Richard was greeted in another student's classroom as he was having conversation between classes. We took advantage of this for peer to peer social interactions while working on social/emotional goals. Richard did well with topic maintenance however demonstrated difficulty with shifting topics as well as topic conclusion. We went over some good ways to assist with this. Richard was happy throughout today's session. We briefly covered the calendar, date/day of week. Richard is getting excited for Thanksgiving break and his vacation with family to Montana. He enjoyed telling me about the things he will be doing in that time. We went over practicing gratitude going into the Thanksgiving season. All while doing this, we were targeting overall articulation skills along with speech intelligibility. The amount of cues and prompts required have significantly decreased. Richard's speech has improved quite a bit this school year. We covered more of our Thanksgiving fact book about the history and some fun facts that apply to children his age. He LOVES going over this and applying it to his everyday life. We did irregular past tense (new list today) and Richard achieved 50% accuracy. He is directed to use them in a sentence as well. He continues to drop 's in conversation. Overall, Richard did a great job today. I hope he has a wonderful weekend. He is a pleasure to teach.
Santino was greeted in the pre-k classroom. He was happy upon arrival. He was yawning quite a bit during today's sessions. We started with a book of Santino's choice - targeting following directions, vocabulary enrichment, attention, and auditory comprehension. Following that, we did a following directions app on the iPad that Santino enjoyed. He required prompting with this however, as the directions were regarding object function and with a two step command. With repetition however, Santino's accuracy improved. In addition, we targeted increasing commenting and requesting with 2-3 words reducing the amount of cues provided. Santino relies on verbal assistance therefore multimodal cues have been implemented. Santino's pull up was wet so we practiced sequencing him assisting with changing his pull up with more independence. This targeted many goals including following directions, sequencing, requesting help, and gaining independence with activities of daily living. For example, when it was time for him to put his shoes back on, Santino was pulling my hand toward his shoe and putting his shoe on my lap - verbal communication for assistance was required during this. We went outside however Santino has not been enjoying being outside lately for unknown reasons and he immediately requested to go back inside. A break was given between activities. Santino is responding appropriately to yes/no questions given pause time - much improvement noted here. Echolalia was decreased today.
Richard was greeted in his classroom as he finished with his last class. He was in a good mood and compliant throughout today's session. Richard is doing well with transitions and feedback without any frequent instances of being defensive or defiance. I am so proud of how far he has come in speech therapy. I had a meeting with Andrea (Richard's other SLP) and we discussed how we are both happy with his continued progress. We quickly went over the calendar together as RIchard is demonstrating understanding of the days of week/date. We did a lesson going over Veteran's Day tomorrow. We did our research of the meaning and why we celebrate and he was very interested in the US military, so we went over the topics of each branch and why it is important for our country and why we will honor them tomorrow. He LOVED this. We also watched a short video on this as well. This covered many goals including articulation, intelligibility of speech, possessive /s/, sequencing, auditory comprehension and vocabulary enrichment. Following this task, we did irregular verbs in a structured task (90% accuracy). We did a Thanksgiving task with a book and answering questions about the information provided. Overall, it was a very educationally packed and fun filled speech therapy session that Richard appeared to enjoy.
Chris rapidly unpacked his back pack in order to share the "line up" of characters to be included in his next video upload. Comment/comment exchange was strong this session, as Chris' awareness of nonverbal cues, gestures and facial expressions was acknowledged with greater frequency and subsequently responded to with verbal clarification. Additional conversational topic carried over from the previous session regarding the dynamics of social interaction with both peers and teachers was highlighted. The familiar aspects of perspective taking and presupposition which continue to be incorporated into sessions regularly were highlighted once more. This afforded the opportunity to further discuss aspects of self reflection and self awareness correlated with the familiar zones of regulation. Chris was eager to share that he is wanting a poster of "how does
your engine run ?" to be put up in his room. The visual reminder is an excellent support for Chris. This will be shared with Andrea who can facilitate. Strong session.
Chris excitedly responded to the initial request of expanding on the recent YouTube video that he posted regarding the new cast of characters as well as those that were on the "cut " list. He was happily glowing as he knows that I continuously watch his videos. Strong scaffolding and parameters for supporting linguistic organization and use of cohesive ties were provided to facilitate strong use of detail and temporal links. Chris was successful as he elaborated with strong vocabulary variation and sentence organization. Additional conversational expansion focused on supporting the dynamics of social interactions with peers and teachers.
Spencer asked to go outside since he missed recess. We kicked the soccer ball and played a game of earning shots by strong productions of /r/ sounds. He was happy to be moving around.
Tristan requested to play basketball while practicing our sounds. He was motivated and likes the competition. He earned extra shots for every strong production of our /s/ words in sentences.
Tristan was full from lunch and did not want to make the witch/wizard brew. Instead we went outside and practiced our /s/ and /v/ sounds while shooting hoops.
Christopher was a little quiet today and the excitement and energy around Halloween might have been too much during lunch. He participated in recess, although he was a little more reserved. During pow wow, we discussed how taking the "observer" role is sometimes ok if we're not feeling great about the dynamic of the activity. We also problem solved some possible Halloween scenarios that were worrying him.
Spencer enjoyed making the actual creation of our witch/wizard Brew using real ingredients. Practicing our strong R sounds he made a commercial advertising his creation of candy brew. Seeing the visual feedback of his speech is a great way for him to make corrections and adjustments with his speech.
