Early Language Intervention
Language competency is important for almost every aspect of a child’s life, including positive peer relations, effective communication, and adequate learning in school. Children with poor language skills might develop social and behavioral problems (Botting & Conti-Ramsden, 2000) and reading difficulties (Dickinson & Snow, 1987; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Dickinson, McCabe, and Essex (2006) strongly suggested that systematic language instruction in preschools can help avert more intense language and reading intervention during primary grades. They described the preschool years as the window of language opportunity.
What is Early Language Intervention?
Early language intervention is the intentional arrangement of experiences that enhance children’s language comprehension and expression. Is all about prevention and boosting. Preventing academic problems from ever manifesting, and boosting all students’ language so that they have the language foundation for academic success.
This is often provided in schools and homes of children who have delayed or impaired language development. The purpose of this type of “special” intervention is to remediate the delay or disability in hopes to catch the children up to their typical peers.
Unfortunately, the interventions are rarely intensive or quality enough to have the desired impact. As a result, children continue to need these special interventions for years and years and their delays negatively affect their academic achievement.
Early intervention is a phrase used when the special interventions are delivered to children who are between the ages of 0 and 3. These children must also demonstrate a significant delay or disability to qualify for these special interventions.
Resources related to early intervention
- Narrative Development in Monolingual Spanish- Speaking Preschool Children
- Narrative Language Interventions in Early Childhood and Elementary Education: A Review of the Literature
- The Narrative Language Measures: Tools for Language Screening, Progress Monitoring, and Intervention Planning
- Check out the results of a newly completed cluster randomized group study in graphical form
Story Champs Assessment and Intervention
Story Champs is a multi-tiered language intervention curriculum that helps educators and clinicians promote academic language of diverse students. Story Champs is a semi-manualized program with explicit teaching procedures, but it is also extremely flexible to allow for sensible differentiation.
Students who do not have an adequate oral language foundation have considerable difficulty meeting academic expectations. And with the majority of students not meeting grade-level academic standards, educators and clinicians needs interventions to promote academic language.
That’s where Story Champs® comes in.
Story Champs® was developed to systematically and explicitly promote oral academic language as the foundation to success in school. Strengthening academic language through storytelling fosters growth in other academic skills such as recalling and sharing information, acquiring word meanings through context, expanding domain knowledge, writing, and comprehending. Story Champs® makes this transition to high level academic skills stress free.
The type of intervention that Story Champs is best used for is what might be considered preventative intervention. The purpose of this type of intervention is to prevent a delay or disability so that children’s language challenges do not negatively affect their academic achievement.
This means that Story Champs should be used with all children in schools (we do not yet have a version for home use, but I am working on it). Children who present with greater needs should receive Story Champs intervention in a more intensive arrangement than children who do not have language difficulties, in small groups or more frequently for example. Regardless of whether or not children have a qualifying disability for the special interventions, preventative intensive intervention should be delivered to any child/student who has language difficulty or language differences.
These difficulties and differences stem from a number of factors such as poverty, low parental education, minority racial or ethnic backgrounds, and English as a second language.
