Welcome to another episode of Insights with NetSupport. In this episode, I was thrilled to welcome Meika Billings Dopwell to the show.
In this episode, I was keen to pick Meika’s brains about top tips for teachers to best support learners with speech and language difficulties in addition to some of the technologies and approaches we use in our classrooms and schools.
Here are the questions that we covered:
1. You’re new to Twitter... As someone in education, how are you finding the experience, what benefits are you experiencing and what top tips would you have for others just joining the platform?
2. As a speech and language specialist, could you share some of the difficulties young people face in the classroom?
3. Linking to the previous question, what advice would you share to educators looking to help students feel more included within the classroom setting?
4. I know you have a bit of a special interest in the ways technology can be used to support learners with speech and language difficulties. Could you share some of the tools and techniques/approaches that you’ve found to be effective?
5. Schools are more than just ‘the classroom,’ so what advice might you have for principals or district leaders or those with responsibility for ensuring inclusion and accessibility about how to successfully support learners with speech/language difficulties in their setting?
As you might expect, these questions brought about some fantastic responses and conversations, but you’ll have to watch or listen to the episode to hear all of the insights shared!
For some of the tools and resources mentioned, for ease of reference, we thought we’d list some of them here which included, although not exhaustively:
Websites:
• https://wow.boomlearning.com/
• https://kahoot.com/
iPad apps:
• Speech Tutor (Helps children say sounds in words to increase intelligibility) where the web version is FREE; the tablet version allows you to record and watch practice trials
• Category Therapy (Great for category and discrimination practice)