Everything is Language

I walked into Rosemary Kennedy School with ideas in my mind.  It was my first job out of school, I was blessed that my supervisor agreed to be my CFY mentor.  I had a caseload of 11 children and was ready to stand on my head to get the job done.  Floortime/DIR approaches were going to be used, AAC technologies were going to be expanded, and I was going to help all of my students. Then I realized I was going to have to test some of my students. The days of a clinical evaluation in grad school went dancing through my head.  Articulation, voice, fluency, hearing, multi-faceted language evaluation, conversational speech sample, language sample...you get the idea. I quickly learned through observation that a school triennial evaluation for CSE and a clinical evaluation are 2 different animals.  Completely. Clinical evaluations require time you don't have in school. Clinical evaluations look at the whole picture while a school evaluation is really looking at academic impact. Clinical eva

Every Fall, my school gets some incoming students.  One of the tried and true goals goes something like this: "The student will sequence 3 pictures into a cohesive narrative" or "The student will organize 3 pictures and sequence using words like first, next, last." All seriousness aside, I see the value in sequencing goals.  After all, a Kindergartner needs to be able to string together a halfway decent story.  Granted, not everyone can sequence with all of the transition words and make it work, but it's still important. Here's what I need my students who are sequencing to do: get the student to understand the sequential order (to me, pictures are the only way to do this.  Maybe text for an older student, but they would have needed the pictures as a foundation when they were younger) Be able to describe the pictures (without the "meat" of the action in each picture, what's the point?) Use transition words (first, next, last, then, after, before

  Working with children with severely unintelligible children is both a challenge and a blessing.   It is pretty clear why it is a challenge, but the blessing is revealed slowly.   With every step forward for these children, you can see how the world of communication opens up. “Communication is the essence of human life”- Janice Light As SLPs, we need to help children who are severely unintelligible get closer to a goal of improved communication.   While the diagnosis of Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) can get thrown around with these children, there are certainly different roads that bring us to the same destination: significant challenges with unintelligibility as well as a disability in overall communication. ASHA recommends considering augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for children with CAS (ASHA CAS Treatment, 2017), and I would go further to say that we need to consider AAC for children with less severe diagnoses as CAS, but still with challenges in communi

This summer brings new experiences for my family. Camps are closed or restricted in use.  The beaches near me are at 50% capacity (and there's still a ton of people there!).  I am fortunate enough to have a blow up pool in the yard, but the usual summer experience is different, so different. I know it doesn't seem like it, but I feel like it's been summer since school "ended" in March.  Yes, we had virtual learning.  Yes, I did therapy online, but there has been a completely different "feel" to the way this summer has started.  There were usual summer tasks that were done already.  My kids were already in "summer" mode because their 1-2 hours of virtual learning left a lot of time for leisure.  On a good day, they played together and on a rough day, I played referee. That is why this simple summer idea has been such a lifesaver already. Stories Podcast! My children's favorites are numerous- but recent ones include "With Our Powers Comb

There are many ways to learn.   One of the most important is when in reflection.  When you can take a moment or 2 and collect yourself.  Figure out what has happened and what you did about it. Obviously, distance learning or remote learning is not going away for at least the next few weeks.  My colleague's anxiety about what happens after summer break is real.  Returning to school must happen, but in what way and how? I work with exceptional students.  Zoom sessions with students with Down Syndrome, Autism, and Intellectual Disabilities bring challenges.  These sessions also bring realizations. SMILE When I start a Zoom session, I get the wonder of being able to look at myself. My wife is a lucky lady, I know :) Seriously though, start with a smile.  Yes, you are texting.  Yes, your email just pinged.  Yes, you have 5 more sessions today.  Smile.  Smile for the student.  Smile for yourself.  Smile because you are still able to touch the lives of students through a computer. GET IT

Listening skills are not dead. You can help your students get better at listening. The pacing of classes, especially as students get older require the ability to have fine-tuned listening skills. Understanding sequence and ordering of steps is hugely important when considering word problems in math. Sometimes we need to almost “drag” our students through the work to get the results that we need. How about something that can help shore up these weaknesses and maybe even make them strengths? Keyword Understanding  from Aptus can unlock some of these puzzles for you and help these students with improving their listening and language skills. One of the earlier levels in Information Carrying Words First and foremost, you need to check out “Information Carrying Words” within the app. It’s my favorite one to work in right now! This mini-game targets listening for attributes and target words (or adjectives and nouns if you want to get fancy!). While the initial stages can be “

I love Star Wars.  Even "The Last Jedi" and "The Phantom Menace." I watch the shows, I watch the movies, and I'm even spreading the love to my own children. While you may not love  Star Wars like I do, you can certainly appreciate working on activities that get your students talking and having fun. This freebie will get that job done- think of this as a free Fun Friday activity that you might be able to do with your whole caseload. I put a lot of the favorite characters like Luke and Darth Vader and even some more obscure items like some of the "pets" and animals that were seen in the 9 movies! Many of my students love Star Wars, and these pages are a great way to stimulate conversation in your speech and language therapy groups.  Hey, sometimes I have to sub in a classroom, and this is a great activity for breaking the ice or giving the students a "fun" activity to work towards. I hope you have as much fun with this acti

Syllable deletion is the Lex Luthor to my Superman. The stubbed toe on a walk through a dark room. The extra minute in the microwave that totally toasts my lunch and makes it gross. The really bad cliches to show how much something is unliked- yeah, you get it. Photo by  Steven Libralon  on  Unsplash I find that improving syllabification in unintelligible children is a fantastic first step in improving overall intelligibility. Of course, some therapists will disagree with me. Oral-motor concerns, stimulability, and the child’s response to treatment are all valid concerns. However, I find that we talk in  long strings of syllables . While the idea of talking in words makes sense, when we are in connected speech, we are in syllable mode. People don’t speak one word at a time, they speak in long groups of words (at least until they run out of breath, but hey, that’s just how we do things in New York!) Traditional methods of reducing syllable deletion will use p

While I don't always do thematic units, I do like to work on bulletin boards within my classroom. I know some of us work in closets (literally), some of us work in the hall, and some of us have actual rooms.  I'm not going to brag, but I work in the old art room in my building.  3 SLPs together in a large space.  We have to take care of 4 separate bulletin boards- so we try to do themes around the seasons. In previous years, we have done snowflakes and turkeys and flowers with vocabulary words.  I love this Word Web and it links up with a good Winter Themed Bulletin Board with only a little prep! I back each one of my webs on construction paper, make a title out of pre-cut letters, and then let the kids get to work on their vocabulary.  When each group is done, I put their words up on the boayrd and boom- bulletin board done! Word Web Freebie for Winter Head over to TPT and grab this freebie!   For more freebies, visual supports, and fun speech games,