Mrs. B’s Classroom Edit display name

About my class

Speech/language impairments impact a student’s ability to progress academically. With articulation errors, students can be hard to understand by teachers and peers as well as effect phonemic awareness development, reading and writing skills. Language delays can hinder a student’s ability to communicate effectively, follow directions, express themselves, comprehension, answer and ask questions, as well as limit their vocabulary. Young children learn best through play. In play, children learn problem-solving, a strong foundation for communication, language cognitive skills, problem solving and social skills such as executive functioning, forming relationships and learning to acknowledge the perspectives of others. They also learn the skills needed to learn from and to teach others. With 80% of a child’s brain wired by age three and 90% by the age of five, we need to give our students opportunities for learning by giving them plenty of language input and opportunity for play throughout their day. “Children who have high social and emotional intelligence exhibit self-confidence, express natural curiosity, make thoughtful choices, relate to others, know others’ feelings and express concerns, communicate needs, desires and ideas, solve problems through compromises and negotiations and employ calming strategies.” (Schiller, 2012). In addition, children will learn to wait their turn and share, all skills learned through cooperative play. Learning these skills promotes and requires “cognitive control”, which refers to maintaining impulse control, upsetting emotions, holding focus and possessing a readiness to learn. According to Daniel Goleman in his book titled Emotional Intelligence, “This skill (cognitive control) is a better predictor of success than academic skills. This type of intelligence must be cultivated through experiences.” By incorporating cooperative play into speech/language therapy, I hope to enhance the students cognitive control to increase their communication skills which will in turn increase their performance in the academic setting.