Thoughts of a secondary school SLT

Tag: bridging questions

  • Supporting Generalisation (Part 4): Mediated learning and Bridging Questions

    In Post 3 of this series (please click here: https://secondaryschoolslt.com/2026/08/20/supporting-generalisation-part-3-meta-skills/), I talked about how metacognitive skills are central to the successful transfer of strategies to real-life contexts, and to becoming a more independent learner. In this last post of this series on generalisation, I will talk about another powerful approach which is strongly metacognitive in nature: mediated learning.

    Many Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) have never heard of the term “Mediated Learning Experience” (MLE) or the psychologist who coined it, Reuven Feuerstein. But they are likely to be familiar with another thinker, Lev Vygotsky, who was coming up with similar ideas in parallel.

    Parallels between Vygotsky and Feuerstein

    Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD – the gap between what a child can achieve on their own, and with an adult’s support) underlies the scaffolding techniques we all use and forms the theoretical basis for Dynamic Assessment (DA). See my post on assessment for more information: https://secondaryschoolslt.com/2026/07/08/language-assessment-at-secondary-school-challenges-and-solutions/.

    Yet, it was Feuerstein who pioneered the very first dynamic assessment tool, the Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD) in 1979, framing the procedure as “test-mediate-retest” rather than “test-teach-retest”. More recently, Carol Westby (2025) used Feuerstein’s wording when she published her “Mediated Learning Observation Instrument” for SLTs.

    Although Feuerstein focused on domain general cognition rather than communication per se, several researchers, e.g. Nelson (1998), and Larson and McKinley, (2003), have recognised the value and relevance of his work to the field of Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) and recommend integrating “mediated learning” into intervention sessions.

    If you’d like to read more about who Feuerstein was, including his work with holocaust survivors, his theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability (SCM) and the evidence base for his work, please see my stand alone post, coming soon…

    What is a Mediated Learning Experience?

    According to Feuerstein, MLE occurs when a more knowledgeable person such as a parent or teacher comes between the world and the learner, “framing, selecting, focusing and feeding back environmental experiences” (Feuerstein et al, 1979, p.71). He also described it as “an intentional interaction with the learner, the purpose of which is to enhance the learner’s understanding beyond the immediate experience and to help the learner to apply what is learned in broader contexts (Feuerstein et al, 2010, p.xviii).

    “Good” parents naturally mediate for their children by going beyond simple dos and don’ts. So instead of hearing, “Don’t touch the stove!”, “Put on your shoes!”, “Don’t run!”, we might hear “Don’t touch the stove. It’s hot. You might burn yourself”, or “Stop here. We need to wait for the green man before we cross” (Some examples adapted from Larson and McKinley, 2003, p.345). This way, the child learns a lesson they can potentially use in other situations.

    The core criteria of MLE

    To guide facilitators, Feuerstein described 12 criteria required for an interaction to be described as MLE, three of which he considered essential. These he called “mediation of intentionality and reciprocity”, “meaning” and “transcendence” (Feuerstein et al, 2010).

    Being “intentional” involves reflecting on the underlying skills we wish to teach, carefully selecting appropriate materials, and explicitly stating the goal of each activity. To attain “reciprocity”, we must ensure that our students are focused on the task by perhaps adjusting our tone of voice, ensuring activities are engaging enough and waiting for them to respond.

    Feuerstein also believed that his patients should understand the “meaning” of the activities he asked them to complete. In other words, it’s important our students are fully aware of the skills we are trying to teach and how they are relevant to their lives. Finally, transcendence involves getting our students to apply what they have learnt to other contexts in a process Feuerstein called “bridging”.

    SLTs as natural mediators

    In practical terms, mediating and bridging have a lot to do with asking guided questions. Instead of telling students the answers, good mediators provide scaffolding, ask questions and then further questions, challenge answers and get students to justify their responses, continually emphasising the processes of thinking, learning and problem solving as much as the answers to individual activities (Haywood et al, 1988 in Nelson, 1998).

    So we might ask students how they knew which answer was correct, why their choice was better than another option, what they had to do to solve the problem and whether there might have been another way to solve it.

    SLTs do much of this already. We are used to setting targets for our students, carefully selecting activities and materials, modifying environments and our communication to ensure our students’ success. And because our clinical training is so deeply rooted in facilitation techniques or “scaffolding”, you might say that SLTs are the most natural mediators.

