Changing Seasons: A Language Arts Curriculum for Healthy Aging, Revised Edition

By Denise L. Calhoun

Changing Seasons: A Language Arts Curriculum for Healthy Aging is a language-based, interdisciplinary program that increases interaction and communication skills among older adults. Featuring simple step-by-step lesson plans and interactive activities, Changing Seasons is a practical guide for caregivers and health care professionals to ensure individuals sustain their quality of life as they age. Each activity reveals new, creative, and fun ways to encourage individuals to speak, think, and write, sparking imagination and engagement with others. This new revised edition recognizes the growing importance of technology in communication, and incorporates many lessons learned during pandemic isolation, as communication was often limited to screens. Included is a new chapter that incorporates eight lessons on utilizing videoconferencing platforms. Though technology may evolve, communication will remain key to a sense of community and companionship—whether in person or online. Changing Seasons provides a roadmap to promoting meaningful interactions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781612498645

Denise L. Calhoun

As an educator for more than thirty years, Denise L. Calhoun is National Board certified as a distinguished teacher in language arts. With advanced degrees in education and educational psychology, Calhoun has mentored new teachers for the Los Angeles Unified School District and was a master teacher for California State University, Northridge. She is the founder and president of Communicare, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that strives to advance the quality of life and sense of purpose for older adults by providing opportunities for lifelong learning and meaningful social interaction across generations.

Book preview

Changing Seasons

Changing Seasons

A Language Arts Curriculum for Healthy Aging

REVISED EDITION

Denise L. Calhoun

Purdue University Press • West Lafayette, Indiana

Copyright 2023 by Purdue University. All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

978-1-61249-863-8 (paperback)

978-1-61249-864-5 (epub)

978-1-61249-865-2 (epdf)

Cover images: grki/iStock/Getty Images (hands); peppi18/iStock/Getty Images (four seasons collage)

I strongly believe in the power of the human spirit. If you have the will and the desire, you can accomplish anything at any age. After observing the changing of the seasons of my parents, Radford and Earline Knuckles, and my mother-in-law, Jessie Mae Calhoun, I became aware of how important it is to maintain meaningful communication with our older generation. This book is thereby dedicated to them for giving me the inspiration to create a curriculum to help families, staff, and administrators understand the importance of communicating effectively and staying connected with our older family members.

Contents

Foreword

Preface to Revised Edition

Acknowledgments

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Curriculum Goals

Curriculum Content

Curriculum Implementation

Tips for Facilitators

How to Use This Book

ORAL LANGUAGE

Strategies for Activities and Lessons

Getting Started

Warm-Up Activities

Lessons

Listening

Speaking

Vocabulary Building

WRITTEN LANGUAGE

Activities

Lessons and Steps for Various Writing Styles

Expository Writing

Descriptive Writing

Persuasive Writing

Narrative Writing

Folklore

Poetry

TECHNOLOGY TRAINING

Basic Functions to Teach for Navigating Video Conferencing Platforms

Teaching Strategies

Key Technology Terms

Video Conferencing Technology Training

Sample Online Interactive Lessons

Checking for Understanding

Challenges

SEASONAL ACTIVITIES

ABSTRACT ART ACTIVITIES

APPENDICES

Appendix A. Additional Idioms, Commonly Misspelled Words, Food Words, and Recipes

Appendix B. Questionnaires

Appendix C. Graphic Organizers

Appendix D. Technology Resources and Assessments

Appendix E. Sample Daily and Weekly Plans

Glossary

Resources

About the Author

Foreword

Changing Seasons: A Language Arts Curriculum for Healthy Aging presents a wide range of both oral and written activities for older adults to learn and/or refine their communication skills. The fundamental rationale for this work exists with how language affects thinking and thinking affects language. As such, Dr. Calhoun organizes her curriculum in two major areas of oral and written activities, as well as technology in this revised edition. Before all lessons, participants have the opportunity to warm up with a large variation of specific exercises.

Within the oral activities, Dr. Calhoun focuses on three skills: listening, speaking, and vocabulary building. Listening includes following directions, recall, and paraphrasing, and speaking includes critical thinking while articulating, looking at others, the intention to be heard, answering questions, and calm body language. Within these general skills, she presents lessons to develop, reinforce, or modify individuals’ communication techniques. The third skill, vocabulary building, emphasizes awareness of the characteristics, usage, and origin of words to better allow individuals to express themselves. Given the ample number of lessons presented, one cannot begin to list them here. Indeed, some surprised me to be part of a lesson plan, so I will share one example for each type of skill.

