I am Seldom Speechless, but when I am it is because of the field of Speech Language Pathology and the amazing littles I meet and work with everyday. My name is Brittney and I am a pediatric SLP.
Have you ever asked your students why they think they come to speech therapy? It can be a really eye-opening experience.
From the Mouths of Babes
To learn reading…okay, close. I love literacy-based therapy, so we use a lot of picture books, and we often work on narrative. This is incorrect, but logical.
To have fun…yes, we do have a lot of fun, but the toys and games have a purpose, and they are not the reason you are here.
To learn math…honestly, this one hurts.
Something Needed to Change
After receiving many responses like the ones above and noticing that my students were not demonstrating carryover, I knew something needed to change.
How can a student carryover a skill if they don’t even realize they are learning it?! To bridge this gap and help my young students (preschool to third grade) understand and remember their speech therapy goals, I knew I needed to build goal ownership tasks into my speech therapy sessions.
I knew I needed a resource that was visual for my non-readers, easy to switch out/ manage during quick session transitions, and provided minimal distraction for my students. That was when I discovered adhesive name tag pockets at the Target Dollar Spot (Thanks Target for always being there when I need ya!). The adhesive pockets make switching out the goal visuals quick and easy, and keep the visuals out of my student’s fidgety fingers!
Speech Therapy Goal Name Tags
Speech Therapy Goal Name Tags were designed to provide even our youngest students with a highly visual, distraction-free tool for recalling and identifying their speech therapy goals. Over 100 different speech therapy goals are represented in this product–covering articulation to AAC. Check out the video below to check it out!
How I Use Goal Name Tags in Speech Therapy Sessions
At the beginning of every session, I quickly slide each student’s goal name tag into the adhesive pocket in front of them on my speech therapy table. Next, using a dry erase marker, I circle the goal we will be targeting in today’s session. If we are targeting multiple goals, I will explain that or erase and re-circle as we transition skills.
At the end of every session, I ask the students to recall what goal we were targeting and give me an example. For example, a student might respond, “We are practicing telling stories. I told you the parts of Dragons Love Tacos.” or “We are working on past-tense verbs like I threw the baseball.”
When a student masters a goal, we will review the skill, discuss the progress made, and then add a special sticker or a checkmark with a permanent marker to that goal icon on the name tag.
I have also sent goal name tags home or with classroom aides to increase generalization and ensure everyone is working toward the same end goals. The name tags are great for students using AAC devices as well. I tape a copy of a student’s goal name tag to the back of their device or place it inside their device carrying case.
Why use Speech Therapy Goal Name Tags?
Teaching your students their speech therapy goals is empowering. Not only does it presume competence and reinforce a growth mindset, but it will increase carryover and support generalization. When students understand and can recall their speech therapy goals, they will notice opportunities to practice and be more likely to self-correct in other settings.
On the topic of goals!
While we are talking about goals, don’t forget to check out the Speech Therapy Goal Bank in the Seldom Speechless Freebie Library. It includes 250+ IEP objectives and 100+ IEP Accommodations that you can copy, paste, & go!
Hey! If you are reading this post, you are probably heading into Extended School Year (ESY) too! This is my fifth year working ESY and while I always dread it a bit as ESY approaches, I am usually happy that I worked it. ESY is more relaxed with a summer camp feel. I love being able to stay connected with a few of my students during the summer. Some districts have more intense ESY programs than others, but for me, it is just a couple of hours, just a few days a week to help me keep a little bit of a schedule during the summer.
Here is how I get ready for ESY each year!
If you are interested in checking out the autopopulating data sheets, you can grab your copy here in the freebie library.
These are the themes I decided on for this year! And I already have a free one-page guide for each theme with books, articles, videos, songs, games, apps, play, and no-print resources so you are ready to tackle Extended School Year. Grab the themed speech therapy idea guides in my freebie library here.
Let me know if you are working Extended School Year this year!
I hope that we spend most of this summer relaxing, but it is a great time to earn some CEUs or build up knowledge in an area of growth. Here is a list of current summer 2021 continuing education opportunities for SLPs.
AAC in the Cloud
AAC in the Cloud is a massive free online conference focused on spreading the knowledge of best practices in AAC so families, teaching staff, practitioners and AAC users themselves can learn and improve. AAC in the Cloud just concluded on June 24, 2021, but all of the sessions are available hosted through YouTube. Best of all, past AAC in the Cloud conference sessions are also available.
Click here to check out the AAC in the Cloud schedule.