    What may be less familiar is making our reasoning explicit to our students. Although many SLTs discuss targets and get students’ input at the beginning of term, it might seem unnecessary to do this with every activity or skill we try to teach…

    Yet, since I started clearly explaining what we are doing, why we are doing it and how what we are working on is relevant to their lives when introducing any new activity, I saw a noticeable improvement in my students’ intrinsic motivation and engagement. Something else that might feel foreign  to SLTs is the level of metacognitive questioning involved in mediating and bridging.

    What is bridging?

    During bridging, we get students to think of alternative situations when they could use the strategy or skill being discussed (Larson and McKinley, 2003, Feuerstein et al, 2007). For example, when teaching a range of clarification questions to use in class, you could discuss other times when it’s especially important to seek clarification, such as to find out which topics to revise for an exam or when attempting a dangerous activity like bungee jumping. Or you might choose to highlight the broader skill of asking questions generally. So, you could ask:

    Can  you tell me about some other times in life when it is important to ask questions? How about at school/ in your free time? What kind of questions might you ask if you were buying a new phone/ trying to rent a room? Why is it important to ask these questions? What might happen if  you  didn’t  ask the right questions  when buying a new phone/  renting a room/ doing a bungee jump? What kinds of  jobs involve asking questions? What might happen if a doctor/ reporter did not ask the right questions?

    Or, if you’re working on putting vocabulary words into different categories, then you could highlight the underlying skill of categorisation, or organisation. You might ask questions like:

    Where else can you find things organised into different categories? Which categories are there in a supermarket/ pharmacy/ zoo? If I asked you to buy some cornflakes, apples and ice cream from Tesco, how would you do that? How can knowing what category something is in help you with your shopping/ at the self-checkout?

    Or alternatively…

    How are zoos organised? What are some different ways of categorising animals? Can an animal fit into two categories at the same time? If you wanted to see the alligators, the lions and the parrots, how would you find them? Why might it be helpful to keep all the reptiles in the same area? How does this make it easier for the zoo and better for the animals? How is what you learn organised at school? Can you think of anything that cannot be organised into categories?”

    Hopefully students begin to realise that everything can be organised into categories, and they start to understand the rules that govern our world.

    How do students respond?

    Larson and McKinley (2003,  p.347, 350) warn us to expect “dead silence” or “weak” bridges initially. When asked questions like, “When is another time it’s important to use your inference skills/ look for clues?”, they may simply reply, “at school”, “with friends” or nothing at all. A stronger bridge might be, “when analysing Macbeth in my English lesson”, or “to work out why a friend is angry with me”.

    You will probably have to provide a lot of support initially, and, of course, adapt your language for lower level students. To encourage your students to produce stronger bridges, you could ask questions like, “When, at school, could you use your inference skills?” Or provide a partial bridge for them, e.g. “How about in your English class…?” (Larson and McKinley, 2003).

    The level of questioning may seem high, but you might be surprised at what your students can achieve with consistent support. And by “consistent”, I mean asking bridging questions at every opportunity: at least every session, and ideally after every activity. I started integrating mediated learning and bridging questions into my sessions slowly after reading about the approach in Larson and McKinley (2003), but after a while of doing it, I noticed that my whole attitude towards my sessions had changed.

    Of course, mediation is not a cure-all, and it’s unlikely to be successful with those with severe neurological impairments. But Larson and McKinley (2003) argue that it’s entirely appropriate for secondary aged students with language disorders in mainstream settings.

    According to them, we should expect to see significant progress within 6-9 months, although I personally feel some students make progress before then. Larson and McKinley (2003) also point out that students are expected to handle thought provoking questions at secondary level, so you could say that using a mediated learning approach is also aligned with curriculum goals.

    Since integrating mediated learning and bridging into my sessions, I’ve seen an enormous improvement in my students’ motivation and engagement, maturity, reasoning ability and transfer of skills and strategies to other situations. It’s truly one of the things that has made the biggest difference to my practice. I hope it helps you too!

    To learn more about Feuerstein, please see my stand alone post: https://secondaryschoolslt.com/2026/09/17/reuven-feuerstein-and-his-radical-theory-of-structural-cognitive-modifiability-scm/

    Notes

    Feuerstein, Reuven, Refael S. Feuerstein, and Louis H. Falik. 2010. Beyond Smarter: Mediated Learning and the Brain’s Capacity for Change. New York: Teachers College Press.

