Escape Speech Room Boredom

I love a good puzzle and a challenge, so naturally my curiosity was piqued when my son came home after a Breakout adventure with his friends.  These adventures are themed rooms where you are “locked” in, such as a jewel heist or the CDC during a Zombie outbreak, until you solve several clues. They are elaborate and creative fun and the group has to work together, or nobody gets out alive  wins the challenge. After thinking about how cool this idea is, my second thought was why not try this in speech?

One of the skills that I find I need to address over and over again with my social language students is the concept of working in a group successfully with peers.  There are so many social concepts to scaffold prior to working in a group such as sharing personal space, whole body or active listening skills, turn taking, maintaining a topic,  perspective taking, emotional regulation, executive function and more!  However, we are requiring even our Pre-K kiddos to master this skill pretty quickly in the school setting.  These skills are also embedded in the common core under the Speaking and Listening strands  Working cooperatively is a life skill and if our kids can’t learn to develop these skills in their early years, how do you think college, jobs or even living in a community is going to go?  Not well.

Out of this skill set, my Connect the Dots: Cornucopia Caper group work product was born! I wanted a fun way to work on a tough social skill with my upper grade students.  It’s always good to shake it up a bit to avoid boredom, right?

I created a print and go packet of activities perfect for November social groups with seven puzzles and challenges to solve.  I set up a secret mission for my students and they must work together to solve all of the challenges (logic and physical) to “escape” the speech room.   I have included templates for group rules and a rubric for data collection on this skill set.

Setting up for success

There are “How to Use” instructions included as well as mission descriptions for your students and an instruction guide/answer key for the SLP in each section.

7 challenges to solve

Your students need to work together to solve each puzzle,  like this Pilgrim’s Peril physical challenge  (the construction paper is the Mayflower and the floor is the ocean, all must share space to stay on the boat for thirty seconds).

Pilgrim’s Peril

The missions can be completed in one or even over two sessions, if the students work together.  There are two HELP cards included for the SLP to intervene if they cannot figure out a puzzle or are having difficulty working together.

Cipher codes to break

Puzzle it out together

The last mission is the “key” to escape and they receive a mission accomplished clue as the meet each challenge. These use these clues to solve a riddle.  I also tell my students, because they tend to be very literal thinkers, that when I tell them they are working to find the key to escape the speech room, this doesn’t mean we are actually locked in the room.  This reduces anxiety just a bit before we start the activity.  If the idea of a timer frustrates your students within the challenges, you don’t have to use it, it’s just a suggestion to move the activity along.  The goal is successfully working together, not beating the clock.

I hope this has given you a fun idea to try when practicing the social concepts of working successfully in a group !  This product is the first in a series, so check back soon for Holiday Hijinks, the next in my Connect the Dots series!

How do you work on the social concept of working in a group successfully with your students?

 

 

 

Deconstructing the Franken-goal.

I read a lot of IEPs during the school year as I supervise CFs and mentor new hires in my large county of almost 200 SLPs.  I support all areas of communication with my speechies, but social language is the area near and dear to my heart.  Because of this, I see a lot of goals written regarding conversation and turn taking.  Turn taking in and of itself is an important skill, both verbally and non-verbally.  We can’t function as a “me first/all about me” community…unless you have a show on the E! network.  However, I cringe a bit when I come across a goal that looks like this:

“The student will participate in 4-6 turn taking cycles, maintaining the topic of conversation and appropriate body orientation, with appropriate greeting/farewell, on three trials each session with no more than one cue.”

To be fair, most of these Franken-goals come with the student from another county or state.  The poor SLP usually looks at me with terror in their eyes when they realize that they will have to take data on this goal (in addition to the many other goals that are also in the IEP).  I suspect an advocate may have been involved in the construction of this mash-up of many different goals into one.  I try to reassure the SLP that we are going to dismantle the goal piece by piece and we will build it back into more functional, measurable and understandable goals. I also include the parent in this conversation so that they are reassured that we are still going to address the areas of concern, and that they are part of our team.  Michelle Garcia Winner’s Think Social materials have a wealth of well written goal suggestions if you need some ideas.

