of HEing a child with a statement. They are usually spot on with their legal stuff.

And here's what the Dept for Education say and you would think that they would know what they are talking about!!

www.education.gov.uk/popularquestions/childrenandfamilies/specialeducationalneeds/a005390/can-a-child-with-a-special-educational-needs-statement-be-educated-at-home