Assessment of Social Communication Deficits in School-Aged Children with Psychiatric Impairments
Search Results for: dyslexia testing
What are They Trying To Say? Interpreting Music Lyrics for Figurative Language Acquisition Purposes
In my last post, I described how I use obscurely worded newspaper headlines to improve my students’ interpretation of ambiguous and figurative language. Today, I wanted to further delve into this topic by describing the utility of interpreting music lyrics for language therapy purposes. I really like using music lyrics for language treatment purposes. Not only do my students and I get to listen to really cool music, but we also get an opportunity to define a variety of literary devices (e.g., hyperboles, similes, metaphors, etc.) as well as identify them and interpret their meaning in music lyrics. Continue reading What are They Trying To Say? Interpreting Music Lyrics for Figurative Language Acquisition Purposes
Assessment of Social Communication From Toddlerhood Through Adolescence
Articulation Carnival-App Review and Giveaway
Today I am reviewing a brand new app by the Virtual Speech Center -Articulation Carnival (requires iOS 7 or later; compatible with iPad). Virtual Speech Center did a great job creating a fun app, where the kids get to go to a “carnival’ and practice their articulation at the word, phrase, and sentence levels.
Much like all their other apps, this one is super easy to use and very intuitive to navigate. With a variety of options to boot. Applicable to children of all ages beginning with 2+ years, it’s phoneme targets include 20 pictures per phoneme and per word position as well as phrases and sentences. All phonemes are editable which is a very convenient options for therapists who need to customize their client’s phoneme lists based on the child’s present level of ability and needs. Continue reading Articulation Carnival-App Review and Giveaway
Narrative Assessments of Preschool, School-Aged, and Adolescent Children
Fun and Educational Summer Board Games: Recommendations for SLPs and Parents
According to the New York Times Article which summarized the results of Johns Hopkins University study: A TYPICAL STUDENT WILL LOSE ABOUT ONE MONTH OF LEARNING OVER THE SUMMER TIME.
“More troubling is that it disproportionately affects low-income students: they lose two months of reading skills, while their higher-income peers — whose parents can send them to enriching camps, take them on educational vacations and surround them with books during the summer — make slight gains.” To continue: “the study of students in Baltimore found that about two-thirds of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income ninth graders could be explained by summer learning loss during the elementary school years.”
BUMMER!
But then again it is summer and kids do want to have fun!
So with the recent heatwaves across the country, how about combining fun with learning on those sweltering summer days when lazing at the pool or going outside may not be the best option.
Let’s take a look at the few common and readily available board games, which can be used to improve various language abilities: including vocabulary knowledge, problem solving, questioning, storytelling as well as other language related skills.
A to Z Jr– a game of early categorizations is recommended for players 5 – 10 years of age, but can be used with older children depending on their knowledge base. The object of the game is to cover all letters on your letter board by calling out words in specific categories before the timer runs out. This game can be used to increase word finding abilities in children with weak language skills as the categories range from simple (e.g., basic concepts) to more complicated (e.,. attributes). This game is great for several players of different age groups, since younger children or children with weaker knowledge and language skills can answer simpler questions and learn the answers to the harder questions as other players get their turn.
Tribond Jr – is another great game which purpose is to determine how 3 seemingly random items are related to one another. Good for older children 7-12 years of age it’s also great for problem solving and reasoning as some of the answers are not so straight forward (e.g., what do the clock, orange and circle have in common? Psst…they are all round)
Password Jr-is a great game to develop the skills of description. In the game you guess passwords based on the one word clues. This game is designed to play with children ages 7 years and older as long as you help the non readers with the cards. It’s great for encouraging children to become both better at describing and at listening. You may want to allow the children to select the word they want to describe in order to boost their confidence in own abilities. Provide visual cheat sheets (listing ways we can describe something such as: what does it do, where does it go, how can we use it etc) to the child as they will be much more likely to provide more complete descriptions of the target words given visual cues.
Blurt – a game for children 10 and up is a game that works on a simple premise. Blurt out as many answers as you can in order to guess what the word is. Blurt provides ready-made definitions that you read off to players so they could start guessing what the word is. Players and teams use squares on the board strategically to advance by competing in various definition challenges that increase language opportunities.
