Expressive Language Skills
Challenges and Strategies
Expressive language skills
General
Use of vocabulary/word
finding
Strategies
 Give the child full attention when they want to speak.
 Comment on activities while playing alongside the child rather than asking them to talk.
 Respond to what the child is saying rather than how
 Be patient, and let the child know you will wait
 Listen and show interest by maintaining eye contact and using their name
 Give positive feedback for effort
 Build on what the child has said, follow their lead
 Increase opportunities for conversation
 Take short turns
 Tell the child if you cannot understand, and ask them to say it in another way
 Confirm you have understood by paraphrasing, enabling the child to continue
 Offer help and support
 Model the correct use of language ( repeat, emphasise, expand)
 Ask open ended questions
 Develop self-monitoring skills (ask directly, “did that sound right”; fade to a visual reminder, e.g. a look.
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Identify key vocabulary for topic
Pre teach new vocabulary, find pictures to match key words if possible
Use text with picture, it may support some children
Teach the vocabulary in context , e.g. prepositions, quantity, adjectives
Make semantic connections, describe it, where might you find it, what does it do? What else is like it?
heighten knowledge about the structure of the word (phonological awareness) what sound does it start
with, is it a long or short word, how many syllables in the word, can you think of another word that starts
with the same sound, can you think of a word that rhymes with it. Can you think of other sounds in the
word?
Support the child in pronouncing new vocabulary correctly
Expand on what the child says,
Ask the child what they know about the word
Have a word wall in the classroom
Encourage the child to use the word, e.g. curriculum related vocabulary, time, measure, size shape.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Word order
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Sequencing ideas, events
Sentence structure
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Build category trees or word webs/mind maps for curriculum vocabulary
Get children to explain the meaning of words that have more than one meaning
Revise new vocabulary regularly until established
Cue child to find word, phonic cueing, semantic cueing, sign or gesture
Cloze procedure, model the sentence and prompt the child to use a similar sentence with different
vocabulary
Set up a situation which forces the child to make a comment, e.g. asks the child to cut out a picture but
do not provide a scissors
Forced alternatives, e.g. What colour is the orange? (No response) Is it orange or green? Orange.
Barrier games
Games to check understanding of meaning, (a) target word with definitions one correct two incorrect. (b)
true/false, target word, a number of true/false statements.
Teach useful phrases
Model the correct structure rather than telling the child they have said it incorrectly. E.g. “bus big
school”, “oh you saw a bit bus on the way to school”.
Use structured sentences The_____ is________. On a pacing board, using pictures to fill in the gaps,
The boy is running. The dog is playing. The girl is dancing.
Give explicit structures for supporting narrative skills
Prompt with cues, first, then last, use visual cues, or flashcards. Who, what, where, when.
Model the use of cues above.
Use story sequence cards with two/three pictures, (first then/last)
Have the child give instructions with the support of pictures/photographs
Take pictures of sequences that are relevant for the child and have them tell the story
Use red dots or counters between the pictures to signify connectives, and then, later, expand on
connectives, because, so, but.
Send the child on messages that involve a sequence
Have the child retell familiar stories, use visuals to support
Provide sentence frames with examples of how to use more complex language.
Pacing boards/gap sheets focused on specific grammatical structures.
Model the correct use rather than correct
Encourage use of longer sentences, use connectives
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Use of verb tenses
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Social communication
Asking questions
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Encourage older children to comment on their own sentences, do they have connectives, do they have
descriptive words.
Barrier games (can provide a script for the child to use to support sentence structure)
Colour coding. Subject verb object, use pictures, or words if the child can read e.g. Subject yellow,
verb blue, object green, adjectives red.
For children with more complex needs Susan Ebbels (2007) suggests shape coding.
Model the correct use rather than correct
Focus on the target e.g. if the child is working on regular past tense “him walk to the shop” put the
emphasis on the target “he walked to the shop”
Ask the child to perform certain actions, what did you do, I jumped. This could be modelled by teacher
and SNA or during team teaching
Have the child instruct peers/doll teacher to jump, write, run
Today/Yesterday, irregular verbs, using pictures, Today I am __________, yesterday I. (Pacing cards
with the structure written could also be used as a support for this.
