Chicken Soup for the SLP Soul

Imagine this scenario:

You’re a first year SLP—ready to take on the world after 6 years of school including 2 years of practicums behind you.  You’re a little nervous about being out on your own, but confident enough to know that while you don’t know it all, you know enough to be plenty competent in order to do your job.  You’re ecstatic that you’ve landed your first job!

Then... “Oh by the way, these several parents of children on your caseload are not happy because their kids didn’t get the services they should have last year.  It happened before you ever came and is something you had absolutely nothing to do with, but you’ll need to put out some of these fires.” 

Um.. What?! That was terrifying for me as a shy, quiet, first-year SLP trying to get my sea legs! I had no idea what I was walking into!

One of these particular students who didn’t receive consistent services that year was a little girl with Apraxia.  Her teacher had told me that the year before, she basically “squawked” because she had such difficulty with her speech. 

I first met the freckle-faced cutie pie with Apraxia at a “Meet the Teacher” night before school started.  She was a bit shy, but we were able to talk a little bit, and I adored her right off the bat! Then, I chatted with her mom and she asked about my previous experience.  Cue hundreds of butterflies in my stomach as I desperately tried to remain confident when saying that it was my first year.  I figured after the prior school year's debacle and some lack of speech progress the year before, that a brand-spankin’ new, first-year SLP was probably not what she was hoping for!

The night went well enough, but I was still really nervous about the whole situation when I got home that night.  My husband gave me a pep talk, though, and told me, “Just do your job, and they’ll have to love you.  You’re awesome! You got this” (Thanks, hubs!)

So, that’s what I did.  I "did my job," and both me and that little girl worked our tails off that year.

I remember the day when she finally mastered the /y/ sound we had been working on.  She had a w/y substitution, so the word “yeah” always came out “wah.”  To show off, her teacher and I asked her questions like, “Are you beautiful?” “Are you smart?” “Are you funny?”  It was so fun to see her just beaming with pride and self-confidence, answering "yeah" or “yes” to all of those questions.  She never seemed to struggle with /y/ after that! ;-)

I'll never forget when her /L/ sound popped into a word one day, too. Her name had an L in it, so it was a pretty big deal! I remembered her mom telling me at the beginning of the year that whenever someone would ask her daughter's name, that her daughter would turn to her and ask her to say it, because she said she "couldn't say it right" Well, let me tell you-- She was rockin’ those /L/ sounds like nobody’s business by Spring!

About a year or so later, in May 2013, on the first official Apraxia Awareness Day, I stood next to her mom at the kindergarten graduation program. She gave me the sweet card pictured above, letting me know how much she appreciated me and the difference I’d made in her family's lives (I still keep it in my desk, and pull it out to re-read on the extra tough days for a smile!).  Together, we stood there, and watched that same freckle-faced cutie who used to squawk and be embarrassed to even attempt to say her name, sing with her peers in her end of the year kindergarten graduation program.


And that moment, right there, is why I am an SLP. Moments like that far outweigh the negatives, and I can't imagine doing anything else for a career!

Want more stories to warm your heart or make you laugh? Hop on over to the next blog, and keep reading! Don’t forget to keep collecting numbers at the end of each post so you can add them all up at the end and enter into the raffle for some AWESOME TpT gift certificates!   My number is:

Happy Hopping!

Thanks Felice at Thedabblingspeechie for organizing this awesome hop, and thanks to all of these ladies who shared their sweet stories!

An InLinkz Link-up

Potato Head Play

Mr. Potato Head is a toy that many of us SLPs have used in therapy with little ones.  It's always been toted as a "must-have" for anyone working with early intervention/prek.  I love my potato heads (I scored a big tub full of heads and accessories at a yard sale last year!), but I'll admit- there was a point in time when I first began my career, where I wondered how I could *really* use it in a variety ways besides the very basics like labeling body parts and requesting.

If any of you new to the field/new to this population have wondered the same thing, or maybe if you're a more seasoned SLP just looking for new ideas for this toy... Here are some other ways I've been targeting many other speech & language goals through potato head play with my preschoolers!

1.  Pronouns:  I have pieces that let me work on both "he" and "she" during play.  I have eyes with eyeshadow and big eyelashes, earrings, big red lips, purses, etc... so I can not only work on "Mister" potato head but also his female counterpart :)  I model a lot of "HE has green shoes on today" and "SHE has a pretty yellow purse"  and try to slightly emphasize the different pronouns.