From Speech to Print: The Role of the SLP for Literacy – Free Course from SpeechTherapyPD.com
As SLPs, we often question our role for students with literacy issues including dyslexia. Each domain of language plays a vital role to move from speaking and listening to reading and writing. This session concentrates on morphology, phonology, and syntax. Evidence-based practices and specific strategies are provided that link speaking and listening with reading and writing.
This webinar is available for .1 ASHA CEU with ASHA reporting included. Click here to check it out.
SpeechPathology.com
If you are not a member already you can take one free course on Speechpathology.com using promo code 1FREECourse.
Presence Learning
Building Better Readers Through Early Collaborative Partnerships is a one-hour webinar available on-demand on Presence Learning.
Description: Progress in creating literate learners is the cornerstone of education and a high-stakes yardstick by which academic performance is measured. Silos of school-based services are how we’ve traditionally helped students with special needs who are at-risk for reading failure. But now, there’s a new collaborative and results-oriented approach: parents and educators working together to provide individual early reading experiences that develop literacy skills for every learner. During this webinar, we’ll explore why, how, and what we read in shared reading interactions with young children and how to develop critical foundation skills for reading success. You’ll see examples of books, techniques, and practical ways to help young learners succeed.
The Leaders Project offers self-study courses for 0.5 ASHA CEUs. Current topic offerings include Grammar Fundamentals for a Pluralistic Society, Differential Diagnosis in Preschool Evaluations: A Case Study, Disorder, Difference, or Gap?: A School-Age Disability Evaluation, Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate EI Evaluations, and Evaluation and Treatment of Speech Impairments Due to Cleft Palate.
Check out the webinars available by Pearson to help improve your assessment skills. Click here to check it out.
Ethical Decision-Making: A Public Health Emergency and Unprecedented Challenges by Theresa H. Rodgers, MA, CCC-SLP, ASHA Fellow
Course Description: Response to the COVID-19 pandemic evolved rapidly with the public health emergency forcing speech-language pathologists to change the very manner in which services are delivered. Regulatory agencies and professional organizations provided needed guidance including information on changes to long-standing professional practice standards precipitated by the pandemic. Personal protective equipment (PPE), billing and reimbursement, informed consent, supervision, telepractice, confidentiality, and Individualized Education Plan (IEP) compliance are some of the topics which presented dilemmas and potentially ethical challenges for speech-language pathology professionals. This session will highlight information on these topics including scenarios that will be analyzed and deliberated by participants.
Available for .1 ASHA CEU. Click here to check it out.
Power Up SLP Literacy Conference August 5-6, 2021
The Lavi Institute is offering 1.4 live ASHA CEUs or 14 professional development hours sharing the latest EBP clinical tools from the field’s leading experts in literacy. The conference videos are available to watch for free. To receive ASHA reporting you would need to sign up for the Lavi Institute CEU Hub ($125/year), which includes 40 additional pre-recorded webinars available for ASHA CEU Reporting.
Free practical continuing education delivered by SLPs. SLP Summit offers 8 one-hour webinars available live or on-demand for a limited time. The specific webinar lineup has not yet been announced, but the following topics were listed on the website: caseload management, stuttering, family-centered intervention, dynamic assessment, service delivery, AAC, anti-ableist practice, narrative intervention. The webinars are available for free with certificates. ASHA reporting is usually available for an affordable price.
Click here to sign up for updates as more information is released.
Unbelievable Deal: Unlimited CEUs with ASHA Reporting from SpeechTheraoyPD.com
If you need to get a lot of high-quality CEUs with ASHA reporting this summer, make sure you check out SpeechTherapyPD.com. SpeechTherapyPD.com has over 1148.5 hours of courses with new live and interactive courses being added weekly. Enjoy automatic CEU reporting and a huge variety of courses presented in different formats for a super reasonable yearly cost.
Check out all that SpeechTherapyPD.com has to offer by clicking here.
Let me know if you check out any of these CEU opportunities! Thanks for reading!
I love to use short videos in speech therapy sessions to spark discussion and increase engagement. Often these videos are wordless or have minimal dialogue, which allows the students to make inferences, predictions, and use descriptive language.
Before we get to the list. I want to familiarize you with three helpful resources to bring these videos to the next level.
Safe Youtube
If you are worried about inappropriate advertisements popping up or the video ending and automatically playing something inappropriate next, paste the YouTube link into safeyoutube.net and it will generate a safe version of the video hosted off of YouTube, so you do not have to worry about students seeing advertisements or content that you have not approved.
