At one of the busiest hallway intersections at Timberline Elementary School is a display cabinet that is now another resource for strengthening students’ vocabulary skills, thanks to an idea from the school’s Speech Language Pathologists Caley Stone and Suzanne Rash.
“This is our thematic unit display that has a lot of different vocabulary,” said Stone, pointing to the colorful display filled with actual cooking utensils such as spoons, measuring cups and a kitchen mit.
There are also activity sheets with cooking-related vocabulary such as “prepare,” which has the definition, an area for counting the number of syllables, a discussion question about the word, pictures that do and do not have the activity, and sentence prompts to stir conversation about the meaning in other context, such as ‘preparing for a math test.’ The theme will change each month.
Rash, who came up with the idea, wanted an activity that would be helpful, but not create more work for teachers, adding that teachers can take some of the available handouts to use in class with students or bring everyone to the display to have an interactive lesson together. She said that the goal is to support language.
Speech pathologists help teachers and students with language skills in a variety of ways.
“In the school setting, we work with a variety of students across the campus,” Stone said. “We work on articulation skills to help students in the way they are producing their sounds and increasing their intelligibility so that they are understood. We also work heavily with students on the knowledge of language that they have and also the language that they are using expressively.”
Speech language pathologists, who are on every GCISD campus working with students from age three until they graduate, also work with students on fluency and social skills.
“We have students who prefer to play alone and we want to support them to engage with their peers so eventually they can collaborate in activities,” Stone added.
When pitching the idea, Rash recalls the encouraging words of her principal, Liz Hilcher, who told her, “If you’re going to do something, do it big; do it for everybody; do it where everyone is going to see it. If you have a good idea, go for it.”
Thanks to those encouraging words, the display now sits at a place of honor where students and teachers alike not only see it every day, but is part of their learning language opportunities.