The goal at Child’s Voice is for our students to learn how to listen and talk and reach their full potential. We often say that achieving this goal takes teamwork: teachers and therapists must provide expert instruction at school while parents need to supply a language-rich environment athome.
Creating such an atmosphere is a difficult task. Parents often wonder if they are talking enough to their child, if they are giving him or her the chance to initiate or add something to a conversation, or if the background noise in their home is interfering with their child’s ability to understand what is being said.
The LENA (Language Environment Analysis) Foundation, an organization that focuses on how parent-child communication positively impacts a child’s brain and communication development, created Digital Language Processors (DLP’s) to do just this. The DLP is a small recording device that is worn on a child’s clothing and counts the number of words that are said to a child and measures how much background noise is present. After the device has been worn, it is connected to the LENA software which codes and then erases the audio recording.
Would you be interested in checking out a LENA device to help you create the ideal environment for developing listening and spoken language skills in your home? Participating is simple: take home a LENA recording device; record your language environment for a day; return the device to your therapist or classroom teacher; and let the LENA software analyze the recording and provide feedback in the form of easy to read reports (see samples below). All of this is done without anyone ever listening to the recording itself.
If you are interested in trying the LENA out, please email Rollen Cooper at rcooper@childsvoice.org. If you are interested in learning more about the LENA Foundation, visit their website at www.lena.org.
