Are kids ready to work on complex sentences in early elementary school?

In episode 64, I share a Q & A from the Language Therapy Advance Foundations members’ group about working on complex sentences with students in early elementary school. Part of the framework I teach focuses on building skills like morphology (e.g., knowledge of word parts like prefixes & suffixes) as well as syntax (the rules of how sentences are put together). These skills can not only boost a student's ability to decode what they’re reading, they can also have a positive impact on their ability to process the big picture of what they’re reading/and or writing. I get a lot of questions about when students are “ready” for this kind of work. There’s a misconception that these skills should be reserved for “older” students in late elementary and secondary school.

That’s why in this episode, I wanted to share why waiting until students are “ready” to work on syntax is a fallacy, and what we should do instead. I also share how to teach kids in early elementary school to use difficult sentence-types, even before they’re able to read and write difficult words or long sentences. This episode was taken from a Q & A session with Language Therapy Advance Foundations members. Language Therapy Advance Foundations is my course that teaches pediatric SLPs a framework for language therapy designed to give them the vocabulary and language processing skills needed to thrive in school and life. If you’re an SLP, and you want a better system for language therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re setting your students up for success, check out the Language Therapy Advance Foundations enrollment page here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding. 

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