“I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”  This quote is commonly attributed to the former Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who ruled over most of Europe.  He shows that if communication is not tailored to specific audiences, then the message will likely be poorly understood, if at all.

Like so many of us privileged enough to soldier on during school closures, I got to embark on a new adventure amidst all the chaos by trying my hand at teletherapy for the first time. 

If your caseload is anything like mine, your students might shout out, “Christmas!” or “Wednesday!” when you ask them what the season is. For this reason, I always reinforce seasonal concepts throughout the school year. I change out my speech room décor, keep the same visual cue visible for reference, and plan therapy units to continuously target the seasons. Spring break is the perfect opportunity to discuss the exciting transition from chilly winter weather to the warm, often rainy weather of spring.  Use these therapy activities before or after your spring break to teach your students all about the season ahead.

Executive functioning is set of cognitive-based skills that help an individual plan, direct, and execute actions in their daily lives. Executive functioning skills require the ability to utilize working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, planning, and interference control. While the exact parameters of executive functioning are still undergoing research and characterization, the core areas listed above can be agreed upon by many researchers (Diamond, 2012). In regard to our daily activities, executive functioning skills assist with the ability to manage time, sustain attention to a task, switch focus, organize, recall details, plan responses/actions in social situations, and multitask throughout the day.

Since the field of speech-language pathology is so broad, we come across students with many types of abilities, including the deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) population. I happen to work in a school that has a program for our DHH kids; our team includes teachers of the deaf, ASL interpreters, and me, the SLP! Ours is a Total Communication program, so we use all modes of communication to teach our kids academic skills. Here are some helpful tips and a list of my favorite materials I use with my DHH students.

If you are blessed to be a part of molding the minds of tomorrow by working in a school system, you will be juggling multiple responsibilities, for multiple children, with multiple disorders. The most important thing I can tell you is to budget your energy.

It’s almost here – the well-deserved spring break we all count down towards. Although we will certainly miss our students, the idea of unstructured time, no meetings, looming paperwork, and departmental requests are all behind us; we can finally bask in the relaxing time off, reflecting on our accomplishments and finishing the school year strong. Many of our students with language delays will also experience this unstructured time, with parents frantically attempting to fill up their days with activities while they’re at work. They will most likely demonstrate regression in their academics and language skills that we’ve worked all year to facilitate. Most parents are unaware of just how much language can be incorporated into any daily activity. With a little bit of our help, we can assist parents with some ideas to entertain them, while also helping to maintain those skills we’ve collected data on, written reports for, and generally stressed about. Below are some ideas for a variety of age groups:

Pinterest. Social media. Teachers Pay Teachers. Blogs. So many fantastic therapy ideas, so little time! As therapists, we have more resources available to us than ever before, but if you don’t have a plan to implement these activities you may end up feeling overwhelmed or scattered from month to month.  This has been my first year successfully utilizing thematic units and while I’m a semi-newbie in my fourth year as a SLP, I can say with certainty that units have made my therapy more effective (and exciting!) for every student on my caseload. Here’s a quick how-to guide to get your thematic units started in no time.

If you were to ask your students “How do you think your speech sounded?” – how many of you would get a shoulder shrug and “I don’t know” as a response?  Unfortunately, it would probably be quite a few of us!  Because we get such a limited amount of time with our students each week, we know there will always be students who forget everything we just did the very second they walk out the speech room.

YOU ARE A ROCKSTAR SLP.  You plan amazing lessons and your students love coming to speech.  There’s just one hiccup – some of your students aren’t making the progress you know that they are capable of making.  If that’s the case, it might be time to reflect on how many productions you are getting out of your students each session.  Here are some simple ways to help increase the number of practice opportunities in therapy (without your students realizing they are actually doing more work!)