Start With the finish in Mind.

There are BIG international sports competitions that are starting this month and while I am not watching all the events, I do love the moving highlights of the athletes’ personal stories.  The details differ a bit here and there, but what strikes me is the theme that their journey to reaching their goal usually started with the end, not the beginning.  Visualizing themselves winning an event, standing on the podium and receiving a medal were all part of the training process for these elite athletes way before they qualified for the first event.  This wasn’t daydreaming, it was purposefully envisioning what they wanted to see in their futures.

This idea isn’t just for athletes, it applies to our students too.  SLP Sarah Ward , of Cognitive Connections,  presented at our GOSSLP conference I attended earlier this year. Her focus was  on beginning with the end in mind when developing executive function skills, an “a-ha” moment for me as a SLP!  She shared a fun therapy technique of putting on our “future glasses” (any funky sunglasses you could find in a dollar store or even making and decorating your own paper versions) to visualize ourselves walking through a plan successfully. If you start with the finish in mind, it’s easier to visualize the steps you need to take to get there.  If you don’t know where you are headed, it’s easy to get lost.

It’s the beginning of a brand new school year for me and this visualizing technique is something I want to try for myself and my students!  Why not think about where you want your therapy sessions to lead ?  How do you see yourself developing new skills this year? What about teaching your students to “see” themselves in the future with clear articulation, strong social skills or participating in a class discussion successfully?  For my students with social language impairments, it is hard to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, including their own in the future! This visualization may help motivate us through the difficult times when we don’t see progress, have a set back, or we are just plain tired. This would be a great way to start your first few sessions this year when you are setting your goals with your students!

Would you use visualizing with your students or yourself in speech therapy this year?  Why or why not?  Share here!

Gotta catch em all!

 

If you have seen people walking around staring at their phones more than usual, it might be because of Pokemon Go.  This new app makes you a virtual Pokemon trainer able to “catch” all kinds of Pokemon in your own neighborhood using your phone’s GPS ( with the bonus of getting kids off of the couch and walking around outdoors)!  When they were little, my boys collected all the cards and forced invited me to watch Ash Ketchum and friends wrangle Pokemon.  But this app isn’t just popular with  kids, even adults are using it!

My brain started thinking about how to use this fun app with a social twist. If you are using this in a social language group, you can map out a whole month’s worth of therapy lessons using Pokemon Go! There are rules to playing the virtual game, both spoken and hidden, so that’s a great place to start.  Safety is a big one with this app- you wouldn’t believe how many people walk into the street or get injured from falling or walking into things in their pursuit of a prized Pokemon!   This is a great opportunity to talk about expected and unexpected behaviors too. I have heard news reports about people trying to play the game in places like the Holocaust memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.  Boundaries anyone?

Once your group discusses the rules, then you can divide and conquer into teams.  There are three teams (you can read about their descriptions HERE) that are part of the game, Team Mystic, Team Instinct and Team Valor, but you could let the kids pick their own names.  This is an opportunity to work on the goal of negotiating with others when working in groups.  Once you pick the team, no changes are allowed, so be prepared to be flexible!

Self regulation is a big skill set in this game, as it’s easy to get overly excited or super frustrated when that elusive Charizard (or any of the 151 Pokemon characters in the game) escapes your grasp.  Working in a group or with a partner on your team requires a LOT of self-control, executive function and future thinking (planning what you are going to do ahead of time).  One of the social language lessons could include deciding what strategies you can use in the moment for keeping your cool ( Zones of Regulation GO!).  You might even want to align each color of the Zones with a specific Pokemon to help you remember your strategies (for example:  Blaziken would be a great icon for the Red Zone).  To extend this idea further, have your kids make up their own Pokemon characters  or trainer names that would describe themselves, including their strengths and skills sets.  This can lead to a discussion about how we want others to see us and both positive and negative character traits.

The game also tailors which Pokemon you can find by the time of day and where you are looking for them.  For example, if you are out in the evening, you will find more ghost or fairy Pokemon. If you are near the beach, you will find more water Pokemon.  This is a fun way to work on inferencing, categorizing and compare/contrast skills with your kids!

