ONLINE: Assessing and Facilitating Sentence Diversity in Early Language Intervention

Online Learning

Monday 24th June 2024, 11.00am-2.30pm NZST

The session will be live and will not be recorded, or available for later viewing due to caregiver-child videos being used in the training. Single registration cost is for each individual, not per site. Zoom will be used to deliver the training with “meeting room” details emailed to participants prior to the event. You will need to download Zoom software to your computer. A webcam and inbuilt microphone on your computer is also preferable so you can fully participate.

Intended Participants

This online Continuing Professional Development (CPD) event is intended for Speech-Language Therapists/Speech Pathologists working in early intervention with a clinical focus on language intervention. Assessment and treatment principles will focus on the transition from words to the production of diverse sentences for children aged between 24-42 months of age.

Readings and Resources

Recommended readings and resources will be shared 1-2 weeks before the event.

Learning Objectives

• Describe developmental accomplishments related to each step of the sentence-focused framework.
• Summarize how parent report, language sampling, and  structured protocols can be used to assess and periodically monitor growth in verb diversity and subject diversity.
• Explain the rationale and empirical support for “toy talk” instruction as an approach for modifyingproperties of caregiver and clinician language input to promote children’s sentence diversity.
• Identify uses of toy talk in parent-child interaction as well as missed opportunities for feedback as part of parent coaching

About Dr Pamela A. Hadley

Pamela A. Hadley, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, ASHA Fellow, is Professor and Head of Speech and Hearing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  Her research focuses on improving the identification of young children at-risk for developmental language disorders and the development of effective, evidenced-based early grammatical interventions. For over 30 years, Dr. Hadley has worked to provide more precise, longitudinal characterizations of early grammatical development for young children with specific language impairment/DLD. Most recently, she has explored properties of parent language input that promote the transition from words to sentences and developed “toy talk,” a simple descriptive commenting strategy, designed to modify adult language input accordingly. Dr. Hadley regularly presents to national and international audiences and is deeply committed to translational research and aligning research efforts with the needs of practitioners.