Narrative Intervention for School-Age Children with Language Impairment

Presented by Sandra Laing Gillam

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Narrative language skills contribute to academic success for school-age students. Children with language impairment have difficulty acquiring narrative proficiency. This may negatively impact their academic performance in oral and written contexts. This course will summarize a narrative intervention program entitled Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy (SKILL). Service-delivery options for using SKILL in school settings will be summarized.

Meet your instructor

Sandra Laing Gillam

Sandra Laing Gillam is a Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education at Utah State University and the current Vice President for Speech Language Pathology Practice for the American Speech Language and Hearing Association (ASHA). Since coming to Utah State, she has received numerous awards and…

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Chapters & learning objectives

Language Underpinnings of Narrative Proficiency

1. Language Underpinnings of Narrative Proficiency

This section will describe the importance of oral language for supporting narration, learning, reading, and academic success. Core standards that relate to specific language skills will briefly be reviewed. Evidence based procedures for improving the language skills that support the development of narrative proficiency will be discussed.

Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy

2. Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy

This section will outline the purposes of each of the phases of the SKILL program and why each is important for improving narrative proficiency. Research relevant to the activities that are undertaken in each phase is reviewed.

SKILL Phase 1

3. SKILL Phase 1

This section will describe Phase 2 of the SKILL program. Each of the story elements, it’s definition and icon will be discussed. Procedures involved in cotelling, retelling, parallel story generation and retelling are outlined. Activities at the end of Phase 1 for implementing a simple literature based unit are discussed. Exit testing procedures to determine whether students are ready to move onto Phase 2 are described.

SKILL Phase 2

4. SKILL Phase 2

This section will describe Phase 2 of the SKILL program. New story elements, their definitions and icons will be discussed. Procedures involved in cotelling, retelling, parallel story generation and retelling are outlined for more complex stories are discussed. Plan, action, complication sequences are introduced and illustrated. Activities at the end of Phase 2 for implementing a complex, literature based unit are discussed. Exit testing procedures to determine whether students are ready to move onto Phase 3 are described.

SKILL Phase 3

5. SKILL Phase 3

This section will describe Phase 3 of the SKILL program. Procedures involved in creating and editing complex stories will be described. The self-scoring rubric will be described a a procedure for editing stories that students here, read or compose. Activities at the end of Phase 3 for implementing a complex, multi-episode story will be discussed. The use of sequenced pictures, and single scene picture prompts to elicit stories is described.