Boom! Take that you darn Wh-questions! One of my 8 year old patients had a HUGE breakthrough in OMazing Kids speech therapy today. After what seems like an eternity of working on Wh-questions, it finally totally clicked today. The QuestionIt? app by Language Learning Apps, LLC has been an integral part of this breakthrough with the scaffolding, symbol enhanced text, multiple repetitions and feedback about the correct answer to a __ (who, what doing, when, where) question. This is a patient who previously could not answer a Wh-question at all. Instead he would either not respond or would respond with some random fact about numbers, maps or Luigi (all high interest areas of his). Guess what he was able to do today?! Sorting (Level 3 – no scaffolding: 95%), Answering Sentence (Level 3 – no scaffolding: 95%), Answering Advanced Sentences (Level 2 – no scaffolding & variations on the word order: 90%). So then I turned my iPad around where he just had to listen to the sentence & question in the Advanced Sentence level. His responses were a little slower but he still rocked it at 85% accuracy. At that point I was on the verge of SLP tears of joy. But it gets even better!
Our conversation as we walked back to the waiting room:
Me: “What are you doing for Spring Break?”
Him: “No homework”.
Me: “Yeah… No school & no homework! What fun things are you doing this week?”
Him: “We are going to a birthday party”
Me: “When?”
Him: “Today”
Me: “Whose birthday is it?”
Him: “_ (child’s name)… my brother’s friend”
Me: “What did you buy for a present?”
Him: ……. (to be honest my brain cut out at this point from the shock of him taking this many conversational turns, maintaining a topic & answering non-structured Wh-questions)
When we arrived to the waiting room, his mom confirmed that all his answers were accurate & we basked in the glory of how far he has come. When I first started seeing him a few years ago, he was minimally verbal & had huge meltdowns at even the mention of the words “birthday” or “party” (tons of sensory issues).
We still have lots more to work on but for today I am enjoying this moment of how far he has come. I share this for all the parents out there & all the therapists who work with their children…. the tunnel may be long but there is definitely hope & light at the end of that tunnel.
Info about this app: https://languagelearningapps.com/app-questionit.html & the review I did on The Appy Ladies: http://theappyladies.com/questionit. (Unfortunately my in-depth review about this app disappeared when The Appy Ladies website disappeared)
Full paid version: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/questionit-ed/id1071917440
Free lite version: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/questionit/id458737797
(This was originally posted on my OMazing Kids Facebook page on 3/16/15: https://bit.ly/3zNwnrM. I’m in the process of saving some of those posts here on my blog to make them easier to link / share during presentations)
Angela Moorad, MS, CCC-SLP, Founder of OMazing Kids, LLC, OMazing Kids AAC Consulting
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