Image – Page 7 – In Spontaneous Speech

Carryover Activities for Speech Therapy

5 Nov

November 5, 2018 Cindy 0

No matter what goals you are working on with a student, there comes a time to move those newly developed skills outside your therapy setting. This is referred to as carry over. For some students we know it can be a real struggle. We all have experience with the student who does a perfect /s/ during therapy and then you see them in the hallway and they turn to you to ask “Is it my peech day?” All of that work does little good if it does not transfer to the real world. Therefore carryover skills are important to address. It is important to have this in mind from the very beginning.

There are things to keep in mind when planning tasks for carry over. It is important that the student is able to do the required task correctly in a controlled setting and hear the difference between his correct and incorrect productions before doing homework assignments on his own. If he doesn’t self correct errors he is likely to practice homework wrong which only reinforces errors. Homework should be given at the level where student is successful.

It is important to reinforce the correct behavior to get it established but after that don’t give immediate feedback every time. Instead, teach self monitoring by asking the student what they think about their production and then give feedback. This makes them responsible for their behavior and not as dependent on your approval. Children often work for approval and do not see the big picture. We want them to be self-disciplined and responsible for their actions. I often tell them they need to become their own therapist because they certainly don’t want me following them around all day correcting them.

As soon as students are at a spontaneous sentence level I encourage them to self monitor by using a hand counter or tally counter. They self monitor by making a click each time they observe themselves doing an assigned task correctly during therapy. This could be monitoring a correct speech sound, using correct grammatical structures, or using fluency techniques. All those things we tend to work on.

It is easiest to do this in an hierarchy. Train the student how to use the clicker when reading a word list or reading sentences that have the words they are working on. Then bring it up to the next level by working on more spontaneous productions. The Silly Sentences in the “Expressive” section are great for a reading task. It goes to the next level of spontaneous speech when student explain what is wrong with the sentence that was read. The Association cards in the “Vocabulary” section are also a way of getting more spontaneous output as the student explains how words are similar in meaning. I often have students working on vocabulary skills as well as sound production in the same group. With the clicker almost any task that requires a spontaneous response can work and meet a variety of needs.

There are a few bonuses for having the student use the tally counters. You can keep track with a second counter or paper and pencil, and compare accuracy of the self monitoring as well number of attempts with the student’s tally. The students finds it motivating to hit a target number of correct productions and you have data for your records.

The clicker can add natural controls at the level of conversational speech.
Often students get carried away with a conversation, and forget to monitor or allow others to talk. The flow is stopped if you need to remind them. The tally counter in their hand is a good reminder there is a goal in mind. When working with multiple students you can give an assigned number to tally before passing it to another student. The group can earn a chosen activity when they reach a certain number. For some reason the clicker by itself can be motivating to some students.

The “Social” section at the top has quite a few activities to encourage spontaneous speech in social situations. There are ideas for role playing in this section. Role playing is a good activity for practicing real life situations. Ideally you will be providing tasks that reflect real life speaking situations so students practice what they will actually be saying and then carry it over.

Here is a link to my “Home Work Rating Scale“. I have used it to get feedback from parents, teachers, and caregivers. The student becomes aware he is being listened to by others and parents know what can be expected from the student. I often use this sheet as an exit requirement. When parents have been part of the process, they are more likely to know and agree when it is time for a student to discontinue speech services.

Speech Therapy Schedule Hacks

20 Aug

August 20, 2018 Cindy 0

It is that time of year when new SLPS are beginning or will soon begin their 1st SLP experiences. Since I don’t have an assignment to start the new school year, I am finding myself getting quite nostalgic about the whole thing. This time of year I can’t help but reflect back and marvel that I survived it all. I also have to laugh about some of the craziness. I know some things have improved over the years, but a lot remains the same, for instance scheduling has always been a nightmare.

We often want to be accomodating to our teachers and administration. Unfortunately, we often become the default for tasks “somebody” has to do. People don’t know what we do so we become the “somebody”. In some states, SLPs are considered licensed teaching positions and are assigned duties such as recess, lunchroom, and before and after school dismissal monitoring. Of course this doesn’t take into consideration that we accomodate all grade levels in our schedule and therefore use all hours of the day for working with students and having parent meetings. This gets even more complicated if you are in more then one school and more than one school assigns you duties. It is important to become assertive about your duties and set up your schedule early on before you get overloaded. Make a nice copy of that schedule and keep it handy. I’ve had to use my schedule to justify not being assigned a duty. You may need to remind an administrator that you need that time to see students and using your time to do recess duty is not cost effective for special education funds.