Have you played Pokemon Go yet (be honest)?  How could you use it in social language therapy? Share here!

 

 

 

 

 

Shark Bites.

With two boys of my own, Shark Week has always been a big hit around my house.  It’s coming around again this month for 2016 and we will be sure to watch!  I have seen some really cute craftivities on sharks that I will be using with my summer kiddos including these great ideas from Sunflower Storytime  and their free shark mouth template PDF !

 

I was thinking about how to apply Shark Week fun to social language concepts using the shark mouth pdf, and I came up with this:

I printed the shark outline on cardstock and laminated it to make it more durable.  Next, I put stick on velcro dots along the edge of the mouth (you could use tape, glue or even lay it flat and just put the teeth along the edges.  I used Word and copied as many triangles onto the page as I could since the pdf only had one tooth that I used for sizing.  Then I printed the teeth out on card stock and cut them out before the activity.  This activity is appropriate for late elementary ages on up but could be simplified for younger kids too.

Before making our shark mouths, we talked about how “sharp” words can be (just like shark teeth).  They can cut and wound people when we are being mean or not using our social filters (think it vs. say it).  I asked the kids to share some words that would be hurtful to them or the people that they care about, and we called them shark bites. We brainstormed on a white board first to talk it through. I like to have a visual model (Sarah Ward’s executive function workshop opened my eyes to beginning with the end visually for our kids), but I don’t want them to copy exactly what I have written.  BTW, I always have that one kid who tells me, “I don’t care what people say about me”, so we talk about it from a cartoon character’s perspective instead (Sponge Bob and Squidward are great examples).  This is a little easier for some of my students with ASD, to talk about difficult subjects or feelings from someone else’s experience, not their own.

We also practice sorting out teeth that I have written on prior to the lesson, onto thought bubbles and talking bubbles.   This is a great companion activity to work on the concept of not saying everything that we are thinking, because it can be hurtful.  I extend this concept to include the idea that just because something is “true” doesn’t mean that it is okay to say it, if it hurts someone.

That’s how we are diving in deep during social skills shark week!  How are you incorporating sharks into your themed therapy (social skills or otherwise)? Share here!

 

 

 

Puppies, Prediction and Cars…

I am a dog lover, so when puppy commercials come on TV, I get drawn in immediately. Subaru has a series of car commercials airing now that just suck me in. every. single. time.  They feature a family of Golden Retrievers (The Barkleys!) and their adventures in driving. There are no words in the commercials (duh, they are dogs) BUT they convey a message in each one very clearly. For my students with social language impairments, too much language muddies the processing waters, so these are perfect!  I have downloaded the series onto my social language Youtube channel playlists HERE .

Beyond the complete cuteness overload, they are fabulous tools to work on the social language concepts of predicting and inferencing for my students!  The eight commercials convey social scenarios (for example: the mom getting her hair done) and are great to use to identify emotions, prediction, point of view and humor, all in about thirty seconds. Don’t forget about expected and unexpected concepts too (a puppy in a car seat-whaaaat?). These would be great to use with Playposit (you can read my blog post on how to create your own therapy activity by embedding questions into video clips HERE ).

Do you use commercials to teach inferences or other social language concepts?  I love using Dorito’s Super Bowl ads  and kid’s movie previews!  Please share your favorites here!

Use Your B.R.A.I.N.S!

I spent the past week at a fun crossroad; posting on the SLP Materials Club facebook page as a guest AND enjoying a hot, fun week at the beach with my family!  It was the perfect respite after a long school year and I even got to read a WHOLE BOOK with my toes in the ocean (“A Man Called Ove”, a fabulous funny/sad summer read that I highly recommend). As we were walking along the Sebastian Inlet, I saw this little piece of coquina rock that frequents the coast where I grew up:

The words “rock brain” popped into my thought bubble immediately! Do you see why I needed a vacation?!  Anyway, as part of my SLP Materials Club week, I posted a new freebie from my TPT store.  I created it to use with my students to work on how we engage other people and show that we are thinking about them.   It includes a flip book for an interview of another person to practice the skills, teaching cards to talk about how we use our brains to think about other and a teaching poster to review the acronym B.R.A.I.N.S. (we SLPs do so love our acronyms). The poster would be perfect to enlarge and hang up in your therapy room, classroom or as part of a fun bulletin board!  What does this acronym stand for?  I’m so glad you asked!

