Boost Language Therapy For Your Child With Better Storybook Readings
When a child gets language therapy from an SLP, a parent might wonder if they can help support their child’s therapy. Reading storybooks gives you, the parent, a way to do this. This activity provides children with rich literacy-experience.
In this post we share many of the ways in which you may help your child’s language skills through literacy. These are ways that you can transform a simple storybook reading into a powerful way to support your child’s language development.
Each story will provide different literacy opportunities. Events, characters and settings change in every story, and these differences add to the richness of storybook readings over time. We give you the tools you need to make every reading a chance for your child to learn new skills.
Getting Started Helping Language Therapy with Storybook Readings
When getting started with storybook readings to support your child’s language therapy, it helps to think like a therapist. But how do you think like a speech therapist? Begin by looking for opportunities for learning.
In every storybook, there are many chances to narrate, make comparisons, ask questions and explain details. By looking at each page with a critical eye, you find more and more ways to help your child learn. By understanding the different approaches we share in this post, you build a powerful literacy toolkit.
Use this toolkit to make each storybook reading a rich experience for your child. Even by first looking at the cover of the book, you get new ways of building your child’s language and literacy skills. Progressing page by page, you will find plenty of ways for your child to engage with the story using language.
Emphasize and Explain the Parts of the Book
We may want to jump right into a book; however, we need to first explain what it is we’re looking at. A child may not have book awareness. The first step is to show the child the cover of the book, the back of the book, what the pages look like, and how to hold the book.
This step is especially true for young preschoolers. Even though this age group is not reading yet, it is important that they get to look at and hold books. Start by reading the names of the author and illustrator, then show your child each part of the book.
You might show your child how to hold a book and what reading looks like pointing to the words as you read. This helps your child see the direction in which you read and what reading looks like.
Describe the Pictures with Extra Narrative
It may be easy to focus only on the words we read, but by also describing pictures in our own words, we give extra language models. Narrating events is a powerful way to support language skills. By providing your own description of the pictures after reading the page, you give your child extra language input.
When sharing extra descriptions, try to include these important words:
- Verbs
- Prepositions
- Pronouns
- Articles (i.e., a, an, and the)
- Adjectives
By providing extra descriptions of pictures using the words above, you give your child models critical for language use. These relate to core vocabulary, common words that can be combined to make many different kinds of new sentences. When you do describe pictures, try to focus on important words, such as prepositions and adjectives.
WH Questions and Story Events
Something else you may do to help support your child’s understanding of narratives is to ask them questions about what’s happening in the story. When your child responds, try using a language strategy to support what they shared. You may also describe the answers to your child. For example, you may talk about the where, the who and the what in a story.
When we talk about WH questions we most often mean:
- Who
- What
- Where
- When
- Why
Asking these questions or answering these questions in your own descriptions can help your child understand these concepts better.
If your child struggles to answer WH questions, first ask your child’s speech therapist about practicing at home. Your child’s speech therapist may have written WH question goals for your child, and they will practice the skills in the therapy room.
Focus on Story Elements
When reading a story, you might ask your child about story elements. Story elements describe the most important parts of a story and help children think about stories. Parts of a story are different for every story. They can help children build literacy skills and world knowledge.
It may also help to write these story parts down together if your child reads and revisit them when you read new stories. Talking about story parts with your child may also help them. For example, you might describing characters and what they are doing, as well as where they are.
Some of the most important story elements are:
- Characters
- The setting
- Events or actions
- The ending
Help Language Therapy by Including Inferences
If your child receives language therapy, they might struggle with answering inference questions. By occasionally asking your child what will happen next in a story and talking through the events, you may support their ability to make inferences.
Inferences are educated guesses we make about what will happen based on context clues we get from a story and what we already know. Children take what they see or hear from the story and combine it with what they already know. By doing so, they make guesses about what may happen next.
Understanding the World
Sometimes your child might read something they don’t understand and don’t have experience with. When this happens, try to explain what it means.
For example, they might read about a jungle but have never seen or visited a jungle before. Try describing a jungle to them and showing them varied pictures of jungles. This is one example of building world knowledge.
If they see or hear a word they don’t know, describe the word and show your child different pictures of what the word represents. Varying models of images can help support a child’s vocabulary and overall understanding of the world.
Seeing Important Details
Bring Attention to Vocabulary Words
Every story provides a child with new words. These words many vary, but each one builds understanding of the world and connects with other words. When you read your child a story, focus on those words they may not know. Sometimes the words may be bolded or stand out as harder than others.
Talking about new words is a great way to help build world-knowledge and give your child a way of thinking about their environment. When you share new words with your child and focus on words in stories, you also build what they know about the story.
Storybook reading provides an excellent way to introduce your child to new vocabulary words. You may try writing down new words found in a story and talking about them later in the week. You may also show your child different pictures of the words to build their word concepts.
Vocabulary Words and Language Therapy
Retell the Story with Your Child
Retelling a story is a great way to support language therapy. Children who get language therapy often struggle with understanding and telling stories. By retelling a story with your child you give them more chances to use their language skills.
At the end of a story, try asking your child about what happened in the story. Provide support as needed and keep the activity enjoyable for your child.
If your child struggles to retell stories, ask their language therapist whether or not this skill should be practiced at home. When recommended by an SLP, ask for guidance on how your child may be best supported in this area.
If your child struggles in this area, you may also retell the story yourself so they hear a strong model of what it sounds like. When you retell the story, focus on sequence words, such as first, then, next and last. Also, bring attention to the parts of the story, such as the characters and events.
How to Get Started with Language Therapy
If your child struggles to understand stories and share what they think about the story, they may need language therapy. By speaking with a licensed language therapist, you will learn whether your child needs help in this area and how they may be best supported.
A language therapist performs a complete assessment to tell how to best support your child’s needs. At Verbalyze Online Speech Therapy, we provide effective language therapy to support your child’s development.
We use new research-based methods to get your child the skills they need to succeed. We also provide parent support and the tools you need to help your child at home.