In listening skills, recipes illustrate a tasty way to follow directions, and, yes, Dr. Calhoun actually provides directions for how to make pear salad animal faces, for example. In speaking skills, individuals toss an imaginary ball to one another after saying the target participant’s name and one free association word. The receiver must catch the ball and also state a free association word. I can see how this could end up being a very funny lesson depending on what comes to people’s minds! In vocabulary skills, participants must write a three-to four-line description of a newly learned word, then present it to the group. I think this could end up being somehow funny, too. The scope of activities is astounding, which leaves lots of opportunity for mixing things up and avoiding boredom. Alternatively, an appendix contains suggested lesson plans on a weekly basis. Regardless, all of these lessons and corresponding activities may take place in groups, which provide important social interaction.

In the second major area of written activities, Dr. Calhoun focuses on styles of writing such as expository, descriptive, persuasive, and narrative, as well as lessons on writing folklore and poetry. Specific skills within the written activities pertain to planning, revising, editing, and rewriting. Dr. Calhoun’s ability to describe each of these types of writing activities so simply, succinctly, and clearly makes one want to try one. She conveys not only the purpose of each of these types of writing but also their structure, function, and rules. Literally, each type has a step-by-step guide with examples and suggestions to try. For example, in the poetry section, she touches upon various types of poems such as cinquains. Cinquains may be written in three different formats based on the number of words and lines, types of words and lines, or syllables and lines.

In the revised edition of Changing Seasons, Dr. Calhoun connects the wealth of information from the first edition and integrates it with video conferencing technology—a must post-COVID. She introduces eight strategies for integration, so I will highlight just one. Since engaging participants over video conferencing can be extremely difficult when lecturing, Dr. Calhoun presents an alternative: the flipped classroom. In essence, this strategy has participants absorb information before attending class. Then, over video conferencing they can be engaged in processing the information more deeply through exercises involving others in attendance. However, one can mix and match these eight strategies such that any one lesson uses some but not all. Lecture may also occur, but usually in much less time, since participants have already prepared with the material. In all, the one-dimensional conferencing over video comes alive with the combination of strategies and interactive lessons.

Don’t Wait, Read

After reading Changing Seasons, I feel like I have earned degrees in rhetoric, English, and literature! Dr. Calhoun covers an enormous scope in her curriculum with enough depth for one to learn how to do each activity but not in so much detail that one is overwhelmed. I learned so much and so can you.

An Author Connecting Her Soul, Mind, and Body

Changing Seasons may represent the interface between Dr. Calhoun’s own personal experiences with caring for loved ones and her extensive, interdisciplinary background and expertise in education, creativity, and language arts. Where others may experience devastation with caring for an older adult with cognitive impairment, Dr. Calhoun, knowing the human tragedy in such situations, draws inspiration from it to offer a means to improving communication and, in doing so, also empowers older adults to take agency. The simplicity of the curriculum is deceiving, since it is really through her extensive experience with teaching teachers and her own education and credentials that Dr. Calhoun makes the stimulating activities look easy. In Changing Seasons, she creates a systematic variety of ways to improve older adults’ communication skills. This is a language-based curriculum to help older adults age well and prevent cognitive decline. Paid or family caregivers may facilitate learning in groups, but individuals can also use the curriculum independently. Dr. Calhoun wholeheartedly wants to convey not only the importance of maintaining a human connection to our loved ones as we age, but also how vital effective communication is to this end.

LENÉ LEVY-STORMS

Associate Director, Borun Center for Gerontological Research; Associate Professor, Social Welfare; Associate Professor, Geriatric Medicine University of California, Los Angeles

Preface to Revised Edition

As far back as I can remember, I have placed a high value on acquiring a college education. It is therefore no surprise that, in lieu of retiring, I decided to go back to school in my later years. During the time I was pursuing a master’s degree in early childhood education, my mother, unfortunately, was admitted to a long-term care facility. Watching her slowly decline as well as observing the miscommunication that was occurring between her and the staff prompted me to ask the chair of the university’s department if I could apply what I knew about teaching children to helping older adults communicate more effectively. Surprisingly, she took a leap of faith and allowed me to do a thesis project on increasing communication skills in older adults. Bridging the communication gap between older adults and staff in care homes was the first step in motivating me to research how language is linked to cognitive functioning.

During this period, my mother was also becoming less active and was gradually losing her will to even get out of bed. To give her a sense of purpose, I convinced her to become actively involved in the writing of my first handbook of activities. Although her short-term memory was declining, her analytical skills were still intact. Collaborating with her and witnessing the power of her spirit helped me to decide to take this idea one step further and develop a tool that would enhance communication among older adults, family members, and caregivers. This tool was published in 2018 as Changing-Seasons: A Language Arts Curriculum for Healthy Aging, a program designed to challenge the brain and promote meaningful interactions through fun and engaging activities.

Research has suggested a positive correlation between language and cognition, but unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic has severely hampered quality interactions for older adults, leaving many feeling lonely and depressed. To address social isolation, I decided that an additional chapter on how to interact virtually needed to be included in this curriculum. To assist me with writing the new chapter, I reached out to Dr. Seung Bok Lee, my partner in Communicare, Inc. Dr. Lee is an assistant professor of education at Pepperdine University