After many frustrating years of scheduling I found a few hacks to make it easier. Most teachers have to produce a class schedule early on. I asked teachers at our first staff meeting to provide a copy of their schedule with circled times when I can see students. I would then have the full schedule of each teacher and possible therapy times. The office or attendance system often provided the student list by assigned teachers. This with the teacher schedule gave me the information to set up my schedule. I would then make a tentative schedule. I then emailed or talked to those teachers about the assigned times for their students. This way we needed less correspondence to get things rolling and they could respond by email.

I try to schedule students together according to their goals but this doesn’t always work out. After many years, I found out this wasn’t as important as I first thought. It was easier to schedule students from the same grade levels or classrooms. In most cases therapy could be adapted to meet multiple needs in a group. Since grade levels were often in the same halls or wings I could get students to alert the next group when it was their time to come or I could work in a classroom with multiple students. i found less wasted time with this method.

Don’t forget to give yourself testing and paperwork times. It’s tempting to use that for student therapy time to make smaller groups, but don’t. It is an area that is sensitive to a lot of people to include parents, teachers and administrators. You need that time to complete assessments in a timely manner.

I found one of the hardest things was having an actual lunch break. It was Murphy’s Law that my lunch time would be prime time for therapy time for multiple groups. My lunch was often at the end of the school day before running off to a meeting.

I hope you found some tidbits to use in this post. I hope everyone has a good start to their school year.

Accessorize Your Speech Therapy Sessions

6 May

May 6, 2018 Cindy 0

Are you searching for an activity that can address a number of speech therapy objectives in a group. Clothing accessories are a good tool for this? Most of these items are readily available in your closets, at yard sales or thrift stores and cost very little if anything. It doesn’t matter if they seem silly or out of the norm. That just opens up possibilities for descriptive language, social conversation skills and clear conversational speech.

So should we see what I found in my drawers and closet? I found hats, scarves, beaded necklaces, sun glasses, knee pads, and gloves.

To address the social skills of conversational speech; complimenting, asking questions, and noticing the perspective of another person. Have a few students go out of the room and put some of the items on. Have them come back in and students take a few minutes to see what they are wearing. Have them go back out of the room and switch items. Then see if students are aware of the changes when they come back in.

Another skill to address is starting a conversation. Students ask relevant questions or make a compliment according to what someone is wearing. For example, “I love that red scarf. Where did you get it?” “Are you getting dressed for a special occasion?”

In another activity, students conduct a talk show. One student can put an item on and be interviewed by another according to the character they become with the items they are wearing. This activity is great for determining if students have conquered those articulation skills conversational speech.

I hope your students have fun with these open ended activities and they help you to get away from the grind of drills, provide an engaging activity and allow for speech and language samples for the beginning of the year.

A Flexible Brain Revisited

10 Apr

April 10, 2018 Cindy 0

I published a post quite a few years ago about making a flexible brain. It was a very popular post at the time. I decided to re-publish this post because for me the jello brain lesson tended to come up in the month of April and is relevant for many today when using the popular Superflex program by Michelle Garcia Winner who is author of Social Thinking Curriculums. For those who do not know the program, There is a character, Superflex, who conquers Rock Brain who is not flexible and doesn’t adapt to change well. He keeps getting stuck doing the same old thing and being rigid in his thinking pattern.

The lesson required the use of a flexible brain to illustrate how the brain needs to be flexible to grow and handle changes in an ever changing environment. There is a comparison of a rigid brain with a flexible brain. The lesson manual suggested using a brain mold to make a jello brain and the mold itself for the inflexible version.

I was able to order a brain mold from a Halloween prop store. Now there are quite a few alternatives where you can order a mold on line. Just do a search for brain molds. It was fairly inexpensive and I used it multiple times.

The manual did not give actual directions or a recipe for the mold. I have a bad history with Jello molds from the 1970s. My jello would stick to the mold and never turn out and lose it’s shape. There was also the problem of trying to work in the time line of classes at two different sites. I needed to be able to transport it. I figured the Jello would melt and be over the table before the first session was up.

