Richard was greeted by SLP in his classroom. Today being Richard's last day of school for the year, we did a fun activity to target all of his goals while still kicking off summer break. We made root beer float popsicles. This activity included the following goals: sequencing, executive functioning, maintaining attention, social interactions with peers and teachers, following multistep directions, rate of speech, /s/ in unstructured/conversational level, and vocabulary enrichment. Richard LOVED this activity. Mostly, Richard required verbal cues with rate of speech,/s/ and maintaining attention to current task. Richard was very eager however remained focused throughout today's session. Social interactions were considered appropriate with both peers and teachers. Following this task, we went over the date/day of week with his calendar. To close out the session, we recalled favorite memories of the school year and what he is looking forward most to for the summer. It was a pleasure working with Richard this year and I truly feel like he made great strides In speech therapy!
Richard was very excited to tell me about his upcoming camping trip. So as a great language activity we made a list of all the essentials necessary for camping. As we named the items we described why they are useful to have on the trip. Great minds think alike-we both added the ingredients for s’mores as the number one thing to pack. With all of our activities in the kitchen it has been an excellent task to focus on organization sequencing and following directions. His vocabulary has also expanded with lots of describing words for different food textures as well as action words used in the kitchen. It’s been a great pleasure to work with Richard. He has demonstrated tremendous growth. All of the above mentioned goals are still recommended for treatment over the summer if possible.
Richard has thoroughly enjoyed his time in the kitchen and wanted to keep cooking. There were limited ingredients left behind from our big ice cream and milkshakes shop. So with some creativity and support from an older student, Richard was inspired to make a sprite popsicle using frozen fruit. It was his idea to take it a step further and add food coloring. Richard was thrilled with the outcome . The conversation turned into a science lesson with lots of new concepts to process.
Richard was so excited about his ice cream shop. He executed all parts of the plan by taking orders, organizing ingredients for making the milkshakes, delivering the milkshakes, and cleaning up. This was a big and exhausting task for him, but he was super proud to get such amazing feedback from the peers and teachers. Dynamic activities like this target so many important speech, language, communication, social and executive functioning skills all at once.
Christopher was excited for the upcoming movie shoot and had difficulty focusing on anything else. He was worried about everyone not being able to work together so we problem solved some ways to work together as a group. He seemed more relaxed until a few minutes later when they had a group meeting with the whole movie crew to discuss the day of shooting the film. He was encouraged to use his calming strategies and take a break if necessary.
Richard was frustrated that he could not execute his restaurant while the other students were testing. He worked his way out of the disappointment and was commended for being flexible. We decided to do a practice run of all the menu items. Sequencing is still challenging for Richard so it was excellent to have a test run.
Richard was hungry so we went to the kitchen for a snack. It lead to conversation about cooking and Richard expressed interest in creating a restaurant for the school. We planned a menu of "Richard's milk shake" shop and made a list of ingredients. Richard was proud of the menu he designed for the peers. It was an excellent activity for language and speech therapy.
He asked to spend some time by himself instead of with the peers during lunchtime recess. Emphasizing the importance of clear communication, Christopher was granted his alone time when he expressed he just needed five minutes of quiet and then he would be fine. When the time was up he still requested alone time. However it was recommended he spend five minutes problem-solving the situation together and then he would be granted more quiet time if he still needed it. He did indeed feel better after a brief conversation and looking at different perspectives.
Richard was greeted in his classroom. He was happy upon arrival. We discussed his fun summer plans, starting with his camping trip. He was to provide SLP activities people do on camping trips. He was excited about his electric scooter and s'mores. He stated he will be playing Pokemon Go on his iPad with his cousins. We discussed some items that may be beneficial to pack during a camping trip. This targeted executive function tasks, vocabulary and word finding/sequencing. We briefly covered the date/day of week on which Richard independently did well . We targeted /s/ and rate of speech with an art/craft activity. Richard required verbal cues (minimal) ~30% of opportunities. Cues to reduce rate of speech were intermittently ineffective. To target a social/pragmatic task, Richard wanted to make a paper airplane and we knew Mr. Marcus would know how therefore Richard was to ask him nicely to help us make a paper airplane. Richard required some cues as he stated "make me a paper airplane". He appeared shy as he was looking away.
After minimal prompting, Richard changed his request by asking him "Can you help me make an airplane?". This was a nice exercise for Richard. Overall, Richard did well. We plan to make homemade popsicles tomorrow on his last day of speech therapy while targeting goals.
Richard was greeted in his classroom. He was in great spirits, and really enjoyed today's session. We started the session by recalling events from the weekend. He was tan today, so that was a good conversation starter. He went on to discuss that he stayed in a hotel with his sister, cousins, uncle and his uncle's friend. He did not recall the town they were in but using cues, he eventually figured it out. He did well with recalling some events and required some verbal assistance with sequencing events. It appeared as if he had a great weekend and he is looking forward to his camping trip coming up soon. In addition, we went over the date/day of the week since today is a new month. He demonstrated much more knowledge on this topic which was great to see. We targeted /s/ and rate of speech during these two tasks. While recalling events, we also targeted some conversational/social/pragmatic goals, conversational turn-taking as well as topic maintenance. Additionally, we read a book together focusing on auditory comprehension and vocabulary enrichment. He has been really enjoying reading together and he uses his imagination while describing how the book can apply to him. It is a joy to see. I was told this will be his last week at school, I will see him Thursday and Friday but it has truly been such a pleasure working with Richard and watching him grow this year.
