My WordPress Blog
They say that hindsight is 20/20. Looking back at my coworker’s descent into substance abuse, I can now see the situation clearly. Coming to work late or not at all, not picking up students, excuses that didn’t make any sense, the cognitive decline — all the signs were clearly there, yet I failed to see them. Worse yet, I failed… Read More
It has been a LONG time since I’ve used an AAC device in my speech therapy sessions. The last time was probably over 15 years ago when I worked with multiply handicapped children, and the AAC devices were LOW tech. If I were a betting person, I would have put money on never encountering an AAC device again in my… Read More
Whenever I work on social skills I frequently incorporate role-play. Role-playing is a fun way to help build social skills and learn about social rules. The kids always love these activities (whether watching or acting) and their attention increases. I wanted to share some of my ideas for making role-play fun and effective in your speech room: Demonstrate the role-play… Read More
When our school IT director asked if I wanted to try out the Amazon Echo Dot with my students, I quickly said “yes!”. I’ll admit I had no idea what I was going to do with it or what the Amazon Echo Dot even really was, but I’m always eager to try new things! Using Amazon Echo in speech therapy… Read More
Listening is a skill that is a lifelong process and our students with attention and social cognitive difficulties need to continually work on active listening. I like to use the term active listening instead of whole body listening with my middle and upper elementary students for several reasons. First, although active listening includes whole body listening, there is more… Read More
At the ASHA convention in Philadelphia, I attended many wonderful seminars. One that provided a great critical thinking strategy was offered by Stacey Crowley from Learning Tree Literacy. Called the 5 WHYS, it is remarkably simple and based on the “Socratic” approach to teaching by probing the student with questions aimed at driving thinking deeper and deeper. Here it is… Read More