Listen and repeat, pictures of verbs, take turns picking up a card “Today I am running” Other person
repeats/echoes. Alternative, other person says in the past tense.
Praise good listening skills
Some skills may need to be taught explicitly encourage them to wait for a gap, or a clear indication from
the speaker before joining in.
Encourage the child to look at the non-verbal cues
that when a person pauses it means you can have a turn
Identify what you feel is rude and explain why
Discuss the effects of saying the wrong thing to a person
Explain about different ways of speaking in different contexts
Discuss how tone of voice and posture give clues to emotions
barrier games to help a child repair and clarify what was said
Develop an ethos of asking for clarification
Teach question forms in sequence,
1. Using single words with rising intonation.
2. "Wh" words at the beginning of a sentence What (What with nouns, what with verbs) who, what for,
where, when, how, how much, why, whose, which.
Play games using the question word through modelling.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Responding to questions
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Making requests
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Who/what? Who is in…? The bag, model, child models, using toys relevant and appropriate to the
child, dolls house, garage.
Using pictures, who is this?? Turn take, teacher models, or more able child can model. Place pictures
face down/ up depending on the level of the child. Use pictures that are relevant/personal to the child
first.
Where?
Dolls house, farm, garage. Hide the object, teacher model, child takes turn, where is the horse, cow,
duck?
More able children can play games using more difficult question words.
What’s in the bag? One child/teacher knows what the item is; the other children have to ask questions
to work out what it is. Where is it from, what is it made out of? Who uses it? What is it for?
barrier games
Give time for children to think and respond to questions Play games using the question word through
modelling.
Who/what? Who is in…? The bag, model, child models, using toys relevant and appropriate to the
child, dolls house, garage.
Using pictures, who is this?? Turn take, teacher models, or more able child can model, taking turns to
ask and respond. Place pictures face down/ up depending on the level of the child. Use pictures that
are relevant/personal to the child first.
Where?
Dolls house, farm, garage. Hide the object, teacher model, child takes turn, where is the horse, cow,
duck?
More able children can play games using more difficult question words.
What’s in the bag? One child knows what the item is; the other children have to ask questions to work
out what it is. Where is it from, what is it made out of? Who uses it? What is it for? Child responds to
questions in order to support other children identify the object.
Setup a situation which forces the child to make a comment, e.g. asks the child to cut out a picture but
does not provide a scissors
Model the language
Role play
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Receptive Language Skills
Challenges and Strategies
Receptive language skills
Attention
Strategies
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Schedule important and demanding activities early in the day or after an extended break.
Keep activities brief or structure them into short blocks, provide a clear beginning and end.
Allow for regular breaks, and give the child errands that allow them to move around.
Alternate activities between mentally demanding, and less challenging or physical ones.
Limit information presented and present one activity or idea at a time.
Keep instructions brief or break them down or provide a written copy.
When giving instructions get the child's attention by calling their name and making eye contact.
Reinforce instructions with written cues or instructions on the whiteboard.
Minimize potential distractions - seat child at the front of class and keep their desk free of unnecessary
material.
 Seat the child near the teacher or with children who will be good role models.
 Provide direct prompts to return to task and positively reinforce on-task behaviour.
 Simplify and reduce material on worksheets, and the blackboard.
 Develop and stick to a daily classroom routine.
 Emphasize the skill or concept over the quantity of work.
 Gradually increase goals.
 Ensure that tasks are meaningful to the student and are within the student’s readiness range.
 Set an alarm for short time segments.
From app store (for ipad): “Giant timer” (Benzac) Free. This timer app has clear digits, great sounds and counts
down or up.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Listening
Strategies to Control Attention and Concentration
Mobilising Attention
 To control attention, the student must learn to recognise those times when they are about to disconnect
so that they can reconnect right away.
 Certain situation characteristics are effective in mobilising attention, such as discussions and problemsolving groups.
