8 SIMPLE ACTIONS EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR STUDENTS WITH DLD DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE DISORDER (DLD)
1.Explicit Teaching
Provide targeted instruction with detailed explanations, modeling, guided practice, constant feedback, reinforcement, and a focus on vocabulary.
2. Interactive Teaching
Asking students questions enables interactive teaching that checks understanding, keeps students active and attentive, and helps them focus on the lesson, while allowing for frequent and regular formative assessments so the teacher can adjust their teaching to meet set goals.
3. Teaching Strategies
Teaching strategies develops students’ metacognition by increasing their self-awareness, including recognizing their difficulties and learning when and how to use strategies, with a focus on what the strategies are, when to use them, how to use them, and why they are useful.
4. Use of Visual Aids
Advocate the use of visual aids to make the content stand out, and provide additional resources such as technological tools, along with variations in intensity and prosody.
5. Secure & Collaborative Space
To develop active and effective learners, it is necessary to create a secure and collaborative social environment, promote deeper understanding of knowledge, encourage personal development through metacognition and self critique, and provide tools and strategies to function as experts.
6. Learning Environment
It is crucial to establish a supportive learning environment by showing sensitivity towards students, considering their perspective, diversifying teaching methods and materials, and encouraging analysis and problem solving to improve academic outcomes.
7. Development of Self-determination
It’s important to develop self determination strategies to make students active, as it predicts a successful post-secondary transition (education, employment, and autonomy). It’s crucial for students to have self-awareness, be capable of self-advocacy, set goals, make decisions, and self-regulate.
8. Assessment for Learning
Assessment for learning is crucial as it aims to gather and interpret evidence of learning to enable both teachers and students to identify targeted learning, determine where the student stands in their learning, and decide what needs to be done to progress. This involves encouraging continuous improvement, allowing external feedback, helping students understand their learning process, and using relevant assessment tools preferred by students.
References
This resource has been created with the support of the ESCALADE program, an evidence-based school program for kids with DLD and other primary sources used by ESCALADE:
Desmarais, C., Caron, V. & Garant, M. (2022). Le programme ESCALADE : de la co-construction à la mise en oeuvre dans votre école : Guide d’animation. Université Laval et Cirris, Québec.
- Collins, G., & Wolter, J. A. (2018). Facilitating Postsecondary Transition and Promoting Academic Success through Language/Literacy-Based Self-Determination Strategies. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 49(2), 176–188.
- Biancarosa, C., & Snow, C. E. (2006). Reading next—A vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy:A report to Carnegie Corporation of NewYork (2nd ed.).Washington, DC:Alliance for Excellent Education.
- Jordan, M., Jensen, R., & Greenleaf, C. (2001).“Amidst familial gatherings”: Reading apprenticeship in a middle school classroom. Voices from the Middle, 8, 15–24.
- Starling, J., Munro, N., Togher, L., & Arciuli, J. (2012). Training Secondary School Teachers in Instructional Language Modification Techniques to Support Adolescents with Language Impairment: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 43(4), 474–495.
- Allen, J. P., Gregory, A., Mikami A., Lun J., Hamre B., and Pianta R. C., Predicting Adolescent Achievement with the CLASSTM-S Observation Tool, CASTL Research Brief , University of Virginia.