Essay 2, draft 3

Integrating the games into the session is a key element to the children’s success in their language and reading problems. The problem with just playing a normal game at the end of the session the child wants to play the game more than to work on their sounds and if they do not do a good job they lose their chance of playing. Now with integrating the game the child can play and work at the same time and there are different kinds of games so there is variety for the children. Using standard cards with the words on the one side and making the child say that word over and over again is typically boring. Now integrating games should be done so the games seem to be more fun and exciting to the child and it would help with phonation awareness and reading problems.

Now by integrating games into the work would make the work that much more fun for the child. According to the author there need to be a caution when using typical board games with speech therapy. First the goal of the session must be emphasized. The objective is to work on the sounds and not to win the game. The second caution the game must be kept simple enough so the child can understand (Yoakam 85). This is very true because kids can easily get distracted if the game is too complex and with older children than can get really board with typical games. Each age group would be different a child who is 5 would need a very simple game like cards that has pictures on one side and the word for the other side.

Playing the memory match game for younger children would be perfect for them. Now the speech therapist would have to put words on the blank side but not on the same picture so the child would have to say two words instead of one. If they found the matching two pictures they would have to say the two words on the blank side. If the child says them correctly they get both cards; now if they got one right and one wrong the teacher gets one of the cards and the child does too. The main goal is to work on the sounds but the hidden goal is to beat the teacher in points because each card is worth so many points.

Now with children, who are in the age of eight through ten, a game with a target that has the words the child needs to work on is much more suited for a little bit older children. The target game is like a playing darts except the child is using a ball and not darts. The board of the game looks like a target but in each ring there are words. The words on the board are a common characteristic most of the time the words would be starting or ending with the same sound. Like for most children the letter R. The rules of this game if you hit the word the child has to say that word five times the correct way and then put the word into a sentence.

The greatness of typical game integrating into the lesson could possibly spill over into the home. In the review of Doris Yoakam article she states that typical games are a great way to break the ice to a child who is new to the environment. By doing this it helps the child to feel more at home with a game that he/she knows and plays it in a different kind of light. Also by do so the child might want to play that game in a new way at home with his/her family and it does not bring the negative of effects of like “homework” (87).

The only other element in order for the games to work is points system. For whatever game that the speech therapist and the child play there needs to be a point system. The points could be anything from tokens to tick marks on the board. As long there is a reward system the child feels that he/she is being rewarded for the good that he/she has done. Now along with the reward there needs to be a negative reinforcement to make improvements. This negative reinforcement could be taking away those reward points for each word that was said wrong. Another way to have a negative reinforcement is that the teacher won or making the game a little more difficult for the child to win would help the child too.

Phonological awareness is one of many key elements for reading. Phonological awareness is “the general ability to attend to the sounds of language as distinct from their meaning. It has been described as the awareness of words in sentences, rhyme, syllables, the beginning and end parts of words, and phonemes” (Segers and Verhoeven 229). This is the basic understanding of phonological awareness and if the child does not have this awareness they might not able to read as well as most children do. In this study, children who have worked on phonological awareness training program on the computer for about five hours of training, each session lasting only twenty to twenty-five minutes, has shown much more improvement compared to children who had no training with the computer (Segers and Verhoeven 229). Now obviously we can tell that with just training there is a significant difference. Also, the use of the computer helps the children to learn more; which is slightly more interactive than a board game or flash cards with pictures on them, but still using a game of some sort. Both, using board games or the computer, help the child get more out of their studies.

Works Cited

Yoakam, Doris G. “Speech Games for Children.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 30 (1944): 85.

Segers, Elaine, and Ludo Verhoeven. “Computer-Supported Phonological Awareness Intervention Kindergarten Children with Specific Language Impairment.” Language, Speech, & Hearing Services in Schools 35 (2004): 229-239.