Games the facilitate asking questions: 
Guess Who (age 6+), 
Guess Where (age 6+), and Mystery Garden (age 4+) are great for encouraging students to ask relevant questions in order to be the first to win the game. They are also terrific for encouraging reasoning skills. Questions have to be thought through carefully in order to be the first one to win the game.
Game that facilitates Story Telling as well as Perspective Taking: Fib or Not (ages 10+) encourages the players to fool other players by either telling an outlandish true story or a truly believable made up story. For the players who are listening to the story, the objective is to correctly guess if the story teller is fibbing or being truthful. Players advance by fooling the other players or by guessing correctly.
Games that improve verbal reasoning and problem solving abilities: 30 Second Mysteries (ages 8-12) and 20 Questions for Kids (ages 7+).
In 30 Second Mysteries kids need to use critical thinking and deductive reasoning in order to solve mysteriously sounding cases of everyday events. Each clue read aloud reveals more about the mystery and the trick is to solve it given the fewest number of clues in order to gain the most points.
In 20 Questions for Kids, a guessing game of people, places, and things. Children need to generate original questions in order to obtain information. Here again, each clue read aloud reveals more about the secret identity and the trick is to solve it given the fewest number of clues.
Now that you know which games to play and why, how about you give it a try.
Have fun playing!
References:
Smink, J (2011) This is Your Brain on Summer. New York Times: The Opinion Pages. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/opinion/28smink.html?_r=1
Parent Consultation Services
Today I’d like to officially introduce a new parent consultation service which I had originally initiated with a few out-of-state clients through my practice a few years ago.
The idea for this service came after numerous parents contacted me and initiated dialogue via email and phone calls regarding the services/assessments needed for their monolingual/bilingual internationally/domestically adopted or biological children with complex communication needs. Here are some details about it.
Parent consultations is a service provided to clients who live outside Smart Speech Therapy LLC geographical area (e.g., non-new Jersey residents) who are interested in comprehensive specialized in-depth consultations and recommendations regarding what type of follow up speech language services they should be seeking/obtaining in their own geographical area for their children as well as what type of carryover activities they should be doing with their children at home.
Consultations are provided with the focus on the following specialization areas with a focus on comprehensive assessment and intervention recommendations:
- Language and Literacy
- Children with Social Communication (Pragmatic) Disorders
- Bilingual and Multicultural Children
- Post-institutionalized Internationally Adopted Children
- Children with Psychiatric and Emotional Disturbances
- Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders
The initial consultation length of this service is 1 hour. Clients are asked to forward their child’s records prior to the consultation for review, fill out several relevant intakes and questionnaires, as well as record a short video (3-5 minutes). The instructions regarding video content will be provided to them following session payment.
Upon purchasing a consultation the client will be immediately emailed the necessary paperwork to fill out as well as potential dates and times for the consultation to take place. Afternoon, Evening and Weekend hours are available for the client’s convenience. In cases of emergencies consultations may be rescheduled at the client’s/Smart Speech Therapy’s mutual convenience.
Refunds are available during a 3 day grace period if a mutually convenient time could not be selected for the consultation. Please note that fees will not be refundable from the time the scheduled consultation begins.
Following the consultation the client has the option of requesting a written detailed consultation report at an additional cost, which is determined based on the therapist’s hourly rate. For further information click HERE. You can also call 917-916-7487 or email tatyana.elleseff@smartspeechtherapy.com if you wanted to find out whether this service is right for you.
Below is a past parent consultation testimonial.
International Adoption Consultation Parent Testimonial (11/11/13)
I found Tatyana and Smart Speech Therapy online while searching for information about internationally adopted kids and speech evaluations. We’d already taken our three year old son to a local SLP but were very unsatisfied with her opinion, and we just didn’t know where to turn. Upon finding the articles and blogs written by Tatyana, I felt like I’d finally found someone who understood the language learning process unique to adopted kids, and whose writings could also help me in my meetings with the local school system as I sought special education services for my son.
