Parts of Speech Exploration (POSE) program is designed for students in grades K-3 who struggle with vocabulary and syntax acquisition due to a language delay or disorder. This program focuses on teaching fundamental parts of speech concepts in a fun and interactive way to improve their language and communication skills. Using themed stories makes learning words and their word classes engaging and meaningful.

Parts of speech are first introduced in theme stories, followed by various receptive and expressive activities designed to provide several exposure opportunities. The targeted words embedded in POSE include words from word classes including pronouns, nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Future upgrades to the program will feature lessons for adverbs and conjunctions.

Shape coding is introduced in the instructional content by color coding words according to their word classes. This provides students with a visual representation to assist them in the retention and retrieval of words and their classification. As students learn the color of words, it will help them make connections between words, word classes, and their functions.

Evidence in Action

Children with language delays or disorders benefit from direct instruction of morphosyntactic conventions, which supports the production and comprehension demands within their classrooms (Barako Arndt, K & Schuele, C. M. 2013). Explicit instruction with respect to the parts of speech (e.g., nouns, verbs, etc.) is integral to morphosyntax intervention as a whole.

Evidence	Expression in Program
According to the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH), which hypothesizes that many children with language disorders have a deficit in procedural memory, the most effective interventions should explicitly teach the rules of language using visual support (Ebbels, S. H., Maric, M., Murphy, A., & Turner, G. 2014).	Explicit instruction is provided through visual symbols and the methodology of shape coding.
Addressing complex syntax in treatment will help elementary school children with not only oral expression, but also written expression, and might even boost listening and reading comprehension (Barako Arndt, K & Schuele, C. M. 2013).	Students receive explicit instruction regarding the types and functions of increasingly complex parts of speech.
For elementary students receiving speech/language services, the five most common targets were regular and irregular past tense, pronouns, plural–s, expanding utterances, and present progressive verbs (Finestack and Satterlund, 2018).	Explicit instruction is provided regarding pronouns (e.g., objective pronouns, subjective pronouns, possessive pronouns, etc.) and verbs (e.g., regular, irregular, past tense).

Evidence-based Program Use

Introduce the shape coding color for each part of speech as presented in the skill instruction.

Leverage the skill instruction to explicitly teach parts of speech.

Integrate parts of speech lessons with other syntax and morphology lessons that target the same concepts (e.g., Concrete Nouns, with lessons for plural-s in MAPS (Morphological Affixes - Prefixes and Suffixes).

The principles in the evidence used to create this Program can be used across a variety of therapy sessions. Using visual supports to teach parts of speech helps students with language disorders leverage their strengths. Similarly, explicitly teaching the functions of different parts of speech as part of a comprehensive morphosyntax intervention may help with oral as well as written expression.

Quick Reference Sheet

When/How do I use the probes?

When:

Probes are available to be used at any time. However, probes are recommended to be used at the start and end of each part of speech category (i.e. nouns, verbs, pronouns, etc.). Each probe receptively tests for correct identification and grammatical use by having students match a sentence to a presented picture.

How:

Explain to the students what is expected from them during the probe: “We are going to choose a correct sentence that matches the picture. We’ll try our best to pick a sentence for each picture we see.”
Give nonspecific feedback or prompting if necessary. Do not provide hints as to whether the student is right or wrong. This is to be used for benchmarking to see students’ independent abilities.

What is the structure of the POSE Program?

The POSE Program is divided into sections for each part of speech (e.g. nouns). Each part of speech is further broken down into sub-parts (e.g. proper nouns). Each of these is targeted using the below format.

POSE Lesson Structure:

Activity	What students are doing
Story	The students are exposed to a specific part of speech in the context of a short story.
Word Sort	The student will find and sort the target part of speech from a set of distractor words.
Word Identification	The student will identify the target part of speech within sentences.
Choose the Correct Form	The students identify the correct form of the target part of speech that is grammatically correct and matches a presented picture.

What do I do for each activity?

Step 1: Skill Instruction

Introduce the topic of the activity.
Skill instruction can be repeated and revisited as frequently as the student requires.
Modify, model, and prompt as much as necessary to support the student.

Step 2: Exercises

Exercises can be directly presented on the educator’s device or assigned to the student to be completed on their device.
Emphasize and use the most effective prompts for each student and model as much as necessary during the activity.
Data is collected only when the activity is assigned to the student.