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An Activity-Based Language Intervention Program for Kindergarten Children: A Retrospective Evaluation

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Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of a small-group intervention based on the naturalistic approach on 220 children from 3–5 years of age. All kindergarten children received weekly sessions delivered by a SLP in collaboration with the kindergarten teacher. These sessions included various book related activities. Two intervention groups were identified: children from middle SES neighborhoods and children from low SES neighborhoods. A control group was matched to the first group and included children from middle SES neighborhoods. Children participating in the program were pre and post tested using three language tests in order to assess basic language skills. The main finding was that children in the intervention groups showed significantly greater gains from pre- to post-test relative to children in the comparison group. The program benefited children from different SES environments. The greatest progress was in the area of vocabulary. In sum, the combination of small group setting and age-appropriate interactive activities served to provide language promoting opportunities for these children.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Studies, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, 31905, Haifa, Israel

    Ravit Cohen-Mimran

  2. Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Liron Reznik-Nevet

  3. The Institute for Communication, Language, and Speech Disorders, Interdisciplinary Clinical Center Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Sharon Korona-Gaon

Authors
  1. Ravit Cohen-Mimran
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  2. Liron Reznik-Nevet
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  3. Sharon Korona-Gaon
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ravit Cohen-Mimran.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Language intervention goals include the following:

  1. (a)

    Pragmatics: children will engage in conversations (listen, respond, initiate) with peers and adults while playing. During the interaction, children will request, ask questions and convey feelings.

  2. (b)

    Semantics: children will produce nouns, verbs and adjectives from daily content areas based on content and vocabulary in selected literature.

Children will understand and produce spatial concepts (on, above, under, in), concepts of quantity (more, less, few, many) and size (big, little).

  1. (c)

    Morphology: children will produce nouns, verbs and adjectives in singular/plural and male/female (the Hebrew language marks male/female in verbs and adjectives).

Children will match verbs and adjectives for gender and number (examples: “he walks”, “she sits”, “all are blue” “the birds are white”).

  1. (d)

    Syntax: children will formulate utterances with simple structure (SVO = subject + verb + object), as well as more complex sentences, such as adding adjectives/adverbs or using the conjunction “and” to connect two utterances. Children will be exposed to complex sentences containing coordinating conjunctions such as but, for, or and if (example: “If you sit quietly, you’ll get a sticker”), as well as to compound sentences containing two dependent (subordinate) clauses, as in “The boy ate the ice cream his mother bought him”. Children will use prepositions (in Hebrew, prepositions either are separate words or are a letter attached to the beginning of a word) such as in, to, with.

Appendix 2

Here are the activities that followed the reading of the book The Mouse and The Apple by Stephen Butler (2004). This book, well known to English speakers, was translated into Hebrew (other books were originally written in Hebrew and are only familiar in Israel). These three activities followed the reading of the book over a period of 6 weeks:

Week

Activity

1–2

Reading the book accompanied by illustrations and demonstrations.

3

Making fruit salad.

 

After discussing the subject of “fruit” (What is the fruit in the story? What other fruits do the children know and like? What are the attributes of each fruit: shape, color and taste?), each group cut three different kinds of fruits: banana, orange and apple. While cutting up the fruit, the SLP emphasized relevant specific verbs such as peeling, mixing etc. Each group put the salad in a big communal bowl. At the end of lunch break every child received a personal serving of fruit salad. Pictures of the activity were used to sequence the recipe.

4

Building an animal farm.

 

Each child was asked to choose an animal and its home, and take the animal that he chose from the toy animal box that was available in the classroom. The farm itself was built from recycled materials. Each group of children participated in a pretend play with the SLP. The teacher was then asked to enable spontaneous pretend play, with the animals in the farm, for 1 week.

5–6

Show following the story.

 

After four sessions of shared story book reading and activities, the children began to prepare a show to follow the story. Each child chose a character from the story “The Mouse and The Apples”, received a “crown” with a figure of the character he had chosen and the group put on the show. In the next session, the children practice the show in small groups and than the entire class presented the story; this time, with all the children playing their parts.

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Cohen-Mimran, R., Reznik-Nevet, L. & Korona-Gaon, S. An Activity-Based Language Intervention Program for Kindergarten Children: A Retrospective Evaluation. Early Childhood Educ J 44, 69–78 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-014-0676-z

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