Resources for Insight and Strategic Thinking

Much of our work is about teaching strategies- a key element in generalization into situations across the day. However, we work with kids who, for a variety of reasons, may not be that "meta." As a result they can struggle to explain why they are even "at speech," let alone their exact goals or strategies to achieve them.

I recently read a very interesting article on infusing video game principles into therapy, "Enhancing the Therapy Experience Using Principles of Video Game Design" (Folkins, Brackenbury, Krause, and Haviland, 2016). The authors' focus was not on including actual video games in therapy but rather incorporating features of games such as "risky challenges" and "generalization" into therapy activities. The article describes how risk-taking in video games is similar to the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development and immersing oneself in "pleasant frustration," and that generalization from therapy can be promoted, as it is in video games, by using learned skills in different contexts. This article can be found on the ASHA website.

These ideas were on my mind when working with a client who a) could use a dose of engagement and b) needs support around the idea of using strategies in the classroom. An area we are working on is comprehension, including that of discourse, but also in following directions. I encountered a review of research on this by Nicole Allison (great summary, Nicole!) particularly supporting the use of a combined rehearsal and visualization strategy for following directions (Gill, Klecan-Aker, Roberts, & Fredenburg, 2003) and have been using these strategies in therapy. The authors define rehearsal as repeating/paraphrasing key elements of the direction and visualization as ‘seeing it happen,’’ or ‘‘imagining the task finished.’’ The authors indicated this strategy use was demonstrated as students repeated directions and looked at relevant objects as directions about them were given, though the visualization principle can be applied in other ways.

I don't often feature "dedicated" speech and language apps on this website, as the theme of the blog is the diverse range of contextual technologies that can be looked at "through a language lens," but a unique dedicated resource I have found helpful is School of Multistep Directions. This app has leveled contexts for students to listen to directions of varied length and complexity (many which are challenging even for me) and "follow" directions through various interactions on the screen--tapping, underlining, highlighting, etc. I especially like the contextual "Chemistry" class, which requires stirring, shaking, and addition of items to containers.

For this particular client, I have sought to build engagement and insight by including the "risky challenge" principle; I simply ask him to guess how many trials he can do accurately (and am glad he generally exceeds his guess).

Regarding the strategy use, I had initially emphasized rehearsal but the study on following directions helped me to tweak this. Though I had used a sketch (word balloons, etc) to demonstrate how rehearsal is done, I wanted to make the visualization element more clear. Enter apps. Two features of apps that make strategy use more explicit--visualizing the meta, so to speak-- are app-smashing (see the work of Greg Kulowiec) or combining apps, and use of word and thought balloons, available in any comic-making app.

So, I made this visual to support my client, who had already started to show use of the particular strategies:

It's pretty easy to app-smash and show strategic thinking in this way:
1. I screenshot one example from the School of Following Directions app.
2. I opened Doodle Buddy and made the screenshot image the background, quickly sketched the circles and arrows that represented the "visualizing", and saved that image to the photo library.
3. Then in Comics Head, I created the comic. This app has characters you can add to a single or multiple frame comic, and also allows you to add photos (I had also saved an image of an iPad so the context of following a direction in the app was clear), pinch to resize photos, layer photos, and put photos, along with text, in word and thought balloons.

Later, I will be able to duplicate and edit this comic to promote generalization to other levels in the app as well as, of course, more importantly, classroom contexts.

Folkins, J. W., Brackenbury, T., Krause, M., & Haviland, A. (2016). Enhancing the therapy experience using principles of video game design. American Journal Of Speech-Language Pathology, 25(1), 111-121. doi:10.1044/2015_AJSLP-14-0059

Gill, C. B., Klecan-Aker, J., Roberts, T., & Fredenburg, K. A. (2003). Following directions: Rehearsal and visualization strategies for children with specific language impairment. Child Language Teaching & Therapy, 19(1), 85.