Developmental Language Disorder – Case Study
We have been working with Daniel since November 2016. He has received regular, weekly therapy sessions in primary school from Year 1 to Year 6. With this, Daniel has been taught activities and strategies, in collaboration with other SLT provisions, to support him in class and at home. Chatterbug has also implemented training for school staff to ensure his language needs are understood and supported in the classroom.
Background
Daniel received a diagnosis of DLD in Year 1. He initially struggled most with grammar and putting sentences together, but as he progressed through primary school, he developed better grammar and vocabulary. His main difficulties then became telling informative, coherent stories, making inferences from large amounts of spoken information, and word skills (such as defining words).
How did Chatterbug help?
Daniel worked with our SLT, Anne-Marie. We have worked a lot on vocabulary, specific sentence structures and grammar, as well as story-telling (‘narrative’) and verbal reasoning skills. Over the last year we focused on:
- Awareness and use of the passive voice in spoken and written sentences (e.g. “the boy was pushed by the girl”)
- Complex sentences which use the conjunction ‘until’ (e.g. “I played outside until the bell rang”)
- Defining concrete words by putting them in a category and giving the important information about them (e.g. “a ‘dragon’ is…a kind of mythical creature, which has wings and breathes fire.”)
- Understanding and defining words for emotions, feelings and personal qualities, such as ‘lonely’, ‘nosey’, ‘safe’.
- Verbal reasoning skills at ‘Blank Level 4’/’Language for Thinking Level C’, with an emphasis on making explanations clearer by including enough information.
Client progress to date
Daniel made steady progress against all the targets set in his Speech and Language Therapy sessions and met almost all his targets. With a little prompting, and when given time and space to concentrate, he is able to do all the tasks listed above.
Speech and language therapy can be a long journey, so he still finds it difficult to use some of these skills and language structures in his everyday, spontaneous communication. He is easily overloaded or sidetracked when simultaneously taking in too much verbal information.
However, he has made enough progress each year to stay in his mainstream class with his friends and familiar teachers. Despite his original anxiety and avoidance of speaking, he is now a confident speaker who loves to make a joke. Daniel knows that listening and talking a lot tire him out, so has learnt to set boundaries surrounding this. Even though he finds tasks involving words hard, he has come to love ‘word games’ and is very proud of his excellent maths skills.
Daniel is now moving on to high school, where there is a specialist language resource base. The high school told us that this client is achieving ‘too well’ to attend the Resource Base – he will continue to learn and socialise in a mainstream classroom, with additional support for his language and learning skills only as and when needed. We are absolutely delighted to see the progress he has made through his time with Chatterbug.
What has our client said about their therapy?
Daniel has said he always enjoys his speech and language therapy sessions, and that his SLT just ‘gets’ him.
He has even gifted Anne-Marie a thank you present, including a quote saying, “Everyone deserves a voice. Thank you for helping me find mine”.
Get in touch
Interested in how Chatterbug can help you? Get in touch on:
Phone: 0113 240 8510 Email: [email protected]
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