    Feuerstein, Reuven, Ya’acov Rand, and Mildred B. Hoffman. 1979. The Dynamic Assessment of Retarded Performers: The Learning Potential Assessment Device, Theory, Instruments, and Techniques. Baltimore: University Park Press.

    Feuerstein, Reuven, Ya’acov Rand, Mildred B. Hoffman, Moshe Egozi, and Nilly Ben Shachar-Segev. 2007. “Chapter 4: The Instrumental Enrichment Program.” In Instrumental Enrichment Program Reader. Jerusalem: Feuerstein Institute.

    Larson, Vicki L., and Nancy L. McKinley. 2003. Communication Solutions for Older Students. Eau Claire, WI: Thinking Publications.

    Nelson, Nickola Wolf. 1998. Childhood Language Disorders in Context: Infancy Through Adolescence. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

    Westby, Carol. 2025. “Mediated Learning Observation Instrument.” Word of Mouth 36 (4): 8–10.

  • Supporting Generalisation (Part 1): Challenges and Solutions

    When we see our students for intervention, we all hope that they will make progress not just with the targets we set them during our sessions, but also that the linguistic skills and knowledge taught ultimately help them become better communicators in real-life contexts (Paul  and Norbury, 2012). Any less than this and our job could be said to be incomplete (Nelson, 1998). Yet, achieving “generalisation” or “carryover” has long been considered one of the harder parts of a Speech and Language Therapist’s (SLT’s) job.

    Criticisms of the “pull-out” model

    In recent years, the traditional “pull-out” model of therapy, where students are removed from their lessons and taken into a separate room, has been heavily critiqued for not supporting generalisation. Some have argued that in creating an artificial context, skills taught within sessions may not naturally transfer to real communicative situations and have limited relevance to students’ lives (Nelson, 1998). Indeed, research has found that children do not always generalise what they learn in this way to spontaneous conversation (Paul and Norbury,  2012).

    As an SLT working privately in schools as part of a “buy in” service, much of the support that I provide is within this context. The criticism notwithstanding, there are many benefits to this way of working. A separate room can provide a quiet, nurturing, distraction-free space for those with  attention difficulties. It also allows the teaching of basic skills, tools and strategies, as well as more attention, talking time and scaffolding (Paul and Norbury, 2012), than would not be possible in a busy classroom environment. Older students may appreciate the freedom to practice new skills without the pressure of doing it in front of peers (Nelson, 1998).

    However, it is important to remain conscious of the drawbacks, and to remember that generalisation is unlikely to occur automatically. According to Paul and Norbury (2012), it needs to be consciously built into any intervention program rather than considered an afterthought. They argue that it should form a part of every session; if not every activity, then at least every goal.

    If your role involves any direct work with students, then you could try some of the following approaches to ensure that what you teach “carries over”: using more “natural”, contextually based activities and materials, involving teaching staff, supporting metacognitive skills, teaching strategies as well as using a mediated learning approach and bridging questions.

    Using “natural”, contextually-relevant activities and authentic materials

    Whilst the “pull-out” room has been criticized for being contrived and “unnatural”, the intervention activities we choose to introduce within that environment may be more or less so. Activities can be placed along a “continuum of naturalness” (Fey, 1986, cited in Paul and Norbury, 2012, p.68), according to how similar they are to those our students normally engage in. So, asking them to complete a specially designed connectives worksheet might be considered less natural, whilst supporting them to integrate said connectives into a real class assignment might be considered more so.

    Interestingly, research has shown that certain approaches which fall toward the less natural end of the scale such as drilling can be highly efficient at getting students to learn new language forms. No natural approach can elicit so many correct responses in such a short space of time (Paul and Norbury, 2012). But, like the pull-out room, the problem comes with transferring these gains to real-life communication. Paul and Norbury (2012) recommend a combined approach of more “clinician-directed” activities during the early stages of treatment, with more naturalistic ones either simultaneously or afterwards to encourage “carry over”.

