Speech & Language Pathologists (SLPs) are called upon to nurture the development of vocabulary knowledge. There are many ways to present words and their meanings to children and adults, and each way works to varying degrees, for different people.
Today I (Alaina) describe one method that I have been thinking about recently: the "Three-Period Lesson." Please keep in mind that I'm not taking any position regarding whether or not the three-period lesson should be used.
The three-period lesson is a popular method in Montessori education. Montessori teachers use the three-period lesson to teach their students new words for objects and basic concepts. I will give you a short summary below, but many people have written fuller explanations with examples. Most helpful for me were Kroenke's article, Irinyi's article, and Jackson's (2011) highly readable dissertation, "The Montessori Method's Use of Seguin's Three-Period Lesson and Its Impact on the Book Choices and Word Learning of Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing."
Here is a quick summary of the three-period lesson. The teacher lays out 2-3 objects on a mat. In part one, the teacher picks up each object slowly and deliberately and tells the child what it is, and as the child picks each object up, the teacher tells the child what it is again. The teacher continues with part one over minutes or across days, until there are signs that the child is ready for part two. In part two, the teacher gives the child many action+object directions related to each object, like, "Pick up the ____." The teacher continues with part two over minutes or across days, until there are signs that the child is ready for part three. In part three, the teacher shows each object to the child and asks the child what it is.
From all of the above explanations, I would characterize the three-period lesson as:
- highly structured
- adult directed
- instructive and evaluative
- responsive
- linguistically consistent (...and I will explain all of these terms in an upcoming post)
Many SLPs make use of activities having these same six characteristics, and appearing very much like the three-period lesson. However, my recent search of ASHA journals (http://journals.asha.org/) and google searches for ["three period" SLP] and ["three period" speech language] didn't show any relevant results, so it seems that many SLPs are likely to be unaware of this overlap between their methods and this particular Montessori method.
I hope this was interesting for you! In an upcoming post, I'll be exploring how we can go about evaluating the effectiveness of different therapy techniques, using the three-period lesson as an example.
