The intervention is aimed at children who need support to build expressive sentences. To be eligible for the intervention, the child needs to be at a no recognisable single words/one-word/two-element expressive utterance level. The intervention aims to provide children with a high-dosage of three and four word sentence ‘frames’ (see visual below of a three element sentence frame). The sentence frames are delivered by the leading adult who says the sentence, signs the sentence and acts out the sentences with toys – see below for the types of toys that are used.
The children are then given the opportunity to describe another action that the toys are ‘acting out’. Each opportunity is only slightly different to the sentence that the adult modelled, and so the difficulty is increased in small steps, building the children’s confidence. So far, the children have really enjoyed having a go at acting out the sentence with the toys. Being hands-on, it is engaging and fun for the children.
The programme involves regular progress checks throughout. The children I work with have taken part in eight sessions so far, and so this week it was time to assess their progress at Decision Point 1 (see photo below). I am thrilled to feedback that all children have made progress. One child’s progress particularly astounded me! I will call him Child A for ease: Child A’s ‘content’ score had moved from 19% to 62%! This is shown on the photo below, circled in blue.
The content score is assessed by marking whether the child used a particular word in a thematic ‘slot’ in the sentence. See diagram below.
At the pre-treatment baseline, Child A did not use any three-element sentences, at most using some two-element sentences—e.g., “that boy kissing” (to describe a picture of a boy kissing a baby). He used 19% of the total content words correctly. After eight BEST sessions, Child A used 62% of the total content words. To describe a picture of a man giving an apple to a baby, Child A said, “daddy giving apple baby” (agent + action + patient + benefactive). Child A used a sentence filling four slots, clearly demonstrating that he is understanding how more words can be combined to create meaning!
I gave Child A lots of compliments, and his proud face was a joy to behold. He was beaming from ear to ear as he made his way back to class. His class teacher shared that she was equally astounded by the progress Child A had made and had noticed since returning from the Christmas holidays that he was now able to describe pictures in the books he shared with her in school. The teacher also shared that Child A’s mum was so pleased with her son’s progress and the intervention that had been put in place. She had religiously been completing the BEST homework with her son and was so pleased to be able to support the intervention he was having in school, at home.
These initial results are positive, and I can’t wait to see what all of the children’s end results will be! Watch this space!
