My SLP Love Affair with Highlights Magazine

During the pandemic I was looking for additional materials for one of my patients, and on a whim I  subscribed to Highlights Magazine. When I got my first issue I realized it wasn't your mother's Highlights Magazine.  For one thing there are diverse children represented, and even bi-lingual stories in Spanish and English. I fell in love. It supports so many goals -- story grammar, problem solving, receptive and expressive language, social thinking -- and it is a no-prep time saver.

Tex and Indi

Each issue features a story about Tex and Indi, five year old twins who live in San Francisco with their big sister Arizona. The consistency reduces working memory load, because kids don't have to remember the character names, background and setting.  I use this story feature to teach story grammar, vocabulary, summarizing, and  -Wh (who, what, when, where, why) questions. The story arc helps develop episodic memory. ("Do you remember what happened last month to Tex and Indi?")

That's Silly

Another great feature is "That's Silly" which is a developmentally-adjusted version of  the "expected or unexpected" concept that is part of the social thinking curriculum. Each colorful two-page spread depicts people and things out of the norm hiding within a typical social scenario. For instance can you find a moose sunbathing on a lounge chair wearing sunglasses? It is a rich format for eliciting language, teaching social referencing (point to the moose and put an incredulous expression on your face), teaching the "expected and unexpected" framework, and giving children an opportunity to share their experiences.

Hidden Pictures

I remember loving the hidden pictures feature of Highlights as a child. Flash forward, I still love it! Of all the sections in the magazine it is perhaps the most powerful and flexible in terms of supporting language goals. It is a treasure trove of vocabulary. I can use it to teach basic concepts such as positional concepts ("on," "under," "over," "behind"), shapes, and colors. I can use it for picture description. It is good for teaching pattern recognition and problem solving. ("What shape is the pizza?" "Let's look for a red triangle somewhere." "Where was the ruler last time?") I enjoy hearing an excited "I FOUND IT!!" when my patient finds a hidden object.

Read Your Kids Books with Asian Protaganists

The trend of violence against Asians in our country is deeply saddening. Teachers and parents can take a small but powerful action by reading their children books with Asian themes and Asian protagonists.  We can start inoculating our children by exposing them to new stories. Stories are powerful.

Here are just a few of the books recommended by the wonderful preschool teacher Allison McDonald, in her blog No Time for Flashcards. 

The Name Jar

In this lovely book, a new girl in school has a double dilemma. Having just moved from Korea, she finds no one can pronounce her name "Unhei." She wants to fit in - being the new kid in school is hard enough.  Instead of introducing herself on the first day of school she tells the class she will choose a name the following week. What name will she choose? Her classmates decide to help her by filling a glass jar with names for her to choose from. One classmate comes to her neighborhood and learns more about her and finds out her name has special meaning. By the end of the story the jar has disappeared mysteriously. Unhei "keeps" her Korean name and helps her classmates pronounce it "Yoon-Hey."  

Baseball Saved Us

This beautiful story shows how baseball, the most American of games, kept Japanese American boys hope while interned in Minidoka, a WWII internment camp in Idaho. "Baseball Saved Us" is is a good point of departure to start teaching kids about a shameful chapter in American history. There are many ideas online on how you can present this book. Here is a teacher guide that gives pre-reading questions,  historical background, vocabulary, and activities that make this story come alive.

More Ideas

For more great book ideas check out Allison's curated collection 25 Picture Books with Asian Characters.

Bilingual Language Development and the Delayed Child

In the Puget Sound we have a culturally and linguistically diverse population. Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin, Russian, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Somali are just a few of the languages that school-based speech therapists can encounter in the Seattle area. Young language learners can encounter a different language at home (and out in the community) than the language they hear in school. 

Parents of  children with developmental delays, especially children who are non-verbal, worry that speaking two languages at home will confuse or even short-circuit language development. As if having a developmentally delayed child isn't enough to worry about.  This is a myth! 

Myth vs. Fact

Kelly Ibanez Arelleno, bilingual speech therapist of The Hola Clinic, helps us break it down in a cool infographic. Kelly's infographic lists reference sources at the end. Big takeaways for some of the families I serve:

Myth: Speaking two or more languages can confuse a child.

Fact: Even developmentally delayed kids can learn multiple languages. And in fact the first language will support the second, and vice versa.

Myth: It's better for developmentally delayed kids to speak the language of the school at home, rather than the language of the community.

Fact: Families should speak the language they are most comfortable speaking, so as to give their children the richest possible linguistic models.  Also, children should be given the opportunity to speak the language of their community so they can interact with their community

Myth: Speaking a different language at home will set up a child who has delays already for language learning delays.

Fact: Research shows that speaking a different language at home can actually improve a child's ability to learn language.

 

What if my child has an Autism Diagnosis?

University of Washington's Autism Center rolls up the research showing that raising a child with autism in a bilingual environment can support language development.  This can net out in big benefits, including:

- More cooing and vocalizing in toddlers, which is a reliable indicator of and pathway to language development.

- More complex pretend play, which drives language development

- Greater use of gestures, which are pre-linguistic behaviors that signal/pre-figure language development

- Most importantly, caretakers speaking their own language are able to be more responsive, more emotionally nuanced, and use better linguistic models.

Resources

Speech therapists and parents alike can find these resources online.

Kelly's Facts & Myths Infographic can be found as a free download on Teachers Pay Teachers. 

University of Washington's handout "Bilingualism and Autism Spectrum Disorder: What the Research Tells Us" can be found online in PDF format.