    With younger children, this might take the form of child-led play, or informal conversation extended by an adult. With older students of secondary school age, we can incorporate materials they are likely to encounter at other times of day into our sessions. So, as hinted earlier, we might use their textbooks, lecture slides or curriculum vocabulary lists rather than specially designed activities (Costello, 1983 in Paul and Norbury, 1998, p.86). Nelson (1998) also recommended balancing “pulling-out” students from lessons with “pulling in” curriculum content and materials. By doing so, our students immediately see the relevance of what we are teaching to their daily lives.

    One idea already commonly used by SLTs naturally supports generalisation: pre-teaching curriculum vocabulary. To truly know a word, we must encounter it multiple times across different contexts. When you teach your student curriculum terms such as “tectonic plate”, “constructive” and “destructive margins” you ensure that they will hear them in at least two different contexts: their Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) session, and their geography lesson.

    Paul and Norbury (2012) also recommend “priming”, by previewing materials and exercises students will go on to encounter in their lessons. They argue that since our students already know the right answers, this allows them to “look smart” in front of other students, boosting their self-esteem.

    However, Larson and Mckinley (2003) caution us not to fall into the trap of simply tutoring our students the curricular material, which they claim is only a short-term solution to underlying language difficulties. Instead, we should aim to use these materials as a vehicle to teach specific language-based skills and strategies. So, when teaching a strategy like morphological analysis, where I teach students how to break complex words apart to work out their meanings, I often include some curriculum vocab words from different topics to practice on.

    Say I have taught the prefix “omni” and the root words “potent” and “bene”, then students may be able to work out the meanings of their new R.E. words “omnipotent” and “omnibenevolent” as well as perhaps extending their reasoning to more everyday words like “beneficial”, “impotent” and “potential”. Teaching the prefixes “endo” and “exo” as well as the root “thermo”, may help them to work out “endo-“ and “exothermic reaction”, “thermal imaging” and perhaps “exoskeleton”. Or, if we are working on figurative language, then I might draw similes and metaphors from their curriculum text,  A Christmas Carol, and have us work out the meanings together.

    Of course, sometimes curriculum materials may initially be too complex for lower level students. In these cases, you may need to start with more basic, specifically designed activities. For instance, I sometimes use simple inference worksheets from websites like Super Teacher. But where possible, I try to combine them with more authentic, contextually relevant tasks, such as getting them to write short PEE paragraphs (Point, Evidence, Explanation) – an acronym commonly used in secondary school English lessons to support extended writing skills – to answer the inference questions about the scenarios.

    This way, my students immediately see how their developing inference skills directly support their ability to analyse and write in English lessons. Once they succeed with these simpler tasks, they can progress to applying these skills to their actual curriculum texts. Alternatively, if you have spent time teaching students to write relative clauses, then you could try spotting them in newspapers together.

    Involving teaching staff

    Using a pull-out model does not preclude the possibility of working more collaboratively. When I worked for the NHS, we would invite our students’ Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) into our sessions as a matter of course. Doing so allows you to share targets, model facilitation strategies and pass on ideas, hopefully allowing your work to be reinforced outside of SALT sessions, thereby supporting generalisation.

    It can also give LSAs an insight into a new student’s difficulties, or conversely, their abilities. In cases of learned helplessness, some students become so reliant on support staff, believing themselves to be incapable that they effectively give up and stop trying. I once worked with a student at a Further Education (FE) college whose LSA attended our sessions. After watching him work, she commented that she had no idea he was so capable.

    Supporting your students to succeed in a quiet, low-pressure environment may help to change others’ perceptions of their limits. When an LSA sees what a student can achieve with the right scaffolding, it might lead to a shift in expectations in the classroom, potentially leading to gentle encouragement to aim higher.

    What next?

    If we want our students to become more independent, we have to move beyond teaching basic language skills. In Part 2 of this series of posts, I discuss using a learning strategies approach and supporting meta skills to aid generalisation and independence. Click here: https://secondaryschoolslt.com/2026/08/12/supporting-generalisation-part-2-teaching-strategies/

    Notes

    Larson, V.L. and McKinley, N.L. (2003) Communication solutions for older students. Thinking Pub. 

    Nelson, N. W. (1998) Childhood Language Disorders in Context: Infancy Through Adolescence. 2nd edn. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

    Paul, R. and Norbury, C. (2012) Language Disorders from Infancy Through Adolescence: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Communicating. 4th edn. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.