 Some tactics that can help students stay focused on the subject include taking notes, organising ideas
using outlines or note/mind mapping, following along in the text, noting ideas, noting distracting
thoughts, purposefully disconnecting (look out the window, become aware of my position and breathing,
relax) so that I can better reconnect a few moments later.
Focusing Attention
 Encourage students to focus on one aspect of the task at a time. To limit the risk of confusion.
 Divide the task into smaller units.
 Between the task sections, use natural break times and opportunities for the student to briefly relax and
physically move. Although these breaks are very short (a few minutes), they allow the student to
recover their capacity to concentrate. They also help to assimilate and store essential information in my
memory long-term, so that I can rapidly recall the main points of the previous work unit.
Using Internal Dialogue
 Negative internal dialogue distracts my attention from the task and weakens resistance to distractions
and encourages disconnection.
 Self-talk about the task; the best way to organize its completion, articulation of my questions and
reasoning, either out loud or silently to myself, helps to maintain focus.
 Self-talk, whether internally or out loud, will often increase understanding.
Using Mental Imagery
 Similarly to internal dialogue, all cerebral activity spontaneously generates a constant flow of images
and scenarios. The use of drawings, diagrams, graphs, schemas or models keeps mental imagery
focused on the learning task, while facilitating my understanding.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Listening Strategies
Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation
or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that
help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next.
Top-down strategies include:
 listening for the main idea
 predicting
 drawing inferences
 summarising
Bottom-up strategies are text based;
The listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar
that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include:
 listening for specific details
 recognising/remembering vocabulary words
 recognising word-order patterns
Strategic listeners also use metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate their listening.
They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation.
They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies.
They evaluate by determining whether they have achieved their listening comprehension goals and whether the
combination of listening strategies selected was an effective one.
Listening for Meaning
To extract meaning from a listening text, students need to follow four basic steps:
 Figure out the purpose for listening. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or
anticipate content and identify appropriate listening strategies.
 Attend to the parts of the listening input that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest.
This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of
information they have to hold in short-term memory in order to recognise it.
 Select top-down and bottom-up strategies that are appropriate to the listening task and use them
flexibly and interactively. Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they
use top-down and bottom-up strategies simultaneously to construct meaning.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Check comprehension while listening and when the listening task is over. Monitoring comprehension
helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, directing them to use alternate
strategies.
Apps: Auditory workout (Virtual Speech Center Inc.) €17.99. This is suitable for students from four to ten
years. It is a research based app that focuses on improving auditory attention/memory/processing of verbal
directions.
Auditory Processing
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Direct Intervention-this involves remediation efforts to improve auditory discrimination, integration skills,
associative skills and teaching specific language or academic skills. Examples include teaching the
person to hear differences in sounds or words, teaching the person to pick out words in the presence of
background noise, and teaching the child to use rhythm and tempo cues in speech.
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Give your student multi-level instructions (with increasing difficulty). E.g. “go to room 2, and ask Ms
Harte for some blue paper”. The student will need to listen carefully to your complete instruction, and
practice rehearsing the instruction. They may find it helpful to practice visual imagery alongside internal
rehearsal.
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Play a guessing game by giving him clues to an item that you have thought of and see how many clues
he needs to guess the item correctly. You could do this while playing “I Spy” or simply by hiding items
around the classroom/yard and having him hunt for them.
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Try playing the “Silly or Not Silly” game by saying a sentence and asking your student to label it “silly” or
“not silly.” For example, you could say, “The mop cooked spaghetti and meatballs for the canary.” (Silly
- of course!) This can be done in a quick fire round.
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The student with auditory processing difficulties must be taught and encouraged to use strategies to
cope with and compensate for deficit areas. For example, homework instructions could be taped, the
person could be taught how to ask for repetition of things not heard or understood, and the use of visual
cues to complement what is heard can be taught.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Apps: Auditory Processing Studio (Virtual Speech Center Inc) €26.99. This app was created by a speech and
language pathologist for children aged seven and upwards who experience auditory processing difficulties. It
incorporates a bottom up approach which focuses on the improvement of auditory processing through auditory
discrimination and phonological awareness activities. It allows for the introduction of background noise to help
children practice skills in a noisy environment.
