Case Study: Impacting Classroom Engagement
In the interest of safeguarding, this child has been referred to as ‘Eric’ throughout the case study.
Our Speech and Language Therapist, Orla, has been working with Eric due to the impact of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) on his speech, language and communication needs. Eric has been receiving intervention with Chatterbug since 2020.
Background
Eric has been experiencing difficulties with communicating in class with both school staff and his peers. As a result of inadequate language skills, Eric has found he is struggling with his classroom engagement, impacting his academic progress.
Mostly, Eric’s DLD had been causing difficulties with how he got his ideas across successfully, as he was unable to properly formulate sentences as well as his grammar lacked structure. This, naturally, can be extremely frustrating for Eric, as he is unable to articulate what he needs to help his development and learning. In addition, this can impact how he forms social bonds with his peers.
His difficulties also extend to understanding spoken language. This means struggling to process what has been said to him and causing further problems with being able to follow instructions. This, sadly, means he cannot always actively partake in class work which will impede his academic success.
Right now, Eric is in KS2 and is due to move on to secondary school. With such a big change, where there will be more people and more complex subjects involved, it is essential to provide intervention so that he will prosper in KS3!
How did Chatterbug help?
To help with Eric’s language skills, Orla implemented a variety of different interventions.
To start, Orla and Eric worked together on Colourful Semantics strips, alongside Eric’s teaching assistant. Colourful Semantics allowed Eric to break down each segment of the sentence into ‘who’, ‘doing what’, ‘to what’ and ‘where’. This also helps with word categorisation, to understand where nouns and verbs are typically placed in sentences.
Not only does this help with narrative skills, but he can then translate this into his spoken language. This can improve how he formulates sentences and his grammar usage. By using Colourful Semantics, Orla was able to identify that he was also struggling with his verbal reasoning skills, meaning new targets could be set and worked on.
With Colourful Semantics, Orla also used our BrightSpeech Blank Level Scenarios. The aim of these is to help a child’s verbal reasoning skills. They do this by depicting a scene with related questions. The levels increase in complexity and help the child translate what is in front of them into spoken language. It also improves their understanding of spoken language as the therapist may ask additional questions to help prompt their answer.
Most importantly, Orla made sure to use things that were of Eric’s interest! To encourage engagement, it is important to have the child invested in the sessions. This meant Orla used stories in Colourful Semantics that adapted to things he liked, as well as using pictures of interest for his blank level questions.
Finally, to ensure that the intervention was consistent, Orla ensured that all of Eric’s parents and school staff understood the intervention. This means that these strategies can be implemented in his day-to-day life. This increases the likelihood of success for Eric’s intervention.
Eric’s progress to date
Since receiving intervention with Chatterbug, Eric has made tremendous progress with his sentence structure. He has met the targets set for him and is even able to formulate sentences containing ‘who’, ‘doing what’, ‘to what’ and ‘where’ information!
After discovering and working on his verbal reasoning skills, Eric has even progressed here also and begun working on new targets. This has massively improved his engagement in the classroom and his understanding of different subjects.
With the progress that has been made, Orla is now able to review Eric’s targets and set new ones, as well as planning ahead ready for his transition to secondary school.
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