Edpuzzle
Edpuzzle allows you to add strategic pauses in videos with built in question prompts. You can also trim videos to remove content inappropriate or irrelevant to your students. I have included an example I made below. You can sign up for a free account to make twenty of your own videos, but you also get unlimited access to tons of videos made by other educators.
Any Video/Article Visual Organizers for Describing and Critical Thinking
No time to prep? I feel ya! I have this no-print visual organizer Boom Card Deck bookmarked on my iPad for quick, engaging, language rich sessions. It includes visual organizers for describing using attributes, describing using key info, compare/contrast, sorting important vs. unimportant details, story retell, summarizing fiction stories, summarizing non-fiction stories, and inferencing.
This is a growing list of animated shorts available on YouTube. I have tried to organize the videos by theme for easy planning. The title of the video is a direct link to the video. These links are subject to change, please preview content before sharing it with your students. It is your responsibility to ensure appropriateness of the content for your students.
Click on the playlist icon in the top right of the video to see all videos included on the playlist. You can bookmark this playlist on YouTube for quick access to animated shorts for speech therapy.
Birthday
Preheated: A boy decides to make a birthday cake for his eccentric scientist father, but accidentally spills one of his dad’s experiments and ends up with super hot hands! Use this video to target predicting, sequencing, inferencing, describing, and summarizing.
Fall
Automne: This animated reimagines the changing of the seasons by creating seasonal characters, who paint their season on to a scale model of the Earth when it is their turn. Great for working on comparing and describing the different seasons.
Geri’s Game Pixar Short: Geri is enjoying a competitive game of chess in the park…against himself. Great for inferencing, describing, and identifying emotions.
Autumn Leaves: Cute, super short film about a little boy enjoying the leaves in the fall! Great for sparking discussion about fall and making simple predictions!
Autumn Squirrel: Silly video about a squirrel trying to keep the Autumn chill out of his tree house. Great for discussing problem solving and cause/effect.
Back to School
Clocky: Cute story of a little alarm clock getting ready to ring for the first time. Great for perspective taking, describing, and problem solving.
Afternoon Class: A boy fights the urge to fall asleep during a boring afternoon class. The video features excellent imagery for using figurative language! Also great for perspective taking and cause/effect.
Acceptance & Friendship
Alike: This is a beautiful animated short with the message that it is okay to be different from others! Great for working on describing, cause/effect, perspective taking, summarizing, and predicting!
Invisible Animated Short: Two chameleons are lonely at a school dance. One chameleon wants to ask the other to dance, but he is too nervous and every time he tries something goes wrong. Great for working on summarizing narrative events, perspective taking, identifying emotions, inferencing, and problem solving.
Snack Attack: This video is awesome for working on many different social skills! The older lady in this story has the wrong perspective and she completely over reacts! Awesome for working on perspective taking, prediction, describing, cause/effect, personal space, summarizing!
Perseverance
Hair Love: This is a beautiful, heart-warming story about perseverance! Great for working on describing, predicting, perspective taking, and problem solving.
One Small Step: Luna Chu wants to be an astronaut more than anything! Follow along on her journey from childhood to the moon! Great for perspective taking, predicting, describing.
Content Warning: Luna’s father passes away during the story. She comes home to find his can left on the floor and the lights off in the house. Then, the animator shows her at his grave and destroying her bedroom in grief. The loss of her father renews her desire to work hard to become an astronaut.
Scarlett: Scarlett is a young girl with an amputated leg and a lot of perseverance! Great for working on perspective taking, summarizing, and describing!
Pip: Pip is ready to become a guide dog for the visually impaired, but the training is much harder than expected. Nevertheless, Pip perseveres and becomes a true hero. Perfect for targeting describing, compare/contrast, summarizing, and problem solving.
Simon’s Sister’s Dog in Fed Up : This one will get your student’s laughing as this poor hungry dog gets himself into a predicament. Great for inferencing and summarizing. Target figurative language with the title as well.
Salt: This is my favorite Thanksgiving video. It is perfect for targeting cause/effect, sequencing, describing, perspective taking, summarizing, & predicting.
Winter
Under the Winter Sun: Two snowman have a fun snow day until the sun begins to rise. Great for predicting, describing, cause/effect, and summarizing.
Hey Deer: Ever wonder what it would be like to live inside of a snowglobe? This short answers that question. Great for predicting, inferencing, and summarizing.