Sequencing Skills
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Prior to listening to a story being read aloud, remind students that they will be working on their
sequencing skills. Depending on your lesson, you might say, "As we read, let's think about what
happens during the beginning, middle, and end of the story," or "After we finish reading, we're going to
try to retell the story."
 As you read, pause frequently to ask students to identify the events in the story and to encourage them
to think about when the beginning gives way to the middle and the middle transitions to the end.
 Once you have read the story, make lists with students about the events that occurred, trying to arrange
them sequentially. Sentence strips or pictures work well for this type of activity, since events can be
represented by either pictures or words and then put in the correct order. Let students use these lists or
pictures as reminders as they retell the story by acting it out with puppets, for instance.
Independent sequencing
 Begin by reminding students that they will be working on their sequencing skills (encourage their
metacognition by having them think about the skill they are going to work on).
 One strategy that may be helpful is to give students pieces of paper and pencils to use as they read.
Students can write page numbers and a few words (for older students) to remind them of important
events in the story. For instance, a student who is reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears in order to
retell it may jot down:
Goldilocks comes in--She eats the porridge--She breaks the chair--She falls asleep--The bears come home
This list doesn't tell the whole story, but it does provide the key elements, in order, and would serve as a good
outline for someone wanting to retell it themselves. If this procedure is new to students, model it before asking
them to do it on their own, using a read aloud story and recording your own ideas in a think aloud style to show
students how to do this on their own.
Once students have completed reading, give them opportunities to write about their stories' sequences in a
reading journal, to discuss their stories with partners, or to retell them to family members for homework.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Understanding Vocabulary
Apps:
1. ’Speech with Milo’ sequencing (Doonan Speech Therapy) €2.69. This app is suitable for students from
four to seven years. It introduces the skills of sequencing on a ‘first-next-last’ basis of increasing
difficulty. Skills of retell, increasing utterance length and the development of more complex sentences.
2. Also ‘Sequencing Lickity Split’ (Lickity Split Learning) €30.99. This app is focuses on the improvement
of visual and auditory sequencing. It aims to do this by building the student’s memory capacity for
auditory sequences of at least seven numbers. This allows for data for up to five users to be stored
and updated.
 Use recording device (dictaphone/phone etc.), make a recording of words. Say the word, define it, and
then use it in a sentence. (Select words that the student will find interesting.) Encourage regular use of
this mode. (If they are studying for a spelling test, spellings can be revised this way.)
 “Word of the Week/Day” Each student selects a word taking turns each time. As the words are selected
and used, they are posted somewhere visible to stimulate continued usage.
 “Ten Questions” One group member thinks of something, which the other players must guess with no
more than ten questions. The first question always is “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? Then,
question by question, the field is narrowed to likely possibilities. After the first questions, the following
questions must be asked so that they can be answered by “yes” or “no.”
 For some students, “Ten Questions” might be too demanding, so make it “Twenty Questions” One of
the values of the extension is that additional reasoning and logic can be expressed. Stretch the game
as much as possible. You can show, for example, the process of moving from broad-based questions to
more discrete ones. In this way, students will team to ask questions such as, “Is it located in the
Northern Hemisphere?” “Is it in the Western Hemisphere?” “Is it in the United States?” “Is it land
based?” and so on. This becomes an exercise not only in vocabulary development but also in
geography.
 Encourage the use of a diary.
 Play games with homonyms – words that sound alike but are spelled differently and mean something
different, as in “sun” and “son.” For example, on a display board, post train rain- or “reign-rain” or” prayprey” or “flower -flour.” Ask students to add to the list.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Play ‘Top Score’ game which can be played even if your child is having difficulty with reading. You
might use a comic book, the comic strips or sports pages in your local newspaper, or a magazine
article- To play the game, the child must know that some words start with a consonant followed by a
vowel-for example, “say, look, go, pay,” etc. that other words begin with two consonants (called a blend)
such as “grow, plate, tray, brush,” etc. Tell the student they will earn a point for every word he
underlines that starts with a blend.