Most of the pieces of this goal are not wrong or bad,  in fact they may be necessary for the student to progress not only socially but academically as well in class discussions. Keep in mind that for our kids with social language impairments, we are measuring their progress against themselves, not necessarily what their neurotypical peers are doing. Let’s start to deconstruct and take a look at the separate areas embedded in the goal:

4-6  conversational turn taking cycles:   Do most adults continue a topic through 4-6 turns?  Not often, but a first grader?  Nope.  Maybe 2-3 at most before the topic changes in natural conversation and definitely not 4-6 cycles, three times in a thirty minute session. We need to break down the steps to having a conversation, practice often, start small and build from there! I have a free conversation football game that includes these steps in my TPT store HERE .

Topic maintenance:  is it a topic of the student’s choosing or a random topic assigned?  I don’t know about you, but I am willing to talk a lot more about something I am interested in.  Are they able to transition to related topics or change the topic completely?  Do they only talk about one topic all the time?

Body orientation can mean a lot of things.  Is the goal to turn your body towards the person you are speaking with?  Turning your face towards the person and engaging in eye contact? Adjusting personal space with other people in the conversation? Whole body listening skills are critical to participating successfully in a conversation.

Greeting/Farewell, ugh.  I really don’t like this as a goal at all and would much rather use peer models and reinforce natural ways to walk into and out of a room.  Very few of us always say “hello” when we walk into a room of our peers and “good-bye” every time we leave.  My teens tip their chin up and give a short, “s’up?” and my fellow SLPS in the building give me a little wave as they walk by me in the halls. We tap into a lot of social skills during therapy naturally, without having to write a goal for each and every one.

Cues:  what kind of cues?  Verbal, visual, tactile?  The goal is independence, so why write in a generic “no more than one cue”?  Note how you are cueing, modeling or prompting your students in your data as you scaffold towards independence.  Don’t forget to share what works for your kids with the adults in their world for carryover.

I really think focusing on 3-5 clear goals is PLENTY, just make them understandable, measurable and functional for your student. An IEP is a fluid document, so I would rather set a few, reachable goals and then meet to add more within the year rather than try to collect data on a bunch of huge goals that may not help our students progress outside of the therapy setting.  No more Franken-goals, they are much too scary!

Cabin Fever Conversation Connection

Connect Four, Milton Bradley TM

Cabin fever has set in at my house after we survived ice and snow for a few days in the deep South, so I am getting a little crazy and posting a mini-blog between Saturdays!  Here’s an idea that came from a conversation with a smart and enthusiastic CF I am supervising at one of my schools.  We were brainstorming on visual support for conversational turn taking and topic maintenance (I know you fellow SLPs are giddy at the thought LOL!).  I love using Connect Four as a visual representation.  And yes, there is even an app for that for you high tech folks. I prefer the click of the chips and the crash of them spilling out with the real game, but to each his own!

I give each child their own color chip and I either put a sticker on my chips or spray paint them if I have forethought energy to prepare ahead of time.  We have a pile of topic cards and take turns drawing one to start the conversation.  If your students are at a higher level and can generate a topic on their own, fantastic!  As someone comments, they put in their chip, then the next makes a connecting comment.  I switch things up by changing the topic and if the kids can maintain the conversation until the board is filled, they win a prize (chocolate or Marvel superhero tattoos are a big deal in my room).  I like the buy in that the kids have to work together to get the prize 🙂

BUT, if they don’t maintain the new topic, the bottom slides out (via me) and we have to start all over again…  NOOOOOOOOOO!   Caveat:  if your kids are not able to handle the frustration level of this activity, don’t do it.  The point isn’t to frustrate them needlessly,it’s just to give them a visual representation/fun way to see what conversation looks like in a structured situation.  Have fun and let me know if you try this out.  Oh, and think spring!