My Speech Tools: Why do SLPs Focus on Categorizing Skills?

Have you written a goal like this: "Given the name of a familiar category, student will name at least 3 items in the category (ex: vegetables, fruits, pets, etc.) on 7/10 trials." or "Given 3 related items, student will identify the category (ex: cow, horse, pig) on 7/10 trials." As a speech-language pathologist, I know that students with weak vocabulary skills may exhibit difficulty categorizing pictures, objects, words and concepts. So when a child demonstrates difficulty grouping like items together, further assessment and intervention may be warranted. So why do speech-language pathologists need to focus on categorizing skills? At an early age, young children begin to recognize shapes, colors, and familiar people. The ability to sort, add order and create working systems is key to developing a rich language foundation. In this post, I want to explain 3 reasons why speech-language pathologists and classroom teachers should strategically focus on categorizing skills as part of their instruction and intervention.

1. Categorizing helps children create patterns and identify similarities and differences.

Language skills are made up of rule-based patterns. The speech sound system is organized by patterns. Patterns also connect grammatical structure to meaning. Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing skills are all organized by patterns. At a young age, our brains begin to sort, organize and connect new information to previous experiences. Phonemic awareness and phonics instruction are designed to teach the underlying patterns needed for reading success. But before they can learn to sort and categorize the abstract, it is important for young children to master the ability to categorize small toys, clothing items, blocks and objects. Categorizing by shape, color, texture, size, and function can be fun and engaging in everyday play.

2. Categorizing develops organizational skills.

Organizational skills are a critical part of executive functioning. Along with impulse control, attention and self-regulation, organization is necessary for learning. One important role of organization is the ability to follow directions. In order to follow 2 or more step directions, students need to access, store and retrieve verbal instructions. Students also need strong organizational skills to read, write, follow a schedule, make plans, complete tasks, and play games. By categorizing, students learn to organize the world around them. The opposite is also true, children who are very disorganized have trouble recalling details and the main idea, knowing how to "start" a project, work cooperatively, and find their home work. As speech-language pathologists, we often target academic organizational skills. Recognizing the underlying deficits in categorizing skills may be crucial in the intervention process for our students.

3. Categorizing helps children connect new concepts to stored semantic relationships.

Every day we take in new information through our 5 senses. We interpret our environment and add meaning to stimuli based on stored information. Semantic relationships link words, ideas and concepts. Brown's Stages of Semantic and Syntactic Development include word relationships such as: agent+action, action+object, and action+locative. In order to create these linguistic relationships our brains must categorize words and meaning. Reading pattern books with children is by far one of the most powerful activities we do to facilitate semantic and syntactic relationships. When children ask for stories to be read over and over, they are creating cognitive maps and categorizing concepts.

Speech-Language Pathologists, classroom teachers, parents and intervention specialists have a crucial role in developing categorizing skills in young learners, as well as school age children. Do you want to learn more about facilitating organizational skills, using pattern books in your speech therapy session, or developing patterning skills in early childhood? I've provided links below to previous posts you may find helpful, as well as a few of my products that target categorizing skills.

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