A guessing word-finding game can be fun. “I’m thinking of a word that starts with “br” that is something
you use to paint a house.” (Brush) “I’m thinking of a word that starts with “tr” that is something we do to
the bushes when they get too large.” (Trim)
“My father owns ” Example: “My father owns a shop, and in it he sells something that begins with the
letter B. ” This is a simple word finding activity. If the child does not know the alphabet, letter sounds
can be used.
Revolving blend- is another game in which someone gives a common blend-for example, “tr”–and, in
sequence around the table or room, everyone must think of a word that begins with that blend-”train,
truck, truffle, try, tray, trumpet, truce.” et cetera. When the list is exhausted, the last person begins
another blend, such as “st”–”stay, start, stick, stuck, star,” etc.
Word origins or facts about words can also be explored as a research project. For example, the word
“salary” had its origin in “salarium,” which is Latin for salt. Roman soldiers received their pay in salt.
Students could have similar activities for homework.
Apps:
1. Grammar and vocabulary language development, educational games for kids in preschool and
kindergarten (Tribal Nova). Free. This is an app for children up to six years where students practice
language and grammatical concepts primarily through sentence building.
2. Improve English with Synonyms (Dev IT Solutions PVT Ltd.) Free. This app helps students with the
matching and analysis of synonyms with a focus on speed and accuracy.
3. Improve English with Antonyms (Dev IT Solutions PVT Ltd.) Free. This app helps students with the
matching and analysis of antonyms with a focus on speed and accuracy.
4. Vocabulary Builder Grades 5-6 (Greg Levy) €1.79. A vocabulary ‘flashcard’ system that targets: multiple
meaning words, synonyms, antonyms, adjectives, nouns and verbs.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Conceptual Language
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Grammatical Concepts
Receptive language therapy often focuses on expanding a child’s vocabulary base and assisting them
in being able to compare and contrast attributes of an item for the purpose of accurate categorisation.
Encourage students to continually compare and contrast how words and concepts are related. Each
new concept or word they learn should be compared to a child’s prior knowledge about the world. For
example, if a child learns about kites, they compare their prior knowledge related to toys, wind, and the
sky. The child thinks about the attributes of a kite and classifies the item into various categories such
as, “things that fly,” or “outside toys.”
Think of different ways to explain new concepts e.g. looking at the concept of "wet": use water to wet
things and talk about things that are wet and dry; look at pictures of things that are "wet"; if it rains talk
about the concept of being "wet"; make up sentences and stories about being wet/dry etc.
Apps:
1. Let’s Do Basic Concepts (Kids Can Talk, LLC €5.49). This app concentrates on spatial concepts and
associated language. It builds skill through listening and receptive identification of twenty two concepts
by following commands.
2. Autism iHelp – Language Concepts (John Talavera) €1.79. While this app has a function for vocabulary
development it also has a function to categorize items shown by denoting “what does not belong”.
3. Comparative Adjectives (GrasshopperApps.com) Free. This app enables students to compare and
describe the difference between two objects, e.g. bigger/youngest/heavier.
 Grammar is in its most simple terms the system and rules of language. These aspects need to be
explicitly taught (verbs/nouns/pronouns/adjective/adverb/preposition etc.) Explicit teaching would
involve giving a definition of that particular term, and allow students become familiar with the structure.
 A progression of this would be to engage students in activities with identifying these concepts, and/or
generating sentences with these concepts contained therein.
 Give students parts of a sentence on individual large sheets of paper. Have them discuss and
formulate the sentence while holding up the pieces of paper.
 Model incorrect sentences, have students proofread, discuss in pairs, and correct.
 Use checklists to enable students to edit/proofread their own work with a grammatical focus.