2.  Basic Concepts:  I model comments like "He has a BIG nose and LITTLE shoes" "Here's his hat! It goes on top!"  "I'm putting her eyes ABOVE her nose"  Or, if I want to check understanding of concepts, I can say things like, "I have his shoes! Do the shoes go on the top or on the bottom?"

3.  Final consonants:  Purse, nose, arm, feet, eyes, hat, top, put, on, in, take, out-- all great words to model and practice with final consonants during play.  I like to sometimes hide the pieces in a sensory bin (ie my box of beans!) so they dig for parts and then we name the item and do short phrases like "Put on ___"     "___ on top"   and   "___ goes in"

4.  Plurals:  Talk about all the pairs your potato head has! Model plurals by talking about the potato head's two ears, two eyes, two shoes, two feet, two hands, two arms, two earrings, glasses, etc!

5.  Action words/-ING verbs:  Make your potato heads do all kinds of silly actions! "He is running" "She is shopping"  "He is dancing" etc...


What other ways do you play with potato heads?

For the Love of Speech: Valentine's Blog Hop!

Welcome to your next (or maybe first!) stop of the "For The Love Of Speech" blog hop organized by Lyndsey over at Speech to the Core and Elizabeth over at Speech Owl! You're in for some sweet treats!

I am SO very thankful for each and every one of you who take time to read this blog, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, and those of you who download freebies & paid items from my TpT store.  I wanted to share the love that I've been feeling! :)

Hop through each blog and download a Valentine's Day freebie-- we each have a different component to make up a full lesson plan to target a variety of activities!  Mine is a little pronoun-themed activity:

You can grab it HERE.

After you've downloaded my freebie, hop on over to Speech Sprouts (by clicking the image above) to check out what fabulous activity she has for you!

Craftivity Tuesday: Articulation Trains

I love the way this train craftivity turned out during Transportation week-- I think it's way cute, if I may say so myself!

I made the locomotive portion of the train from a die cut at work, and then just cut rectangles from other color construction paper.  I free-handed the smoke clouds and cut out a bunch at a time by cutting multiple pages at a time, too.

[Side note:  If you do crafts in your therapy sessions, you NEED to watch Jenn's video over at Crazy Speech World on craftivities.  She shares how she makes the crafts work for therapy, and what she does to prep.  It is chock-full of great tips! And Jenn is adorable, so go check it out! :)]

I used the pictures from my Cariboo Phonology set because they were the size I was looking for (and I'd rather just hit "print" instead of standing at the oh-so-coveted copy machine that is never free when I happen to need it, making copies from an artic book!), but you could use other pictures you have on hand-- just size the smoke clouds and train cars accordingly!

Easy peasy! :)

Movin' Mondays (...on Tuesday): Transportation Toss

I'm a day late for a Monday post, but better late than never, right?! One of my goals in therapy this semester is to get back to incorporating movement into my therapy sessions.  Today, I wanted to share just a simple vocabulary activity I came up with for our Transportation unit in preschool (I love all of the cute winter-themed activities I am continuing to see everyone posting on Instagram & Facebook... but I just can't do winter anymore!  <insert sign language for "all done" here> So, onto new themes, we go!)

This activity just uses basic transportation images found here (I went with real photos for this activity) taped to beanbags.  I took three containers and taped on pictures of water, a road, and a cloud for various modes of transportation, as well.

The kids got to pick a beanbag out of a pile, and we worked on picture naming and some WH questions.  After talking about the pictured item for a little bit, they had to decide which container they should toss it in-- water, road, or air.

 

It was a super simple activity, but they got to move around a little bit and throw things (I mean, what 3 or 4 year old doesn't enjoy that?), so they enjoyed it!

For added movement, try adding some simple yoga to your therapy! Act out each mode of transportation as you work on naming the pictures-- try boat pose for boats/ships, chair pose for a tractor or cars with arms extended out in front of you rather than vertically, or warrior 3 pose for airplanes!

2015 SLP Resolutions

Hello, New Year's Resolutions. We meet again.  I know in the past we've gone our separate ways after a month or two, but this year, I think we should stick together for the whole year-- I have a lot I want to accomplish in my professional life in 2015!

