Spencer was excited to show all the animals in his room and we did our "nature show" describing them. He then enjoyed playing a memory game on the iPad that had silly sentences using /r/ and /l/ sounds. It was an entertaining game and gave Spencer a lot of speech practice.
Christopher was frustrated during recess with a game of tag. We worked through the uncomfortable feeling of being in lunch with someone who was annoying him. He was firm on going to his room but he agreed to stay with his peers for the few minutes that were left with lunch. While in his office, we talked about the "unhelpful thoughts" that can sometimes make us have a big reaction to a little problem. We did a lesson on "Outsmarting Unhelpful Thoughts." He liked the handout and asked for a copy for his room. He was proud of himself when I praised him for taking helpful and positive steps to problem solve and take better care of himself.
Richard was excited to complete the nature scavenger hunt. We discussed each item on the list, describing it in different ways and looking up fun facts. Richard has demonstrated a great curiosity about learning and is asking questions to learn more and clarify. The list provided a great way to practice multi syllable words. When Richard is excited, he tends to speak quickly and drop sounds. So this was an excellent task to practice that skill during an exciting activity.
Tristan heard from his brother about the nature scavenger hunt and also wanted to participate. He turned it into a competition where he would find the most items on the list. Before beginning, Tristan used his strong speech to go through the list. He also explained his strategy for finding the more difficult items. He had an idea to get credit if he explained 3 things about the item. We agreed that would give him credit for finding it. Tristan is at his best moving and outside.
Spencer wanted to hunt for lizards so we did a nature scavenger hunt around the school including great /r/ vocabulary. He read the list of 16 word/pictures with 100% accuracy and was very proud of himself. He used his strong sounds. While on the "hunt" we narrated as if we were on a nature show and had to use our best speech for the audience.
Richard had a good speech therapy session. We covered a lot of his speech, language and pragmatic goals. He remained focused for the majority of the session. Richard received 50% accuracy for /th/ in the final position of words at the sentence level. Richard is starting to carry over /th/ in the initial position of words at conversational level already, which demonstrates improvement. Richard also accurately named 10/12 irregular past tense words in a structured task. He was very excited to achieve high accuracy with this. We covered the calendar/month. He enjoyed discussing his plans for the weekend with his friend from the neighborhood. Richard required some prompting to reduce rate of speech to increase intelligibility especially when he was excited. It was a good, productive session. Lastly, we covered auxiliary verbs and omissions of -s.
Santino was happy when I entered the room as he finished with his teacher. He has started to name each of his teachers upon greeting. "Ms. Amanda" and yesterday when Janis walked in the room he said "Ms. Janis". This is great for greeting skills. One thing that is challenging is understanding the concept of pronouns when asked his name. My/your is a more abstract skill - therefore when asked "what is your name", Santino responded with "Ms. Amanda". Santino requested a book and picked one out from a few options on the table. Attention to books is better when he reads some of the pages. However, this makes comprehension more difficult. He reads, then I read the page again and we follow up with questions regarding the illustrations and what was just read to him. I like to read the same book 2-3 times for repetition to help with answering the questions however completing a task too many times becomes more of memory. Following this activity, we completed a receptive language task that targeted prepositions in a field of 4. This was difficult for Santino but it was a great challenging learning task. In addition, he is getting better following 2 step commands that involve object function. We went outside upon request and played "tag". Joint attention and eye contact improved when I was chasing him. He really enjoyed this game! When he would go down the slide - he requested the next part of the play ground he wanted "go blue slide", "jump tires" with verbal prompting. Overall - it was a good session targeting many language goals.
Chris initiated conversation rapidly this morning as he shared how excited he was that the "Sonic 2" movie premiere was Thursday after school. Topic maintenance was strong this session and expanded response to comments was noted with increased frequency as well. Cycles of speaker listener reciprocity were characterized by decreased speaker- speaker overlap, and allowance for pausing was increased. Chris was observably tired this morning, however, motivation and attention were strong.
Santino was greeted as he got to school by a few teachers. No greeting was reciprocated. When we got to his classroom, using eye contact and visual cues - Santino verbally greeted me with "hi" with intonation in his voice. Santino was 'distracted' today and required more redirection than usual. He was happy however attention was fleeting during session. He has been requesting to "take a break" from the table after activities are complete. Santino verbally requested a book - he was given a choice of 3 and he chose one of the choices. I like to do interactive books with him to increase attention to task. We did a flap book which was great to work on "where" questions and simple "what" questions. Verbs are still being targeted in structured settings with a goal to expand and generalize the skill to unstructured settings, however that has not been met yet. Santino was offered an inside activity or to go outside and he verbally chose outside. When we were on the playground, he asked to "play basketball". This was great since I have not done that with him. We went to the basketball court and he continued to look past the fence at his surroundings. We did hand over hand shooting the basketball and throwing. Eye contact was fleeting. I am primarily focused on using functional sentence structures and expanding language.
Richard was greeted in his classroom as he finished with his previous teacher. We discussed his new class pets (fish) and set a scheduled time to feed them during the days. We covered the calendar. Richard has started to really understand the concept of time (days/weeks/months/ etc.). He said he has begun doing the daily calendar on his own. He started a countdown to his 8th birthday. We targeted /th/ in the medial position at sentence/conversation level. Richard continues to required moderate verbal and visual prompts to increase accuracy. Overall self awareness has improved. In addition, past tense and auxiliary verbs were heavily targeted in today's session. Word retrieval and overall vocabulary was targeted during unstructured tasks. Speech intelligibility was overall fair to good today. Richard continues to be very receptive to constructive feedback. Speech and language goals will continue to be targeted in the context of therapy and carried over into other classes.