I researched Jello brain recipes on the internet. It turns out that there are a lot of these. Some of them are a bit on the gross side of things. I decided to stay away from the worm and bug infested brains although I’m sure they would be attention grabbing. I wanted something that would be close to flesh tone and stay fairly solid even if it wasn’t in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. So I settled for the following recipe. It worked well.

You need the following ingredients:

3 boxes of jello with orange to pink colors (watermelon, peach), Evaporated milk (12 ounce can), green food coloring, and 2 1/2 cups boiling water

Dissolve the gelatin in the boiling water, Spray the inside of the mold with vegetable oil spray. Add milk and cold water to the gelatin mixture and stir until smooth. Add 2 drops green food coloring. The mixture should look flesh-colored. Add a drop at a time until you get the right color. Pour the mixture into the mold and put in the refrigerator. This brain turned out to be quite solid and kept its shape for several hours. In between sessions I slipped it back into the mold and put it back in the refrigerator.

For the lesson, slips of paper with brain functions from the categories of social awareness, motor,and factual/science are inserted into the jello brain. The students take turns pulling these out and talking about them.

I debated the best method of getting the papers in the Jello. I ended up laminating the papers and poking them in after the brain was taken out of the mold. This worked better than pouring the jello mixture over them. This way ends of the paper were left sticking out and easy to grab with tweezers. Surprisingly, the brain kind of resealed itself and was in good shape after the papers were removed. I reinserted the laminated papers into the same locations for the next group and used it again.

No one asked if they could eat it. I wouldn’t recommend it after all that examination with tweezers and handling of papers.

I took a picture of the brain so you could have a visual. The photo at the top is my original jello brain.

Crocodile Dentist Adapted for Communication

7 Feb

February 7, 2018 Cindy 0

I updated Crocodile Dentist with a new communication board. It was a popular game with my early language learners and I managed to wear out two crocodiles since the original posting in 2013. This was a great game for speech therapy reinforcement and to encourage communication. Apparently some of you are still using it.

Readers have requested the communication board I made to go along with the game but unfortunately I don’t have it any longer. It was left behind with the game when I moved on to other schools. I no longer have access to the program Boardmaker to print the digital copy. However, there is a free program called Picto-Selector that I have been using to make communication boards. This program may be a good option for some of you. Click on the colored print to find the site to download it. I made the board below using it. If you want to download this board click on the board below.

Meanwhile, here are the game adaptations I posted about in 2013.

Crocodile Dentist is a plastic crocodile that has a spring loaded mouth. The mouth closes when a certain tooth is pushed down. Kids enjoy the suspense of seeing who is going to get bit. I give the kids an option of using using a tongue depressor because some take this quite seriously. The trigger tooth changes location each time the mouth is opened.

Some of you may already use this game for reinforcement. I thought you might like to know how you can expand its use a little further. I use it to expand a student’s verbal output to 2 to 3 word phrases using a communication board and to follow directions using prepositions.

I colored the teeth alternating colors using permanent markers. I used pink, green, and orange because I already had a die that had those colors. If you don’t have a die you can make a spinner or use colors for a die you have.

For my students with limited verbal abilities, I use the communication board along with the die in a plastic jar. I have the students shake the die to get the color of tooth they need to push down. I then model phrases using the communication board while playing the game. The game creates a lot of opportunities for repetition of phrases such as “I have ….” or “push down green tooth”. I also reinforce saying “your turn” and “my turn.” After repetition the students start to say the appropriate phrase when you point to the correct icons as a prompt. Finally, they may prompt themselves by pointing to the icons and verbalizing. This is a good way to break up an imitative pattern that often happens when training non-verbal children and uses a natural context for turn taking.

The colors are used in the direction cards also. Click on the free download icon for the cards. Cards were made using the concept vocabulary: next to, beside, between, right, left, colors, not, side, front, either/or. Children take turns drawing the cards and following the directions for the tooth to be pushed down. We play a variation by giving each child three poker chips. They feed the crocodile a chip if he bites. The person who feeds all three chips is the winner.

I provided a word program down load because I thought people may need to adjust the color words for their needs. If you have any difficulties with this, leave me a comment. Print out the cards and have the students pull them out of a bag and then follow the directions while playing the game.

A reminder that Teachers Pay Teachers is having a February sale. If you have been putting off purchasing, now is a chance to get a discount. Don’t forget to use the code.