1.  Blog more consistently-  When I first started out, I was doing multiple posts a week.  It was a LOT of work, but it made me feel really accomplished! Once we bought our first house in March, I fell off the horse, big time! Owning a home was all so very exciting and new, and I had SO many things I wanted to do with the house, that blogging was kind of put on the back burner.  I still haven't quite gotten back into the groove of consistent blogging, but my goal for 2015 is to blog a minimum of once a week for the first couple months and then consistently do at least two posts per week after that.

2- Become more proficient in AAC-  I've definitely developed better skills in the realm of AAC this school year, but it's still an area in which I feel I could use more proficiency.  Step one of this goal was attending a LAMP training/workshop in Wichita in December 2014-- it was awesome, and I am feeling more confident already!

3- Be more consistent about sending home homework activities for some of my students-- Realistically, I know they're not going to get practice in every single night.  But, for the parents that I know DO want the homework, especially the parents of my phonological processing kids, I'd like to be able to send home a handful of different home activities each week.  I think I have enough materials available to do so, it's just a matter of getting them all organized and put together into packets by sound/phonological target.

4-Educate others who don't know what we do:  A teacher I know in another district has often made negative comments about my profession or blanket statements about students on IEPs in general that have really gotten under my skin.  I don't believe this person intends to be rude with their comments--really and truly, I believe the comments are just made out of ignorance about our profession and a lack of understanding about what we do to help students with special needs and why they need accommodations, differentiated instruction, etc...-- but I'm making it a goal in 2015 to do my best to educate this person on what we do and why it matters.  If I can help shed some light, I feel like I'll be inadvertently making a difference in the lives of the students on IEPs in this teacher's classroom, as well!

5-  Attend the ASHA conference in Denver!  I have been dying to go to an ASHA convention, and all the SLP bloggers who were there in Orlando this year made it look/sound super fun & I wished I could have been there to go to all the amazing seminars/booths.  Denver is only about 8 hours from KC, and there's often times cheap flights between the two cities, so I'm really set on trying to make it happen this year!


I have a handful of other goals on my list, as well, but I think this is a good place to start.  Check out what other SLPs are resolving to do in 2015 by visiting Natalie Snyder's link up here.  What are your goals for the new year?

How can I use that to target language? - Letter Tiles -

“How can I use THAT to target my student’s language goals?”

It’s a question I’ve thought to myself more than once going into the preschool rooms to do push-in therapy with my language students.  When I push in to the classrooms to provide therapy, I often times just follow the child’s/teacher’s lead and take whatever they are working on or playing with & figure out how to put a speech/language twist on it.  At this point, with it being my 4th year in preschool, I've become pretty good at making just about anything a language activity, but it definitely takes some creative thinking at times-- for instance, using letter tiles to target pronouns & spatial concepts!

The other day, I walked into a classroom at centers & the student I was going to work with was playing with letter tiles.  One of his language goals is for subject pronoun usage-- “he” “she” and “they.”  We started spelling out names of people who are important to him-- his brother, his mom, and his teacher.  I modeled sentences for him like, “HE starts with an A” or “SHE has ‘T.’  SHE has an ‘I’” etc… as we put each letter in the sequence.  After we were done with a couple different names, we compared.. “THEY both have an ‘A’”  “THEY start with different letters.”  After we were done, I heard his teacher modeling for him, too, emphasizing pronouns-- “Were you working with Miss Kari? SHE’S the best, isn’t she?” -- Double bonus! :)

You could also use the tiles to target spatial concepts..

-”Put the “A” on top of the “K””

-”Put the “C” next to the “D”

-”Put an ‘M’ above the ‘N’ etc...

-After putting a sequence of letters together, you could ask which letter is first/last in the row.

It’s an easy way to hit spatial concepts for your goal, while also working on letter recognition, which the ECSE teacher is likely working on, too!  If they are not at the level of letter recognition yet, you could step it down & do it by colors-- Put a blue letter under a green letter, etc… while still modeling the letter names afterwards.. “You’re right! the blue N is UNDER the green M”  

I know letter ID isn’t necessarily a goal we work on as SLPs, but my teachers try to work on language goals for me, so I try to model academic concepts for them, too!

WH questions is another potential area to target.  It depends on whether your student needs visual supports or not, but you could ask questions about what you just spelled with letter tiles-- ie, if you spelled “hat” you could ask “Where does a hat go?”   If you spell “sky” you could ask “What do you see up in the sky?” etc...

What other ways can you think of to use letter tiles to target language goals?