I could have never predicted then just how much Tatyana and Smart Speech Therapy would help us. I used the online contact form on her website to see if Tatyana could offer us any services or recommendations, even though we are in Virginia and far outside her typical service area. She offered us an in-depth phone consultation that was probably one of the most informative, supportive and helpful phone calls I’ve had in the eight months since adopting my son. Through a series of videos, questionnaires, and emails, she was better able to understand my son’s speech difficulties and background than any of the other sources I’d sought help from. She was able to explain to me, a lay person, exactly what was going on with our son’s speech, comprehension, and learning difficulties in a way that a) added urgency to our situation without causing us to panic, b) provided me with a ton of research-orientated information for our local school system to review, and c) validated all my concerns and gut instincts that had previously been brushed aside by other physicians and professionals who kept telling us to “wait and see”.
After our phone call, we contracted Tatyana to provide us with an in-depth consultation report that we are now using with our local school and child rehab center to get our son the help he needs. Without that report, I don’t think we would have had the access to these services or the backing we needed to get people to seriously listen to us. It’s a terrible place to be in when you think something might be wrong, but you’re not sure and no one around you is listening. Tatyana listened to us, but more importantly, she looked at our son as a specific kid with a specific past and specific needs. We were more than just a number or file to her – and we’ve never even actually met in person! The best move we’ve could’ve made was sending her that email that day. We are so appreciative.
Kristen, P. Charlottesville, VA
Can you keep it down? Voice Monsters on the Prowl!
So I have to admit, I don’t really like pediatric voice therapy. I don’t know why. I got A’s and loved all my voice classes and voice clients in grad school. I voluntarily got some CEUs in pediatric voice therapy after college. But I never quite felt about it the same way I feel about language therapy. So needless to say I could always use some help when searching for materials for pediatric voice clients. That’s why I was so excited when I got the opportunity to review the “Voice Monsters” created by Rachel Osborn of The Queen’s Speech Blog.
Rachel has created this voice therapy techniques packet to target clients with vocal nodules. However, the materials in this packet are applicable to clients with a number of different voice diagnoses (e.g., vocal hyperfunction, functional dysphonia, etc) provided of course these clients have been seen by an otolaryngologist and have been cleared to receive vocal therapy).
So what does this 37 page packet contain?
Targeted for children ages 4 and above this packet provides explanation of voice disorders as well as tips on vocal hygiene for kids. Interestingly both the explanations on page 4 and the tips on vocal hygiene on pages 5 and 6 are actually a perfect way to present the information to parents. However, given the complexity of the language on the first two cards on page 4 (e.g., abnormal, characteristics, intensity, causes, inflammation) you might need to simplify this information for the students (especially for younger children) to adjust the language to their level.
The next set of cards explains the yawn sigh (pages 7-20) and the ‘buzzy voice’ (pages 20-30) techniques. The yawn sigh technique cards are very easy to understand and what I particularly like about them that they are arranged in a hierarchy of vowels, words, and sentences. I like the fact that Rachel included blank cards so you can create our own sentences. She does a similar hierarchy of sounds, phrases and sentences for the ‘buzzy voice’ technique as well.
I also like the fact that Rachel included some fun activities into her pack in addition to the exercises. There’s the quiz which reviews things that can hurt and help you voice, the voice detective game for good and bad voice habits, as well as a voice thermometer to help students monitor their vocal volume. There is even a generic game board for practicing a variety of tasks.
Finally, I really like that fact that Rachel includes information on other voice exercises as well as links to videos and other useful resources.
There’s just so much you can do with these activities, and the adorable graphics make it both fun and functional for the children to participate in therapy.
The best part of me was that in addition to the materials being functional I didn’t have to spend any effort on “cutefying’ them for my clients, and that’s definitely a huge plus in my book. You can grab this cute and functional activity in Rachel’s TPT store for as little as $4.00.
For more information check out Rachel’s blog, The Queen’s Speech and don’t forget to follow her on Facebook!
Spotlight on Syndromes: an SLPs Perspective on Treacher Collins
Today’s guest post on genetic syndromes comes from Amy Locy, who is contributing an informative piece on the Treacher Collins Syndrome (TCS). TSC occurs in 1 out of every 50,000 live births with 40% of children born with TCS having a family member with the syndrome. TCS is distributed equally across genders and races. It can often occur in conjunction with the Pierre Robin Sequence.
Developmental Anomalies
There are many developmental anomalies associated with TCS that are restricted to the head and neck and vary from person to person. Continue reading Spotlight on Syndromes: an SLPs Perspective on Treacher Collins
Social Pragmatic Assessment and Treatment Bundle