B- Be present in the moment

R-Remain on topic

A-Actively listen

I-Interpret Accurately

N-Non-verbals are important

S-Seek information

You can download this social language freebie HERE .  I know you want to give your brain a rest too and not think about school for a bit, but go ahead and file this away for the Fall now!  Happy Summer!

An End of the Year Treat!

 

 

It’s almost the end of the school year and TPT is having a BIG sale as a treat May 3rd-4th!  I wanted to share a few goodies from my store as well as my wish list items that will be added to my own cart!!  Don’t forget to use the code CELEBRATE at checkout for additional savings! Happy shopping. I am linking up with SLPRunner and The Frenzied SLPs for a sale linky, so make sure you click through for more great product suggestions!

 

You might want to snap up a few things from my store like my Lucky Duck! Social Skills game on winning and losing and a few for the start of the year, like my That’s Sick social skills unit on germs and hygiene (game, story, puzzles and a flip book are included).  My Social Skills Squish Bundle is seven different play doh mats, scenarios and extension ideas to practice social language concepts (and a great value)!!

Now what I am super excited to pick up from my fellow SLPeeps this week?  Take a peek …

I love to make up new games to play with my students (or have them come up with their own rules and ideas!) and this game board clipart from Peachie Speechie is perfect!  I can use these games with some of her fun activity sets  like these Social Skills Deck cards. Print and Go FUN for these crazy weeks!!

Full disclosure:  I already own and LOVE this product!  However, it’s on my wishlist for one of my CFs (shhhhh).  Speech Paths has done it again with this engaging social language activity pack that is a fun way to work on hard social concepts with my elementary students.

Speech Time Fun saves the day with a print and go social skills gold mine for my older students!  I am looking forward to trying it out this summer and then recommending it to my middle school CFs in the Fall!

Space themed AND social skills fun?  Done, done and done!  I am excited to grab this fun social language game from Jenn Alcorn.  My boys will LOVE it!

Anyone have blurters out there?   ME TOO!   I can’t wait to try this activity from Badger State Speechy to help my friends work on not interrupting using stories, activities and visual supports, SCORE!

What’s in YOUR cart???

Get to the point!

I was chatting with a colleague the other day about one of our favorite students.  She is a fifth grader with high functioning ASD and she has come a long way in so many of her social communication skills!  One area she continues to struggle in is giving too much information in conversation.  She understood the steps to check in visually with the listener (non-verbals) and what she should do , but she continued to give way too much information day to day.   I have a freebie on TPT to help with these beginning steps of determining how much information is too much or too little that she used very successfully (you can download it HERE).  She could often recognize too much detail when other people did it, but like many of our students, she needed more support with her own self-monitoring.

Her SLP and I brainstormed a couple of ideas to try,  including giving her a time constraint to share relevant information/responses.  15 seconds doesn’t sound very long, but it sure feels long if someone is rambling on and on without reaching a point.  A visual timer was introduced, but the student got flustered trying to organize her thoughts to fit the time limit (hello executive function!).  So her very smart SLP, Jaime, had her use a graphic organizer to put down her thoughts prior to the timed activity.

This was a great way to help her visually see the important pieces of information that she needed to include or the unimportant details that might bog her down (and she was more successful)!  This graphic organizer idea goes along nicely with how schools often teach writing to our kids, a main idea, 3 supporting details and a concluding sentence, and is a framework to help our students learn to summarize and condense their thoughts. You could even give your students five tickets representing each part of the re-tell as visual support. Obviously, this is not something that will happen in natural conversation, however, we often have to break down the skill and practice from model towards independence.  This is tricky for lots of our students on the spectrum, with ADD or with executive function weaknesses, so lots of practice in the therapy room AND in real time is essential (get mom and dad on board at home and the classroom teachers/peers using these strategies too for generalization).

