Prioritizing Oral Language

Our students were coming into school with an increasing need for language support. We don’t have universal preschool in Montana and many students enter kindergarten without any experiences of early childhood education.

We were strong in our teaching of alphabetic instruction, phonemic awareness, and decoding skills. And were able to assess these skills in real time to adapt and intervene as needed. But our students were struggling with their writing skills, or their social emotional skills were not being addressed. Essentially, we were only focusing on one part of the equation.

With TEL Ted we can screen all our students, interpret that data quickly, and intervene with high quality language instruction. Since implementing the program, we’ve seen immense success. Our students are now outperforming on language skills, and we’re seeing this directly impact their writing, their engagement and ability to socialize with peers, and even in their math instruction.

Giving Students the Best Outcomes

It’s important when choosing programs to look at those that are backed by evidence and have a strong research base. We need to be sure we’re giving our students the best possible outcomes we can and use practices we feel confident will work.

We chose the TEL Ted Program because of its large evidence base. It’s been shown to be effective for students of varying socioeconomic levels, and for English language learners. We know this program is tried and tested and we can trust in what we’re teaching.

The school-based assessment was an important part of the TEL Ted Program. Across the District we have in-depth language assessments available to us, but it’s not feasible to assess all students with these. We needed a way to quickly and accurately screen all our learners. LanguageScreen, part of the TEL Ted Program, provides us with an objective, standardized overview of student’s oral language skills. The reports provide us with a summary of the whole grade, and we can look in more detail at the specific areas of weakness for individual students. For those who then subsequently receive the in-depth language assessments, the LanguageScreen scores correlate with these assessments. It’s enabled us to bring rigorous oral language assessment to every child.

Rich Language Experiences for All Students

Another reason we liked the TEL Ted Program is the Whole Class component that goes hand-in-hand with the Intervention. For those who are behind in their language skills, students get a double dose of instruction. They’re getting to build on the skills that they’ve already been exposed to, and that repetition helps to cement these skills for those learners. But we’re also able to adjust and be flexible with the Whole Class sessions to support our learners who are achieving at a higher level. All students are involved and so they learn a lot from each other.

The strong focus on building narrative skills alongside vocabulary also resonates with us. At their heart children are storytellers. We have a mantra in our schools – if we can say it, we can write it. By enabling students to build their understanding or sequencing of events, characters, problems and solutions, we’re setting them up to talk about what they know and then write about what they know.

Reducing the Need for Additional Services

Previously if a child struggled with language skills, we would call the speech language pathologist for an evaluation to see if they qualify for special education services. Now, we can screen, intervene and address language skills much earlier. Importantly, we can make sure we’re not missing any child. As a result of implementing the TEL Ted Program, we’re starting to see a reduction in students needing additional services. The provision of both the whole class curriculum and early intervention means that in many instances, after receiving TEL Ted, children do not need that additional SLP evaluation. It allows us to focus our special education support on those students who have a disability or developmental language disorder, while still supporting those children who just needed school-based intervention and extra focused support.