Super Star Speech

Not too long ago, the use of sign language was reserved for the deaf and hearing-impaired and the people who needed to communicate with them. Today, signing is much more prevalent. A few weeks ago, at our church’s vacation Bible school, nearly all the songs the kids learned were accompanied by some signing. Not only is it fun for the kids, but the motions help them learn the songs more quickly. And I can’t help but think that if, in the future, some of these kids are in a position to communicate with a hearing-impaired person that uses sign language, they will have  a head start.

Another use of sign language that is becoming more prevalent is the practice of teaching signs to babies, beginning when they are just a few months old, well before they are beginning to communicate through spoken language. And why would parents of normally developing children do this? Well, here are some reasons:

1. Simple signs are easier to produce than spoken words.

2. When babies and toddlers have the ability to communicate, their frustration levels go down.

3. Teaching sign language while speaking to your child does not slow down the acquisition of spoken language. In fact, it may actually accelerate language acquisition.

Teaching sign language to babies is turning into a big business. Several companies produce DVDs and books to teach Baby Sign, which tends to be a simplified version of the ASL (American Sign Language) signs. I taught my children some signs when they were babies. We just used a handful of words….eat, thank-you, milk, please, etc. They did pick them up quickly and use them appropriately before they were a year old. I didn’t stick with it, though. They were all early talkers who spoke in complete sentences between 18 and 24 months, so they didn’t need the additional communication tool. I do wish I had followed up with it more, though, so that they would have had some competence in sign language as older children. They learn so fast when they are little!

Signing can be a very useful tool for children who are language delayed or who have physical disabilities that affect their speech. Giving a child another means to communicate can greatly reduce the frustration and accompanying tantrums that result from the inability to speak. Simultaneously teaching sign and stimulating spoken language can actually positively affect the speech of spoken language as well.

Here is an interesting article from the Seattle Times about teaching sign language to babies: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/homegarden/2012434730_babysignlanguage26.html

The theme of the July 14 edition of the Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Minute is “Speech Trouble.”  Read what the columnists have to say on this topic and find some good links and resources.

When you think of a speech/language disorder, what comes to your mind? A child who stutters? One who says, “wabbit” for “rabbit?”  An autistic child who has only a few words in his spoken vocabulary?  Speech-language pathologists work with a wide range of issues. These issues fall into several main categories:

Articulation

Articulation disorders include any type of speech sound errors.

Language

A language disorder is a deficit in receptive language (comprehension), expressive language (speaking), or both.  The child may have deficits in vocabulary, have difficulty formulating complete sentences or difficulty answering questions. He may exhibit poor grammar or misuse pronouns. His speech may sound fairly normal, but he may not use it appropriately in social situations.

Stuttering

A child (or adult) who stutters has difficulty with the fluency of his speech. He or she may repeat sounds or syllables. He may stretch out sounds at the beginning of words or “get stuck” when speaking. He may avoid social situations that he fears will cause him to stutter.  Many children exhibit short periods of disfluency between the ages of two and four as their language skills are rapidly increasing. This can be perfectly normal. If the symptoms are severe, or if the patterns continue beyond four, it may be indicative of a stuttering problem that needs speech therapy.

Voice Disorders

The most common voice disorder in children is a hoarseness caused by vocal abuse. This is typically seen in little boys that scream a lot. It is also common in singers. This vocal abuse can cause physical damage that requires surgery. A speech pathologist can work with the child to help him or her learn speaking methods that will be gentle on the vocal folds, allowing the damage to heal.

Another common voice issue with children is hyponasality or hypernasality. These are generally affected by cleft palate (repaired or unrepaired) or hearing impairment.

Speech-language pathologists also work with some issues that are not directly related to speech, such as swallowing disorders.

If you suspect that your child may have a problem in any of these areas, a speech and language assessment may be advisable. A speech pathologist can help determine whether your child’s speech behaviors need remediation, should be watched and rechecked later, or are within normal limits for his age.