Another idea I had was to give her a visual representation of information.  Use a bag (like one from a party store) and put in objects to represent information on a topic. For example, a movie ticket, popcorn, an empty drink cup, a picture of the movie, all in the bag.  Ask the student to decide if there is enough information/detail in the bag to understand what the topic is.  Then explain that the bag is really our brain.  You can put in one object (not enough) or lots of extraneous objects (representing off topic or unimportant details) to visually represent conversational responses.

You could also have your other students (artic monitoring anyone?) record short videos giving examples of conversational responses and have your student identify if it’s too much, not enough or just the right amount of information. If the example has too much information, see if the student can identify which comments were extraneous or redundant to make it a little harder.   To further extend this idea, your students working on this skill might enjoy making their own cartoons and they can record the responses using Toontastic, a free app on itunes.   This is great for feedback when discussing if they gave the right amount of information to a new listener.

How do you help your students give responses with just the right amount of information? Share here!

 

I’m so NOT a groupie.

In working with students on the autism spectrum, one issue that seems to continue to pop up is working in groups successfully.  Collaborative learning is woven throughout the core from my itty bitties to high school.   I really like the tower of building blocks poster, from Michelle Garcia Winner’s Incredible Flexible You ,  that illustrates all the steps required to be part of a group.

There are 14 skills that are necessary to do this effectively. Fourteen including joint attention, joint intention, imitation, attachment and emotional engagement, individual self regulation, language and cognition, central coherence, theory of mind, executive function, perspective taking (sharing space with others), self regulation in a group, cooperation and negotiation, collaborative play/sharing an imagination, and then, learning in a group.  It would be a great visual to share with parents and teachers to show the complexity of what we are asking them to do.  While it is innate in a neurotypical child, these skills often need more discreet teaching, breaking down the steps and lots of practice to help them figure out how to do all the things necessary to be part of a group successfully.

By the time the students are in middle school and beyond, it becomes more evident when there are social weaknesses that impair participation and cooperation in group work. Also, our kids who don’t have these group prerequisites can often appear to be non-cooperative and difficult behaviorally (refusal, interrupting, not being able to accept a differing opinion, no social filter) rather than their class recognizing that these “behaviors” are often part of their social language impairment.  This does not endear them to their peers or teachers. They are often left to fend for themselves as a result, and this may inadvertently reinforce these behaviors to escape the group work for our kids.  It’s a miserable cycle.

I have seen some great strategies that teachers, OTs and SLPs have used to encourage moving towards successful group work.  They include letting the student choose a part of the group work to complete (on their own or with a preferred peer), recording a piece of their research or presentation on an iphone to reduce anxiety with presentation to a class, having the group present to the teacher outside of the class setting (less people, less distraction), or working in a group via technology such as group me (a group text message app that allows a back and forth group discussion), edmodo or using a google doc.  Build up the time they participate slowly and reinforce the heck out of them!!  For my older students, introducing the concept of the “social fake/boring moments” as illustrated in this fantastic poster by Social Thinking (RT) is important. This poster for working in a group is a great resource too.  We need to acknowledge sometimes we need to work, think and talk about things we really don’t care about because it’s the expected behavior in a class discussion or project (and in life).  Here is a video link to a good example of a conversational social fake (and a bad example too)  as well as a great lesson plan from Cindy Meester on talking about the social fake HERE using the curriculum from Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking (RT) program. I also really like this TPT game, Phoney Baloney, from Just Speechie SLP to work on this skill too.

Working on the prerequisite pieces, such as self regulation, having a plan of what to do/say when you disagree, sticking to the topic, and the art of negotiation are all life long skills that will build success in group work, far beyond the school years. These are critical skills for success in the workplace and in relationships as well.  Remember, the skills aren’t going to be acquired in a few speech sessions, if that were true they would have picked them incidentally a long time ago from their peers! It’s not just the SLP that needs to work on these skills either, the best outcome results from a team approach (student, family, teachers, peers, OT, counselor, etc..) and a lot of structured opportunity.  I like to think about social language development as more of a crock pot than a microwave.

What strategies have you found work well in group work in the classroom for your students?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Powtoon for the win!

