SPLS Tracy Petersen

I see potential in this system to provide learning and instruction for students in MTSS. We are always struggling to find a way to provide additional instruction to these students and this might offer a way to provide specific skill instruction and additional practice.  It may also provide a way to give guidance and support to teachers in their attempts to offer instruction in MTSS. In particular, in the area of speech language development, we know that we are looking for ways to provide that guidance. For example, consider the core standard: "Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly when retelling familiar stories or reciting poems, nursery rhymes or lines of play."(SL.K.6) We often use this standard to address articulation errors in student's speech. Few teachers are comfortable addressing speech sound errors, and we wouldn't expect that. However, we could share a module that had video about accurate articulatory placement, scaffolds for teachers to use with students to achieve placement, and then practice materials for students. This would provide a nicely structured task for teachers and students to use in the general education setting and would provide data before moving on to suspecting a disability. In the area of language, our AEA team has developed a MTSS site to share with teachers to use in the gen ed setting. These tasks could be expanded with specific instruction and shared as a module. In addition, I am part of a group at our AEA that is looking to create "commercials" or 3 to 5 minute presentations, that could be shared with SLPs, parents, or teachers to orient them to a specific therapy model, technique, or material. This might be a way to organize and share those commercials.

Challenges would include finding the balance between direct instruction and feedback and independence. in the area of articulation, students need some specific feedback on productions to ensure they are practicing accurate, not inaccurate, sound productions. In addition, we would need to find the time to create the modules (something that we are currently struggling with for our "commercials").

In the future, I would like to see a way to increase the fidelity of completion. I know that I have not always been true to the process when using the system for mandatory trainings (I skimmed and passed the test) but that was not a learning that I was particularly interested in but one that I had to do.
It would also be valuable to have an option for video responding so that a teacher might have an opportunity to really see the student's production or attempts.

Tracy,

I appreciate you making the connection with the SPLS system to our current MTSS approach. You also took the time to really dig into speech language development and how the SPLS potentially has an impact on students' learning in this area as well. I absolutely agree with the challenge between balancing instruction, feedback, and independence when using the SPLS. Finally, fidelity is certainly a concern with this topic. I too would like to see this technology include an opportunity for teachers to see student attempts, mistakes, etc.

One feature that I think would be incredibly beneficial is the inclusion of purposeful feedback when students make mistakes throughout this platform. Students will struggle, feel challenged, and make mistakes. I think this technology has the potential to provide students with constructive and purposeful feedback when they encounter such mistakes.

Hi Tracy,

The issue of fidelity is a huge one in my book as well. Students often do not have the skills to pace themselves to complete tasks assigned. It has to be taught.  My high school students are very enabled when it comes to this. Completion of work is also a consideration.  Some students will only do part of the assignment just to get it done. Many students also lack the communication and writing skills to ask for help. Another issue, and I know this may sound silly, but just the teachers' ability to write good clear concise instructions is important as the teacher is not there to talk to face to face, so if the directions are confusing it may frustrate the student and they may produce a product the teacher was not intending to happen.

Sharon -  You are so right about teachers needing to provide clear, concise instructions. This has been eye opening for me as I have developed courses in my LMS. I will type up instructions that I think are clear, but it doesn't take much time before my students are asking questions about what they need to do. I would never have guessed how detailed I need to be when giving instructions through a LMS. I now spend much more time on instructions and add to them as students ask questions about parts I missed. I have also taken online courses where we (students) participated in scheduled web conferences (or watched video recordings) where the instructor explained what we needed to do. I like this option because questions can be answered immediately. It's also nice to see the instructor -- I think it helps build the teacher-student relationship.  

Tracy,

Thanks for making me think about using a system like this to address difficult topics. Our science curriculum includes sexual reproduction and every year we have parents who pull their children form the class because they do not feel the topic is age-appropriate. Those students do not hear the content but with a system like this they could in a location with privacy. Awesome idea.