Full Course Description

Play & Language: The Roots of Literacy

OUTLINE

Foundations of Cognitive-Play-Literacy Relationship: Frameworks for Assessment/Intervention

Dynamic systems theory: integrating nature and nurture theories
The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning
A performance competence framework for assessment and intervention

Social-Emotional/Cognitive Precursors to Play: Birth-17 months

Neurotypical and atypical patterns of social emotional development
Environmental influences on social emotional development and play
Temperamental variations in children
Presymbolic play

Development of Pretend Play Dimensions (17 months – 5 years): Relationship of Play Dimensions to Language & Literacy

Theory of Mind Dimension (understanding thoughts & feelings of self & others)
Decontextualization Dimension (reduced use of props in play)
Thematic Dimension (from familiar to novel pretend themes)
Organization Dimension (sequencing & planning of play)

Interventions to Promote Playing to Learn

Set goals for playful learning
Promote literate-style language through play
Develop phonological awareness skills through playful practices
Promote thematic pretend play to develop foundations for language and literacy

OBJECTIVES

Explain the development and interrelationships of cognition, play, language, social-emotional skills and literacy.
Describe methods used to evaluate a child’s play/language skills.
Employ play to promote the cognitive, language and social-emotional skills that underlie children’s effective social interactions and literacy comprehension.
Describe current theories of language/ literacy learning.
Explain the role of play in self-regulation.
Implement a playful practice approach to emergent literacy.

Program Information

Target Audience

Counselors, Teachers/Educators, Occupational Therapists & Occupational Therapy Assistants, Social Workers, Speech-Language Pathologists, and other Mental Health Professionals.

Copyright : 02/02/2017

Narrative Intervention for Building Social-Emotional Skills and Self-Regulation in Children and Adolescents: Going Beyond Language and Literacy

Program Information

Target Audience

Counselors, Teachers/Educators, Occupational Therapists & Occupational Therapy Assistants, Social Workers, Speech-Language Pathologists and Other Helping Professionals who Work with Children and Adolescents in Elementary through High School

Outline

Narrative Intervention: Going Beyond Language and Literacy

Types of narratives and their roles and functions
- Fictional
- Personal/autobiographical
- Life stories
Common Core curriculum and social skills
Cultural variations in personal and fictional narratives

Narrative Intervention to Promote

Social-emotional skills
Self-regulation
Self-identity
Self-determination
Problem-solving

Narrative Assessment

Fictional narratives
- Eliciting fictional narratives using stimuli varying in cognitive and linguistic task demands
Personal narratives
- Prompts for eliciting personal narratives
- Rubrics to evaluate personal narratives
Life stories
- Interviewing strategies to elicit life stories
- Rubrics to evaluate types of coherence in life stories
Narrative microstructures and macrostructures
- Vocabulary for thoughts and feelings (Theory of Mind) and complex syntax
- Structure, content/plot/theme and coherence

NARRATIVE INTERVENTION STRATEGIES: INTEGRATING FICTIONAL AND PERSONAL STORIES

Strategies to Develop Autobiographical Memory and Personal Narratives

Reminiscing that promotes autobiographical memory
Using children’s books to trigger reminiscing
Elements and influences of settings on stories
Identify and build narrative plots
Developing landscape of consciousness (Theory of Mind)
- Making connections between emotions/ mental states and actions
- Developing vocabulary and syntax to express connections between mental/ emotional states and behaviors/events
Support-making narrative inferences
- Question-answer relationships – from literal to inferential
- Levels of language abstraction – from contextualized to decontextualized language
Facilitate personal narrative skills to promote problem-solving and self-regulation

Strategies to Develop Life Stories

Role of characterization in life stories
- External (physical) and internal (psychological) traits/characteristics – identifying relationships between character traits and character behaviors and narrative events
- Use biographies/autobiographies to understand characterization – relationships between traits and events
- Character transformation: life turning points
Identify and develop themes
Support making narrative inferences
- Think alouds
- Questioning the author
Facilitate life stories to develop self-identity and self-regulation

Objectives

Articulate the relevance of storytelling to the English Language Arts (ELA) state standards and how storytelling meets IEP and curriculum goals.
Analyze the types of storytelling and their connection to social-emotional development in students.
Employ tools to assess and document the development of students’ narrative structure, coherence, vocabulary, and linguistic elements.
Analyze the relationships between setting, plot, character traits, social-emotional skills, self-regulation, self-identity, and problem solving.
Utilize age-appropriate literature to help students connect emotions/behaviors/mental states of characters to self to promote self-regulation.
Apply strategies to support inferential thinking by relating emotions and mental states to events.
Facilitate students’ recognition of characterization, plot, and theme in fictional stories, autobiographical narratives, and life stories.