 Does anybody know what an opposite is? My name's Alana McGurray and I'm a speech language pathologist with Edmonton Catholic Schools. So on and off are opposites. I presented books to begin with to show how we can pre-teach concepts that we're working on in the classroom. And what I was looking at was pre-teaching descriptive words and opposite concepts. Gladness is something that's a square and something that is round. With a large group I used a book to pre-teach the descriptive concepts that I was going to work on. And basically, you know, I allow the children to notice what's in the book and then I listen for their comments and I really try to follow their lead into what comments they're making on the book. Once I kind of see where the group is going with it, I reflect back to them what they're observing and I might expand a little bit on what they're talking about because I really want to make connections between what they're seeing in the book and their own experiences. I also use it as an opportunity to introduce new vocabulary or new concepts to them. No, it's big. Literature is something all kids really engage in. They love it. You know, when you really choose a book that has beautiful pictures and is engaging, the kids are right there with you. And I think when that happens, then that's sort of where the magic happens because you go away from just reading a book into making connections into what they experience and their world. And this one is full. I wonder what this one is. I use choices and contrasts. So this strategy is a strategy we use to introduce new vocabulary, to highlight word meanings, to get the kids thinking about the similarities and differences between things. So I might use a choice question, especially if the kids don't have vocabulary or I want to introduce them to new vocabulary, I might provide a question like, well, do you think it's round or it's square or is it high or is it low? And that provides the children, you know, immediately with some vocabulary to choose from. I wonder if it feels smooth or bumpy. And I think that really gets kids using their critical thinking skills. It gets them describing things and thinking analytically about things. I really think it works on more than just language. It works on the higher level cognitive skills as well. We don't see with our fingers, we see with our eyes. We also use visual supports. This strategy we use for children who might need some extra support in understanding language or in using language. It has numbers, that's a good clue. Some of the strategies I used were using objects for the children to actually touch and manipulate as we talked about them. I used pictures so the children could see what we were talking about. And I also used gestures so I might have used actions like little and big or I might have used gestures for a speech sound like this sound. I usually try to start large group. I think large group is always the place I want to start with kids. We introduce the whole classroom to a concept or an idea. When moving to small group, I try to choose the kids who I think need a bit more repetition. When I think about small groups, so I like to try to include peers that are also very strong with their own speech and language skills so that they provide a model for the kids who need repetition and practice.