Data analysis for our Indigenous children's communication research

Today Emily-Jane Woodhead, Sarah Bartlett and I had a wonderful day analysing data from our Indigenous children's communication research and preparing for more data collection with children, families and staff next week. It was serendipitous that we were joined by early childhood education researchers Prof Linda Harrison (Macquarie University) and Dr Leanne Gibbs (CSU) for a short while to plan how to share the resources with the Indigenous children at their school holiday program next week.

Emily-Jane, Sarah and I celebrated our birthdays too :)

Brazilian Portuguese speech assessments and resources

While in Brazil I was able to purchase two of Brazilian Portuguese speech assessments and discuss their development and use with the authors:

• ABFW: Teste de Linguagem Infantilm - Prof Haydee Fiszbein Wertzner is the author of the speech subtest - and the "W" in the title acknowledges her contribution. It is important to purchase the complete test because the book and the box of cards are sold separately as well
  
• Complete test - https://www.booktoy.com.br/index.php?route=product/product&path=57&product_id=749
• Manual - https://profono.com.br/produto/abfw-teste-de-linguagem-infantil/
• Stimulus cards - https://profono.com.br/produto/fichario-abfw/
  
• TESF: Teste de Estimulabilidade dos Sons da Fala - https://www.editorabooktoy.com.br/tesf-teste-de-estimulabilidade-dos-sons-da-fala-12276 - Luciana de Oliveira Pagan-Neves, Danira Tavares Francisco, and Haydée Fiszbein Wertzner (other authors are Márcia Mathias de Castro and Tatiane Faria Barrozo). This assessment considers stimulability - and references Glaspey and Stoel-Gammon's work.
  

Authors of TESF Luciana de Oliveira Pagan-Neves, Danira Tavares Francisco, and Haydée Fiszbein Wertzner

Speech assessment component of the ABFW: Teste de Linguagem Infantilm

 Some of the other resources available at the FORL conference from BookToy https://www.booktoy.com.br/

Wiradjuri children's books and Indigenous resources

Today at the Dhuluny Aboriginal Art Market I met two Wiradjuri children's book authors: Larry Brandy and Jessica Leffley. We are purchasing Indigenous resources as part of our current RHRI grant to support rural children's communication.

Jessica Leffley

Resources purchased from Reilly Callie

Covidence review of services and resources to support Indigenous children's communication

Today Dr Carolyn Gregoric, Sarah Bartlett and I met to advance our Covidence review of services and resources to support Indigenous children's speech, language and communication.

Here is our PRISMA diagram from our work so far. We have gone from 2100 articles to 75 to be included in our review.

Carolyn, Sarah and Sharynne

Great strides made at OAMS today

Today was a wonderful day of big steps towards pulling together some of the threads of our research. 

• First, we had a wonderful meeting with our research partner Ebony Hay where we worked together to create/trial/assess the first set of resources we have purchased for OAMS using our RHRI grant money (and advice from listening to staff at OAMS, other ACCHOs and others who are supporting Indigenous children's speech, language and communication). 
• Next we had lunch with Liz Pressick to talk about the overarching research at OAMS regarding continuous quality improvement. 
• Then we met with Anna Blackie (OAMS-Allied Health) and Bonnie from SARRAH about the Allied Health Assistant program.

Emily-Jane Woodhead, Anna Blackie, Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Bartlett (online)

Emily-Jane Woodhead, Liz Pressick, Sharynne

Emily-Jane Woodhead, Ebony Hay, Sharynne McLeod

Resources to encourage Australian parents to use their home language with their preschoolers

I just learned about these two great resources to encourage Australian parents to use their home language with their preschoolers created within NSW Health
• 'Helping my child learn two languages' flyer http://www.mhcs.health.nsw.gov.au/publicationsandresources/pdf/publication-pdfs/ahs-9715/ahs-9715-eng.pdf/view
• ‘Helping your child learn two languages’ video www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIrD7PkeDdg

Useful resources on the web

Here are some useful resources I have learned about recently:

•  The languages you speak to your bilingual child. Blog post by François Grosjean about the work of Annick De Houwer: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201410/the-languages-you-speak-your-bilingual-child
• Training to Enhance Services for English Language Learners http://www.tesell.org/

Oxford Word List - High frequency Australian English words

I have just learned about the Oxford Word List that lists high frequency words in Australian children’s writing and reading development. It is available here http://www.oxfordwordlist.com and can be searched by children's school grade, sex, multilingual, and Indigenous status, school setting (SES status), location (urban-rural), and text type (e.g., narrative) . A great resource for considering the vocabulary of young children.

Creating the Multilingual Children's Speech website

Over the past few months I have been working with many people to create the Multilingual Children's Speech website. It contains resources for speech-language pathologists (and others) to support them to work with multilingual children. It will be launched in November, but I wanted to name some of the people from Charles Sturt University who have assisted with the design, uploading, and critiquing of content: Bobbie Tulloh, Jo Masters, Dan Given, Tony O'Neill, Amy Felke, Sarah Verdon, Kate Crowe, Brendon McLeod, and Amy Whitfield.

Here is the image that will be on the Overview page next to the words "Children are amazing!"

Amazing web support: Jo Masters and Dan Given with Sharynne