Holiday
The Present: A young amputee receives a puppy with three legs from his mom. This video shows the boy going from displaced frustration and anger toward the dog to care and compassion. It is a good conversation starter regarding empathy and perspective taking. USe this video to target summarizing, describing, and inferencing.
Downtown: Cute animated short about a town that has lost all of its color and a little house that brings the spirit of christmas. Use to describe, compare/contrast, predict, infer, and summarize.
A Shorter Letter: Cute video that helps kids understand you do not always get the toys you want for Christmas. Good for sparking discussions about describing, compare/contrast, and summarizing.
Baking
Here’s the Plan: This video is definitely for a more mature student group. It references divorce and includes a scene where one of the character accidentally gets a bloody nose. This video is good for discussing cause-effect, compare/contrast, and inferencing.
Preheated: A boy decides to make a birthday cake for his eccentric scientist father, but accidentally spills one of his dad’s experiments and ends up with super hot hands! Use this video to target predicting, sequencing, inferencing, describing, and summarizing.
Salt: This is my favorite Thanksgiving video. It is perfect for targeting cause/effect, sequencing, describing, perspective taking, summarizing, & predicting.
Spring
Petals Animated Short: This is the story of two young humanized animals with different levels of respect for the environment. Highlights the impact people can have on the environment. Great for inferencing, making predictions, identifying cause & effect, compare/contrast, describing, and summarizing.
Sweet Cocoon Animated Short: A very chubby caterpillar cannot fit into his cocoon. A few of his buddies help him out. Great for working on summarizing narrative events, identifying cause & effect, problem solving, and inferencing.
The Spark & The Time Shop: These Chik-fil-a commercials are adorable! They help children see the true meaning of christmas and are great for inferencing, predicting, and summarizing. Time shop includes some funny figurative language examples.
The Gift: A boy asks Santa for an elf and the elf is afraid of being someone’s toy. This little video is fun and festive, and great for targeting describing, compare/contrast, perspective taking, and summarizing.
Summer
Watermelon a Cautionary Tale: A boy imagines what if you really do turn into a watermelon when you eat the watermelon seeds. Great for discussing figures of speech (i.e., do you really become a watermelon? No. You may just get a stomach ache.)
Content Warning: Some of the imagery of becoming a watermelon may be scary for some students.
Beach/ Ocean
Piper Pixar Animated Short: Adorable animation of a baby sandpiper adventuring out of his nest to get his own food. Great for describing, summarizing, and problem solving.
Trouble in Paradise: This crab does not know what a coconut is and he wants it far away from his home! Great for inferencing and describing.
Bottle Animated Short: Cute wordless story of a sandman and a snowman who communicate by sending things back and forth in a bottle over the ocean. Great for working on describing and compare/contrast.
The Legend of the Crab Phare: I love this sweet video. The Legendary Crab Phare likes to collect ships as they pass by. As he gets older it is harder for him to move, so he becomes sedentary causing him to appear as an island in the middle of the ocean. Eventually, a society forms on top of him until one day he molts and begins again. So many inferencing opportunities. Great for working on describing, inferencing, and summarizing.
Taking the Plunge Animated Short: Cute video about a nervous guy, who accidentally drops his engagement ring into the ocean just before he took the plunge to propose causing him to actually take the plunge to find the ring. Great for working on non-literal language, inferencing, describing, summarizing, and problem solving.
Camping
Roughin’ It Mickey Mouse Short: Mickey, Goofy, and Donald go camping, but they have very different ideas of what roughing it means. Great for working on compare/contrast, describing, identifying cause/effect, and summarizing.
Content Warning: Mickey references being in nature’s bosom in the first ten seconds. I personally just start the video after to avoid teaching this particular vocabulary word. Also, Mickey is attacked by forest animals very time, so may view the tussle as violent.
Zoo Animals
Rollin’ Wild Animated Short: What if jungle animals were like blown up balloons? Very entertaining. Great for working on predicting, identifying cause & effect and problem solving.
Catch it! Animated Short: The meerkat’s sacred fruit is stolen by a vulture! How will the meerkat’s get it back? Great for working on inferencing, predicting, problem solving, and summarizing.
We Love Animals Animated Short: A trip to the zoo shown from the perspective of the animals inside their small enclosures. Very sad and will spark big discussions about animal care. Great for working on inferencing and summarizing.
Safari, So Good Mickey Mouse Short: Mickey and Minnie are left behind by their tour bus in the wild, but they make the most of enjoying the plains and the animals. Great for working on summarizing, inferencing, describing, understanding indirect language, and identifying cause & effect.
