Chris was eager to share a variety of topics as he initiated conversation by stating "Ms. Lynne, I have so much to tell you today." He continued to share excitement regarding the upcoming movie release of "Dr. Strange" and his plan to attend the movie with 2 friends on Thursday. Chris excitedly shared additional topics of interest which included additional upcoming movie releases, the starring actors in the films and the characters they portray. Story lines were also explored, and strong supports were provided to facilitate the use of cohesive ties and temporal links within his monologue. This provided an excellent opportunity to review aspects of presupposition and perspective, as well as the importance and value of attending to, and acknowledging the gestural and facial cues of your communication partner. Strong motivation to review /s/ target phoneme reduction was once again noted this session.
The session commenced with Chris rapidly sharing his excitement about the new "Dr. Strange" movie release this week. He was eager to share his ideas regarding potential cameo appearances and the possibility of particular actors portraying his favorite characters for the first time. Conversational reciprocity was supported via use of familiar scaffolding strategies. Topic shifting was strong as new ideas regarding his own YouTube" stories followed. Supports and cues were facilitative as familiar topic shift strategies were subsequently utilized. Chris demonstrated increased self awareness and recognized the need to support successful topic transition within the conversation. He was extremely proud as he once again shared that he " remembered what to do, and was better at changing the subject." Chris was elated at his success this session and asked if we could please " stay together longer today." Such wonderful motivation and success today.
Richard was greeted as he finished his reading lesson. He appeared as he was still sick (congested and tired). Richard was blowing his nose throughout the session stating he still wasn't feeling great. Speech intelligibility was affected as his nose was stuffed so speech sounds were distorted and increased saliva production/management made it difficult to always understand when he was talking. He was cued to slow rate of speech and swallow his pooled saliva a few times during session. We covered his articulation goals (/th/) at sentence level - Richard required some verbal prompting to improve overall accuracy. In addition, we covered auxiliary verbs (without omitting -s) and past tense. We covered some pragmatic goals as we went over scenarios with peers and how to appropriately handle conflict. Richard did quite well with this activity. Besides Richard being sick, it was a good session.
Today we continued to target the same goals while expanding some. While working on answering "what" and "where" questions given a digital visual cue that Santino has worked with previously. I asked object function questions with new visual cues (picture cards of objects) given a field of 3. For example "What do you wear on your head?" and the choices are a hat, blueberries, and a shirt. Santino required verbal cues however did quite well. We did a game that targeted turn taking and requesting. Santino has been requesting well. As stated before, we are targeting the skills to carry over requesting into other scenarios. When asked his name (for safety purposes), Santino conintues to confuse pronouns and says "Ms. Amanda". I usually model "My name is /s/___" We went on the playground per Santino's request and he continues to expand his vocabulary there. Lastly, Santino changed his pull up with some assistance however he is doing so well with this! He really requires help sequencing the task and putting on his clothes/pull up in the correct direction. He's much faster than he was when we started. This is a great functional skill to continue to work on.
Spencer was in a great mood but said he didn't want to practice speech because of the new braces. Instead, we planned our next experiment, which was a great task in vocabulary, organizing, sequencing, and problem solving.
Tristan was not very talkative - he just got braces and said they were bothering him. So we did not focus on speech and more on language. We read some articles on sports and discussed them. We read about a sports blooper and he became more engaged talking about the funniest things he has seen in sports. We then played spot it, which is a good game in attention to details.
Great session with Spencer with card game Spot It practicing our speech sounds. He was on target and then asked to take it outside for a nature scavenger hunt. There were little kids there and he was such a great teacher, teaching the kids about the lizards and habits of snakes. It was a great activity in speech, language and social communication.
Santino was greeted on time in the cafeteria. We have been targeting greetings with people's names (which he is so good at remembering). So rather than saying "Ms. Amanda", I prompt him with "hi". Santino will follow up with "Hi Ms. Amanda". Although eye contact is fleeting, the overall greeting has improved. We started by playing with building blocks (using many prepositions), following directions, using creative thinking and turn taking. Following the activity, we completed an auditory comprehension task based on an illustrated book which helps with answering questions. We have been working on naming questions based on object function given a field of 5. Santino continues to do well with this given pause time and often repeated questions. Identification of new verbs was targeted today in a field of 3. Santino did relatively well with this. We went on the play ground upon request by Santino "I want to go outside on playground". I explained in depth to Dorothy and other teachers to expand his utterance length with requesting. For example, when Santino requests Froot Loops or lunch, cue him to use "I want to eat ___" to start integrating the Verbs. Santino was happy throughout his session.
Richard was seen for ST today at 11:00. We have worked steadily this year on greeting appropriately to peers and others (including teachers/therapists). Often, Richard tends to ignore greetings from others or comments made by others that may be appropriate to provide a response. For example, when someone says "hello", a response of a greeting would be appropriate, or "I like your shirt Richard" or "have a great day" would typically have a return response. Today - Richard did require more prompting to reciprocate those communication skills. Also, we did the calendar. Irregular past tense was covered in depth today (both structured and unstructured). There is improvement with this during structured tasks. Auxiliary verbs continue to be difficult for Richard as he continues to omit -s frequently. Lastly, we targeted /th/ in medial position with self generated sentences.
