Activities for the Non-Crafty

I mentioned in my last post that I really enjoyed the simple activities my supervisor R uses to motivates the kids during various articulation/phonology and language activities.  I liked them because they are easy to make and the same type of activity can be used with variation on a theme (e.g. holidays, seasons, what the kids are learning in class, etc.)  There are three basic types of games R rotates through that are varied only by their theme.  It’s amazing how the kids are content to play essentially the same activity each time whose stickers/pictures have changed.

Matching

Well, this one is pretty obvious and I’m sure many of you out there already doing clinic have used the matching game.  R buys small stock cards, buys some stickers that have a repeating theme (e.g. this week I’ve been using snowman that are dressed differently; hat, scarf, broom, etc.).  Give each child a card at the start and then let them draw a card from a pile after each turn and see if they get a match.  Who ever has the most matches “wins.”  In our therapy room, this means they get to pick a sticker first.  (I’ll explain the sticker charts below.)

Either/Or

The second activity R uses involves some simple stock cards with either one picture, or another on them.  For example, following the winter theme above, about half the cards might have a picture of a snowman and the other half a picture of a snowflake.  Before beginning therapy, let the kids decide (or decide yourself) which picture will be worth a point.  After each turn the child draws a card and gets a “point” if it’s the chosen picture.  Whoever has the most points at the end “wins.”

Count the Stickers

The final activity R uses involves a varying number of stickers placed on the back of an appropriately themed picture.  Again, recently, we’ve been using snowmen pictures.  On the back of each one are a varying number of likewise winter-themed stickers, usually between 1 and 4.  After each turn, the kids draw a snowman.  At the end of the session, each kid counts up the number of stickers they have and whoever has the most “wins.”

Finally, the sticker charts.  Every child has a chart with about 20 spaces on it.  After every session, if the child has worked hard, paid attention, behaved, etc., they get a sticker.  Once they collect all 20 they get to choose a pencil, candy, or other small prize out of the treasure box.  The kids also get really excited about this.  I had one little girl tell me today, “I’m almost there!  I have 7 left!”

I can’t speak for other graduate clinicians, but in my experience a lot of time is spent on (sometimes rather elaborate) therapy materials.  And hey, I admire the crafty folk who are materials savvy!  I have spent a fair amount of time on some fancy therapy materials, but I like these because they are both easy to make and, more importantly, easy to execute in therapy.  When you have 20 minutes of therapy with 3-4 kids, you don’t want massive amounts of spent on entertaining the kids. They’re there to work, after all, and every minute is important!

Now I’m just hoping there won’t be another 2-hour delay or cancellation due to inclement weather at School 2.  I feel like I’ve barely led any therapy there!  And Friday!  Friday I will witness (and hopefully assist in) my first classroom-based therapy activity.  I’m really interested to see an SLP at work in a classroom, especially with Response to Intervention (RtI) being the new Thing in education.

Another day, another school

I was introduced to School 2 today.  I am in such trouble.  School 2 is like a maze, and as a spatially challenged person, I am liable to get lost.  I also failed at storing pretty much anyone’s names again.  Following my own advice from yesterday, however, I did learn the front office lady’s name AND the librarian, since my supervisor R pointed her out as someone I should definitely know.  Small victories, I guess.

Otherwise, the day was once again spent observing the various groups of students.  I felt like I saw more language today than I did yesterday, although lord knows there’s plenty of articulation/phonology treatment at either school.  I also went through most of the client files as well.  Not that I’m going to probably remember much at all about what I read for each kid.  Originally, I was just going through the drawer alphabetically, but then I realized I might want to know the information for the kids I was simultaneously observing, so I changed my tactic and started pulling files for the kids for each group.  I had a dim hope that if I looked at the file and then watched the kid in group I might somehow remember stuff better, but I’m not sure it helped much.  I’m already trying to think of a new plan of attack for tomorrow.  (I didn’t ready ANY files for School 1 yesterday.  I feel a little dumb about that, and it certainly would have livened up the afternoon after the novelty of the place wore off.)  In any case, it’s a relief that R provided me with a cheat sheet for all the kids on her caseload (i.e. an abbreviated summary of each kid’s goals).  For all those starting and/or planning on interning in the future, I highly recommend asking your supervisor if s/he has something, and if not, making one for yourself as you go through the files to pull out and refer to.

However, the file reading was worthwhile to see how the IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) were written and the sort of the language they used.  Apparently, the state I am currently in has instituted some kind of computer program that everyone is supposed to use to write IEPs so that everything is uniform and IEPs can be easily accessed by educators, educational support staff, and related professionals within the state.  There were easy to read in the sense that everything was uniform in format and presentation; however, I found the language goals annoyingly vague.  All goals made by the SLP and reported in the IEP have to match the state academic standards for that child’s grade…which of course don’t exactly match to the specific kinds of things an SLP might be working on.  For those of you planning on working in schools, you might want to go ahead and start to familiarize yourself with your state’s standards for each grade, as I believe many (most?  all?) will force you to write your goals (or use a program that forces you to write your goals) using state standards.  Each state’s academic standards are probably available for easy viewing on each state’s Department of Education website.

In any case, I have another summary of a test below and then (I think!) I’ll be done with learning about new tests I’ve barely heard of before.

• TACL-3 (Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language) (1999)

Just as the test says, it tests the auditory comprehension of language for ages 3;0 to 9;11.  The three categories of language comprehension include: vocabulary, grammatical morphemes, and elaborated phrases and sentences (i.e. syntactically based word relations, complex sentences, embedded sentences, active/passive voices, direct/indirect objects, etc.).  It does not cover all aspects of language comprehension (e.g. comprehension of discourse, metaphors, idioms), but it does not claim to be all-encompassing, and it certainly covers a fair amount of ground as it is.  At 20-30 minutes testing time, it certainly makes it attractive to the busy speech pathologist.  Scoring is a simple 1 or 0 system, with a ceiling of missing three successive items for all subtests.  This tests also seems pretty strong psychometrically.  I just noticed that the woman who wrote this test, Elizabeth Carrow-Woolfolk, is the same person who wrote the CASL I wrote about yesterday.  Quite frankly I like both tests by her, but that may be partly due to the fact that my theoretical preferences seems to be similar to hers, and I’ll be damned if she doesn’t write a test that appears straightforward to administer and score.  (If I ever get the chance to actually administer any of these tests, I will report back on that.)

Goals for tomorrow:

1. Jump on that file reading and figure out a better way to commit some of that to memory!
2. Make more effort/use more strategies to learn peoples’ names.
3. Ask to do things.  I’m there to learn, and I learn best by doing, so I might as well dabble around, even if it’s just familiarizing myself with materials or re-visiting my Boardmaker skills.