This article from The Irish Times really touched me…

Sitting your Leaving Cert, moving away from home, going on to further education, being named student of the year. These are all major milestones, but especially so when you have Down syndrome. Not that that stopped one inspirational student, writes Vicki McKenna

NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD student Róisín De Búrca has had a busy year. One of the few people in Ireland with Down syndrome to have completed a full Leaving Certificate last summer, she then became part of an even smaller group by proceeding on to further education. On top of that, De Búrca recently won Bank of Scotland’s student of the year award. “I felt proud of myself, something I can accomplish in life, something that belongs to me alone instead of the family,” she says.

De Búrca has just finished a Fetac Level 5 course in Business Administration at Galway Technical Institute (GTI). She chose this course because: “I wanted to see how the business environment worked and wanted to see if it was the subject I wanted to get into.” As a native Irish speaker, she spent two weeks on work experience in the office of an Irish-speaking creche, based in Muintearas in Leitir Mór. “It was easier working there because everyone knew me there and I was able to communicate through Irish because it is an Irish-speaking organisation,” De Búrca explains.

This work experience involved administrative functions, counting cash and bagging it for lodgements, filling in forms, including menus and Garda clearance forms.

De Búrca has a confident, easy going personality and loves creative writing, a pursuit she devotes much of her spare time to. “I usually write about love and death. I just want to do something to take my mind off things. Now, I am hoping to do a script for a play,” she says. “My favourite novel is Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I just love vampire novels, that is what I am trying to do with my book to bring vampires in as a plot towards the start.”

English and Irish were her favourite subjects in school, and she mentions her particular love of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , King Lear and Macbeth .

She also has a keen – and varied – interest in music, listing favourites including Luke Kelly and the Dubliners; sean-nós singers including Nan Tom Teaimín; Irish country singer John Beag; popstar Hannah Montana; and folk giants Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.

THE CONSIDERABLE SUPPORT De Búrca received helped open the world for her and has enabled her to live independently, says her mother, Eileen Kenny. “It is very important that people with disabilities get the help they need.

“Róisín’s level of achievement is exceptionally high, and that’s partly because of the level of opportunity she got. If she had never been put in for the Junior Cert, then she wouldn’t have achieved it. Likewise, the school could have put her in for the Leaving Cert Applied only, but they didn’t; they offered her the full Leaving Cert. Children with disabilities are often as much handicapped by the low expectations of their carers and those around them as they are by their disabling condition. Roisin has been lucky.

“The opportunities always came from the school. Anyone that did help her – teachers and the education psychologist – have always been impressed by her abilities. She had to work harder than average to achieve the same result, so she was very tired at the end of the day. She is very diligent and hardworking, so she was prepared to put in the necessary time.”

De Búrca’s secondary school principal, Máire de Bhaldraithe, says, “Róisín had drive and enthusiasm for learning from day one in Scoil Chuimsitheach Chiaráin. Her confidence and single mindedness won the hearts of her fellow students and of the staff.”

Gráinne Murphy, independence officer with Down Syndrome Ireland (DSI), notes that De Búrca’s achievement broke new ground because she did “a full Leaving Cert and passed six subjects”.

“She would have been in the minority of people with Down syndrome in her age group to attend secondary school.”

From a family of five brothers and one sister, De Búrca credits the support of her family with helping her on her journey through mainstream education.

Of her move away from the family home, she says: “Once you get into the rhythm of living in Galway away from your parents, I found it relaxing. There is a great student life here.”

It is vital to have support systems in place for people with Down syndrome, DSI president Claire Leonard says. “I would be very much in favour and I would always encourage parents to try mainstreaming, but if the classes are very big and if they do not get enough support, then they are going to get lost in the system,” she adds.

“The earlier you get stimulation and the earlier you get intervention going, the better their prospects for later on.”

There are far fewer people with Down syndrome going into secondary school than primary school, Leonard, says. “I think a lot of them going would tend to veer towards special schools at that stage,” she explains.

FOR THE STUDENT OF the year award, De Búrca won a €1,000 scholarship from Bank of Scotland Ireland.