Apps:
1. Grammar and vocabulary language development, educational games for kids in preschool and
kindergarten (Tribal Nova). Free. This is an app for children up to six years where students practice
language and grammatical concepts primarily through sentence building.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Inferential Language
2. Advanced Grammar in Use Tests (Cambridge University Press) €4.99. A ‘challenge’ based app to
practice grammar skills across fourteen grammatical areas.
3. Grammaropolis (Grammaropolis LLC) Free. This app uses parts of speech as animated characters with
personalities based on the roles they play in a sentence. Some downloads are free, others are at a cost
to download.
The student must simply read between the lines and make inferences about things not directly stated.
Inferential language also involves interpreting figurative language, drawing conclusions, predicting outcomes,
determining the mood, and judging the author’s point of view.
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When making inferences, explicitly model the process (through ‘thinking talk’) of using prior knowledge
and logical guessing to guide students to make connections between what is in the text and what they
can assume based on what they already know.
Pause from time to time to ask questions about the text. Identify difficult words and ask students to use
context clues to figure out their meaning. In this way, students must infer the meaning of the difficult
word from the context.
Ask students to make inferences about the setting of the text. Have students identify the setting (time
and place), and ask them what they already know about that place and time period. Have students add
details about the setting that are not written in the text. In this way, students apply their prior knowledge
to infer details about the setting.
Ask students to make inferences about the characters or people in the text. Ask students to explain why
they think the character did something. Allow different students to offer multiple interpretations of the
character's actions.
Write an inferential question about the text on the board and have students copy it at the top of a journal
page. Have students fold the journal page in half vertically, using the folded line as a divider. Have them
write on the left side, "What the Text Says," and have them write on the right side, "What I Know."
Have students look for sentences in the text that they think answer the question. Have them copy these
sentences under the heading, "What the Text Says."
Ask students to think about details or facts from their prior knowledge that they think answer the
question. Have students record these under the heading, "What I Know."
Have students create a new heading at the bottom of the page that says, "My Answer: What I Infer."
Have students think about the sentences they copied from the text and the facts they already knew.
Have them write an answer to the question that combines both under the new heading. Their answer
should be in complete sentences.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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Explicitly teach figurative language and idioms/metaphors etc. Display these around the classroom and
have students add their own.
Apps:
1. Kidioms (Ventura Educational Systems) €1.79. This app uses an interactive notebook to present an
idiom, its meaning and an example showing the idiom in context. Each page has an accompanying
graphic. There is also a ‘match up’ game. There are also Kidioms 2 & 3.
2. Painless Reading Comprehension Challenge (Barron’s Educational Series Inc Mobile) Free. This app
tests knowledge and skill, with multi choice for meanings and phrases.
Reasoning Skills
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In developing these skills, place an emphasis on higher order skills; these being those skills that
encourage the ability to reason. This group or hierarchy of skills involves recalling information, basic
concept formation, critical thinking, and creative idea formation. (Formerly viewed as the tools of
mathematics, these skills are now recognised as crucial to competence across the curriculum)
Teach these skills explicitly in a bottom up way from recalling information, to the more difficult area of
creative thinking.
Activities may be modified, simplified, lengthened, or deleted to meet the needs of the intellectual
diversity found in most classrooms.
Let students witness what high quality reasoning is like through modelling, and the use of a thought
bubble symbol to denote you are ‘thinking out loud’.
Use visuals to support the kind of thinking strategy/skill you are currently using: e.g. making
connections/putting in context/making inferences/relating to my experience/problem solving.
Use interactive discussion to facilitate concept development.
Use current media stories (where appropriate) to encourage students to make connections with
events/problems that occur in real life.
Apps:
1. If…Then...Fun Deck (Super Duper Publications) €2.69. Suitable for younger students where they
complete statements to enhance critical thinking.
2. Blooms Taxonomy (Maggie Fossum) €0.89. This app breaks down cognitive levels into separate
sections to encourage and develop students’ higher level thinking skills.
Special Education Support Service, c/o Cork Education Support Centre, The Rectory, Western Road, Cork - Tel: 1850 200 884 - Fax: 021 425 5647 - Email: info@sess.ie
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