Christopher was excited with all the holiday festivities. He has been really making an effort with all the students lately. He is very kind and thoughtful with the younger ones. He is practicing good strategies of "ignoring" or "changing the topic" with the peers who sometimes trigger Chris. He feels good when he sees that the strategies are effective. He has his moments of saying unrealistic or negative statements but his communication skills have improved to a place where we can now problem solve and think of an alternative approach. Very proud of Chris!
Spencer has been really motivated with our science experiments. It promotes great practice of the /r/ sounds and good speech habits when we play the "professor" explaining all the steps and findings. It's a great exercise in vocabulary and language.
Santino was greeted with his mother in the entrance of the school at 12:10. He was happy upon arrival. Today was the last day of school before holiday break. Santino reportedly did not eat lunch yet. He had a great session full of many fulfilled opportunities provided. We completed a book task, answering "what are they doing" questions - targeting verbs. Santino's independent responses are becoming more accurate with practice. Rather than answering with the noun in the photo, Santino is starting to use verbs + noun/pronoun. He is answering yes/no more accurately. We did a following direction task on the iPad that included multi step directives with object function. Also, we did a holiday craft that consistented of following directions, commenting, requesting, cutting, coloring and attention. Santino enjoyed this - especially the gluing! Santino continues to practice verbal/visual cues to answer his name/location questions. Eye contact and greetings are improving. It was a great session to end the second quarter.
Chris initiated conversation with enthusiasm as he was eager to share his new ideas for his video series. Topic expansion was once more facilitated through the use of familiar cues and supports. Topic shift was rapid this session, and cycles of exchange were variable. Familiar supports were provided to enhance allowance for reciprocity and enhance more fluid topic shifting. Chris was clearly excited this morning and periods of speaker -speaker overlap were noted. Chris shared that he was looking forward the holiday break.
Chris and a classmate were talking in Chris' room as the session commenced. Allowance for topic shift and expansion into a three way conversational exchange was supported with strong nonverbal cues successfully. Chris was subsequently eager to initiate conversation and share details of the new Spiderman movie that was just released. Supports were provided to assist with sequential story line and plot expansion while supporting mindfulness related to aspects of presupposition. Use of strong gesture, and body language allowed for message clarification within the topic, as well as increased use of cohesive and temporal links. Awareness of topic shift strategies continues to increase as Chris will now verbally state intent to shift topic as a precursor to doing so with increased frequency.
Santino was greeted in the pre-k classroom as he finished his lesson with his previous teacher. He reportedly knows his sight words and can do a puzzle on the iPad app. Santino demonstrates strength with concrete concepts such as letters, numbers, colors, shapes. More abstract concepts are difficult such as language, syntax, grammar, social/pragmatic skills. Today's session consisted of implementing previously targeted language goals including verbs, increasing MLU, commenting using descriptors, expanding knowledge of propositions and attention/folllwoing directions. We have been heavily focusing on functional daily goals. Santino continues to demonstrate increased understanding. He is independently requesting help, wants/needs, and answering yes/no. We are still targeting answering questions such as name/address. Greetings/eye contact is improving as well. Santino has been requesting breaks as well. He had some attention seeking behaviors today such as dumping his water on himself, allowing it to spill out of his mouth and rocking his chair off the floor - looking at me for a response. With consistent redirection and minimal attention brought to it, he discontinued. Overall, a good session for Santino.
We made a fun gingerbread house out of cookies, icing, and candy. It was an excellent activity for describing and organizing language. There were also lots of opportunities for speech practice. Tristan really enjoyed it and couldn't wait to eat it. He initially got upset when it collapsed but then we turned it into a funny story about an earthquake that attacked Candyland.
We made a fun gingerbread house out of cookies, icing, and candy. It was an excellent activity for describing and organizing language. There were also lots of opportunities for speech practice. Spencer really enjoyed it and couldn't wait to eat it.
Christopher was a little upset by some of the dynamics at lunch. With some coaching from myself and a peer, Christopher chose to ignore some undesired behavior from another peer. He was praised by Mr. Pat for how he responded which gave Christopher a huge boost of confidence and shift to a more positive attitude. He was able to regroup and enjoy the rest of lunch with his peers. We reviewed the event in our pow-wow, and he was very proud of himself.
Tristan took the initiative and asked to go outside for our session. When I asked why, he replied "my speech and brain work better when I'm moving." While hitting some tennis balls and throwing the football, we practiced 75 /s/ words with 70% accuracy.