Explaining the reasons the bank selected De Búrca for the scholarship, Rhona O’Connor, charity manager for Bank of Scotland says: “I met Róisín at the Down Syndrome World Conference in Royal Hospital Kilmainham last August where I was terribly impressed by her achievements and personality. She was not bigheaded and was modest in her success.”

“I was very proud of her,” her mother Eileen says, “particularly as it was not an award restricted to people with disabilities. I was glad that the amount of effort she had put in was acknowledged.

“I also feel that Róisín is breaking new ground for people with Down syndrome and therefore increasing the opportunities for people who are younger than she is.”

Down syndrome explained

Among the most common characteristics of Down syndrome are developmental disabilities, where motor skills can be a problem and there is a slowed and/or incomplete mastery of physical coordination.
Down syndrome is a set of mental and physical symptoms that result from having three copies of chromosome 21 instead of two copies. That is why Down syndrome is also referred to by the name Trisomy 21.
Symptoms of Down syndrome can range from mild to moderate to severe/profound. Róisín De Búrca has Standard Trisomony 21.
Between 90 and 95 per cent of all Down syndrome is Standard Trisomy 21.

I just discovered a very interesting program on the internet. A home hearing test that uses pure tones generated by your computer! There is a free trial version that tests several frequencies. The tones must be calibrated for each computer, so in order for it to be functional, you need someone with good hearing or someone with a recent audiometric test to set the tones accurately. Once it is calibrated, the subject presses the CTRL key or a joystick whenever he hears a tone and the program automatically produces a graph of hearing levels at different frequencies.

I set the tones to my hearing levels. I have an audiometer, but if you have a young person with good hearing around, you could get reasonably accurate results by calibrating it to 0 db at every frequency. (0 db is average normal hearing for a young adult.)  This took about 5 minutes. I just used my ipod headphones for this experiment. They worked fine, but higher quality, noise blocking headphones are recommended.

The frequencies included in the free trial are 500hz to 2000hz. People with noise-induced hearing losses generally have a loss in the 4000hz range, so the free trial version won’t pick that up. When I do hearing screenings, I test 500hz to 4000hz, which is the range of most speech. The full version of this program produces tones from 125hz to 8000hz.

This could be fun just to play with, or useful for a screening for all your family members. Of course, if you had any concerns, you would need to have full testing done by an audiologist.

I have no connection to this company—Esseraudio.com–I just thought this was cool!

Homeschoolblogger.com is offering  some free online classes over the summer, including one on teaching your baby sign language and another on teaching the love of reading.

Are you in need of inspiration, encouragement, and support in your homeschool journey? Is your time precious, your money tight, and your desire to improve your homeschool on your to-do list? All of us at The Old Schoolhouse^® and HomeschoolBlogger.com are very pleased to announce an inspiring, new opportunity: HomeschoolBlogger.com’s FREE Classes!

We have a vibrant lineup of topics already scheduled for mid-July and August and more are being scheduled each day for this summer and fall—just in time for back-to-school planning and preparation!

Here is the schedule of groundbreaking July FREE Classes:

Level with Me about Math – Can I Really Teach It?
July 13 – 2PM EDT/1PM CDT – Preshow 1PM EDT/12PM CDT

Breathe new life into your math program as John and Carlita Boyles, homeschooling authors of Math on the Level, share practical ways to bring on revitalization while producing enthusiastic learners!

Babies & Sign Language – Give Them Their Words
July 14 – 2PM EDT/1PM CDT – Preshow 1PM EDT/12PM CDT

Learn the benefits of signing and why it works. Why is it important to give babies a language? Find out! You’ll also learn how reading while teaching can be easy and fun.

Homeschooling: Teaching a Love of Reading
July 22 – 4PM EDT/3PM CDT – Preshow 3PM EDT/2PM CDT

Get an overview of the Spalding Method from Spalding for Home Educators with focus on teaching basic language skills, developing a love of reading, and understanding the structure of language.

But wait! We have more . . . because we know how much you love good information, come early to be doubly blessed with a pre-show! One hour before the main presentation start time, settle in for even more great information, encouraging words, and uplifting education for yourself as the homeschool teacher. And the price simply cannot be beat—it is all free!