My eyes have been opened to several new websites that I can use as a SLP for social language therapy!  It’s always exciting to come across fresh ideas, but as a more “seasoned” SLP,  I worry a bit that it might be too complicated for my non-techie mind.  When a speech friend sent me a link to a video created using Powtoon, I thought it was worth a look around the website.  Boy am I glad I did!  Powtoon is a site to create cartoon based video presentations for businesses.   However, I used it to create a video from the materials in one of my TeachersPayTeachers products, #sorrynotsorry ,  as an instructional video on the steps to apologizing.  I exported it to Youtube and you can check it out HERE  or on my Social Videos Pinterest board.  Warning, it was my first try and I am still tweaking timing and placement of the text, but I put this together in less than 20 minutes after watching the tutorial.  If I can do it, you can too!!

The site has great step by step tutorials and walks you through visually how to create your Powtoon using pictures and text, with music or voice overs in the background!   There is a free membership with plenty of basic creating options, all the way through a professional membership which runs several hundred dollars a month.  It would also be interesting to use it as a marketing tool for a private practice.  Another project for another day…in the summer.

You could create the videos, but what a fun and engaging way for your students to create them too!  Whatever concepts that you are working on in a social language context, for example, the Zones of Regulation or Expected vs. Unexpected behaviors, could be the focus of the student created video.  What a better way to see if they understand the concepts than by asking them to teach it to others!  Collaborative learning is a big focus in the schools, and your students can work on delegating tasks, creating a script, accepting another person’s point of view/opinion and advocating for their ideas in a group all while creating their own Powtoon.  And on those days that our friends seem to have completely forgotten what we have been working on?  These videos are a great visual reminder to review concepts and strategies, and you don’t even have to say a word!

As our world moves faster and is more savvy electronically, how do you see using these types of  cartoon videos in therapy or for marketing?

The Language of Emotion

 

 

Last week, I talked about teaching point of view/perspective taking skills in therapy with younger students with ASD, ADD, and/or mild cognitive impairments.   This week, I am focusing on another social language concept, the language of emotions.  I use the emotion pictures from Super Duper Inc. (the scared lady in the picture above is my favorite!), characters in books and short animated clips with exaggerated expressions and role playing activities.  I like to work on broadening the skill far beyond labeling emotions to teach my littles how to be flexible thinkers!  You might want to also check out these previous blog posts for some other therapy ideas for emotions HERE and HERE .

We start by looking at pictures of facial expressions and labeling how we think someone might be feeling.  I point out the clues that help us figure out the emotion, such as the person’s eyes/eyebrows, mouth, body language, etc…  Teach the language first and practice simply matching to start with.  Yes, it’s very basic, but you want the kids to have the language of emotion in static pictures before they can move to more difficult interpretations of short video clips or real life interactions!  Don’t assume this is too easy for your littles!  Sometimes they have happy/sad, but not much more beyond that.

 

Next, I put the emotion pictures on headbands (the one in the top picture is from my Hedbanz (RT) game, but you can make your own).  I demonstrate that I want them to imitate the expression on my headband but not say the emotion label out loud (just copy the emotion with an expression). I then have to guess what the emotion is on my headband based on what they show me.  It’s a little tricky at first, but they catch on quickly.  We take turns and then look at our cards to see if our expressions and guesses match.  By the way, all of my kids try to see the card on their own heads the first few rounds.  It’s not going to happen buddy, you are going to sprain your eyeballs!

The ability to label emotions leads into more complex skills such as self-regulation.  Are you going to put your head down, cry and refuse to talk when something is hard or can you say, “I am frustrated.  I need help.” ? The language of emotion is critical for higher order thinking such as perspective taking and is ultimately a life skill, not just a language goal.

When my littles understand emotions and are able to use the labels consistently, then we are ready to move onto varied activities to practice this skill, such as my Oceans of Emotions packet in my TPT store.

Connecting how we feel to what we think and what we say, as well as learning to predict what others might be thinking and feeling, lays the foundation for social language success. The language of emotion is simply a stepping stone to be able to function in in a social environment more successfully!

What are some ways you work on the language of feelings?