Digging a little deeper: Multiple Meaning Words

Am I the only one who wishes she had time to sit and think about different aspects of speech and language treatment.  Sometimes I fantasize about going away for a week and just sitting in my hotel room alone and geeking out about speech therapy.   I really need to get to ASHA don’t I?  My digging a little deeper series was a way for me to pick a topic that I wanted to do that with and then think about the treatment and activities that could go along with it.  This month I am focusing on multiple meaning words.

I used to work with my students to figure out what the different terms mean-homophones, homographs, and homonyms.  It ties into the curriculum and it’s a fun way to see how prefixes, suffixes and root words can change the meaning of words.  It’s kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.

One day I got a call from a parent of a student I was seeing.  He asked if I had been talking to his daughter about this and I stated that I had.  He then went on to tell me that he wasn’t “mad” but he would prefer that I stop talking about this because his religion didn’t believe in this.  *Sigh*  I think a sermon that avoided all multiple meaning words might be difficult to listen too-but I try to respect other people’s religious beliefs. 

Teaching vocabulary is such a big task that it can be overwhelming.  When I am starting therapy with a child, I like to think about where I want to end with them.  Not because I hate working with children-but because a good understanding of what “finished” will look like helps guide my therapy.  It’s especially helpful in the murky middle of therapy treatment when I may be struggling with next steps or goals to add for a student or client.

What is a good end point with multiple meaning words?

Seriously, can you tell me?  We can’t teach every single multiple meaning word that is out there.  I haven’t found a lot in the research that suggests how many words you would need to teach to start seeing generalization.  I want the student to show some understanding that words can have more than one meaning AND I want them to be able to use words that have more than one meaning in a sentence or in conversation.   When we first start therapy, I may need to use lots of cues.  I usually know that I am done, when it starts getting harder for me to find challenging goals.

What multiple meaning words and how many should you target? 

I like to work from a list (because it is convenient for me.)  I try to be realistic about how many targets I can teach over the course of the year.  I’ve seen the number 7-8 words per week floating out there in regular education literature.  I feel like most of my students need more practice learning the words, so I may choose 3 words per week to introduce.  The average school year is 40 weeks but I’m going to take 4-5 weeks out as students may be absent, on field trips etc.   I would be teaching 105 words over the course of a school year.  Once I know my target number, I can also work with the teacher and use the child’s classroom textbooks to pull common multiple meaning words for use in my speech room.

How should I teach or target multiple meaning words? 

I like to introduce our words for the week-I almost always pair them with pictures since they are often spelled the same.

We can start with simple receptive tasks where I read a sentence, and the student points to the picture that I am talking about.  It’s kind of fun with homophones (words sound the same but are spelled different) to see if the student can pick the correct one with just the written word.  We talk about how this is more related to spelling but that it is fun to know.

I have a few picture books which show simple multiple meaning words.  I have the child pick one to define and then I have to define the other.  I may use the EET tool to help them define it or we may work on using synonyms or antonyms.  I love to play-“Can’t say it” where I get points if they define the word by saying, “stuff, thing, or use the vocabulary word in the definition.”

We tell jokes.  Lots of jokes.  Can the student identify the word that means more than one thing?  Can they define each one?  Why did the multiple meaning word make the joke funny?

We work on using the words in a sentence.  Can the student use them correctly?  Can they use both of them in the same sentence or paragraph?

Is this really my job?  Am I just doing what the teacher is doing? 

I think this is a question that we ask a lot when we are thinking about language therapy-especially in later elementary, middle and high school.

I believe that we offer different services than a teacher or a tutor would.  We use hierarchies, we provide multiple opportunities for learning, we support students with cues and prompts and change them frequently within sessions to increase our students understanding and performance.  We can try to break down goals or learning to help an individual student grasp a concept or idea.

Goals:

Looking at my end goal for the student to be able to understand and use multiple meaning words as well as my targeted number of words I can write a fairly specific long term goal.  It might look something like, “In order to demonstrate understanding and use of multiple meaning words, Student will be able to generate a sentence containing a multiple meaning word, taken from a list of 100 words previously targeted in therapy sessions, within a one year period for 90% of targeted words.”  Once the long term goal is written, I can write my short term objectives-how am I going to get there.  SOme possible benchmarks:

• The student will identify the correct mm word used in a sentence by pointing to the picture with 80% accuracy.
• The student will match mm words within a picture activity.
• The student will define mm words given 4 choices.
• Given one definition of a mm word pair, student will define the other mm word.
• The student will identify mm words within a joke (or text).
• The student will define one mm word within a joke (or text)
• Student will define both meanings of mm word within a joke (or text)
• Student will explain how a MM word brought humor to a joke.
• Student will use a mm word within a sentence.

Do you work on multiple meaning words in your sessions?  What are you favorite activities or ways to address it?  I’d love to hear about it below.  Check back later this month for online resources, apps and other activities related to multiple meaning words.