How Do You Know app? by Lynn Epstein, MS, SLP-CCC

How Do You Know? Building Critical Thinking & Inferential Skills

Purpose

To build and strengthen language and verbal reasoning skills. Students learn to answer “Wh” & “How” questions with key details and relevant information. They practice making inferences using a language framework to identify and label visual clues to explain how they know! Studies reveal that critical thinking, like making inferences, are essential to meet core curriculum standards and to understand what's going on in both the classroom and social situations. See below for related research.

How Do You Know targets the following language goals
• Question comprehension: who, what, where, when & how
• Verbal reasoning strategies to make inferences
• Critical thinking skills to distinguish key details
• Build vocabulary and semantic knowledge
• Recognize and label associated vocabulary
• Practice reading comprehension at sentence level
• Verbal reasoning skills

Favorite Features of Teachers, Parents & Therapists
• Lots of content; vivid pictures and over 10 categories to choose from:

Places, Activities, Weather, Emotions, Conditions & State of Being, Time, Events, Holidays, People & Occupations, Animals, Geography

• Data collection with percentages for both Wh-questions & How questions
• Different levels of audio and visual prompts
• Study Guide section called “Let’s Talk About It!”
• Email reports and share results with parents, teachers, & therapists
• 100 name capacity; edit to add/delete name
• "Read to Me" option; audio on/off
• Practice reading at phrase & sentence level
• Reinforcement; encouraging audio feedback for correct /incorrect responses
• “Listen Again” button

The author:
Lynn Epstein, MS, ASHA certified speech language pathologist with over 35 years of clinical experience in child language and communication development. How Do You Know? is based on successful strategies and lessons used with thousands of students to strengthen communication and reasoning skills.

Related Research:
How Do You Know? app is an effective tool to practice and reinforce critical thinking skills. Children use a language framework to practice verbal reasoning by answering “how” questions and explaining the inferences they made. While playing, students learn how to answer questions with relevant information and associated vocabulary.

Reasoning and critical thinking are necessary skills for meeting core curriculum standards and competence across the curriculum. Students engaged in critical thinking must make associations that connect problems with their prior knowledge (Pellegrini, 1995). Research shows questioning prompts students to engage in a research process that fosters higher-order thinking skills and social-moral attitudes (Daniel et al., 2005). Difficulty answering wh- questions affects a child academically, linguistically, and socially. (Parnell, 1986). Lessons that explicitly teach students how to explain what they know are effective training tools in advancing critical thinking skills. (Abrami et al 2008).
 

Lynn Epstein, is a certified speech language therapist with over 35 years experience. She is the owner and clinical director of Laguna Beach Language Speech Clinic and can be reached at Lynnsfunny@yahoo.com

Lynn Epstein, MS, SLP-CCC
Clinical Director Laguna Beach Language Speech Clinic