The Syntax Acquisition Incorporating Literacy (SAIL) program is designed for students in kindergarten through 3rd grade who struggle with syntax due to a language delay or disorder. This program focuses on teaching syntactic concepts in a structured, interactive way using themed stories and various activity types.

Simple noun and verb phrases are targeted first, followed by simple sentences. Each structure is first introduced in the context of a story. Target structures are presented in different contexts throughout the story to help students build a general understanding of how the structures can be used in various ways. Following the story, activities allow students to practice identifying and generating the target syntactic structures in various ways.

Receptive and expressive activities have been designed to provide practice opportunities of gradually increasing difficulty. Instructional activities include selecting syntactic structures in a text, identifying grammatically correct sentences that match pictures, and verbally generating a sentence using the correct syntactic structure. To further support mastery, color and form marking is used to explicitly teach syntactic structures (Balthazar, C.H., Ebbels, S., & Zwitserlood, R. 2020). This will help students with not only oral expression, but also written expression, and may have a positive impact on listening and reading comprehension (Barako Arndt, K & Schuele, C. M. 2013).

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 syntactic structures is integral to morphosyntax intervention as a whole.

Evidence	Expression in Program
Balthazar and Scott (2023) identified three reasons for specifically targeting sentence structure. First, complex syntax is necessary for communicating complex ideas. Second, complex sentences are harder to comprehend regardless of modality (i.e., listening, reading, etc.). Thirdly, oral and written material in mid-elementary through secondary school contain progressively more complex sentence structure.	Targets were specifically chosen to teach students the increasingly complex syntactic structures they will encounter as they develop their language skills.
According to the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis , 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 color and form marking.
Auditory bombardment allows learners to increase their exposure to new concepts, as well as to reactivate and update their memory for the target concepts. When used at the beginning of a session, auditory bombardment may function as structural priming, or modeling, to support a student’s productions later in the session (Finestack et al., 2023).	Video stories placed at the beginning of each lesson use auditory bombardment to expose students to the target structures multiple times before active practice. This primes students for later productions of the target structures.

Evidence-based Program Use

Teach complex sentence structure to support text comprehension for students with general comprehension goals.

Introduce the color and form marking element for each syntactic structure as presented in the skill instruction.

Show the story video to the student at the start of the lesson.

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

Similarly, using an auditory bombardment exercise that exposes students to multiple examples of the target syntactic structure at the beginning of the lesson may prime students to correctly use the structures later in the lesson.

Scope and Sequence

The SAIL program targets syntax components including determiners, verb tenses, and pronouns. Understanding these syntax components is essential for analyzing and constructing sentences in any language.

The SAIL program begins with an entry probe to identify the student's strengths and challenges. This initial probe serves as a benchmark for the student's skills, indicating an appropriate starting point. The educator will introduce the program by presenting the target skill within a story context.

Work Book	Description
Story	Story videos feature target words from the lesson. Sentence complexity increases throughout the program.
Identify it	Identify the syntax components (e.g., simple present tense) from the story by selecting the target words from a group of words or sentences.
Find it	Find the sentence that matches the image.
Say it	Say a sentence related to the image using the target syntax component.

Extended Applications

Details alternate Program uses or learning paths

The SAIL Program has several potential alternative uses that do not require completion of the full program. Educators can select activities from the SAIL program to supplement other programs or focus on specific goals. Target skills in SAIL align particularly well with lessons in POSE that involve specific parts of speech (e.g., noun phrases). The program will not gather data for an extended application that alters the target skill. The following suggestions outline alternative ways to use SAIL:

Vocabulary: The SAIL program can be used to enhance vocabulary knowledge. Educators can focus on action words and the production of action verbs by presenting various activities from the verb tenses skill to the students.

Expressive Language: The SAIL program can be used to practice expressive language skills in general. Using the stories and images in the practice activities, educators can prompt students to answer comprehension questions, to describe the scene, or to construct complex sentences.

Fluency: The SAIL program can be utilized to improve speech fluency and enhance speech flow. The educator can focus on addressing the repetition of sounds, syllables, or words; elongation of sounds; and interruptions in speech while teaching fluency strategies such as fluency shaping and fluency modification. Before implementing these strategies with the student, the educator should provide instruction on them. Throughout the program, the educator can use the stories to encourage the student to retell them while applying the fluency strategies. Additionally, the educator can initiate conversations about the stories and encourage the student to utilize the previously taught fluency strategies.

Quick Reference Guide

Recommends “Tips and Tricks”

When/How do I use the probes?

When:

Probes are available to be used at any time. However, the entry probes are recommended to be used at the start of each level (e.g. Phrases, Sentences, etc.), while the exit probes are recommended to be used when a level has been completed. Each probe receptively tests for the correct identification of syntactic structures in phrases or sentences.

How:

Explain to the students what is expected from them during the probe: “We are going to choose the 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 SAIL Program?

The SAIL Program is broken up into phrases and sentences. Within each of these areas, phrases and sentence structures are broken down even further to specifically target areas such as “determiner + noun,” “present progressive auxiliary + -ing,” “modal will + infinitive,” “SV” sentences, and more. Each target area is holistically targeted using the below activities.

SAIL Activities for Specified Target Areas:

Activity	What students are doing
Story	The students are exposed to the target syntactic structure(s) in the context of a short story
Identify it	The student will find and select the target syntactic structure when presented with text from the story and a picture.
Find it	The student will identify the grammatically correct sentence with the target syntactic structure relating to the presented picture.
Say it	The student will say a grammatically correct sentence with the target syntactic structure when presented with a picture.

What do I do for each activity?

Step 1: Skill Instruction

Introduce the topic of the activity.
Review the skill instruction.
- Modify, model, and prompt as needed 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.
Use the prompts that are most effective for each student and model as needed during the activity.
Data is collected only when the activity is assigned to the student.
Repeat this activity as many times as needed to ensure that the student can produce their target sound.